Replacing twaddle

I've mentioned about ridding our home of twaddle.  I think a post of all the changes we have made is in order, but for now here is one snippet of our changes. 

Reading materials.  It can be a tricky road to cover sometimes.  Especially if you don't have the funding to buy books.  We make it more of a practice to look for books that we would like for our children to read or use and then go to the library's online search to see if our library system carry any of the ones we deem fit.  We 'request' it online, and it is on the hold shelf for us in a few days.  This has drastically cut down on the twaddle coming in.  My children were very fond of going to the library and searching for books.  However, more likely than not, they came back with comics, or other twaddle books.  They definitely had art books, or animal books that were fine, but too many poor choices were being brought in.  There are only so many hours in the day and the thought of "did I want my child to spend their precious hours with junk food for the mind", made me stop and reconsider our ways.  So this way isn't as fun for the kids, but has most certainly helped us to work towards our family goals.

That being said, there are days, like science class days, when it is too cold or wet that we need to pass one and a half hours...with 5 children.  Not a fun time.  So today I took them to the library.  However when it came time to leave I put the children in the van and then went back for the books.  I took this time to weed out unwanted books.  Below you will see the choices we came home with.  Because the girls' schooling is filled with living books, I use library books to fill in their interests.  They were pretty excited about the new reads.  Isabella LOVES (yes, with all caps!) The Self Sufficient Life by Seymour.  She really wants to buy it, but it's a pricey book.  So for now we just have to renew it.  Hmmm, maybe that would make a good birthday present. 

We got a few more that are not pictured, but the themes are all the same (homesteading, cooking, animals, or crafting).

Aubrey wants to get in on the fun!  He's holding a book that the girls are going goo-goo over, called In*Jean*Uity.  It's taking jeans and either embellishing them ( you can use the ideas for jean skirts as well), or repourposing them.  We just got a bag of clothing off of freecycle, or the homeschool loop (can't remember), and it had two pairs of jeans that we couldn't wear.  One had huge holes in the knees, and the other was a men's size that didn't fit anyone.  We were going to get rid of them when I came across this book today.  The girls have been hard at work cutting, measuring and sewing.  Fun stuff.