Since before the holidays, it seems that at least one person in our family has been fighting a cold. It’s an unusual one too. You feel like you’re getting better and then hours later you’re back to feeling awful. And sometimes you wake up feeling badly but then by afternoon you think it’s gone, only to start over again the… Read More »Lemon Ginger Tea Recipe for Colds
(This picture has nothing at all to do with my post, but I needed a picture and thought the cats were very funny watching the snow. Sorry for the overexposure. I’m still working on my camera skills and they wouldn’t re-pose once I figured out my settings.) As you may have noticed if you’ve been reading here for a while,… Read More »Writing
We’ve been in quite a cold snap since Christmas. The days when our thermometer hits 0 are “warm”. Because the wind chills are so low, the children have been in much more than out. It has been helpful for getting schoolwork done though, since the lure of outside play isn’t a distraction. The cats are staying in, too. Sometimes the… Read More »Keeping Warm
If it’s cold outside and you live in Maine You might want to make a hat. You need wool, a pattern, needles to knit, A marker or two, and a cat. The pattern is easy to find online, The wool is a hank I bought. But the needles must be the right size, you know, And for them I have… Read More »If You Want to Make a Hat – A Silly Poem
We had a beautiful, quiet and snowy Christmas day. We missed being with some of our family – some due to distance, some due to the foot or so of snow we got, but phone calls and face time and Skype came into service. The children were able to decipher all their clues to figure out the tags on the… Read More »On the Second Day of Christmas
What began as necessity has become tradition. With a house full of peekers and shakers and squeezers and sniffers and not a lot of room to hide things, I need to wrap presents early. But with a house full of peekers and shakers and squeezers and sniffers, even wrapped presents don’t always hide their contents well. So years ago I… Read More »The game is afoot!
For the last several years, we’ve been wrapping our gifts simply. It started as a whim one year based on the line of the song and wanting to decorate with an old fashioned flair. But since then it’s become part of our tradition – all our gifts are wrapped in brown paper with a bit of colored twine tied around… Read More »Tied Up with String – Simplicity in Wrapping
The other day, Emma and Sophie asked me for help to make gifts for some little friends. Honestly, the timing wasn’t great because I had so much of my own to do. They were asking for some creative help and given my distracted thoughts I had a tough time wrapping my brain around their ideas well enough to translate them… Read More »The Gift of Making
The theme of trying to live simply seems to be everywhere, except during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Then, simplicity seems to be thrown aside and “buy all the things!” takes over. And then after all the shopping pressure, you add in the pursuit to decorate your home in holiday perfection (what do you mean you don’t have… Read More »Simplicity in Gift Giving
Our oldest son, Josh, came home for Thanksgiving and brought along a friend of his to introduce her to Maine and our family. We had such a wonderful time with them but I’ve been having a more difficult time than normal adjusting to only the seven of us at home. I’m sure it sounds odd to those who have… Read More »When They Come Home – Squeezing it all in