Write down who you are...

This may just look like our cozy little coffee station. A home for our electric Hario pot, cone coffee dripper, hand thrown mugs and Old Factory Coffee Beans. And it is, it does a fine job, but if you look closer, you'll see something that is much more important.

The chalkboard above tells more of our story than this little nook of heaven ever could. When we started our Family Meetings last year, it was out of near desperation to draw the four of us back together. We put out a big piece of poster board and we wrote down things we needed to remember on a daily basis-- we wrote down our rituals for living.

We chose things we wanted to be about. We chose guiding themes for what was important. We talked about or values. Then we wrote them down and put them up so we would be held accountable, by each other and by every person who steps foot in our house.

I encourage you to take time to find out who your family is and write down your values. It guides us toward who we should be every day.

Quiet Things: Filled with Light

I have really enjoyed daylight savings. I got up early and took time to knit and read. This song came floating in on my Pandora station. It sounds like waking up to me, like rebirth. And falling back, the gift of an extra hour feels like rebirth too. Like, resetting the clock.

It was brisk, clear and sunny today by 7:15. Oh joy for autumn light, shining through the window as I filled thermoses with warm soup and I cut up oranges for lunch. I said a little prayer of gratitude as the kids ate breakfast and waited for the bus. That fall sunlight never ceases to amaze me.

And now, the house is really quiet. Our black lab's deep breathing is the only sound I'm hearing. And I am really grateful for this time in life, time to take a step back and enjoy the things that Christ has for us: love and family, good food, beautiful friends, amazing coffee... we are filled with light.

Welcome Home

She grabbed my face between her soft hands and said, almost sternly, "Welcome Home."

Her exclamation summed up everything my heart felt. It had been so long since we had gone out to fly kites. It'd been forever since we laid with our backs on dewy evening grass and looked at the clouds pass. And here she was, laying stomach to stomach, face to face, pronouncing her little greeting, blessing and benediction.

Welcome Home.

In the last month, I've completely changed my daily life. I left my Fortune 500 company job as an Art Director to embrace the daily living that I'm meant to have now.

I felt like I had been living a double life-- deeply trying to find balance and rhythm in our home, but fighting for the illusiveness of time everywhere else. "Gotta do more, gotta be more" felt like a runaway train. So, I chose to disembark.

So here I am, barely a month of newness under my belt. I'm practicing healing. I'm embracing the life that is right here.

I'm choosing to reclaim wonder. I'm carefully putting my heart back together. Loving my husband and children, loving our little house and our rhythm.

I'll be here more often too. I feel like I've come home on so many levels.

November Gratitude

November 1: For parents who come visit. And who are content in the excitement of sewing costumes, Halloween Parties and Trick or Treating. And who are content in the quiet: drinking coffee around our table, reading magazines, helping with homework, walking in the leaves and snuggling while watching movies. We are blessed.

November 2: For a few moments to sit on the porch in an old quilt. For the little pajama clad man who came and sat with me. "Share your warmth, Mama." By all means, Mr.

And for amazing friends, who encourage dress up, family togetherness and laughter!

November 3: For our glorious church and potlucks. Yellow leaves and fall sunsets.

November 4: For God's grace, practiced forgiveness, vulnerability, hard work, long roads and strong friendships.

November 5: For warm clothes, soft places to land, arm chairs, phone calls, letter writing. Things that make this world seem not so harsh.

Creating Memories: Late Summer

 

Yesterday, I surprised the kids and took off the afternoon. We've been having early-outs from school due to high heat. They got off the bus, cheeks flushed and a little lethargic. Until they realized that I had icy lemonade, chocolate cupcakes and a cool house for them to come home to!

We pretended we had a summer day off and we packed our day with tons of fun things. The afternoon felt lazy and productive, all in the same breath.

And when I looked back on everything we did yesterday, I am amazed. It was a really great day at home.

-We read a few chapters of James and the Giant Peach while we ate our cupcakes and drank lemonade.

