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Know Your Competition on Facebook – Boost your Blog BB#100

By: Trish Corlew6 Comments

Did you learn a lot from studying your analytics about what types of posts your audience likes and interacts with?  Now we will take that very information we found for you on Facebook to Know your Competition! Yes, we are going there. But, let’s call it benchmarking… because really that is what we are trying to do. Determine how successful we are compared to others in our niche. We can learn a lot from others who are bigger than we are. We will look to the pages that are really growing to see if we can gather some intelligence about YOUR audience.  How do we know who they are?  Keep reading…

Know your audience on Facebook

Graph Searches

If you haven’t started using this powerful search, you will fall in love once you try them. This is how can we study other pages that your audience likes. Simply use this search string in Facebook and replace “hip homeschool moms” with the name of your blog:

Favorite pages of people who like Hip Homeschool Moms

So what are we going to do with this information?

The Challenge: Study Your Most Successful Competitors

Now let’s spend some time understanding what is working for your largest competitors. Study the engagement, see which types of posts were the most successful.  Document the following information:

  1. How often did the post?
  2. When?
  3. What type of posts (pictures, links, statuses, videos, contests, trivia, )?
  4. What were the most successful posts?
  5. How much did the page interact with their audience?
  6. Notice the apps and tabs they are using would these benefit your audience?
  7. Do they repost other brands content?
  8. Do they use hashtags often?
  9. Do they post sponsored content?

The key comparison to track is engagement rates by days, time of post, by content type and topic allows you to really start learning.

Resources to Help Analyze Your Competitors (and Yourself)

  • Likealyzer.  LikeAlyzer helps you to measure and analyze the potential and effectiveness of your Facebook Page. It allows you to monitor, compare and explore all the possibilities of your Facebook Page by evaluating your activity to ensure your success on the most popular social network in the world – Facebook.
  • Fan Page Karma.    is a paid tool that provides a free version that allows you to do a pretty detailed analysis of your Facebook Page and a comparison with your competitors.
  • Conversation Score.  CScore is a free tool that performs an analysis of your Facebook Page, categorizes and gives it a score based on the behavior of your Page.
  • AgoraPulse Barometer. This report provides an analysis of your Facebook Page and compares it against other companies’ Pages (that also used this tool) that have a similar number of fans. It calculates the average percentage on several criteria based on your last 50 posts. The report shows the score for your Page received compared with the average score for other Pages that ran this assessment.

Share Your Thoughts, Tools and Insights

As you are working through my challenges, please share your thoughts and insights in a comment.  If you are using different tools that are working, please include those as well.  I am not the sage of Facebook social media… I just spend a lot of time analyzing and trying to help grow our Social Media success.  So help me learn from you as well!  I am just like you, I want to grow my blogs too, ya’ know 🙂

I know these challenges are harder than most, but because Facebook is changing, we have to really understand our niche to be effective.  I encourage you to take your time…. if it can’t be done overnight, come back after you have completed that day’s challenge before you start the next one.  These challenges will build on each other!

Be sure to read the other posts in this series:

Be sure to visit the other co-hosts and do their challenges as well!

  • Lisa from Squishable Baby wrote a series on Giveaways
  • Michelle from Simplify, Live, Love wrote a series on Grammar
  • Thaleia from Something 2 Offer wrote a series on Blog Photos and one on Commenting
  • Martiel from Amazing Success Academy wrote a series onSEO and one on Blog Titles and Topics
  • Honey from Honey’s Life wrote a series on Twitter

Until next time…

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Know Your Audience on Facebook Boost Your Blog BB#100

By: Trish Corlew10 Comments

Well, Facebook picked a fine time to change the way they treat Company Pages… right before I am about to write my portion of this challenge! And I’ll go ahead and confess, I am one unhappy lady with Facebook right now. Let me also mention while I’m at it, that I am one of the co-owners of Hip Homeschool Moms.  So my perspective is being shared here on my personal blog (Live and Learn Farm), but my experience is from doing the Social Media for Hip Homeschool Moms.  I also need to tell you I make everything a game!  So, although I’m mad as fire at Facebook, I’m determined that we are going to figure out how to continue reaching our audience despite this dramatic reduction in organic reach to our audience that took the time to like our page!  But before we go there, let’s get some basic items covered up front and get right to our first discussion… Know your audience on Facebook.

