The darkness fills the corners more and more as we lean towards the solstice. The short days, early dusk, and long nights give ample opportunity for reading a good wintertime tale. Stories, in fact, have shaped the way we celebrate this season. Here is an interesting article about it. How sweet and cozy it…
Category: Celebrating
10 Ways To Celebrate A Destitute Christmas: #1. Scrumping Citrus
There is a sort of transcendental peace about poverty. I usually find the holiday season fun, but very stressful. The crush of shopping, making sure all the favorite holiday things are celebrated and everyone will get what they want, and all the worry about planning the holiday make me anxious. This year, when Black…
The Week of Birthdays
Every day is so full of things to do, I am always working on something. There has been no time for involved cooking projects, French translations, knitting or writing. I have also been too busy to enforce the chore lists for everyone, and most of the time end up doing it myself because it’s easier. …
Rainy Day Colors
Easter brightened up the end of a rather dismal week – with illness and rainy weather, everyone was grouchy and cramped. It felt like I spent the week with both of Cinderella’s obnoxious step-sisters, and The Little Engine That Could – And Did, even though you told it not to several times. Clothilde managed…
Painting Eggs
All week last week we blew eggs for our morning omelets, and saved the shells. Over the weekend I started some rye in a pretty pot to hold the Easter branch. Yesterday some friends joined us yesterday to paint the eggs, and brought some white eggs that they had saved. We use just regular…
Too much
Christmas was fun…..(and there was too much chocolate) ….and busy. The results, naturally, are tiring, and lead to other things: All the new stuff we got from extended family gave me a panic attack this morning. There’s no place for it to go. My kids can’t handle what they have already. Puzzle pieces strewn…
Calamondins and Crazed Dogs
Our neighbor gave us a bunch of calamondins – tiny, extremely sour, but very flavorful little citrus fruits (the one in the picture is actually a Satsuma orange – Clothilde had started peeling it. The calamondins are much smaller and at that point had worked their way into the sour gummies). Ethan baked a ham…
Nutcracker
This week has been full of Nutcracker performances – it’s Rose’s second year, and she’s a soldier again. It’s a fun part, and she has really enjoyed it so far. Clothilde went to the school show this morning and loved it. She’s been waking up so early this week (before it is even light out). …
Pig Madness
Ethan spent most of Friday and Saturday chained to the pig roast, but otherwise the birthday/holiday celebration went quite well. Thursday was of course full of scalding, scraping, field-dressing, the crisis of making the ice-and-hay cooler (which worked very well actually), and a very late drive across town to get the extra-large roasting equipment…
This Season
Right after Thanksgiving I managed to re-furbish chocolate advent calendars with healthier and less hyper-activity inducing sour gummies, but then got lost in trying to finish up home school for this year and getting my garden going. Yesterday I finally opened up our holiday stuff…it’s not much. A collection of unbreakable ornaments, a felt garland…
December Dumpster Dive Tradition
Only two days shy of the anniversary of the last time the freezers at “Earth Origins” corporate natural food store crapped out, they did it again. We had already had an insanely lucky day – the first part was taken up with a friend-of-a-friend who had demolished an old hay barn and had a…
Birthdays, All Around
We’ve had so much going on…. and all my children had birthdays in the past two months. Clothilde, the “baby” is now 3! She’s talking so much now. She helps out with everything. She says she wants to be called Cinderella. I think someone read her the story, or maybe Rose brought it…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 