Well, I got it…the cold that has been making the rounds. Ugh. I’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program once the achiness leaves my bones. I had plans to get my seeds started today, but that will have to wait until later in the week as the weather has decided to allow the sun, but also freezing cold air. Too cold for these bones today.
See you in a few days, hopefully earlier….
Peace!
We went bowling tonight. First time in years and we had a blast! We went with some good friends of our’s and their son. While both girls did great, I think Xi is actually hooked. She kept telling me how much she loved to bowl and I swear she didn’t stop grinning the whole night.
Here’s our little bowler:
Every time she hit a pin she’d jump up and down and then clap. It didn’t matter if it was 1 pin or 9 pins, same reaction everytime. We are definitely going to be bowling more in the future.
Hope your weekend is full of grins and unguarded glee! Peace!
My darling sister, who lives in Oregon, is giving our family the most amazing gifts…twins. She is currently about 7 weeks away from delivering her son and daughter and we are all thrilled beyond belief. Last weekend was her baby shower, and as I couldn’t fly to the West Coast for it, I sent her gifts…and was relieved they arrived on time I might add.
Both gifts were handmade by your’s truly and I loved every moment of the process. Not really a WIP, as they are finished and have been opened and all, but I couldn’t share them before the shower.
So, without further hesitation, I share with you the gifts I made with all the love in my heart for these two little babes. I cannot wait to see them and snuggle their little faces close to mine. Sis, I love you more than words will ever express…
Heather over at Shivaya Naturals had a great post today that included this picture:
We have been doing alot of mixing things up around here. Our natural rhythms were being pushed aside to make room for the business of life. We were not forgetting what is important, but just going too fast to really stop and breath in the moments with our kids. So we are taking some steps backwards and starting anew.
We have very basic needs for our life as a family, and to be happy is at the top of the list. Just like most families these days, we feel the crunch of the economy. We spent last year with J out of a job and literally making just enough to keep the house and lights on (most of the time it was literally down to the last day and last penny). It was extremely hard, extremely scary, and extremely humbling. During these darker days, some light did creep in though. We found out just what we are all made of and we found we are strong. We became more creative in our endeavors to bring joy into our home. I found my green thumb in the garden and my knitting hands became calloused with the hours spent learning new techniques. The girls found that more didn’t necessarily make them happy and that the things they received made from mama and daddy’s hands were better than any store bought gift. We learned to simplify and to really be happy with what we have. This isn’t to say we were hoping J stayed out of work forever, not at all…but rather these were lessons we learned inside each of us, even when we didn’t realize we were learning them. There were many dark days…depressing days to be honest…but now that J is working again we are realizing how easy it is to get away from the good parts of our time in the dark. We are by no means sleeping on 100 dollar bills, but at least we know we can pay our bills on time, and treat ourselves to dinner out once in awhile. Still, having been so poor that we honestly didn’t know where the extra money we’d need was coming from each month (thank the gods for my childcare work here at home though….that job kept our lights on), it was easy to start feeling “rich” once a steady paycheck was flowing in. We got cable again, splurged a little more on things and just got busier for some reason…
Well, we are taking a few steps back now and just breathing. We are happy…I am so incredibly grateful to have the man I do and to have found a way to contribute to our income and still be home with our girls. He has never pressured me to do anything other than be happy. We support each other emotionally and completely. We need to just slow down a little and start just being again. Our children are really our world. They are amazing kids, all of them. They have taught us so much about what is truly important in life. When we stop and just let them be, our world is so much richer.
So with all that hot air now blown, this post is really boiling down to a very simple conclusion. It’s time to just stop and breath, laugh, hug, play and love. Thank you Heather for reminding us that we really are happier when we make that time to truly be with our children. To listen to their cues and to admire their tenacity. Heather has asked for other ideas on how to create a joyful existence with our kids, so I encourage you all to go read her post and comment. I challenge you all to let go of the stresses of everyday life, the to do lists, schedules, worries and take a moment to breath deep and just smile. Enjoy every moment that you can because life flies by and pretty soon, those babes are grown up and on their own. You don’t get this time back…enjoy it while you have it.