Boost your Blog Facebook Day 1

 

Facebook is a Business

I know… that is obvious. But it needs to be stated at the beginning of our discussion about this platform. Just like we are in business to make a living, so are they… and they now have shareholders to answer to. The days of getting a bunch of free advertising are pretty much over on Facebook. That does not mean we need to leave Facebook! Far from it! In my opinion, that would be very short-sighted to consider leaving Facebook. After all, it is still the most popular social media platform on the internet (right now). And, at least for our audience, they are primarily on Facebook. What it does mean is…  we all need to get extremely smart with our approach! So what’s a blogger to do?

Know Your Audience

I cannot emphasize this point enough! We have to know our audience, know what makes them want to read our posts, know what they love about our sites (and don’t like so much), know why they share some posts and not others, I mean KNOW them. That is the most important piece of advice I can give you. Period. It doesn’t matter what platform we are talking about.  If you don’t know your audience and how to connect with them, you are batting a zero already. Relationships. That is what social media is based on. If you are not developing a relationship with your audience, you are losing them to someone who is!

How do you get to know your Audience?

You spend time with the analytics and numbers from your site.  Take some time to study and compare all the analytics from all the platforms you use. Facebook insights are easy to navigate and a treasure trove of information. You  can learn so much via the insights that Facebook provides:

  • Where your audience is geographically
  • What time of day and days of the week your audience most uses Facebook
  • The demographics of your audience (age, location, gender)
  • The reach each of your posts receive
  • What posts garner the most engagement with your audience and what type those posts are (pictures, comments, links, etc.)
  • What technology your audience used to view your page
  • Details about audience numbers (how many you have gained and lost) and even if they hid a post, all your posts or reported your posts as spam!
  • If you pay to have any of your posts boosted, you will see the results compared to organic reach as well.

I am a numbers-aholic, so I track everything. I don’t necessarily recommend you spend more than an hour on this exercise, but I do encourage you to pay special attention to the type of posts, when, and notice what is special about it that helped engagement.  Was it a fantastic photograph? A great tag line? A post that was time sensitive? Make note of these items.

Resources to Help you Analyze your Numbers

There are so many resources you can choose from to help you understand your Facebook Analytics and this list is not extensive nor all inclusive.  If you have other resources you love to use, please let me know in the comments below.

John Loomer wrote a great article about page insights for Social Media Examiner. I highly recommend you spend some time understanding your metrics

Another site you need to visit that will provide a detailed explanation of how to find the data, download it and understand it is by Web Marketing Today.

The Challenge…

Download and study your numbers for 2014.  I know that might be a lot of data… but Facebook is changing! You have to know your data to see the trends! If you are not intimately aware of your numbers, you wont notice the numbers as they shift.

Share Your Thoughts, Tools and Insights

As you are working through my challenges, please share your thoughts and insights in a comment.  If you are using different tools that are working, please include those as well.  I am not the sage of Facebook social media… I just spend a lot of time analyzing and trying to help grow our Social Media success.  So help me learn from you as well!  I am just like you, I want to grow my blogs too, ya’ know 🙂

Be sure to read the other posts in this series:

Be sure to visit the other co-hosts and do their challenges as well!

  • Lisa from Squishable Baby wrote a series on Giveaways
  • Michelle from Simplify, Live, Love wrote a series on Grammar
  • Thaleia from Something 2 Offer wrote a series on Blog Photos and one on Commenting
  • Martiel from Amazing Success Academy wrote a series onSEO and one on Blog Titles and Topics
  • Honey from Honey’s Life wrote a series on Twitter

Until next time…

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Boost Your Blog in 100 Days Challenge

By: Trish Corlew6 Comments

Boost Your Blog in 100 Days Challenge

How exciting!  I am taking part in a fantastic challenge for the next 100 days,  if you are a blogger interested in growing your blog, I hope you will join us! It is an opportunity to work together to learn how to grow your blog with social media channels like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.  I’m sure you have heard as many times as I have, content is king … and, to be honest, it is true.  Content IS king!  But we all know that getting the content in front of people who actually want to read it is just as important. So, meet the Queen of the Kingdom, Social Media. Once you are being just plain great with fantastic content, it’s time to start sharing  it with the world. But for many of us, Social Media is not so easy to manage.  It can become the highway to a-maz-ing growth, or it can be become the dam that literally prevents you from having time to write that fantastic content.  So, like most queens, she has to be managed 🙂 !  Honey and her friends had the idea to help others grow their blogs and I just happened to jump in on the tail-end! But, seriously, I’m excited to be a part of this wonderful group of women and look forward to learning way more than I contribute 🙂 So, without further adieu, let’s get to Boost Your Blog in 100 Days (or #BB100 ) and meet the hostesses.
Boost Your Blog

