Home for the holidays

By on December 29, 2017 in Handmade Holidays and Celebrations

There was finally a moment yesterday where I was not in a flurry of activity and so it seemed fitting to get this years decking of our halls in the books so to speak.  For anyone who has not been around here before, our families tradition is to hold to the old ways of celebrating Christmas (at the Catholic way) which is to keep advent as a time of preparation and penance and hold off on all the merriment until Christmas Eve.  Throughout the years we have made a few changes like not waiting until the bitter cold of winter sets in to put up the lights outside (things we never had to worry about in Florida) and getting a tree while they are still being sold (I have had to run out and buy a fake tree once or twice) but for the most part, we prepare by making the ornaments that we will need, sewing a few new Christmas wrapping bags (see explanation here) and having everything ready to go so we can just spend Christmas Eve or a few days prior getting the house ready for our favorite time of year.

This year we have a tree in pretty much every room of the house.  The little boys spent a day scouting our woods for Christmas trees to bring inside, big ones, little ones and tiny ones like the one I have next to the sink.   Truly I think I will just keep it there until it looks bad.

This year I got the shingles just as I was in the middle of creating our mama made gifts and I recovered (thanks to pulling all the holistic tricks out of my bag and putting my essential oils to work) just in time to go to all the Christmas week parties, buy all the foods and everything else that consumes every moment of the week before Christmas.  Luckily I had purchased most of the gifts for the kids and so no one was left wanting but I do intend on getting those handmades done and ready for Epiphany.

This year since Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday we departed from our usual salmon and instead had all the meats, smoked chicken, smoked turkey, bacon, spiral ham and all the trimmings followed by our annual Prime Rib dinner on Christmas day.

So we are enjoying our Christmas vacation by staying warm and cozy, watching all the Christmas movies, making gingerbread houses and cookies and keeping Christmas tunes playing throughout the house.  It’s our favorite time of year and I thank God for giving us all this time together as our children get older and older and we won’t be all together like this much longer.  It is both bittersweet and a blessing and this mama is going to squeeze every minute of merriment and enjoyment out of this beautiful season.

So how was your Christmas?  I can’t wait to hear!

 

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a few more moments

By on September 27, 2017 in Uncategorized

Yesterday, there was a moment of the day where I walked around and everything was quiet.  The kind of quiet that only spring and summer can bring.  The quiet of most everyone finding something to do outside and then I realized,  in all my haste and complaints for fall to come I had not taken into account that this quietness is now almost come to a temporary end.  Soon we will all retreat inside to cozy spaces for most of our waking hours.  There will be time to read, knit, work on a project but there will also be the bustle.  I won’t call it noise, its just the sound of living.  There are a dozen of us living and breathing in this house and it creates bustle.  It’s not a bad thing, its just different than today, when the entire house was seemingly clean and there were no projects laying around or children making the sounds of bustle.

Before anyone should get it wrong, the pictures you see here are an exception.  We do a cleanup once a day and the house will look like this but it never lasts more than an hour before more messes and living happen and that’s ok too but I will admit to having made a cuppa and walked around all alone enjoying just the site of it.

By the way,  I intend to harvest all the goldenrod that I can gather for dyeing projects this week but it smelled so much like honey and I had to battle with quite a few bumble bees to get some yesterday so all of what I collected ended up in vases throughout this house instead.  There is plenty more out there anyway.

It is funny to sit outside and find both dandelion greens and fallen leaves together, though they probably always coexist at this time of year but I don’t remember ever noticing.  The garden is looking ready to rip out and replant to fall plants.  We are very close to harvesting our potato beds and the Jerusalem artichokes will be ready soon also.

The geese now have their grown up honks and they make such a ruckus anytime anyone comes near.  They will be good to alert us of any foxes or other predators that they see.  I also meant to talk about the electric fence we added to our homestead this year.  It is exactly what we have needed.  It keeps all the birds where we want them instead of on the porch, on the rocking chairs, in the gardens and spreading every bit of mulch they can find.  It is also a great protection for them and they are still getting all the fresh grass that they want.  The guys move it every two days and it is quite easy to do.  Very lightweight and powered by the sun.  I wish we had done it sooner.  With so much land, we have a lot of predators and that is one less thing to worry about now.

I am hoping for a few cool days to get lots of weeding done but during this heat spell, my heart just wants to stay inside most of the time and make the house ready for cooler weather.    I have a pile of fabric waiting for me to do a lot of sewing and the knitting basket keeps reminding me that most everyone could use new winter knits this year and so a few more moments of warm weather and an excuse to be inside is fine by me.

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