Thanks for listening to this long winded post. Hope you all find your zen space, I’m rediscovering mine for sure! Peace!
Anna Maria Horner arrived today…okay, not the actual woman but some of her Folksy Flannel fabric did show up and I am singing the praises of her designs. I cannot wait to dive into these stacks. I ordered 2 fat quarter stacks that will be made into the girls’ new comforters, as well as 2 yards of 2 of the prints to be made into new pillowcases. I’m in-love with it all!
After seeing the tied quilts from Amanda over at SouleMama, and Nicole from Frontier Dreams, I knew I had to follow suit. The patterns and colors are going to go perfectly with the color of paint we chose for the girls’ walls – a deep coral. The flannel is so thick and soft that I cannot imagine these blankets being anything other than cozy. I picked up batting made from recycled 2L bottles for each and the flannel for the backings from the local quilt shop that I have a feeling I’ll be spending alot of time in. Just walking into the store is like a breath of fresh air. It is a “green” store, so they take the environment very seriously and refuse to sell synthetics other than the recycled batting. I love it!
I can hear my sewing machine working overtime this weekend!
Do you have any crafty plans for the weekend?
Peace!
Well, we were able to clean out around 200 items from our home (that includes little toys that went unused) and will be taking them to the Goodwill this week. I really need to improve on my grocery bag usage. I don’t know why this one is such a hard one for me to just get… I think to help I’ll be making some colorful bags to use to make it more interesting visually. Hah! Definitely will keep up the decluttering efforts too!
For this month, we will be working on changing over all the lightbulbs in the house to energy efficient ones, continue working on using recyclable bags for groceries, and 2 week meal planning so we are only going to the store 2-3 times per month rather than every week. Nicole, over at Frontier Dreams, is the inspiration behind this one. Thanks Ni!
Hope everyone is having a great week so far! Peace!
J has a new project:
He’s really excited about it. We’ve been a one car family for quite awhile and it hasn’t been bad at all. Lately, however, I’ve found that the kids I take care of are old enough to be able to transport about easier than when they were infants. And J has really been wanting a car of his own. But not just any car, he wanted a project. One that runs great even if it’s not cosmetically up to snuff. So we found one that we could afford and we couldn’t be happier. The truck runs great! No mechanical issues at all actually. The guy we bought it from had inherited it from his uncle so it’s always been in the same family and was a beloved truck. He had hopes of restoring it but life got too busy and as many of these projects go, it was time to say goodbye. We are so lucky we found him, and he seems pretty happy that we did too. We have a lot of plans for this beast. It will take years to get it to where we want it, but the fun of a car like this is the project and the dream of how beautiful she’ll look once restored to her full glory. The girls are thrilled, J is stoked and I love it. We’ve really needed a truck, and this will definitely make it easier when I get my organic dirt from the Natural Gardener…no more breaking backs bagging our own cubic yards! Yay! It will help with hauling the feed and hay for the animals, and for just having fun. Fortunately J doesn’t commute more than 10 miles to work so gas won’t be a huge issue.
So thank you Joe for the sale and for taking such good care of it. We will treat it like part of the family and as we work on restoring it, we’ll document it for you and anyone else who is interested. You made this family very happy!
Loving the new ride! Peace!
Just a few things we’ve been doing and how our life is going over here at the farm.
Okay..my friend Jill just posted on her blog about this amazing site and I just have to share. Knock Off Wood just might possibly become some of you DIY types favorite site. Seriously! This gal (yes, I said gal), builds most of her own furniture, and it’s not just any furniture. She’s found complete plans for things that cost 100’s of dollars in places like Pottery Barn and she’s posting them free of charge. Ana is your typical stay at home mom with little money who wants to have a nice looking home. So she found a way to make this happen by building her own things, and in the process this site was born. “What I strive to do is enable an average woman like myself to build outstanding furniture with minimal tools, time and money. “
These plans are amazing and are so well laid out that even a building novice such as myself might have a shot at completing a project and actually have it turn out nice. Haha! I’ve already found half a dozen things I’d love to build and I just read about the site 20 minutes ago. I might have a new hobby brewing…I know my mother in law is going to like this as she’s venturing out into the building world herself and is definitely an inspiration to me.
