this moment ~ farm friends

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~ inspired by Amanda Soule ~


I bet most of you will recognize where it was that we were last week...

I know this is supposed to be just one photo...

but there were baby goats! I could have posted 20 more...


Feeling grateful for...
the friendship of those great farm folks...
my daddy on his way to visit... (it's been a long, long time!)
the very last days of winter!


Blessings to all!


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~ Yarn Along ~

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Once again joining Ginny's Yarn Along...

Chloe especially loves the cover of this Wendell Berry book, she says she can't stop looking at it. I especially love what he has to say...

"For a long time now we have understood ourselves as traveling toward some sort of industrial paradise, some new Eden conceived and constructed entirely by human ingenuity. And we have thought ourselves free to use and abuse nature in any way that might further this enterprise. Now we face overwhelming evidence that we are not smart enough to recover Eden by assault, and that nature does not tolerate or excuse our abuses. If, in spite of the evidence against us, we are finding it hard to relinquish our old ambition, we are also seeing more clearly every day how that ambition has reduced and enslaved us. We see how everything - the whole world - is belittled by the idea that all creation is moving or ought to move toward an end that some body, some human body, has thought up. To be free of that end and that ambition would be a delightful and precious thing. Once free of it, we might again go about our work and our lives with a seriousness and pleasure denied to us when we merely submit to a fate already determined by gigantic politics, economics, and technology." - Wendell Berry

A little stack of books. Winter Cottage obviously needs to be finished up this week, because then it is on to a new season! A season of growing, gardens, so much goodness!
We got our copy of Four Season Harvest at least 10 or 12 years ago, a wise purchase seeing as how most have our gardens have been at altitudes between 7000-8000 feet. The book is worn, pages are loose, and in the resource section there is a very apparent lack of "www" or any mention of websites. Neat.

No knitting happening at the moment, I seem to be focusing on crochet and sewing.

I think I am doing better with the colorfulness of my granny squares. A brighter yellow and orange added, and I will definitely be including lots of that turquoise!
This afghan could likely be a year long project, possibly longer. I am taking it slow.. will it be done in time to keep us warm next winter, or will it be a cozy project to keep me occupied...

I still have more book post ideas on my mind. Up next, I think, will be some of my favorite Waldorf kindergarten resources. Sometimes I hesitate to mention something I will post, since there is always a chance I will take a while to get to it, but I already started making my list and taking some pictures, so hopefully soon...


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random thoughts...

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Accompanied by random photos. I have really been slacking with the camera lately. So I just pulled some pics from iPhoto, taken in the last couple months.

Too bad we didn't have the camera the other day when we saw that mama cow with her baby who had clearly just been born. Baby all wet, afterbirth still hanging from mama cow! Or, I should say, too bad we didn't know we had the camera with us.

We had a few winter days that were warm enough for t-shirts and wide open windows. Though mostly it was freezing. Though also it sure wasn't a very snowy winter. I think our snow was stolen by all of you out east.

And speaking of stealing, Chloe has been reading (but not in this picture) The Borrowers by Mary Norton. It is about little people who live beneath a house and "borrow" belongings from the family above. But as Chloe points out, they aren't really borrowing, they are stealing, cause they don't give anything back. She really hopes we don't have borrowers living under our house.

I'm sure I have mentioned before, the girls often spend hours of their day drawing. Usually with their beeswax crayons and colored pencils, sometimes with chalks.

Really messy chalk!

Lots of their play lately has been a strange combination of "castle" and Little House on the Prairie.

With more and more outside time as spring approaches. Hooray!



Remember, these are just random photos, I don't really have anything to say about them...

But the other random thoughts...

Seeds. My mind is full of thoughts of seeds. And the garden too of course, but that is still buried beneath snow, so, seeds, seeds, seeds.

We probably don't get much more than 90 days between our frost free dates. Yikes, challenging.

Tonight after dinner and doing the dishes I almost started making dinner again, for tomorrow night. We will be in town tomorrow and on days like that I really like to plan ahead and have dinner already prepared and waiting at home.

But I just baked cookies instead. Oats, whole wheat pastry flour, coconut oil, maple syrup. And a few walnuts and raisins.

We are having a kind of busy week. We have had a kind of busy winter! Usually in the winter we are in town only a couple times a month, this year it has been at least once a week. Kinda don't like that.

