house. home. land.

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And so now I suppose I shall have to go ahead and tell the story, except that I am still kind of unsure of  sharing it. Not all of the parts were happy, and actually this is really only just a speck of the story.

Sometimes it's easier to just not say anything, and in some ways that's what I've done with this blog over the years. Anything you see and read here is truth and real, but that doesn't mean it's everything.

I want to get this part out of the way so that we can move on to more of the good stuff, and also because I think it will allow me to go further here with more of the story, whether happy and beautiful or not. (Thankfully I know there will be a whole lot of goodness, happiness, and beauty. It's always part of it.)

So like I said, pencil and paper. I wrote this last week. I made brief mention of it here. It's my little way of tricking/forcing myself to get something done. Now I have no choice, so I'll just get on with it…


Home is not necessarily in a house. We have done very well at creating a home for our family within the walls of this house. Especially if you consider some of the difficulties and sadnesses that we have had to go through while being here.

Sometimes we joke that we accidentally bought a house. (And sometimes it is so not funny.)

Always, from the beginning, Jason and I barely past 20 years old, we were going to buy "our land". That is a whole story and dream itself, it is part of who we have always been. (Once we were even going to wait to get married until we were on our own land, and have our babies on our own land. That was about 1998, and lasted until about 1999. It's a really good thing we didn't wait!)

So it really was odd that instead of buying land we bought a house on only a ¼ of an acre in a rural mountain subdivision. Oh my gosh, sometimes it is hard to not feel some regret at not having bought the land right then. But we were faced with a move back to Colorado and somewhat overwhelmed with the need to find a home for us, our children, our pets. It kind of seemed like we needed a house. (For us that feels like such a silly thing to say!) So we would stay in the house for a couple or few years and then buy land.

Hmmm... I think I have shown and shared pretty well of the happinesses that we have had here, and I of course have been grateful about a billion times that we have a home, safe shelter, at all… but oh! has this been a hard seven years!!!
(Yes, here we are now seven years into it, not just a few…)
Good, great, beautiful, wonderful years, but also a lot more than that. Also a great big gigantic struggle.

(Okay, this is the one and only time I am going to mention this here, but the worst of it is that there have been very unkind people in our world since moving into this house. And unkind is not even close to the correct word. Really really really really mean, and that too is not even close to an accurate description. But I have never wanted to bring that ugliness here. It is not what we choose for our life, our world. We just unfortunately got accidentally stuck living right next door to it.)

Yuck. Okay. That's over.

(Also I will say, it's not like I have kept this a secret. Those closest to us know the story well, including some of my dearest blog friends. Melanie, Jules, Lisa, Tonya, Jeanene, thank you for your friendship and sharing and understanding and ability to somehow really know me.)


The good part of the story continues…

The land dream, the land dream, the land dream.
It is still not over, someday we will get our "big land", but for now we finally have our own few acres.
Our own little mountain, our own forest, our own giant fir tree.
It is our home, and we are headed there right now…


(Some peeks from last year at the land here, and here, and here…)


Thank you for letting me share our stories with you!!!



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this season

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I have a story to tell. I am going to try. I think I figured out how to find my words - with pencil and paper. Or maybe pen? The pencil may fade…

(Look Tonya, she still wears her cardigan! A bit too small, but I am only just now knitting her a new one…)

Well wishes and happy day to everyone. I shall return soon…


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april feeding our families (gardening for our families!!!)

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(I had myself some fun making these little collages of past garden photos…)



When I first wrote to my friends with the "feeding our families" idea, I offered the following broad suggestions for possible topics…

I think the topic of "feeding our families" leaves lots of room for interpretation. We could share simply, or we can ramble on about our passions in the kitchen. Ideas I am having include...

a favorite meal,

a menu plan for the week,

seasonal menus,

holiday food traditions,

snacks for our children,

(are your children hungry all day long?)

food sensitivities,

food fears (gmo's!)

food memories,

picky eaters (my girls like almost all vegetables. not so big on fruit. particular about sweets (chloe), don't like chocolate (chloe, and me) (thinks bacon and eggs together sounds like one of the craziest things, and especially would have no interest in eating it for breakfast)

breakfast!

and I imagine as we approach garden season then that might play into how we approach and express food love to our family.

and budget stuff, probably many of us face the challenge of feeding our families well on a limited budget.

Each month now I think to myself that perhaps I will take the easier, simpler approach. Though if you look back at my other posts you will see that I actually kept taking the more random, rambling approach. Hmmm, maybe that is how things will stay. 

I have never felt inadequate or even slightly concerned about my blog posts until starting this project, with such a wonderful group of talented, inspiring women, most of whom are much more prolific with their blog writing than I am. Then I unfortunately had feelings like… oh gosh, what have I gotten myself into, I have nothing to share, there is a reason I never wrote much about food in the past (even if the reason is nothing more than a lacking of time) (and a lacking of photos)…

Neverthless, I really am enjoying this series so, so much (despite my occasional gasps of "oh no!", usually occurring while I am busy in the kitchen and then suddenly realize I am supposed to be photographing and writing about all this food stuff too…)

Back to the simple idea though… 

Were we are at in the kitchen this week…

Shared the results of Saturday's bread baking morning with a kind neighbor. I like the way she held it close, inhaling, before carefully wrapping back up in cloth.

Uhmmm...

I don't think I can get anything else into my head other than thoughts of gardening and food growing!!!

We have trays of spring greens started… just Swiss Chard and kale for now, probably we will direct seed some spinach soon… tomatoes started indoors, a few varieties, some peppers too…

We garden for love, but also out of necessity. If we do not grow enough vegetables then really we do not have enough to eat. So while early spring is all about those good greens, we are also looking forward to getting our storage crops planted… onions, potatoes, cabbage (sauerkraut!), beets, various varieties of winter squash…

We even just had our first little garden harvest of the season! A teeny tiny bundle of chives, snipped from awakening plants, giving us a little taste of fresh green goodness!


I guess I have decided to skip the link gadget thing for now, but if you have a food post of your own to share then please do leave a link in the comments. (Did you all see that Heather from Beauty that Moves is doing a weekly kitchen series? All kinds of gorgeous kitchen inspiration over there!)

Enjoy visiting these lovely friends for more good food stuff...

Melanie from Our Ash Grove

Jules from A Little Crafty Nest

Melody from Bespoke

Sarah from Our Island Home

Tonya from Joyful Living

Taisa from Small Wonders

Heather from Shivaya Naturals

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some sewing…

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I try to get some specks of sewing done during my free moments. Yes, sometimes only specks at a time get done. Eventually it adds up. Making, mending, finishing, done. A new dress for Elsa. A mended dress for Chessa, who is kind of rough on her clothing. (I mean, who so loves her handmades that she wears them to pieces…) A forgotten project found. Baby bibs in progress, two are now finished (but then I had to move on to the dress. Had to. Really.) And belated photos of my finished swap items (sent way across the country to Sarah in Maine, and again thanks to Amanda. And I forgot to mention my swap gifts, but the whole thing was neat and fun, and especially surprising when my package arrived from someone living only about an hour away from us (because about an hour away from us is still in the middle of nowhere) although she has now moved far far away… thanks again Dawn!)

Well, as much as I would love to get all chatty about sewing right now, I have a food post to be writing also. I sure didn't mean to be here so infrequently, but wow, the time just slips away! Lots of good things happening! (And that's an understatement. Some incredibly wonderful exciting things happening here!!!)

Hope the days have been happy for you, dear friends and kind readers…
See you soon…
Renee


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