Remorse

Reilly gave me her updated Christmas wish list this morning.

This was the note that was sitting on my desk tonight. (She printed it up during her computer lab today).

Concidence, no?

I'm just sayin'...

Kids say the !@#$% things...

This comes after a recent Family Home Evening on gratitude...

and after watching a docudrama about the struggles of the early handcart pioneers...

and after making a Thankful tree by writing down everything we're thankful for...

and after having oodles of discussions lately about how many blessings we have...

(sigh!)

Ok, so we don't have a Wii, game stations, a basement or a trampoline. The girls share a room. We have an extremely outdated kitchen that is in desperate need of repair. But we are blessed! Richly blessed!

My friend, Amanda, recently recapped a talk she had heard from John Bytheway. The gist of it was how the things we actually complain about are the very things we've been blessed with. I.E...an outdated kitchen--at least we HAVE a kitchen, etc.

I have a dear friend who is contemplating adopting a child from a third world country. In our discussions, I have been acutely aware (more than usual) about the many things that we have been blessed with. We take the little everyday conveniences for granted.

If Reilly would have left out everything but the last line, I wouldn't be feeling so defeated right now.

co-zy (adj)

1. snug, comfortable, and warm

2. marked by friendly intimacy

Tokens of the Harvest

As of the past several weeks, I've officially become a working girl! Susan Taylor, a long time, dear friend, has been trying to get me to come work at her shop, Black Eyed Susan as one of her floral designers for quite some time now...

I was hesitant to commit because Ellie is still in kindergarten and only goes half days, and I want to be home when the kids get off the bus. Between house and yard projects, church assignments, kids' after school activities, being a Daisy leader, managing my "mini farm", and occasionally finding time to blog, I rarely have a spare moment...

This opportunity to work for Susan was just too good to pass up, plus it gives me an opportunity to get the hang of things gradually so when I can commit to more hours, I'll be an old pro...(It also gives me an excuse to change out of my daily uniform (yoga pants))...

Susan has been really flexible with my hours, so as of now, I only work 3 afternoons a week and 2 Saturdays per month.

Occasionally, there has been an opportunity to work in the evenings as Susan hosts a few design classes each month.


Her Tokens of the Harvest class was originally scheduled for Thursday, Nov 11th. Due to a scheduling conflict, she split the class up into two nights. She hosted the class this past Monday evening and had me in charge of last night's class...

Many ideas were given for unique and fresh ways to decorate a beautiful harvest table...

We had a much larger turn out last night which had me a bit nervous, but overall, things went pretty well...

Who would have guessed that lima beans would add such a whimsical touch to an ordinary vase? Imagine how cute it would be to have different sized glass containers down the middle of the table each filled with lima beans and a few gourds tucked into each vessel. A small tuft of reindeer moss adds the perfect touch...(using dried peas, or dried pinto beans would also be something that would look cute in the containers with the gourds or squashes)

And look at that sweet little orange squash sitting on top of a bed of moss...

Several of these down the middle of a table with different heights of cake plates would be glorious!

Just a simple glass serving bowl filled with tiny white gourds and lima beans makes a perfect every day autumn table centerpiece...

as does this white platter with tiny pumpkins, an acorn squash and kumquats...

A gourd nestled into a wreath set atop a mirror base is such an elegant look. (That huge green gourd was quite the find! When Susan and I went gourd shopping the other day at None Such Farm, we were both very smitten with it's glory). At 75 cents per pound, though, it would have made quite a hefty purchase since it wieghed 37 pounds. I just happend to ask if we could borrow it for a few days, and much to our dismay, they agreed!!!

Fresh maple leaf cuttings add just the right touch to these little glass bottles...

And look what she did with those fresh pears! Spray painted and lightly glittered nestled onto a silver tray with chestnuts sprinkled around...Pure joy! These were a great conversation piece last night!

Picture this...fresh fall branches lining the middle of the table, with guilded pears tucked around, and painted pumpkin in the center of it all! A true showstopper it would make!!

***Which is your favorite???

The post that I should have done 2 weeks ago....