-Truman did his homework while Isabel played with dolls.

-Truman made an awesome Lego, car/airplane as a surprise for Eric.

-We set up a waterless swimming pool for the sheep and Molly. (So our stuffed friends would not 'feel left out' when we played outside.)

-We sat in the kiddie pool and washed all the outdoor furniture, the front door, the side of the house. I drank lemonade, dunked my feet in the pool and I read a few pages of this book.

-We picked up Dad early so he could join our summer fun!

-We played water balloons.

-Eric and I snuck off to the coffee shop for a few minutes while our neighbor watched the kids play outside.

-I made tacos for dinner while the boys made more Lego sculptures. And Izzo took a bath.

-Dinner together was fun and relaxing, we love spending time together!

-Truman took a bath and Izzo did homework.

-We had silent reading time.

-The kids did a few Cosmic Kids Yoga videos.

-They played spies and 'helped' while I finished some 'pick up, put away' in the playroom.

-Dad got home from a meeting and we made paper monsters.

-They got to bed early and read James and the Giant Peach with Eric. 

It was such a glorious day, I wanted a little record to keep in my mind forever.

What did you do yesterday?

Daily Seeing: July

Outside: It's been a bit cooler. Tonight it's raining, I'm sitting near an open window listening to the wind and the raindrops. We've been setting up our water color painting outside lately in the afternoons. Isabel gave the sheep an art lesson.

Inside: We had a completely lazy Saturday morning, watching movies, playing legos, setting up doll houses and making/fixing things with the glue gun.

Listening: We all love different pandora stations, but we stop and dance for this song:



Learning: To practice happiness, joyful togetherness and deep listening. Everyday.

Wearing: This dress, on repeat all summer. I got it quite a few years ago and it is still a weekly wear. So comfy too!

Thinking: How quickly this summer is moving along.

Reading: Truman, Toy Story 2. Isabel, The Velveteen Rabbit (again). Me, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life. Eric, Young Men and Fire.

Praying:

Suscipe St. Ignatius of Loyola
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace.
That is enough for me.

What have you been up to? What beauty are you seeing in your daily life?

Into the Woods

Sunday evening, we packed up our dinner and headed off to the woods. We were all craving a little out door time. We at our pork roast sandwiches and hardboiled eggs within sight of our favorite Royal Red Maple tree and marveled at her growth in the last years. 

After dinner, we took a short be steep trail up into the hills and where the woods were alive and glorious. Truman led us most of the way, he loves to 'be the leader.' When we were near the hill top, Truman exclaimed, "This is Terebithia." 

And I couldn't help remember when she actively lived in Terbithia for a while. We re-read the book this summer and it was still magical, melancholy and still had so much to teach us about friendship. 

We are soaking up the last few days of summer, school shopping starts this weekend for us. And then we all start back up in the school routine. I am so grateful for little blocks of time where we can journey into the woods-- running, laughing and playing. We come home happy, tired and thankful we have each other. 

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Weekending: Instagram Style

This weekend started early in the week. We've been soaking up the summer and visiting all of our favorite places. You can follow our summer adventures here.

Summery smile!

Front yard baseball season.

Quiet morning painting, reading, crafting, pbs watching.

Eric's breakfast creation.

Kite flying.

Kitchen table studio.

Sketchbook Saturday Morning

Dock jumping.

Sunset swimming.

After church brunch.

Visiting Bob's Drive Inn, playing old maid.

Good read, good thought, good listen: a list for the weekend

Hello and good morning. It's not a holiday here, we're all up to our daily activities. Kids are with their glorious caregiver, we're going to work. But, I did sleep in a little and I will wear flip flops to work. That makes it feel like a holiday!

I have a few more images for you from our trip, but we'll have to wait until the weekend to look at them together. What a joy! I brought home thousands of photos. I am thinking about combining them into something. Any suggestions?