We live in between a small town and a tinier town. And we have been visiting both libraries. It kind of concerns me, cause that's a lot of books to keep straight, we're lucky we haven't ended up with any big late fees.

Books. Gosh I love books.

Lets hope for more book posts soon!

So, care to share any random thoughts??


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~ Sewing Bee ~

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Remember how excited I was about Julia's Sewing Bee? And then there was that incident, which I don't really like to mention anymore, (called the flu) and my poor little quilt sat neglected for much too long.

This past week I finally got to bring my squares back out. I had previously arranged them in satisfactory order, and carefully stacked them so that I would still know their order, but when I picked them up the other day I could not at all recall what I had intended to do with them! So I started over...

Here they are, squares sewed into pairs, and shortly after I got them sewn into their horizontal rows. I thought I was going to get a lot of sewing done today, but instead I got a lot of cooking and baking done and just a little bit of sewing.

I will always gladly take any small sewing moments I can get!


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~ Yarn Along ~

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Happy to be once again joining Ginny for her Yarn Along...

Resisting posting belated valentines photos, since it is finally March, but still want to show you this little red gnome I had made to greet the girls that morning. There was a matching heart too. I had always wanted to make one of these gnomes, pattern from dear Tonya. So cute, I think I will be making more.

This book was sitting out, Chloe must have been reading it. I have several vintage fairy tale books from long before we even had children. This is a collection of Hans Christian Anderson.

Really neat illustrations.

I wonder if Chloe was reading Little Tiny. (Thumbeline.) I remember loving this story when I was a child, but I have written here before about Chloe's sensitivity to certain stories. The last time we read this one together, which was more than a year ago, she burst into tears at the end and threw herself into my lap. Poor thing. She said she never wanted to read it again, but I have recently seen her taking a peek at it.

Another neat vintage book found at the antique shop in town today. It's an early 60's copy in such great condition, and full of enough stories to keep our avid reader occupied for at least a little while.

More wonderful illustrations.

And here are some of those granny squares I mentioned. I have finally started our afghan, so very excited! It's somehow not looking colorful enough at the moment, but I have more colors that I will be adding. I think I have 17 squares done, based on Chessa's counting. (That girl loves to count!) But I made that many squares without weaving in any of my ends, and so on Sunday instead of making more squares I had to sit and weave in all those little ends of yarn. I sure won't be doing that again, I will try to be disciplined enough to weave in my ends as I go!

It is getting late, but I think there may be time for at least one square before bedtime!


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Finally!!!

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Hooray hooray! I think that we are truly all better now!


Goodness, what a long recovery that was. It was so nice to have a normal enjoyable weekend. And so nice to eat some good food!

We had the buttermilk I had made that I wanted to put to use, and also bananas that really needed eaten (I can't eat raw bananas, they make me dizzy and kind of nauseas, is that weird?) so I made two loaves of banana bread. It was very yummy, even though I have just about no sweet tooth at all lately, good snacking for the girls though.

I had also made some creme fraiche (european style sour cream, not that I had ever had it before..) and we tried that for the first time tonight with an enchilada casserole. The best meal we have eaten in weeks! And leftovers still for tomorrow night. I really like when our dinners can last a couple nights.

And making cultured dairy products is so much fun! I seem to be really good at it, though I'm sure it's a pretty basic thing that anyone can do. Still, feeling impressed. I want to try making yoghurt next!

Clearly not much more than food was on my mind this weekend.

My sister just called and was laughing at me cause of my creme fraiche excitement. Don't care...

There was some nice handwork time this weekend too. Crochet. Granny squares, of course. I will try to take some pics and hopefully join in with the Yarn Along later this week.

Hope your weekend was full of happy wonderful goodness too!

(Anyone have any suggestions for using our buttermilk and creme fraiche??)


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Still here, kind of...

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Sort of...


As some of you have guessed, we have been not so well. Actually, we have been more sick than we have ever been before, and all four of us at the very same time!!!

I can count on one hand all the things I have done in the past week...

One day I made a small loaf of bread. Since not much was eaten other than dry toast. We ate less in one week than we usually do in one day.

Another day I made buttermilk. Glad to save the milk from going bad.

