army guys and bows

so, yeah I am feeling pretty pleased with the cake I made for Cecilia's birthday. I have absolutely no professional training or experience with cake decorating, but I do have that irresistable combination of optimism and enthusiasm that allows me to pretty much try all kinds of things that I have no experience doing. Like refinishing wood floors, electrical work, and using fondant on a cake. I mean, I do watch Ace of Cakes now and then, and I do still love using play-doh so what could go wrong? This time, exactly nothing went wrong and the cake for my oldest daughter looked fabulous. Now, before you ask me when I am starting my professional career, I must share the other cake I made for the same party:

Not exactly Ace of Cakes material, but this army rendition of the pool cake made one little four year old boy VERY happy. The river is made of jell-o. I wasn't too happy with the way the color came out, it pretty much looked like a vat of grape jelly, but luckily, the birthday boy didn't care about the color. He just loved the combination of army guys and frosting, so life was good.
Now that two of my children have "turned" a new age, I am finding myself feeling nostalgic. We are headed into uncharted territory this year. The oldest is bound for middle school, and the little one is headed for every day pre-school at the big school. It feels like kindergarten to me even though it is officially called 4-k. I feel a little like someone pulled the rug out from under me and my kids have grown up without me noticing.

I am not a fan of change, so this year should be interesting. Just the thought of all the new schedules and activities has me a little anxious, but anxious or not, the new school year will be here in 3 weeks!!

in the groove

We are certainly adjusting nicely to the lazy days of summer. My kids have a tan (well as much tan as kids who favor their 1/2 Irish mother can get), I am sporting what I like to call my savage tan (again-see the Irish comment), The house is staying wonderfully clean because we are pretty much never in it, and we are all staying up late, the kids are sleeping late and everyone is in a vacation-type mood.

As of right now, we don't have any big summer plans-thanks mostly to gas prices and the price of heating oil that is lurking just around the corner for us in the fall. We are also going to be saying goodbye to our 11 year old car soon and a reluctant hello to a car payment for the first time in about 4 years. So, it's close to home for us but we are making the best of it and having fun together. The summer days go so quickly-we've been out of school nearly a month already and I am not sure where it went.

So, all this brings me to my gratitudes for summer, I am thankful

that I can be home to share summer with my kids

for the pool we belong to

that we are all healthy

for family

for summer birthdays

for the beauty of creation in this season

for 99cent shakes at sonic

for packed lunches and dinners eaten at the pool

for sunscreen and chlorine scented kids

for air conditioned libraries and movie theaters

for the 20 minutes of reading time required daily to get a free Dairy Queen blizzard at the end of the month

for friends

this is what it looks like

when you have left your aunt and cousin in the baby pool and decided to just jump into the big pool all by yourself, with no grown up, not even an older sister in the pool. If you are Gabe, you would have a hard time understanding why that is not a good idea, because, as he puts it "but mom, I can totally swim."
Good argument, actually, but I won't tell him I think so. For his crime, he had to sit out for a few minutes. I would have liked to keep him in exile a little longer, but the wind was so chilly, I thought it would be heartless.

summer's here

So, we had a picture perfect day on Sunday and I have no pictures to prove it. We had a nice breakfast of pancakes with strawberries, maple sausage, coffee and orange juice. My kids said it was weird having pancakes for breakfast-I guess it's been a while since we had breakfast for breakfast. We usually do breakfast for dinner around here because my idea of a good breakfast is a cup of coffee.
We took the kids up to the school playground and "practiced" softball with all of them for a while. Gabe got too hot, so he and I came home and packed some snacks for the pool. We hit the pool around 3 and stayed till 7-stopped at the store on the way home and then had dinner around 8:30. It was 10pm by the time we got the kids into bed and they were all tired and smelled of sunscreen and chorine-probably my favorite smell in the whole world.
It was a day of simple pleasure, just being together with no agenda and nowhere to be.

masterpiece

Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? Either way, this portrait of Cecilia took my breath away. Cecilia takes art classes at a local studio in the Fall. It is a great place to be creative, an old house by a pond, with a little stream and a koi pond right inside. So, the daughter of Cecilia's teacher is very talented and created this portrait of her last year and we finally got to see it today.
The portrait is indescribably beautiful. It totally captured her personality. I was pretty much in tears when I saw it yesterday and that took me by surprise. The artist is using it next year to apply for college and then I am hoping we can purchase it! I need to have this portrait.