The series will cover multiple 10-day series like such as:

  • Topics to blog about
  • Twitter
  • SEO/Keywords
  • Pinterest
  • Growing Facebook Followers 
  • Getting more traffic.

Be sure to sign up to receive the emails so you don’t miss anything! Join us and let’s learn to grow our blogs with the Boost Your Blog in 100 Days Challenge #BB100!

Remember, anyone can participate.  You can do one or all 10 challenges at your own pace or follow along with us… whatever works best for you and your blogging needs.

Meet the Hostesses:

honey 400Honey Rowland, blogs at Honey’s Life about homeschooling, family life and green living.  With a passion for self-sufficiency and natural, special needs parenting you’ll learn about everything from natural, local foods to essential oils and homeopathy to gardening and farm life. Honey has also turned the constant ‘talks too much’ report card comments into a home business. She runs social media while obtaining new sponsors and advertisers for herself and other bloggers. So whether you’re curious about chickens or children, ask…’cause she’s dabbled and babbled in just about everything.

Michelle Simplify Live loveMichelle Marine blogs at Simplify, Live, Love where she shares down to earth tips for the thoughtful mama. Michelle. along with her husband, 4 kids and a bunch of animals, lives sustainably in barn on 5 acres in rural Eastern Iowa. Michelle is an avid gardener and from-scratch cook of real food; she cans produce, homeschools, and teaches community college classes in addition to blogging. Her husband is building their forever home to the German Passive House standards and they plan to live off grid yet still enjoy modern conveniences. Simplify, Live, Love chronicles their attempts to live sustainably and strives to remind people to live simply and frugally yet still enjoy life.

MartielMartiel Beatty from Amazing Success Academy specializes in helping artists build online businesses and blogs. She is a fiber artist, expert blogger, author of Blog Notes, and GIMP Wizard. She is also the founder of Sewmantra and started the Academy because she couldn’t find an affordable, knowledgeable and effective program that supported handmade, indie-artists. Find out how she can help you build your business today. 

lisa familyLisa Nelson from The Squishable Baby focuses on creating positive learning experiences through everyday life. I believe that learning about – and respecting diversity, different religions, other cultures, charity, and our environment – through play, through crafts, through lessons, through giving – will not only produce more empathetic children and adults – but will put a child on a path to a love of lifelong learning.

Thaleia 300 lightThaleia Maher blogs at Something 2 Offer where she is generous in giving advice and helping others find free resources that meet their needs; be it for homeschool or life! She is a BIG researcher who wants to encourage families on their homeschool journey. Wife to high school sweetheart. Mother of four (including 2 little reds!), Sister, Daughter, Christ-Follower, Talkative, Creative. Hoping to figure this whole life, blogger, social media thing out! So be sure to keep tabs on her journey of life.

Trish CorlewAnd finally, me, I’m Trish Corlew and I blog at Live and Learn Farm and am one of the co-owners of Hip Homeschool Moms. I primarily run the marketing and advertising of Hip Homeschool Moms as well as our Social Media. Oh, and by the way, this picture is FOUR years old now. Maybe one of our team members should write about using current pictures so folks can recognize you if they bump into you at a conference or something 🙂 I have been married for 17 years and have three sons (14, 12 and 10 years old) and we live in West Tennessee on a 40+ acre farm. In my spare time, I love to help homeschooling moms figure out how to best homeschool their families! I love to work in our vegetable garden and can regularly be found trying to learn something new, modeling that learning is indeed a life-long endeavor!

So here is the current schedule:

Days 1-10: Leave 100 Comments with Thaleia begins Feb 15.

Days 11-20: Grammar Mistakes Bloggers Make with Michelle.

Days 21-30: Using Twitter with Honey.

Days 31-40: Topics for 100 Blog Posts with Martiel.