I know, I know...Halloween is old news at this point, but for posterity's sake, I had to document the festivities of our Halloween weekend...

The school parade was on Friday morning...

It saddens me that my kids won't venture into the silly zone when it comes to Halloween costumes. I wish they liked costumes that shows some creativity. They choose such boring things. I was so impressed with some of the costumes from some of the other kids. Bubblegum under the table was my personal favorite...If it wasn't so gosh darn cold, I would have thought to get a picture of it...

FYI: Ellie is actually supposed to be a china girl, not a geisha. I went on line for some tips on how to do her makeup. Darkening in her eyebrows was just a BAD idea!..Yikes!

It wasn't intentional, but I'm pretty sure that getting decked out like this for the kindergarten party made a few other moms in other classes feel like slackers. We had just decided at our planning meeting that we would all dress up...But I felt kind of like an overachiever...

I was in charge of the "witches brew" activity. Each child took turns putting "bones" (pretzel sticks), "spider eggs" (popcorn), and "dragon tales" (candy corn) into the cauldron while I read a spooky Halloween poem...

It was a big hit, especially since everyone got to take home a bag of their "witches brew"...

Mrs. Lincow's PM kindergarten class...

As is tradition, my mom, Katie and Josie drove up from western Pa on Friday to partake in the Halloween fun...

When they arrived on Friday night, we went to Sopranos for pizza...

The next day (Saturday) was our Primary's Trunk or Treat/ Carnival....

We had spooky brew...

Creepy food...


and games like Boo Bowling...


and a Pumpkin toss...(As well as the Mummy Cake Walk, and Fish if you Dare)




The kids all got to do a pasta skeleton craft...

which was a BIG hit...

Observe my sister's artistic abilities on Jake's face...

Everyone got to have their picture taken at our Haunted Photo Booth that was displayed in the front foyer...

(dang it, why didn't I get a picture of the whole spooky scene?! It was super cute thanks to my friend, Leisha...)

The kids all paraded around to show off their costumes...

And then, they headed outside for some trunk or treating...

My mom did a great job spookifying our trunk...

The next morning we held our traditional "candy shop" and traded our trunk or treat stash...
( you know about the universal rule that moms get first dibs on their favorites candies, right?...in my case, it's sweet tarts, sour patch kids, nerds or fun dip (if available)

Later on in the day, we carved pumpkins....

and dressed up into fancy clothes...

and got ready to do some official trick or treating...

(Unfortunately, Halloween fell on a Sunday this year. Our community wouldn't DREAM of switching trick or treating to Saturday! I angsted over whether or not to let the kids go trick or treating. I didn't want to send them mixed messages about what's appropriate and what's not for a Sunday activity. Brian and I finally decided that we would go as a family, rather than Jake splitting up and going with his buddy, Brady.

It ended up working out fine, even though Ellie and Josie fizzled out after about 5 houses...

Here is a self portrait of me after a jam packed weekend of "Halloweening!"

P.S. I proposed to my bed that night...

Five for Friday--A little of this and that...

1. Ellie lost her first tooth...She's probably the only kid I know that can just reach in and pull a tooth out without any tears or drama...

The going rate for losing your first tooth in our house is $2...

2. My friend, Angela, sent me this article about baby koala twins that were rescued from their mother after she was killed...

I can't stop looking at this picture...I've never seen a baby koala, but oh my goodness...isn't it precious?!

As my sister, Katie, said..."I want one!"

3. My latest purchase...and a frivolous one at that! (It holds as much value as those crows I just recently bought from Susan...but make me just as happy!)

When I saw this in a catalog, I knew I HAD to have it...

A. It's a duck

B. The newspaper is written in Creole (Haitian form of french) (I used to fly to Haiti when I worked for American, so this holds special meaning for me...)

C. It supports the people in Haiti...

I can't believe that with all the other things we need, that I actually ordered this and paid shipping! Isn't this the kind of thing that you hope to get as a gift?!

