Halfway through 2012-2013 School Year

We are halfway through our homeschool year. Our schooling took a Classical direction this year with help from Andrew Campbell's The Latin-Centered Curriculum. This book greatly simplified our homeschooling and freed us from the chains of progressive education. We used a couple of different Charlotte Mason programs for the past 4 years-Mater Amabilis and Ages of Grace. Mater Amabilis in particular is very well done and I would recommend it to any Catholic homeschooler. Ages of Grace no longer exists so I can't recommend it. Plus we found it way too overwhelming. With very little tweaking, I have been able to implement LCC successfully. I'll save the specifics of what we are doing for another post.

2011~Our Year of Austerity

We decided to make 2011 our year of austerity. Since purchasing our home two years ago, we haven't been on a written budget and our lack of savings/mortgage reduction progress proves that. Fortunately we found Dave Ramsey way back in 2002 so we haven't had any non-mortgage debt since 2004.

We refinanced our home down to a 15 year fixed rate mortgage this summer and have a plan to have the house paid in full by the end of 2015. Big goal but very doable with no other debts.

I am a terrible blogger. This blog has been idle for a couple of years now after just a few entries. But this is my second post of the day so I have doubled the number of entries in my blog in one day. Looks promising right ;-) Anyway, I need to stay motivated so that all the goals we have set are accomplished by year's end. Hopefully blogging our journey will help keep me motivated.

Thomas is Catholic!

Baby #4 was finally baptized yesterday after the noon mass. It was a private ceremony in the Blessed Chapel. Tommy slept through the baptism. Guess the mass just tuckered him out!

Here we all are in the chapel after the baptism. Father Moss did a wonderful job and we are blessed to have him in our parish.

Welcome to the Church Thomas Allen Black!

Sewing Challenge

My friend Stephanie's awesome blog about sewing motivated me to start sewing again. Or rather motivated me to buy stuff to sew, the sewing has yet to happen. Heh. I issued myself a challenge to sew through my little stash. I need to sew just one item a week. All my projects are fairly small, 2-3 hours at most so I am not asking for the impossible. This week I will have a bit of extra time since my week will end on Sundays. Yeah, I cheat!

Blog Title Explained

So, I am new to blogging. I mean, I do enjoy reading lots of other people's blogs. But I have never considered myself a very good writer, so this blog is more for accountability than actual entertainment. I have far too many projects started and none finished. *sigh*

Probably what has kept me from blogging before more than anything is coming up with a catchy blog title. I don't think I came up with anything catchy, however it is different and suits me just fine.

Now on to the explanation. Being a romantic Anglophile, I want to build my own folly someday and call it "Black's Folly". Since the Lord of Black's Folly doesn't retire for at least another 11 years, I will just have to dream about my folly...