Days 41-50: Figuring out your Followers on Facebook with me, Trish.

Ready to boost your blog #BB100? Join the 100 day challenge and we will get this party started! 

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They are Laying!!

By: Gage6 Comments

Hello! Sorry I have not posted in a while I have been busy with ALL kinds of stuff from chicken accidents to school to a friend’s birthday party!  So I have not been keeping you updated on my babies.  

I have a surprise… They are laying!! Our baby chicks and teenage chicks are laying eggs!  YAY!!!  If you remember, a friend of ours, Mrs. Pamela, gave us the teenage chicks. They are Red Sex Links and White Leghorns and there are four of them. We bought the bantams from Welp Hatchery.  There are probably 15 hen bantams laying eggs. With another 15 or so roosters… anybody want some roosters?

 

Hens are a' laying

 

Here is a picture of the variety of eggs we are gathering daily. The eggs vary in shape, size, color, and weight. The biggest ones are from our Rhode Island Reds that we have had for several years. The next brown one and the two white ones are from the teenage chicks. The cute little bitty ones are from my baby bantams… but they are not babies anymore!  I have not found any itsy bitsy eggs from our Dutch, Blue Bantam chicks yet… but am expecting to find one of them soon! Can you imagine how little they will be? The smallest eggs so far are about 1.5″ x 1.25″ to the big eggs that are 3″x 2.5″. The color ranges from a white/cream color, to a reddish-brown and then just plain tan. And the shape of the eggs can range from a normal ovular shape to a pointy bullet-shaped egg. I now have to check all the boxes every day, not every 2-4 days on the bantam side, since they were not laying yet.  

My mom loves the little eggs, she was so surprised at how small they are. Speaking of small eggs… my brother, Chase, loves omelets. My dad has been joking around with Chase saying his next omelet will be a three egg omelet using the littlest eggs. We have not cooked with any yet, but we are having breakfast for dinner tonight… I’m sure my mom will have me comparing eggs and photographing our dinner.  I’ll post those pictures soon!  I am sorry I left you all waiting for another post, while all these things at my house were going on. From now on I will try to post more often. 

One final note, we have a possum or raccoon attacking our chickens, and we have lost 3 chickens including two of my favorites… Cuddles and Sunny and another barred rock, Checker, who I have not talked about before. We just borrowed a live trap to try to trap the animal. Please pray we catch whatever it is getting my babies! I’ll update you on that soon too!  

See ya soon!

100 Things About Me…

By: Trish Corlew4 Comments

I was reading a post by a blogging friend, Darcy at Just a Night Owl (I knew we would be friends… she has chickens too) and she listed “100 Things about Me”. As I read it, I realized how much it helped me get to know Darcy so I thought I might try to write one too. She mentioned several times throughout her post that it was not easy, so I was not sure I was going to write one. Until another dear friend and co-owner of Hip Homeschool Moms, Wendy wrote one on her Blog, so the challenge is on! So…. here goes my attempt at 100 things about me… 