string

this boy is so much fun and he has his grandfather's ability with knots and string. My father-in-law could tie a knot that no one, and I mean no one could untie. He was a cook on merchant ships that ran a trade route from Europe to Africa. He would be gone on long voyages, gone for more than a year at a time. Of course, this explains the spacing of my husband's siblings quite well.
He could tie a knot, and now Gabe has somehow genetically inherited his love of all things tie-able (not sure that's even a word. He is constantly tying knots, tying string, taking my bathroom robe belt and creating marvelously intricate patterns and knots, tying chairs together, tying himself to things. If he could get the cat to stand still, he'd tie her to something.
So, last week, when he found the ball of string that I used to tie up the climbing roses on the trellis on the front porch, he was in heaven.

here it is

Now, two posts in one day. Apparently, the woman who lived here before us LOVED roses. She had planted many rosebushes and lovingly stenciled roses and vines and ivy with roses and little patches of roses all over the house. While the stencils were covered within days of moving in, I have taken over the care of her living roses and this is the first beauty of the year. I pruned all the roses in March, and was hoping that the plants would be okay after my attempts at caring for them, and it seems that they are!!

wow

So, without resorting to self-loathing and excuses, I cannot believe I have not updated this blog in more than two months. All my good intentions have gotten me nowhere and I have neglected this little journal miserably.
April was truly a blur this year, starting off with what we like to call Tonsilectomy on Tuesday (can you tell that Julianna is into Magic Treehouse books right now?). She handled the surgery really well, but it was both scary for us and reassuring at the same time. As I answered all the pre-op questions, I said a little prayer of gratitude for each "no" I was able to give: no heart problems, no liver problems, no kidney problems. You get the idea. It really helped give me some perspective on how healthy and lucky we all are. For some parents, a tonsillectomy would be a joy and they are just hoping that their child will live. I don't want to forget that; I want to be grateful as I share this time with my kids.
We also have become a sports family-which has been so much fun and busy and crazy. Cecilia has taken to softball like a natural and is starting a skills class this week. One of the coaches has suggested private pitching coaching for her (who even knew this existed?) At the rate of $40 an hour, I think we will wait just a little for that one.
I, for myself, have been up to my eyeballs in busy! I have taken on several larger writing projects which, although not very inspiring, have been good for me. Squeezing work in around the kids' schedule and spending time with Gabe this last year before school has been an adventure and a challenge. We are also in full swing Vacation Bible School planning mode. And,now I am up to my ears in the end of the year excitement. School awards, preschool picnic, ladies lunch at church, field day, pool day for the fifth graders, Alex's Lemonade stand for the fifth graders, it's all good and all fun, but wow. It's a lot to pack into one week. Now I know why the Duggars homeschool their kids-the schedule would kill them.
I am going to take a picture later of my very first rose of the season-it's on one of the red rosebushes out back.

she is seven!

I can't believe my baby girl is seven today!! She has been sick with some type of stomach flu all week and hasn't been to school yet this week, but her birthday has arrived anyway. All in all, she is handling it well, with breaks of crankiness and complaining, mixed in with the enjoyment of being home and some birthday gifts already. We always give "sibling gifts" first thing in the morning.
We also stayed up late and decorated the dining room with photos of the birthday girl.

so, yeah, I scrapbook

Well, I haven't scrapped in just about forever. Last month at my crop for Katrina, I attempted to work on some pages, but my purpose in being there is really to make everyone else comfortable and serve food, and handle all the details. I like to crop a little while I am there, but can't focus for long. So, this weekend, during Friday's snow day, I scrapped:



And, while Friday was our first measurable snow of any consequence, only one of my children had any desire to go out and play:

Sorry he is sideways, but I forgot to format the photo first. He had a blast and we made a snow-snack, which was a little hershey kiss shaped sculpture because the snow wasn't wet enough to really pack. We stayed out for about an hour and then it started to really sleet and we came in. We had a really nice day of movies and crafts and snacks and (for me) scrapbooking.

at the risk of being redundant

I am again forced to blog about my dining room. I know my faithful blog readers have been wondering what exactly my dining room looks like these days, and now, you know. We finally have our fabulous table! It is more beautiful than I had imagined, all 7.5 by 4 feet of it! It is so strange sitting so far away from each other, since our old table was only about 28"across. We aren't quite settled into it yet and I am very cautious about allowing drinks around it, but so far I am in love with it.