Sometimes I cried. We all did, except for Chessa. Tough little six year old.

Oh yeah, and one day I drove Jason to the emergency room. He was becoming severely dehydrated, having been unable to keep even a sip of water in him for almost 5 days. That was a rough trip!


The list of what I didn't do is much, much longer!


Things to be grateful for...

The house was really really clean when we got sick. Thank goodness, since all chores were abandoned for the week.

A best friend who took hours from her day to run our errands and bring things to make us healthier.

And most importantly, we are all so so so so so much better now!


My wish for you...

May you never ever ever get sick at the exact same time as all the rest of your family!!!


Thanks to those who wrote to make sure we were okay!
Health and happiness to all!


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Sewing Bee!

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I am so so happy to be joining in Julia's Sewing Bee! All week it kept coming to my mind...

Just before I learned about the Sewing Bee I had decided that I wanted to make us a little quilt. So what good timing!

I cut squares as I had free moments in my days.

Don't let my lack of words make you think I'm not super excited about the Sewing Bee!

(I'm just too tired to be on the computer this evening. I think I shall go do some knitting...)


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castles, and castles

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There has been a lot of castle play happening here recently. Sometimes the girls are king and queen or princesses themselves. More often though they are creating their own elaborate castle worlds on paper.

The girls like to lay out notebooks together so they can draw extra big pictures. So we have here the interior of the castle as well as the courtyard. (This is Chloe's castle, Chessa had moved on to other things.)

Within the castle walls are gardens, animals, people working, and children playing.

I love the girls dancing in a ring. And the little woman leaning over the garden with her watering can. And the men harvesting the wheat. Okay, I love it all!

There is so much detail in these drawings, and much of it is very tiny. Therefore hard to take photos, and so we have here a blurry queen and king.

I love all the people bustling about in this one! The woman in the green dress and red apron, hair in a bun, is supposed to be me. I guess I'm a maid? (I won't take offense, the girls know cleaning makes me happy.) There are also a lot of cats in this castle!

There is a royal coach parked by the fence and a wagon traveling along the road. The wagon is called the "Help Yourself Wagon". You can go and get whatever you need.

The girls often spend many, many hours a day on their drawings. There are always stories to go along with them. Chloe can flip through a notebook from a year or two ago and tell you what every person or animal in the picture is doing and thinking.

The castle pictures prompted a search at the library for castle books. They were enjoyed, but there was some doubt, and the girls have realized that perhaps they do not want to live in a castle after all. (Lots of violence in those old castle times!)

They did however want to build castles of their own. And how excited they were when I handed over some thick paper and let them cut and glue to their hearts content.

The castle is now populated by a beeswax royal court, and you will be happy to know that this kingdom is in a land of peace.


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Winter, Midway...

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February is here! We have made it halfway through winter! And while it is dumping snow on just about every part of this country, here we are in our Colorado mountains, at 7000-8000 feet, and we have just had only our second real storm of the winter. If you can even call it a storm, barely more than a few inches of snow, when in other years it would not be unusual for us to have at least several feet of snow by now, if not much more.

It leaves me feeling a bit confused, almost like it's no season in particular. However, it is super super freezing quite often, so I guess there is really no doubting it is still winter.

Other days though it's warm enough to go out and pretend that spring might be on it's way soon.

The girls are always up for outdoor adventures, no matter what the season.

This day they set out on a picnic...

Seeking just the right spot, which was beyond the snow on a sunny stone wall...

Waving good-bye to daddy.

Whispering sister secrets?

Smile for mama.

They said they were going to stay outside the whole entire day. But after about 10 minutes they came in. They said they missed me too much and wanted to come be with me :)


This was another day. They were traveling to Wisconsin. On foot, because they don't have a wagon.

They are Caroline and Charles Ingalls.

See Pa's suspenders? He (she) finger-knitted them all by him(her)self.


And now we begin the new month. I guess I don't really have a Brigid or Candlemas post this year. We did have a nice day, perhaps most memorable part being the wonderful Brigid stories we shared together. (Here is my Candlemas post from last year, you see we do so love Brigid...)

I always look forward to these special days in February, we sure can all use some extra joy and fun to help get us through the last long stretch of winter. (I pretend that it won't be too long...)

Hope everyone in the snowy lands finds time to enjoy some nice coziness!


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