4. Almost every day this week, this is what Brian has been coming home to...

5. My recent trip to Monticello inspired me to complicate er...um...I mean "expand" my garden in the front yard...

I hand dug a huge section out with the help of some of my grub loving feathered friends...

This was the final product...I transplanted roses from a few other places in my other garden and added a few new ones...

I can't wait for spring to see my vision come to life...

This just makes me happy

Something to Crow About...

I've recently started doing some part time work for my friend Susan at Black-eyed Susan...

I'm one of her floral designers and when there's not a custom project to work on, I've been helping with sales....

The only downside to working here is that it's giving me a HUGE case of the greeds!

I'm surrounded by utter cuteness...

Take this guy for example?!  I mean, seriously, who wouldn't want a crow that wears a party hat?!

I bought 6 of these little boogers!

He's one of those things that just makes me plain happy to see...

I love how Susan has such a knack with arranging things...

Her pumpkin colored walls really pop this mantle!

Isn't it clever how she arranged this "spooky" toppled over scene complete with crows...

Her signature "painted pumpkins" was something I learned how to do this year!

It was so neat learning her tricks of the trade...(top secret recipe!)

they look almost candied...

super cute...

and glamourous...

I love working in her shop especially on gloomy days...

The atmosphere is so cozy and inviting...



Thelma and Louise...part two

After we left the island of Chincoteage, we headed down route 13 (which, by the way, is the most obscure highway ever!).
 We stopped at a few towns along the way...

One of them was the town of Parksley...

Right smack dab in the middle of town was an old fashioned five and dime store called Jaxon's...

You can't see it, but my mom is tearing up in this picture...

The minute she walked in, she said it was like being a little girl again at Kresky's--her local five and dime in Fredonia, Ny...

The way the place smelled, and the way everything was displayed on cabinets was just as she remembered as a child.

It truly was a blast from the past...just look at these old hair nets...(are there other people wearing these other than lunch ladies?)

We continued down the road until we reached Williamsburg, Va.

It was Friday afternoon when we arrived.

Kudos to my mom for safely getting us over the Chesapeaque Bay Bridge Tunnel (a 30 minute ride over a bridge completely surrounded by water). My mom has a great phobia for bridges and tunnels, so this was quite an accomplishment for her...

There was so much information to cover in just the short time we were there that we decided to focus on the slavery aspect of things...(We went on a plantation tour and began to regret it about 10 minutes into it)

The guy leading it treated us all like we were personally responsible for slavery.  He actually made us go out in a cotton field and PICK COTTON (it was 98 degrees that day, no lie!)  We left feeling ashamed of our whiteness...

This was a slave woman's handbook on how to care for her mistress...

This was so interesting...It's actually the menu that the staff used as a guide for what to cook.

I would love to have a copy of this...

It's hard to imagine cooking like this during a time when there weren't any modern appliances...

Oh...to have a "well paled" garden...

We met up with Lynne and Ken (aunt and uncle) who live in Williamsburg.  They treated us to a delicious lunch at the Trellis...It was so blazing hot that day that we lingered a bit longer in the a/c building...

After our lunch with them, we did a bit more site seeing in Williamsburg and went back on the road to our final destination....Monticello-- (Thomas Jefferson's home)...

Look at this garden!  It's a mile long and absolutely, positively beyond words!!!

The story about Thomas Jefferson being in love with his slave Sally Hemmings was very interesting to learn about...She was actually his first wife's half sister...

When we got home and told Brian all about what we learned, he likened it to the SNL skit where they were able to bring our founding fathers back from the dead and a press conference was held.  The reporters could ask any question they wanted, and of course, every question asked was about how these guys slept with their slaves...

slave kitchen...(If ONLY mine were half as nice as this!)

 

Here we are right before going on the house tour...

This was such a lovely trip...I know I'm forgetting a million things...

I can't believe how long it's taken me to actually post about this...

It's always hard to recap the adventure...

As always, these trips with my mom leave me feeling rejuvenated and relaxed...

We have so many great memories to look back on of our time together...

Thanks for a fabulous trip, mom!