As is usually the case with me, one piece of furniture arriving has put other pieces of furniture into motion and now my house is bordering on chaos. The old table needed to be relocated to the basement where it will serve as a desk. This required the removal of the old desk and some shelves as well as the painting of the office area. All of this, including the purchasing of $5 paint, happened between 1 and 3:30 pm on Saturday-not bad if you ask me. The office is green, which is my favorite color, but a shade that is slowly growing on me. Of course, when I told my husband I got the paint for $5 he proclaimed it to be the perfect color. Moving the old table downstairs was more work than I had anticipated, but now that all the pieces are in place, I really like the way it looks. I think it will work better as well.

At the same time, I decided that Gabe's room needed some work and cleared a bunch of toys out of the basement so that I could move the toy storage from the basement to his room and move his nighttable back up to Cecilia's room because she really needed it.

Sometimes I am amazed that my husband still speaks to me!

winter inspiration

So, because I am always inspired by this blog I thought I would try to find something beautiful about winter. I am way more of a bah-humbug type when it comes to winter. I don't like to be cold. I have a 3 year old who doesn't like to wear a coat and who still needs to be buckled into a carseat with a coat he didn't want to wear anyway. I spend the winter looking for the longer days and waiting for the warmer weather.
The idea is winter white and because there's no white stuff on the ground around here, this is my offering. This lovely mixture became my favorite muffins-cinnamon strawberry from Cooking Light magazine. I don't think they end up being very "light" around here because we can't stop eating them, but at least they start out that way.
Today I spent the day cooking and baking (after a little work this morning and while Gabe had his friend over). I made some meals for friends who are going through some rough times. One had surgery yesterday for breast cancer, the other is awaiting news about brain surgery. It felt good to be making the "good soup" for them. Something small, not a cure for the cancer or for an unexplained mass on the brain, but something. Slicing onions, cooking the soup in the stock pot that's so big I could actually have used a stool to reach in for stirring, filling the containers, all of it was a prayer, something sacred.

Galations 6:2

bear one another's burdens and in doing so,

fulfill the law of Christ

super gabe

Me: Gabe, look at this picture

Gabe: that's me, mom

Me: yes, that's when you were superman for Halloween

Gabe: Remember that? That's when I saved the day

less than 2 weeks

Because my house is decorated for Christmas and because I just love sharing pictures of my dining room-here it is:

So, the photo is poorly lit, but you get the basic idea, right? I am loving having myveryownhouse at Christmas. It's so much fun decorating and making everything festive.

We are mid-hustle and bustle around here, with activities revving up and shopping coming to an end. I am trying to keep some peace and room for reflection in this season of advent, but am coming up a little short as usual. It's always so hard to make the space for quiet in a home with four other people! Wishing you all a wonderful, magical, memorable Christmas, full of joy and light.

I am holding in prayer this advent season all those whose Christmases will not be filled with joy, those who have lost loved ones or whose family is in turmoil, or who are caring for a sick relative or spouse. The events of this year have taught me to be both thankful for the blessings I have and to be prayerful and mindful of those who are struggling. It could easily have been a sad Christmas for us, but for God's healing and mercy for my mom.

It's the most wonderful time...

Okay, so it is nearly Christmas, but here it is just getting to my big charity crop planning time. The crop is January 12th, so I am in full swing planning mode and I really do enjoy it. This is what it looked like last year:

this year, I am hoping that we will have to beg, borrow and nearly steal to have enough seats for everyone that wants to come. So, if you are a scrapper and you are close to me-just email me for more information! There was a lot of creative energy in that room and such a sweet spirit. I am hoping to have another presentation this year of what our work-crew did last year in Mississppi.

So, as I continue to give thanks for all my many blessings, I am also grateful for the opportunity to host this crop! Hope to see you there!

every good and perfect gift..