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  1. I’m from the coast of NC
  2. I’m the last of 5 children
  3. My sister is 18 years older than I am and was leaving for college the day I was born
  4. She said they knew I would not be compliant when I was just two years old
  5. I have three brothers and three sons
  6. I am Messianic
  7. I LOVE the beach
  8. I desperately want to downsize and simplify
  9. I walk my faith out everyday instead of talking about it
  10. I started and own an IT staffing business
  11. I placed my husband (three times) (found him a new job for those not familiar with the term “placed”)
  12. The number three seems to be common in my world!
  13. I am addicted to caffeine … big time!
  14. So was my mom, when she was pregnant with me
  15. I HATE snakes
  16. I LOVE homeschooling
  17. I am not a “suzy-homemaker” type of mom
  18. I want to go to Israel for a long trip (would rather move there)
  19. Want to learn to speak and read Hebrew (fluently)
  20. I LOVE learning (one reason I love number 16)
  21. I LOVE being mom to boys!!!!
  22. I was scared to be a mom to boys 🙂
  23. I have clothes in my closet from a size 2 – 16
  24. I rarely wear make-up
  25. I failed Algebra (twice)
  26. My 13-year-old son is better at Algebra than me.
  27. My 9-year-old son just started Algebra… it won’t be long before he is better at Algebra too
  28. I have green eyes
  29. So does my 12-year-old son
  30. My favorite color is purple
  31. My least favorite pink
  32. I was a daddy’s girl, big time
  33. I am a type A personality and all that goes with Type A’s
  34. I love to dance and sing — although I’m not great at either
  35. I can’t play a musical instrument
  36. I own a guitar
  37. I need to start a bucket list
  38. I love the Montessori method of education
  39. Have I mentioned I LOVE the beach?
  40. Darcy, this is harder than it looks, you are right!
  41. We have nine cats
  42. My 13-year-old does litter
  43. We have a greenhouse
  44. I haven’t visited the greenhouse much since we found a dead snake in there
  45. We have 42 acres, more than half of that wooded
  46. We have lots of fruit trees we planted
  47. And blackberry bushes
  48. And grape vines
  49. And they all produced this year!
  50. I made blackberry jelly for the first time by myself this year (See number 17)
  51. I absolutely love studying God’s word with my family
  52. I LOVE books
  53. When my dad passed away, the only thing I wanted was his book collection
  54. My dad loved books
  55. My boys are voracious readers… I think it is genetic!
  56. I LOVE hummingbirds
  57. So does my sister
  58. My sister and I have the same taste… (we bought the same kind of vehicles, same color in two different states and didn’t realize either had bought one).
  59. I was the chairman of the board of my boys’ Montessori school for three years before we decided to homeschool
  60. We have two classrooms
  61. I love soft rain showers and thunderstorms…
  62. but love the sun and sand more
  63. I want to move to the beach when we retire
  64. I love to shell hunt on the beach…
  65. I hate exercising but love to walk miles on the beach everyday I’m there
  66. I am co-owner of Hip Homeschool Moms
  67. I want to write a book about homeschooling
  68. I LOVE helping others homeschool
  69. One of my brothers is a published author
  70. I NEVER watch TV
  71. I don’t know how to text
  72. I’ve had an iPhone for 4 years
  73. All of my siblings are still on the coast of NC or VA
  74. We don’t eat shellfish or pork
  75. We drink raw milk
  76. We have dairy cows
  77. I love to sit with my boys and watch our chickens
  78. I love to muck the barn (don’t tell hubby)
  79. I love to garden (i.e., pick what has grown)
  80. I HATE weeding
  81. I am VERY outgoing
  82. I have no identified artistic gift (but I love to try to paint)
  83. I was my Dad’s caregiver for the last month of his life, with my sister
  84. I’m about to turn 48
  85. I love to play strategy board games
  86. All of my siblings and I love sudoku
  87. My boys and I love to do “Mind Benders” by The Critical Thinking Company during lunch
  88. My boys love the beach too
  89. When we leave the house, our vacation has started
  90. We are journey oriented, not destination focused
  91. I am “the cup is half-full” kind of person
  92. I trust completely and totally
  93. If you break that trust, it is hard to regain
  94. We keep the Sabbath
  95. I have over 25 different translations of the Bible
  96. I love taking road trips when the vehicle is reliable and the schedule is loose
  97. I’m a “Talk is cheap… Walk it!” kind of person
  98. I don’t lie and won’t keep liars near for long
  99. I am so completely in love with God with all my heart and soul
  100. And love teaching my children about Abba!

My Precious Cooker

By: Trish Corlew2 Comments

 

DisclosureI’m not sure when it happened exactly, but yesterday I suddenly realized my nine-year old son is no longer just a “kid inchef hat the kitchen”, you know… being my assistant. Blake has been interested in cooking with me for years! He has always wanted to be in the kitchen helping me make anything and everything that is on the stove or in the oven! When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, for years now he has stated a “cooker”.  

This week Blake and I were cooking a Broccoli and Chicken Stir-Fry recipe (which turned out fabulous I might add)… anyway, we were in the kitchen getting everything ready. We regularly double or triple recipes because we love leftovers in our house and we have three growing boys to feed, so besides learning a life skill, Blake gets a great fraction and measurement review every time he cooks with me.  But as I was watching him gathering the ingredients, I realized he not only knew exactly where to get the ingredients from, but  he knew the tools he needed to use and how to use them and he knew how to follow the recipe.  