Check it out and if you build something from there, let me know! I’m off to peruse more things I want to build for our home.
Hope you all are having a grand day!
Peace!
Need batteries for the camera so no pics today but will have some up later after picking up supplies. With that said, it’s been cold here! Now I know you all who live in the North are probably laughing at us Southern weaklings down here..hehe, but Austin is not used to these temperatures. Last night it was in the teens and when I looked at the thermometer this morning it was still only 18 degrees at about 9AM. CCCoolldd! Plants have suffered, but I did get a good, thick (6-7″) mulching down the week before this cold front moved in, so I’m hanging on to hope that the roots of most of my garden survived and will spring forth in, well Spring. I dared to dig down into the mulch in one spot of the garden to see what it looked like and there was green, thank the gods! So I’ll keep crossing my fingers.
I happen to love the cold myself. I love bundling up in sweaters, sipping hot coffee in the middle of the day and seeing the ice on the birdbath, animal troughs, etc.. I don’t know how well I’d fare up where there is real cold, but this is a good Winter here and I’m embracing every chilly aspect of it. I feel like I was really prepared this year in the garden, so that makes it more bearable I think.
My Larkspur sprouts are all doing well, as are the poppies and ranunculus. I layered leaves on all of them and they are now popping up through those, so I think they will survive. The animals have all been given extra hay and we buttoned down the coop (which is just hardware cloth on 2 sides normally), so the goats and chickens are all snuggly and warm. The cats can’t bare to go out, but since we don’t do cat boxes, they are forced out in the morning to do their business and quickly run back to the front door, crying loudly to let us know they need back in..haha! The ferrets are cocooning in their cave made of an old bath mat and towels…they are toasty indeed.
Yesterday, my dear friend Jeanne and I processed about 30+ pounds of deer sausage, thanks to the hunting capabilities of our sweethearts. We had so much fun, even though it was a ton of work. But when we looked at all that we accomplished and the good food we have to feed our family throughout the year, it makes it all that much more worth it. On top of the sausage we have roasts, steaks and tender loin. Thankfully my girls love fresh venison, so none of it goes to waste around here. J will be making jerky this afternoon and cold smoking the links before freezing them. We made Breakfast sausage, Mild Italian, Hot and Spicey and a Cajun sausage. Yum! Throw in a couple glasses of red wine and we had a party yesterday with all our work. Fun!
Last week was not only my darling J’s birthday, happy birthday love, but also our 10th wedding anniversary. 10 years! Holy moly! It’s been quite the ride and I am really looking forward to many more years. We are a lucky couple to have found each other and to have found true happiness with each other, even on the days I want to wring his neck I just love that man!
Hope everyone is hunkered down, keeping warm and enjoying their New Year. Don’t forget to check out One Small Change over at Hip Mama Mountain. There are now over 200 participants from all over the world signed up. Suzy’s local paper wrote an article, their radio station has it up on their website and Mothering Magazine is promoting it. Yay! So far the girls and I have bagged up 2 large bags of toys and clothes to be donated and still have a couple closets to go this month. It feels good to lighten the load and know that it’s going to bring smiles to faces somewhere else. Farmgirl told me that she has had fun with some of the stuff for a long time and now she was ready to let some other children know the fun of her things..haha. That right there is a small change that I hope will ripple out….thank you girls, for your generosity…and thank you all who have found Suzy’s movement through AmLo Farms. It really doesn’t take much to make a difference, and you all are a part of that difference with each small step we all take!
XOXO. Peace!