For the weekend here's a little list of things I'm loving right now:

Good coffee: Every morning, I am grateful for the Old Factory Coffee shop. We even took a huge bag of their coffee on our trip. A little bit of home on the road.

Good photography: I'm taking Erin Little's class and I've been shooting manual for a few days now. Eeek, really? Me? Shooting manual? She's patient, kind and explains the hardest concepts like an artist. Thank goodness.

Good read:  I just finished reading Wendell Berry's The Wild Birds. About membership, community and family.

Good thoughts: Huge list of easy steps for sustainability. It's inspiring, every little bit helps.
And Wendell's own list of Rules for Sustainability.

Good listen: And finally, a rare reading from Wendell Berry. About Arthur Rowenberry, one of his Port William Membership characters.

Is it Spring?

This is what Spring has looked like for us. On the left was only eight days ago. On the right, this Sunday. Such a crazy change! There is snow in the forecast again for this week. I am keeping a stiff upper lip. Desperately trying to 'be joyful always.'

What does it look like where you are today?

On Crafting a Home

If you were at our house last evening you would have seen: bed mattresses moving out, playroom dumped from the last play-date, laundry put away in drawers, vacuuming quick before a game of Candyland, flurry of homework, smoothies making, kitchen cleaning, door bell ringing, kids singing, bikes still out front and then oops it rained. There were books to read, plants to water, fish to feed, dog to walk... chatting, hugging, good-night kissing.

All the activity balloons into a disappearing mushroom cloud, over as quick as it started. We tuck little angry bird + lamby jammied warm and soft bodies into bed.

And I am grateful, for these days of wonder. And these quotidian moments. Where crafting home means nothing more than creating a space for the wonderment to begin and end each day.

It's in the small moments of our lived days where the wondrous possibility abounds.

What do your evenings look like?


*********

A few links:

Steve is writing poems, everyday. You should read them.

This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

This fascinating street photographer 

CALL THE MIDWIFE

Summer vacation, planned 

I love... Knitting and Reading

I finally finished these simple mittens (made with Coffee Beenz yarn in Black from Athena's Fibers). And they were simple. I was a bit afraid of them-- the thumb gore, exact replica, measurements!

But anxiety aside, once I got started I realized these mittens were the perfect project for me-- pushing me outside of my knitting comfort zone while being quick and with an easy-to-follow pattern. If you want to try something new, this pattern could be for you!

I started a simple scarf for Truman. After knitting most of the skein, I figured I'm not going to have enough yarn! So I ripped it out last night and I'm making it much thinner. We'll see if that will get me some more length. I'm going to take the time to brush up on my stitches while making this simple project.

We've also been reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe together. They are fascinated by it. And I have to admit that I am too, I remember these books holding my attention and infusing me with so much magic as a child. But they haven't lost that magic at all-- it's wonderful to see them again through my children's eyes.

What are you knitting? Reading?

Linking up today with Kerry for I love and Ginny for Yarn Along. 

**My comments are not working well on the first post on the homepage. If you would like to comment, please open up the post by clicking the header (I love... Knitting and Reading) above then you should be able to comment easier. I haven't made it a priority to fix that. So at least there seems to be a work around for now.

I love... time to be together

The kids and I have been creating in 3D. Homemade play-dough, puppets, modeling clay! I love the time we sit around the table and take time for the creative process.

Joining Kerry for I love.

For Today

the lumineers album. every. single. song. on. this. album.

lattes. we've been making them almost everyday. and when we don't make them ourselves. we visit Erin and she makes them for us. so spoiled.

the weather. negative temperatures makes all of us want to be home and in the big bed reading books. i love being home.

wool socks. mom got me these beauties for my stocking. loving my growing smartwool collection and my tootsies are toasty.

simple mittens. i am almost done with mitten no. 2. this video really helped with the thumb gore.

girl scout cookies. they are tasty and i do not have to coordinate the sale this year. this is a win win. carmel delites now come stress free. (on sale from today to march 17th... wink wink)

husband. he came home with teacher appreciation chocolate bars + an extra for me. truman wrapped it up along with my favorite-daily-used pen. "i knew you would love the pen. since i KNOW you love that pen." nice thought, Truman! even if he did have to borrow it from me-- to wrap it up and give it back.

this book. this documentary. this show (so dramatic!). this video.

