gnome homes and star moss and august

Half way through this summer season. Our world so full of color, we can feel ourselves heading towards the golden time. I am embracing it. I am happy to be here right in the middle of summer.

I cannot believe though that here we are at the beginning of August and I have yet to do a real gardening post.

How grateful I am for our garden this year. As I am every year. We are grateful for the food of course, but also for the time spent among the beds, in the dirt, under the sun.

This is what dinner has looked like so many nights this summer. Thank goodness we were able to get through most of the hottest afternoons without cooking! Bread baked very early in the morning, beans in the crockpot, easy grains like quinoa, lots of cold grain/bean salads. And then a big bunch of these wonderful greens, chopped up and piled on top, almost always raw. Almost every night. Yummy. Thank you garden!

I am often enjoying the view of the garden from up above. Standing on the back deck that is off of our kitchen.

Giant hollyhock leaves down below! (That is a 10 inch pot beside it!) No blooming hollyhocks this year though. (Sad.) But new cosmos have been greeting us each morning and soon the calendula will be shining it's bright face up to the sun. Happy!

And the gnomes have been making us happy too.

Last weeks storytelling and gnome crafting was inspired by an exciting discovery in the forest.

A gnome cave. With star moss! (Some kind of special fairy/gnome moss perhaps? I'm not exactly sure, but Chloe was so excited to discover it!)

We discovered lots of other neat things that day out in the forest.

A tree trunk smashed up by a bear, to get at the ants inside. Look closely on the right and you can see scratch marks from it's paws! (You would have to click to make the picture bigger...)

Tall trees.

Little trees.

Aspen leaves singing in the treetops.

Thistle stalk for snack. Peeled of course! She harvested it herself.

Ripe service berries.

Isn't that neat! A bit of love in the stump of an old Ponderosa.

And the magical gnome talk continued all week long.


Oh my, blogger is being funky with pictures. Glad I got through that. There has been so much that I have been wanting to share here, wishing to write about, but goodness how quickly the time passes!

Speaking of which, I am coming very close to my 100th post! Perhaps later this week. And I have a nice little giveaway planned too!
So see you soon :)


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wool and roly-polys and forts and rain and me!

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Our weekend was full of lots of nice things.

Friday, oh it was such a good day. The girls have been doing lots of playing with wool and water lately. Soft wool, cool water, very nice for hot days. This weekend though it finally cooled down enough for some hot soapy water, the girls spent hours with their wet felting projects, they made sweet little baskets, which turned into bassinets for their little dolls. Some needle felting happened too. And I got our wool nice and organized. And I got my sewing space nice and organized. And I finally made a new ironing board cover. It only took me 3 years to choose a fabric, but once I did I made it in about an hour. Now on to one of the many other projects on my home sewing list!

But oh yeah, I didn't take any pictures at all of any of our happy creating.

I did get some other weekend photos though.

The girls and their roly-poly's. So many hours spent playing with and caring for their roly-polys!

And fort building! The girls finally spent the night sleeping in a fort without it coming crashing down at some point in the middle of the night. This is a pretty impressive fort. Chloe's side has two rooms. A bed, bookshelf, a dress, her bonnet, her dolls.

It is kind of hard to take a good picture of a fort. Especially when it takes up the entire room.


And it is really hard to take pictures of yourself! But I decided to pick up the camera anyway. Inspired by lovely ladies and a really great project, and most of all for my dearest friend Rae, who is always asking to see more of me, cause it is so hard for us to be so far apart...

So here I am. Saturday morning. 37 years old. Like everyone else I am working on acceptance (so I think I'll say nothing else...)


Also, the most wonderful thing has happened. It has been raining. Raining and raining and raining. For days. It stops in the earliest morning hours. It is damp and cool when we wake up. The chilly air is so to be appreciated after some very hot weather in past weeks. The sun comes out, there is time in the garden, time to dry a load of laundry on the line. And then the afternoon clouds come. And then later in the evening it starts raining. Very hard. And we get to listen to it. All night long. So so nice!


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forest wandering...

Our weekend was filled with lots of nice summer-ness, including a wonderful Sunday wandering in the forest.

Would you like to see where we wandered? There are way too many pictures, so I'll skip the words...















And then a picnic dinner beside the lake before we finished the short drive home.

Looking at these photographs this evening I am filled with such wonder and gratitude that we get to live in this amazing place. (It still amazes me even after 15 years...)

I hope your weekend wanderings brought you to your own place of beauty!


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belated love for wash wednesday

I was intending to write a garden post, was looking through some pictures... then I noticed this photo below, the girls doing some washing out on the back deck...

It was early spring, still lots of snow on the ground, but sunny enough to enjoy some outdoor water play.

And here we have dollhouse laundry day, looking quite cheery on the line.

I really cannot believe that I never did a Wash Wednesday post. I was so excited when Nicole started the project, I'm sure she knew I would be, I remember emails we were writing to each other last year sharing laundry love thoughts.

I have always thought laundry lines we worthy of photographing. Laundry on the line has always made me happy. I really do find hanging laundry to be a very enjoyable chore!

We have a low laundry line on the deck, and a small drying rack also. It is sometimes a challenge to hang an entire load but we manage for now. Maybe someday we will put one down by the garden, but I am anticipating the convenience of this one in the winter. (Although it will not be at all convenient with three feet of snow on the deck...)

We do lots of pink loads!

And this photo above is one that Nicole recently included in a Wash Wednesday post.

Nicole, since you liked the little toes I included a couple more for you here. And in case you were wondering, those are "doll swings" tied underneath the stool...

I am glad to be able to share moments like this with others who find joy in these simple things.


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~ this moment ~ sisters stitching ~

~ inspired by amanda soule ~

(Another rocking chair moment, I sure did love to find them this way. Do you see that serious look on Chloe's face? She is a very thoughtful child...)


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