I watched as he gathered the cloves of garlic from the garlic/onion bin, and as he moved to pull out a cutting board and knife and proceeded to cut the ends off and slice the garlic to fit inside the mincer.  And as he leans over and re-reads the recipe to be sure that the garlic goes in at this point, my eyes follow him to the stove where he minces the garlic into the skillet and uses a knife to scrape the mincer clean! He read the recipe, knew exactly what to do, where to find everything, how to use it and without any assistance whatsoever from me! None. 

Being Montessori homeschoolers, we have always put an emphasis on practical life skills from an early age so seeing him in the kitchen is not particularly surprising… realizing he could do it without me, WAS!! I was so proud of him expertly navigating the kitchen, putting his ingredients in at the right time, and in the right amounts. Yet, to be honest it was a tiny bit bittersweet! We have now morphed into being cooking partners where we both have our own roles when working together in the kitchen! 

So, it’s official… Blake is now a cooker, my “precious” cooker!!  I am so very thankful for the opportunity to homeschool, for these times that I am fully here, in the moment, engaged and am really able to savor these experiences with my children! What an amazing blessing!! God is so good to us! Thank you Abba for these precious blessing you have given us!  

My Precious Cooker

Hip Homeschool Moms $15,000 Back to School Giveaway

By: Trish Corlewcomment

Extravaganza

 

If you have not visited Hip Homeschool Moms now is the time to do it! There are over $15,000 worth of giveaways going on this week! Tomorrow (August 17th) is the last day to register for some of them, so be sure to head on over there. On this link, you will find all five days listed. Each day, there are different sponsors and different donations. So don’t miss out on any! The amazing sponsors are listed below:

 

A Journey Through Learning
Academia Celestia
All About Spelling / Reading
Apologia
Arithmetic Village
ArtAchieve
ArtKive
Backyardcity.com
BeeYoutiful (makeup, skin care, etc.)
Bella the Bear
Bible Study Guide
Brave Writer
Bright Ideas Press
Camp StarBRIGHT
Classical Academic Press
Classical Historian
Classical Writing
CM Live
Compass Cinema
CurrClick
Desiree Alonso Aprons
Diana Waring Presents
Discount Homeschool Curriculum
Dish Dish
Edmund Scientific
Educational Insights / Learning Resources
eduCents
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom
Geography Matters
Girls of American History
Great HomeSchool Conventions
Heritage History
Home Art Studio
Home Learning Institute
Home School Adventure Co.
Homeschool in the Woods
Inspired. Simply.
Institute for Excellence in Writing
JessicaSprague.com
Kathryn Dahlstrom
Kidzmet
Knowledge Box Central
Knowledge Quest
Learn with Math Games
Lee Woods
Lilla Rose (hair accessories)
Maestro Classics
Magical Mouse Schoolhouse
Manchester Wood American Made
Martha Stewart Living
Maths on Screen
Math-U-See
Media Angels Inc Publishing
Memoria Press
Montessori Services
My Mardel Homeschool
New American Cursive
New Leaf Press
Penguin Books
Pick and Draw Game
Professor Carol
Pumpkin Seed Press
Raising CEO Kids
Raising Real Men
RedWagon Tutorials
Sarah and David Interactive – Learning Hebrew is Fun
Sarah’s Silks
Scaredy Cat Reading
SchoolhouseTeachers.com
See the Light
Sneakin’ in Science
Spanish Clicks
Stage on Screen
Study Solutions
Textbooks Heaven
The 101 Series
The Critical Thinking Company
The Kid Garden
The WonderMill Company
Touch Math
Tucker-Jones House, Inc
Veritas Press
We Choose Virtues
Young Living Essential Oils

POE Columbus Lesson 2 Our Sailboat Adventure

By: Blake4 Comments

Disclosure

For Lesson 2 of the Columbus Unit of our Paths Of Exploration study, we are learning about explorers and their ships. Mom assigned me the project of writing about our sailboat adventure a couple of years ago. This is my report on our sailboat trip.  