What makes your week happy? What things are you loving?

Joy is...

Joy is homemade lattes in the morning, kids making it to the bus, wearing my favorite yellow dress and finishing an epic book.

Joy is a husband who does dishes, reads Winter in the Big Woods to a bath tubbin' little boy, roars like a monster, practices math flash cards and helps freshly washed babes into pajamas.

Joy is a special lady loosing her front tooth! Finally! We've been calling her Nanny McPhee.

Joy is sunsets and sunrises, for birth and death. For new beginnings, brimming with abiding joy. For a long earthly obedience and life everlasting.

Joy is a cleaned house. A wise woman once stood in my kitchen and loosely quoted Thich Nhat Hanh, it's not about how clean your house is... it's just about the process. Joy is scrubbing floors on hands an knees. As Grandma Eunice would say, "I'm thankful I am able to do it."

Yarn Along: Wild and Simple

This week while I was at the Library looking for Adventure books for Truman I stumbled upon Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (for ME to read!). This book has been making it's rounds in the blogging world and in Yarn Along for quite a few months (here, here, here). And Gretchen Rubin interviewed her about happiness, here.

I finished the book this evening... I loved the imagery of the trail, the scenery, her determination and the fact that she was a woman who took on the wilderness and came out to tell about it. And the idea that hard work and natural landscapes can -in fact- save you from yourself and offer prospective. 

I did kind of feel like I was flashing back to my childhood a bit, our parents believed in exposing us to State and National Parks and we spent a good chunk of time every summer careening through forests and setting up tents. Most of the stops on the map we had camped at, walked through or drove by. I was so sad that she had to bypass Yosemite, Tuolumne Meadows and a greater portion of the Sierra Nevada's, I would have loved to hear a story with those touchstone places as a backdrop.

I was not disappointed by the book. It is not the book for everyone, but I liked it just fine once it finished.

On the yarn front, I just cast on for these simple mittens. I've decided that I need a pair of mittens in some sort of beautiful yarn that I got from my friend Hannah. And these mittens just might be the simple quick project I need to bring me out of the knitting rut I've been in for quite some time.


As always, I'm joining along with Ginny for Yarn Along.

Finding Fall: Light that Binds Us

I am the light in the late summer and early autumn afternoons that bathes the fields in gold.
I am the light that blisters your skin in the summer,
I am the light that sparkles on the snow in the winter.
I am the light you ache for in the winter,
revere in the springtime,
escape from in the summer, honor in the fall.

Seeking autumn's beauty: 

Finding Fall: Apples and More Apples

I always feel like fall is finally upon us when we pick the apples off of our tree. Then we make apple pies, apple sauce, apple juice, apple cake, apple crisp and anything else we can think of. We lost half of our tree due to a thunderstorm with high winds early in the summer and I didn't know how we would fair this fall with apples. But we picked one laundry basket full of apples so far!

I've been processing basket in little bits. First with apple sauce (recipe below!), then with apple pie filling. I am always intoxicated by the smell of apples and cinnamon. Is there anything that smells more like fall? Other than crisp mornings and slowly decaying leaves?

For the next few weeks, I'll share with you the answer to that question. As I seek to find fall and live fully present and embrace this season.

Easy Crockpot Apple Sauce

10 peeled, de-seeded, quartered apples
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar (I use a bit less, but the kids like it with this much sugar)
3/4 cup of water
1 tsp. lemon juice

Add the apples to the crockpot with cinnamon, water, lemon juice and sugar to the crockpot. Cook on high for 3 hours or until when stirred the apples fall apart. Stir until desired consistency. Let cook for 15-30 minutes more to thicken up.
Freeze or process as desired.