 
This year has changed the life of my whole family. 6 months ago today, we bought our first house, this house that now feels like home. Before we bought the house, I was so weary from living at our old, rented place. Couldn't wait to get out after living there for 6 long years. I was so glad when we finally closed the door on that house and that part of our lives; that was certainly a literal ending to what was figuratively a long and exhausting wait and struggle to get to this point.
Now that we are here, in this home that I love, I can hardly remember living anywhere else. I was so unhappy being there and am now completely content and often, still, thrilled with our house. Sometimes, especially when I am walking in the upstairs hallway, I remember when I first came to look at this house and I could immediately picture us living here. I feel so blessed to have this home, so grateful for this amazing gift. There are so many beautiful moments in this home, I am constantly reminded to be humble and grateful for being here.
So, my concrete things in this home that I am grateful for:
a really big sink with the cool faucet
the front porch
high ceilings
the pretty walk along the side of the house
21 windows and 3 skylights
wood floors
the dining room I worked so hard on and now is so cozy
a finished basement for all the kids' stuff
the kids having their own rooms
being close enough for the girls to walk to school
the bay window in the living room
the woodwork, especially the staircase
the feeling of coming home to ourveryownhome every single day

it's november

So, I am celebrating this November, apparently, by scrapping photos from last November. This is one of the layouts I made on Saturday when I spent the day with some great friends, just talking, laughing, snacking, and scrapbooking. It had been so long since I had even pulled out my supplies, but it was such a fun day and it felt so good to create a little. Being in the company of that group of women is always rejuvenating for me.
I just realized this morning that next week is Thanksgiving and I haven't even begun my Thanksgiving list. We hold this tradition near and dear in our home. Our pastor started it, handing the kids a cute piece of paper a few years ago, simply title "Thanksgiving List" and instructing them to complete that list before they even beging their Christmas list. My kids are always amazed when they hear about other kids making their wish lists well before Thanksgiving!
In the spirit of gratitude, I will begin my list here.
I am thankful for:
my home
my mother's improving health
my family, big and small
answered prayer
my husband who drags me out of bed much too early to have coffee with him before he goes to work
Gabe having such cute manners, like holding doors for me
Julianna being able to read chapter books and feeling so good about it
Cecilia's talent with clarinet and the joy she finds in playing it
the love my parents have for each other
coffee
friends
my new slipper socks
learning to knit
creativity
heat on a cold morning
our wood floors

There's a start, I will keep adding.

some golden grahams goodness

Do you remember these? These were an absolute favorite of mine as a kid and I had to BEG my mother to make them. She was never a big fan of melting anything-we actually talked about that at last year's cookie day. My mom would make all sorts of intricate recipes, fancy cookies, tarts, whatever-but you would never find a rice krispies treat or an indoor smore in her house.

In case you don't remember these-it's:

8 cups golden grahams cereal

6 cups of marshmallows

5 T butter

1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips (the original recipe says milk, but we use semi-sweet)

1 t vanilla

take out 1 cup of marshmallows, then melt the rest with the butter and chocolate. Stir in the vanilla and then add the cereal and the separated marshmallows.

On the green front, I got sandwich containers for my kiddos lunches so we can eliminate the baggies. They are going to try the water type bottles they already have for their lunch drinks and we will see how that goes. I also got new recycling containers from our borough so that we can really recycle and it's now on my oldest's chore list to handle the paper recycling. I am also trying to get more info on composting-everything I have found so far is a little pricey. I think that's the way with a lot of the "green" stuff-it's almost like a status thing. Anyway, not sure if I made my goal of 5, but we are all looking for ways to reduce how much trash we are making. Oh-and I am only allowing individual snacks to be eaten out of the house.

going green

so, this week as I was putting my groceries away and just generally cleaning up the kitchen, it struck me. We, as a family, generate a TON of trash. A ton. Maybe I have been watching too much "living with Ed" or maybe I am just starting to realize that so much waste just can't be good, but something needs to change.
I am going to spend some time this weekend (you know, my spare time) to come up with 5 concrete things for our family to "go green" and really reduce the amount of trash we make. I have a sneaky suspicion that part of that idea will involve more cooking for me so that we can eliminate some of the packaged foods (like snack foods for the kids' lunches). I think I will also go old school and get my kids some thermoses for their lunchboxes-thereby eliminating the dreaded juice box.
Anyway, that's my goal.

one hat, two hat

One hat complete and one hat in progress. I actually knit the first hat in just one day-one day with a LOT of knitting!
So, now it's 1.25 down, 5.75 to go. This is my first time following a pattern and it is a simple one, but I am still pleased with how the whole project went along.