Our NC Sailboat Adventure

In 2010, we were visiting our granddaddy in North Carolina and rented a beach house on the beach in Emerald Isle. Close to the end of our trip, we rented a sailboat called the Good Fortune for the day. It was docked in Beaufort NC. We left Emerald Isle and traveled to the dock. There we met Captain Ron and his dog Rudder. It was his boat we were going on. We talked a little and then he had to get the ship ready. While he was doing that we explored the waterfront. Once the boat was ready, we left the dock.  Good Fortune

On the way to Cape Lookout, we saw many sea creatures like jellyfish and dolphins and red algae. We tried to get pictures of the dolphin, but we never got a good one. Captain Ron told us that this dolphin was released from Disney World and was tagged. The ride was gentle and calming I actually fell fast asleep with his dog, Rudder. When i woke up it was only a few minutes till we got to the island.

Apologia Swimming Creatures and Rudder, the dogAs we were anchoring, we were surrounded by pelicans! Captain Ron said they were looking for an easy meal. We had to ride in a dinghy to get to the island, once there we saw tiny black ovals everywhere! When we got a closer look they were actually snails… TONS of them! Then we starting exploring the island and saw an under water lizard, some crabs and a conch shell with another mollusk. Mom even brought the Apologia Swimming Creatures book for us to look up creatures we found!  

We hiked to the other side of the island and found a huge tide pool. We investigated the tide pool and swam in it… and saw that there was a sand shark in it with us! Luckily sand sharks don’t bite people. Mom spent her time shell hunting up and down the beach. She found beautiful whole conchs and many unusual shells. Dad, my brothers and I investigated some large boulders along the shore. When Captain Ron told us it was time to leave, we all were sad. We were all having so much fun on this island. 

On the way back, I stayed awake the whole time and we got to see wild horses. We were going to go to the island where the wild horses were, but we stayed on the first island too long. Once we docked back at Beaufort, i was glad to be on land again.  

I found out I LOVED sailing and want to go back again!   

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Hip Homeschool Moms Contributor

By: Trish Corlew6 Comments

HHM

 

I am so excited to announce that I have been invited to be a part of Hip Homeschool Moms as a regular contributor!  If you are not familiar with Hip Homeschool Moms, you need to go visit their site and get to know them!  They are a great community of ladies dedicated to connecting homeschool moms for encouragement, information, friendship and fun! They have an extremely active Facebook page (28,000+ members) and an equally active website.  You will find weekly featured team contributor, weekly guest bloggers, weekly linkups, weekly giveaways, reviews, and much more!

What an honor to be included with an amazing line up of bloggers. I am humbled to have even been considered for this opportunity, especially when you look at the talented ladies they have!  This gifted team of contributors write articles that appear on their website and on Facebook and are 100% focused on homeschooling. The articles focus on helping us with resources, ideas, motivation, inspiration, sometimes encouraging us to take time to laugh and enjoy life and other times reminding us of the seriousness of our task at hand. When in a community with so many wonderful moms, it helps me realize we all have the same goal, to give our children the absolute best education we can with a strong moral foundation, we just travel different paths to accomplish the goal.  And, in the process, we should encourage each other to be the best we can be with the skills and talents God has given us.

Hip Homeschool Moms

I hope you will enjoy this wonderful resource as much as I have already! I look forward to seeing many familiar faces and meeting lots of new friends on my new adventure with Hip Homeschool Moms! I will still be writing here as much as always, maybe more with all this inspiration 🙂 

Until next time….

How to Make Homemade Blackberry Jelly

By: Trish Corlew6 Comments

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We planted blackberry bushes 5 years ago and this year they have produced a bumper crop!  We have already picked five gallons of berries and there are that many plus much more still on the bushes!  I made blackberry jelly with my sister-in-law last year, and our boys just loved it!  So, I knew I was going to be making jelly this year, but I’ve never made it on my own.  So, as the name of our blog implies, we learn by doing around here, so today, hubby and I made 21+ pints of blackberry jelly in six batches.  Since hubby manned the juicer, I guess I wasn’t completely on my own, but I was the primary and he was the assistant, LOL!  So here’s how to make homemade blackberry jelly!

 

How to make homemade blackberry jelly

We started with 5 gallons of blackberries that we have been picking over the course of a week and putting in our refrigerator to keep.  We juiced all 5 gallons of berries and they produced about 24 cups of blackberry juice. To juice the blackberries, we used our KitchenAid Mixer. The KitchenAid Mixer has an attachment that is specifically for juicing. I know lots of folks buy a separate juicer, but I like to really get the full use of our kitchen equipment, especially ones that you invest in like a KitchenAid!! Besides, you can spend as much on a juicer as we did on our mixer! We even grind wheat with an attachment to this mixer!  It is simply a workhorse and worth every dime you pay for them! We did have to clean out the juice attachment once while processing the 5 gallons of blackberries. But that was not much work at all.  

