HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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the steady.
This weekend Kevin and the kids worked on creating a compost pile. And I worked nearby re-painting an old pair of homemade shutters. My mother crafted them decades ago. (How can I be so old that I can accurately use the word “decades” to describe my own life?) And for some reason those two things made me miss our moms. Mine and Kevin’s. The mothers we can no longer call on the phone to share the story of simple Saturday projects outside with the family. I still have a long list of “why’s?” for God. And when it hits me, when it trips me in the middle of…
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it takes a little convincing
Our church has recently begun an event for women called Refresh. It was held a few weeks ago. I had to be convinced to attend the meeting. Not really because I didn’t want to go. That wasn’t it. I’d had it on my calendar for the last three months. I did want to go. However. The day hadn’t gone as planned. I didn’t think school would take quite as long as it did that day. I wanted to finish a project I’d been trying to finish for two months – the bed skirt. (Still not really completed correctly, in fact.) Then life handed me an excuse because Kevin was returning…
Keep Reading . . .
today. (teens are wonderful wonderful too – PSA)
cliff’s edges.
my social dilemma
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. VII.
We’re about to wrap up our “getting started” segment of our Outdoor Hour Challenge. (We are on Number 9 of the 10 steps to getting started!) And that really makes me happy! It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed the first ten steps to get us started. I have. It’s just that I subscribe to the newsletters for the website and each week super appealing outdoor ideas come across my screen and I want to to do them instead. But this form of discipline, of patience, is something that is lacking in my life and in our homeschool routine so sticking to the plan is pretty vital practice for me right…
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Love
Love. It just isn’t the one big thing. That giant gift with the fat price tag doesn’t earn you a free pass. I can’t buy my children a really cool game for the Wii one Saturday night and then not speak to them all week. And when they wonder where dinner is on Tuesday evening I just point to the Wii game. That’s ludicrous. I can’t read Piper six chapters of a novel when she’s four and then never pick up another book until she’s eight. “What? Another reading of ‘Guess How Much I love You?’ Nah. I read you six chapters last year.” That’s crazy talk. I’m learning that…
Keep Reading . . .
In Praise of Small Homes
tick tock. a small choice.
Q Bitz Solo: A Timberdoodle Review
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Craft Projects? Go!
I didn’t wait long. I just couldn’t. After I conquered the stars, I just had to jump right in. I grabbed a favorite quote from my pinterest board labeled “words on the walls” and gathered what supplies I had on hand. (By the way, why aren’t the pinterest boards in alphabetical order? Wouldn’t that make more sense?) Anyway. I gathered a piece of foam core we had in the craft closet, red burlap left over from creating a poorly designed but basically usable bed skirt and some cute ribbon. And glue and scrapbook paper and this crazy spray fixative I found on our shelf that works really well but smells…
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the stars.
The stars were holding me back. No, that’s not some artsy poetic beginning to a deep blog post. The stars were literally delaying my progress. A basket of assorted stars. Probably twenty of them. Maybe more. Small. Medium. Blue. Red. Rustic. Metal. Tin. Sitting on the red bench in our hall since the day we moved in. I’d been telling myself since that day that I was not allowed to begin any new projects until those stars had been displayed. Every last one of them. I’d work on a few here and there. Before breakfast. After nap. The kids would see me wandering around – hammer in hand, nail in…
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and I hope it’s always true . . .
I wore this headband this weekend. My six-year-old son made it for me a few weeks ago when I was sick. It’s crafted from a waistband of a pair of bear-print pajama pants that he outgrew. And I didn’t stay home all day. I actually left the house. Ran errands. And it was both an easy decision and a hard one. But this is what I decided. The message to my son that he matters, that the works of his hands are precious to me, that message matters more to me than what strangers may think of my fashion sense. I mess up. All the time. But my hope is…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. VI.
This week, it was cold. And a few things delayed the prompt beginning of our walk for our weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge. (A filthy wretched poop in a swimmie. Not because we’d been swimming, but because Fox saw the swimmie had Nemo on it and asked to wear it. And I was thinking no farther ahead than that moment so I consented.) I actually didn’t feel like trekking out. It was a hard sell this week – to me. But although delayed and sort of half heartily, I put on gloves, a scarf and a huge sweater and headed out of doors. The pressure of children knowing our schedule and…
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Wilde Words.
Maybe it’s because he’s my baby. Or maybe it’s because he’s legitimately adorable. (That’s the one I’m going with.) But lately it seems that Otto has become the golden child at our house or something. There isn’t a human being residing under this green-shingled roof that is not completely in love with the two-year-old who stomps up the steps in hand-me-down black cowboy boots while wearing plaid leg warmers on his arms. Remember how he was pretty much a completely non-verbal family member? (The only one of his kind, as a matter of fact.) And remember how I decided to not be worried because I knew it would all work…
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pointing at myself.
I have sixty-eight drafts resting in the unknown regions of my blog’s set-up pages. There are so many ideas I want to write about, explore and share but sometimes I just type out the words but never press “publish”. I am finding it more and more difficult every day to balance the type of mother to a teenage daughter that I wish I could be with the type of mother to a teenage daughter that I actually am being. This is unbelievably hard work. We have been in the beginning stages of forming a new Shepherding Group with some fellow church-attenders. It’s been a desire of mine and Kevin’s for…
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Virginia Woolf Does It – Why Can’t I?
This weekend I made buckeyes. And it isn’t even Christmas. Our washer has been blinking E20 every time I try to wash a load of laundry. I woke up Sunday morning with a severe crick in my neck and my Hawkeye curled around my head. When I told him “good morning” he replied, “If I eat a vitamin and a bite of spaghetti at the same time, what would that taste like that?” We brought our heat bill down by $90 last month but this weekend’s colder weather will likely alter next month’s bill. Our thermostat rests at 58 degrees. In the morning I can see my breath in our…
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good words IV.
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. – Jack London
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The Bean Store
I don’t do a lot of sticker charts. I can’t remember to keep up with them. I’m not all that great at rewards systems. But sometime last year I found myself answering the same question one trillion and two times each day. “Can I play a game on the computer?” And I was always making up and then breaking various rules and guidelines. I’d try to time the kids but then forget to see how many minutes they’d actually been on that day. What eventually developed out of my frustration was a counting system of sorts. The kids could earn beans for various tasks – chores, completing schoolwork without being…
