A gift on it's way

I finished this gift mei tai 10 days ago. I waited to post about it until I could get to the post office and send it on it's way. Hopefully this carrier is now with it's new owner, so here are the completed pics.

I used up the left over fabric to make a matching bag for it. I followed the directions in Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross for the bag. I'm happy I finally got to try a project out of this beautiful book! It's been on my "to do" list for months.



Earlier this week I woke up extra early (on account of my falling asleep at 8:30 trying to get T to sleep) and decided to spend a little quality time with my sewing machine. I needed something quick and easy because I didn't know how long it would be until T realized that she wasn't snuggled next to me anymore. So I decided to whip up this pair of cloth-diaper friendly (lots of room in the rear) pants for said little girl. I used the sleeves of an old shirt of mine. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Especially the way I was able to keep the stripes lined up! I still have some trouble with the stitching puckering up on the knit fabric. I need to work on that. But it's passable for play clothes for a 17 month old.

And here's a picture of T modeling them later that morning.


And do you remember all that picking we did last week?



Well, just today I finally finished up preserving all that produce. We've got blanched and frozen broccoli, spaghetti sauce, and lots of applesauce and apple butter. We made some delicious apple crisp. And we have lots and lots of apples individually wrapped in paper and stored in the "root cellar." It was a lot of work, but I know we will enjoy the fruits of our labor in the months to come (pun intended).

Apple picking and other stuff

Ray took off work on Friday so that we could go as a family to pick apples. And pick we did! We picked over 100 pounds of apples. With all of us working, even T, it didn't even take that long.



We also picked tomatoes and cut broccoli. About 20 pounds of each. That's not much in the way of tomatoes, but I think the broccoli will last us for a while.




Saturday was a full day of soccer.





Sunday was a little rest and a friend's 10th birthday party. All in all a very good way to spend a fall weekend.

National Zoo

We went to the zoo a couple of days ago. There were no crowds. The weather was beautiful. The animals were out enjoying the weather, too. We didn't try to see everything. We just visited a few animals, but we took our time and really watched. I think the kids enjoyed seeing the orangutans traveling on the "O-line" the best.


I enjoyed seeing a mother gorilla and her 8 month old baby.


I feel somewhat sorry for the individual animals that are in the zoo. But the kids learn a much better appreciation for those species when they can connect with a living example rather than just a picture in a magazine.

Of course, we had to climb on some animals, too.



It was a perfect day.

Sometimes you just have to laugh

A couple of nights ago I was putting the kids to bed and my four year old, Cara, was really trying my patience. She was in the bathroom having a meltdown over brushing her teeth. I wasn't making any progress and it was getting later and later. So I called in for back-up. Unfortunately, when my husband got upstairs, he had even less patience than I did. (It had been a really long day.) As we were standing outside the bathroom together listening to the screaming coming from inside my husband noticed something on the wall. It was a patch roughly 4 inches in diameter, about knee-high, and whiter than the wall. I bent down to get a better look. I scratched at it with my nail and a little scrap of paper came off. I scratched off 20 or so more little pieces of torn paper that had basically been stuck on like paper-mache with (I can only assume) spit. And underneath I found this:

I just had to laugh! Even as frustrated as I was, the image of Cara executing her "brilliant" plan to cover up her graffiti brought tears of laughter to my eyes.

I think she left her mark just the night before. But, it was pretty well concealed. Had we not been standing around right at that spot, it might have gone unnoticed for much longer. I kind of wish I had left the paper-mache on, because now it's much more noticeable. And I'm not sure how to get ball point pen off the wall without taking the paint off too. Wait a second...I've got more paper and plenty of spit. Hmmm.

Finding time to sew

This project has been at the top of my "to sew" list for months. It's a carrier for my beautiful, sweet new niece, Abigail Rain. My sister provided the fabric long ago. I should have had it ready for her before the baby came. Yet here it sits waiting to be assembled.


And Abby is over a month old. Why is it so hard to find time at the sewing machine? I will finish it this week!

And here is what's next on my "to sew" list:


I'm going to make three of them...matching, of course! Then I'll just need to find something matching for the boy. Hmmmm....

Baking and a garden update

We spent some time in the kitchen today. I love that we are able to make (nearly) all of the bread we eat. And I also love that it means we have plenty of stale, day-old loaf ends to turn into this:

Bread pudding makes a yummy dessert and may be my favorite quick and easy breakfast, too. I also used up the last of the plums we picked earlier this summer to make this crisp:

It was the perfect treat to have after a long evening at back-to-back soccer practices.

It was a dreary day today. But we did get outside for a while to check on the garden and pull a few weeds. And admire the flowers.


Considering my black thumb I've had some pretty good success with my cucumbers.

The most of the tomatoes are still producing well, too.

The most amazing to me is this "wild" tomato that is growing at the bottom of our steps. It has even survived an accidental near-decapitation with the weed whacker.

And the kids, of course, spent some time on the swings. That swing-set was a good investment.

Hanging on to summer

We are back to school and the Autumn Equinox is right around the corner. We aren't quite ready to say goodbye to summer yet, though. Yesterday we ditched afternoon lessons and filled up the kiddie pool.

And today we took a field trip up to Baltimore to the Science Center with some friends. We had a great time and learned a few things, too! The best part of the day was right after we left the museum, though. We spotted this great water fountain that (despite the cooler weather) just had to be run through again and again until the older kids were soaked through. I restrained myself from insisting that they not get wet because we had no change of clothes or even a spare towel in the car. They were having too much fun to care about silly things like that. The fact that they had to ride home bare naked just made the whole experience that much more memorable. Oh happy days!

New step

The CCD year started tonight for us. J has been looking forward to this day for two years, ever since M went to his first class. The day she gets to go off to "school." She was up early and dressed before I had even rolled out of bed. She was out on the swings in the backyard before breakfast, no doubt daydreaming of all the exciting and wonderful things that would happen in her CCD class.

I really think my kids like being homeschooled. They tell me they do and I'm inclined to believe them. But there is something sort of mysterious and alluring about real school. I think maybe they have watched one too many Magic School Bus episodes.... So it turns out that CCD isn't quite like real school. After all, it's one hour a week and it's at night. And there definitely isn't a daily field trip on a magic bus. But she came home all smiles anyway.

And M enjoyed his class. And I got to spend a little extra time with just C and T. I think this is a good thing.

Next up for this space: Pictures. Soon I will figure out how to add some. Soon.

And now my story's begun

Alright, I'm starting. No time like the present, even if the present is way past my bedtime.

Why start a blog? My husband laughed at me when I said I was thinking about starting a blog. Good naturedly, but still, he was definitely laughing at me. I know I don't have a lot of spare time. I can't even keep the laundry done or the house clean or the garden weeded or the toys picked up. I know there are tons of things that I want to do but there aren't enough hours in the day. No matter that I have a dozen or more different projects that are at varying stages of incompleteness. That's okay. I don't claim to be SuperMom. But I do have a lot of ideas about things I want to do with my kids in our homeschool, projects I want to work on, crafts I want to make, and trips I want to take. A blog is the perfect way to keep a record of all that we are doing and at the same time share what I'm doing with those who care to know. And maybe even be a bit of a motivation to actually follow through on some of those ideas. Can't very well have a blog if we never do anything interesting to blog about.

So, this blog is for my family and my friends in case they are curious as to what we've been up to. And for anyone who by chance stumbles upon my little corner of cyberspace and thinks they might want to stay and get to know me. But mainly this blog is for me...to have a record of my life with my kids now when they are young and to encourage me to do all those things I have been wanting to do with them. It's the story of my life and I'm going to try to make it a good one.