(Note to self:  I really should not call the by-product of juicing “waste” because we feed it to our chickens and they were some kinda’ happy to get blackberries!)  

The Sure-Jell directions as well as our Ball Canning Recipe Book both were VERY emphatic about not making a double batch and that the measurements needed to be exact, so I ended up making six individual batches of blackberry jelly.   

Ingredients per batch (Use precise measurements):

3 3/4 cups of Blackberry JuiceBlackberry Jelly Ingredients

4 1/2 cups of Sugar

1 Box of Dry Pectin

1/2 Teaspoon of Unsalted Butter

 

Equipment needed:

7 Half-Pint Jars or 3 Pint Jars and 1 Half-Pint Jar

Lids and Rings for Jars 

6-8 Quart Stainless Steel Pot (to cook Jelly) NOTE: I found this great deal on Amazon!! 

Small Stainless Steel Saucepan (to keep lids in hot water)

Large Pot for Water Bath for Canning

Jar Tongs

Ladle

Jar Funnel

2 Measuring Cups (One for Dry and one for Wet ingredients)

Knife (to cut butter)

Wash Cloth (to wipe jar tops after filling so lids can seal)

Magnetic Wand (to retrieve lids from hot water)

 

Directions:

Step One.  Wash jars, lids and rings in warm soapy water and rinse well.

Step Two.  Put Jars in large canning pot for the water bath to get them hot and lids in the smaller pot to keep them hot.  

Step Three.  Pour 3 3/4 cups of Juice in Stainless Steel pot and add 1/2 teaspoon of butter and one package of dry pectin and cook on high stirring constantly.

Step Four.  Once Juice has reached a boil that you can’t stir back down, add sugar, stirring in one cup at a time, but being quick about it!  Let boil for one minute.

Step Five.  Move juice off heat.  Using the jar tongs, retrieve all the jars from the water bath (draining them back in the pot as you go).  Get funnel in the first jar and ladle in the jelly.  Move as quickly as possible.  

Step Six.  Wipe the rim of the jar and place the lid and ring on.  Tighten down rings and move to filling the next jar.  

Step Seven.  Once all the jars are filled and closed, using the jar tongs, place the jars back into the canning pot water bath.  Bring to a boil.  

Step Eight.  Boil for five minutes and remove from water using the jar tongs.  

Step Nine.  Let sit undisturbed for 24 hours.  

Over the next 30 minutes or so, be listening for the “pop” of the lids to show that they sealed correctly.  Once the jars have cooled, you can check to see if they are sealed by pressing in the center of the lid gently. If the lid pops up and down (making a popping sound), the jar is not sealed. But, if you put the jar in the refrigerator immediately you can still eat this jelly.

Just so you know, it gets quite hectic once you put the jelly on the stove to boil.  From that point until the jars are filled and back in the water bath, it is pretty non-stop action. It is not hard to make jelly and it doesn’t take long to get a routine going, but having an extra set of hands really helps during these steps.  I’m pretty sure I would not recommend doing six batches one after the other, but this project is off my list now!  I love marking things off my to do list!  Plus this is a pretty messy process (notice the spill beside the juice in the picture above).  So, I wanted to process all the blackberry juice we had already made.  We had to clorox our white counter-tops to get all the blackberry stains off after I finished!  

Blackberry Jelly 21 Pints

Cost breakdown per batch:

We already had all the equipment, so those items are not considered in the cost analysis.  For one gallon of blackberries, expect to get approximately 3.5 pints of jelly.  

Blackberries – $0.00

Sugar $1.61

Dry-Pectin $2.50

Butter $0.05

Jars $5.00

Equals about $2.62 per pint…. and it’s homemade! Gotta’ love it!   

So, now that I am an expert at this whole making jelly thing, I figured I needed to write a post to teach you how to make homemade blackberry jelly too!  LOL!  Honestly, my boys said it’s better than Aunt Neal’s jelly (don’t tell her that though).  So, even though I may be a newbie, I was a successful one!   PS… that is quite the compliment, it’s hard to top Aunt Neal at anything, much less at cooking!  

Until next time…