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158 articles from Diane's Heart-to-Heart emails are now available spiral-bound for you:

Enjoy reading selections of Heart-to-Heart here or order the bound volumes (at left).
I hope they offer you encouragement!
Diane Hopkins

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

My 11 year-old-daughter Louisa loves to sing the song from Annie that promises the "sun will come out tomorrow". I think as moms we often live in the zone of "tomorrow". There is just so much to do today and we are getting tired. Tomorrow is always there, promising time and new energy. The bad news is that tomorrow just keeps hopping ahead one more day, and some very important things keep getting scheduled for "tomorrow".

Louisa has asked for cooking lessons for several years! (Gosh, it hurts me to write that! Could I really have put her off for years?!)

I had some grandiose ideas that kept me from action:
-recipe cards in a cute flip-top recipe box
-a little 3 ring binder that we add one recipe at a time as she learns to cook
-healthy sweet recipes that we invent together
-a syllabus and a plan with weekly hour lessons where we focus on quick breads, then soups, salads, breakfast foods, etc.
-fun, hands-on nutrition lessons
. . . .ah, need I go on?
Dreaming, dreaming!

Better to do a little than nothing at all. If we wait to pull things together and do them up right, then very often nothing happens. It is scheduled for that ever-fleeting "tomorrow".

So, I called Louisa in from play and said, "I want you to follow the recipe and make Cabbage Banana salad for dinner. I'll help you if you need me to." Nothing grandiose. No organization or cute recipe cards needed. Just spur-of-the-moment, practical stuff. She didn't feel confident but the salad got done and a little bonus is that the other family members gave her some kudos for it. And another bonus is that I got a direly needed reminder to myself that it doesn't have to be done exactly right as long as it is generally edible. She felt good about her effort! Next day I had her make Broccoli Tree Salad. And the following, it was Spinach Salad.

These are not the cooking lessons I dreamed of giving her, boo hoo! But this is realistic, I can manage this today and she will eventually gain the skills and hopefully enjoy cooking.

Don't wait for that elusive tomorrow. Let the sun come out . . . today!

Loving you!

Diane Hopkins

Here's the recipe for the salad Louisa made. It's easy, fresh and light!

Cabbage Banana Salad

4 cups thinly shredded cabbage (about 1/3 head)
1 celery stalk, sliced thinly
1 banana, sliced
2 T. milk
1/3 cup mayonnaise
3/4 tsp. celery seed (this makes the salad unique!) pinch salt

Variation: add pineapple tidbits, sunflower seeds, or peanuts

Mix milk, mayonnaise, celery seed and salt in the bottom of a salad bowl. Add cabbage, celery and bananas and toss lightly. Serves 6.

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Hot off the press!

Love to Learn!
Homeschool Handbook

Your Guide to Setting Up a Homeschool, Selecting Resources, and Joyfully Educating Your Children

Need homeschool help?

Diane Hopkins has been reviewing and testing homeschool products for over 20 years and you can benefit from her experience. In this comprehensive guidebook, each grade of school is detailed with the best-on-the-market in curriculum for your homeschool and notes added on how to use these resources! Set up your school schedule, learn how to get your kids to take charge of getting their schoolwork done, and how to make your homeschool fun and meaningful. Reproducible forms are included.

Large, spiral-bound book introduces you to the 7 Hopkins children, and shows you how she taught and raised them homeschooling: the mistakes she made along with the successes. Full of family photos, personal stories, and wisdom—this volume will give you the help you need to get enthused, get organized and get going! More details and sample pages, click here!

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