Lest I Forget

For over a year, or really, since we moved into our house, I have not cared for the colonial blue walls in the foyer and hallways. Not only is it not my favorite blue, it was one of the worst painting jobs I have ever seen. It was slapped on so haphazardly that patches of blue decorated the ceiling where they never bothered to wipe up mistakes. Then they tried to touch up the bad spots with the same color but with a different sheen. It was bad. I have had a paint chip taped in the hallway for the past year, along with a quote from local painter. This was one job I did not want to tackle. The foyer is a two-story entrance. I am not particularly fond of heights. We made the call and set up a time for the job to be done. Here are some before and after pictures of the project. I am really happy with the results. It makes it seem much brighter. My parents arrived on Friday to go to Colonial Williamsburg with us for their homeschool days. Saturday was cold and breezy and w...

Sunday dawned cold and dreary. The forecast left little hope of improvement. In fact, the day turned steadily colder and wetter and windier. I asked Tony to go into the chilly attic and bring me the rosemary I had drying up there. With Anna an eager helper at my side, we sat together and stripped the branches of their leaves. We filled two empty spice containers and half a gallon ziploc bag. Having just finished "The Long Winter", I couldn't help thinking of the girls and Ma taking turns grinding the wheat in the little coffee mill while the wind and snow whirled around their little house. Those two spice bottles will be more than I need, so I am thinking about making little sache's of rosemary to freshen up the dresser drawers. This morning, with Olivia and Tony home for the day, I made a more hardy breakfast than I normally would on a Monday morning. Tonight's menu is chicken salad sandwiches, cole slaw, and homemade tomato soup. But there can be no sandwic...

Only Anna is participating in the Young Writers Club this week. We go to our homeschool co-op on Friday and Saturday was just too pretty to not play baseball! The topic was:  tell about a family member who you look up to. Anna: I admire my sister Sophie. She is loving and brave and smart. She likes to knit. She is smart at math and she helps me play 'five crowns'. The way I look up to her is she was brave to go to Austria to study.

Anna and Jack both wanted to participate in the Young Writer's Club when I told them about it. I did Jack's in an interview style, since he cannot yet write. Anna wrote and typed up hers all by herself! "Where would you most like to live and why?" Anna: I'll like to live at home becuase I want to live with my family and play with my friends and play baseball with my Dad. Jack:   me: Where would you most like to live?   Jack: ummm...the beach!   me: Why?   Jack: If there's a beach house for sale, so we can go to our beach. We can play in the water and make sandcastles. I think that's it for my 'card'. (He then signed his name to the paper on which I was dictating his thoughts.) I can see that this will be a good exercise in writing. Already Anna noticed that her original sentence contained a lot of the word "like". She made some changes herself and then we discussed different ways to say that you like something without a...

Both! Anna is learning about the layers of the earth. Namely the crust, the mantle and the core. Imagine her delight when she found out that we were supposed to build a model of the layers using ice cream, frosting, magic shell topping and chocolate chips for school this week. We assembled it during the day yesterday because Thursday night is pizza and movie night and what could be better than pizza, movies, and ice cream? This is not exactly to scale. OK, so we weren't even close. Still, Jack asked me which blob of blue frosting was the Atlantic Ocean. I pointed to a blob and said, "Why this one, of course." He was satisfied. Please ignore all the pizza night dishes in the background. I would never make a good food photographer. Our core is vanilla fudge ripple. Our mantle is chocolate. The crust is the magic shell topping. The oceans are the blue frosting and the mountain ranges are the chocolate chips. Tony, being the thoughtful person he is, when I s...

For those of you who, like me, are more than disheartened by all that is in the news recently (I am more than worried about the future of our country.), I thought I'd share a little something that made me laugh out loud. So, back when the weather was warmer and I actually ventured out of doors, I found this book at a yard sale... It was published in 1963, and I thought it would be fun to see the tips from housewives back then. The introduction made me laugh out loud though... Can you read it? The paragraph in brackets?

I was awoken last night, or this morning, depending on how you look at it, at 4:30 am by some random noise. Tossing and turning, sleep was proving elusive, so I turned on the little lamp on my bedside table and picked up "The Story of a Soul". I am embarrassed to admit that I have been reading this for a year now and I am still not done. It is not that I don't find it interesting. On the contrary, I feel that I must digest what St. Therese has to say in small bits, so to better understand and remember. What a joy for me to come upon this passage last night: "The following morning, September 8, an outpouring of peace flooded my soul, that " peace which surpasseth all understanding" (Phil. 4:7), and in this peace I pronounced my sacred vows." You see, way back when I was pregnant with our little Therese, before we knew she was a girl, Tony and I were on a walk when the name Mary Therese filled my heart. Tony was not as in love with the name as I, but I ...

Have you ever had yarn that you fell in love with, but then couldn't figure out what it was for? Well, that has been the case with this yarn for months. I started out knitting a scarf in 1x1 ribbing, but the stripes weren't coming out like I had hoped. So I ripped it out. Then I tried a scarf in stockinette with a border of garter stitch. I loved how the stripes were going, but it still rolled something awful. I tried blocking a small piece to see if it was worth continuing, but it was not. So out that came too. Then I tried a reversible stitch pattern of K2, P1. Back to the stripes not looking right. Frogged again! Finally, last night, in the middle of the night, as I was trying to convince Therese that it was not time to be up, I searched on Ravelry for one skein projects using sock yarn. I found this pattern . It is turning out just how I hoped! Whew! The book I am borrowing from a friend. I am learning SO much. It is an easy read explaining economics. Something that ...