alcoveshome

home study+home studio+retro food

Archives for August 2021

The joy of a home music studio

by 1 Comment

I never could have imagined the joy of a home music studio. In 2020 we built a home music studio in our basement.  Timing gave us the ability to turn our basement TV room, rec room, and extra bedroom into a home studio.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

home music studio with instruments and gear bathed in blue light

This studio has become a gathering place for my teenage sons and their friends and for my husband and his musician friends.  It kept everyone occupied during the pandemic and civil unrest in our city. Now it provides a designated space to go to and do creative work. And it allows me some peace upstairs!

[Read more…]

10 most important simple steps to teach your child to read: Step 5

by Leave a Comment

Help your child increase their awareness of details

Awareness of details in the world and people around them is an important skill for children learning to read. Find out how to help increase your child’s awareness of details by trying these simple tips.

girl carefully reading in a book with her finger helping her follow the words

Awareness and Reading

I am going to go off the path a bit here and talk about the importance of awareness. By awareness I mean attention to detail. This can be anything from using clues to help figure things out, the desire to figure things out, and the ability to figure things out. Awareness in reading involves things like noticing a certain line in a letter, being careful of which way to write a letter, or reading a word out loud and correcting it so that it matches an actual word in the English language. I notice the gap in awareness levels in my youngest students when they are in my classroom. I believe that awareness of details is very closely tied to reading. 

[Read more…]

Cowboy Food is Camping Food

by 2 Comments

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases

This retro recipe for Cowboy Food is the perfect dish to make your first night of a camping trip. It takes me back to early August days camping high in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Cowboy Food is camping food.

Cowboy Food cooking in pan on stove top with wooden spoon
Cowboy Food simmering on stove

Camping Food

We ate Cowboy Food for dinner at least a couple times per camping trip. We cooked it in a pot on our camp stove perched at the end of a long picnic table. This recipe for Cowboy Food is more in the Midwest tradition because it is sweet and tangy and not spicy like a Tex-Mex version might be. Even if you’re not going camping, this recipe for Cowboy Food is sure to warm you up on a cold fall or winter evening.

[Read more…]