We love tradition in my family.
I appreciate our rituals that revolve around the seasons and holidays. But I mostly enjoy how they bring us all together.
On Saturday, my mother had us over for her annual St Patty’s day/Spring Equinox celebration.
It was a chilly, sunny day. We walked in to a warm and cozy house with Irish ballads playing and signs of spring tucked here and there.
There was salmon, brown bread, deviled eggs, potatoes and soda bread.
My grandmother told stories of her days living in Donegal, Ireland and my mother pulled out her tea cozies for us all to wear in honor of St. Patrick.
Merry Making
oh there has been much merry making and excitement over here the last few days.
st. nicholas paid a visit with some chocolates and goodies and hannah is in full swing with the nutcracker. we got to see her first performance on saturday and it was beautiful!
i shed many a tear throughout the show. my tears were of joy but also of awe, sadness and a bit of release.
this mama here has been a bit weepy these days and having quite a time excepting that my girls are growing up. i have been resisting it actually and it doesn’t feel good. i want to enjoy and embrace each stage that they enter and this weekend i had a bit of an awakening and decided to let it all go. and oh does it feel good!
and to make things even more joyous and celebratory we got snow! and a lot of it.
harry has declared that he is a snow dog. he was out in it for hours yesterday. we had to thaw him out by the fire.
the girls were romping around out there until 10 o’clock last night. you can see a few more adventures in the snow here.
today we make ornaments for our creature tree and head over to a friend’s house with a very steep hill in their back yard for a day of sledding.
what did you do this weekend?
Foraging for Greens
we are on a tight budget this year which means i needed to get creative with the holiday decor.
i am always on the look out and keep a sturdy pair of clippers and a pair of gloves in the car at this time of year.
my girls moan and groan when i swerve off the side of the road for that perfect fallen branch or crop of pine cones on the ground.
my goal is to not buy one single green and so far i am keeping my promise.
today i helped a friend prune back a very overgrown juniper which filled the entire trunk of my car.
i used it to fill my window boxes and pots.
i still hope to make my own garland to go around the front and back door and adorn it with magnolia seed heads.
i saw a bunch of them at the library the other day and plan to fill up a basket tomorrow.
i am also inspired to make a wreath like this one.
what are some of your favorite things to decorate with?
Advent
happy december!
i thought it would be fun to hang the advent calendar in a new spot this year. one we didn’t even have last year!
december 1 envelope was to take out all of our christmas and winter books.
it’s always so much fun to look through all of them. even though we have read them hundreds of times it always feels as if if we have a brand new bunch of books.
many in the pile give me warm and fuzzy feelings from my childhood including tasha tudor’s a doll’s christmas. i remember studying every single detail in each drawing and my mother would even let us get a real live christmas tree for our dolls.
there are so many beautiful books out there for the christmas and winter season. we probably have at least 50 of our own. i have had to hold myself back from accumulating too many or we may need to build a whole new room on top of hannah’s for a library!
i am always drawn to beautiful illustrations and love elsa beskow’s books. a favorite is peter and lotta’s christmas about the christmas goat.
christmas in noisy village is one of the sweetest books ever and this version of the mitten is beautifully done.
owl moon by jane yolen is probably one of my most favorite books at this time of year. it makes we want to out on a night hike in the woods each time we read it.
so now all we need is a new load of fire wood and we are all set for hunkering down each night to read.
The Advent Calendar
the last day of november, oh my!
the girls decorated their rooms for christmas and i am in love with those egg carton twinkle lights we made!
the advent calendar is out and ready for tomorrow.
i remember how magical it was to open those little windows each morning to find a candle or a sleigh or a bell.
i am not sure if my girls find it as exciting as i once did but even hannah, at almost twelve, asks for one each year.
they do however get excited for the advent calendar that i started hanging a few years back which is just simply a string of envelopes with the date on each one. each envelope includes a little slip of paper with a holiday activity we will hope to achieve that day.
i make things simple and easy.
tomorrow we will take out all of our christmas books, many of which were mine when i was a girl which makes this one of my favorite activities!
this month i plan to include you on each day’s envelope.
Turning 8 and a Sleepover
While talking to my mom the other day she told me she had been a bit disappointed with second and edgemont as of late.
thanks for the nudge mom, you’re right, i’ve been a bit absent.
she even reminded me i hadn’t posted about norah’s birthday yet!
our little norie turned 8 this november.
her birthday wish was to get her ears pierced and have a sleepover party.
both went quite successfully.
i hardly snapped a photo (hence the blurry not so great photos above) of the celebration since i was busy with a party of 12 girls. yes you read right, 12!
it was our first experience hosting a sleepover party and it actually ran quite smoothly especially for such a large gaggle of girls ranging from 7-12 years old.
there was pizza making, chocolate cupcakes with butter cream icing, rainbow looming, and a movie .
oh and there was lots of chattering, laughing, squealing and screaming in between.
chris and i were quite surprised when we found them all asleep by 11pm.
i heard the first few up whispering at 6am which soon turned into giggling and then loud thumping.
a game of “slide down the staircase in your sleeping bag” had begun.
our cue to get up and start making pancakes.
A Weekend at the Shore-room
this past weekend was our annual september get away to cape may point.
my sister, nephew, my mom and the girls and i all squeezed in to our little shore room.
it was a bit cramped but cozy and most of our time was spent outdoors.
it was a lovely way to ring in autumn with absolutely gorgeous weather.
the air was cool and crisp but the salt water was warm, making for long beach days.
we sustained ourselves with picnics of hard boiled eggs, salmon, fruit and fresh cob oven bread baked just around the corner.
my mom treated us to dinner at the blue pig on friday night and lunch at the red store on saturday.
we made our way in to town for some organic homemade ice cream and a visit to the whales tale a shop that brings back many childhood memories.
the monarch butterflies have begun their migration to new mexico and cape may point is one of their major rest stops. we were able to see the beginnings of this journey.
we spent our last day on the beach romping in the ocean and playing in the sand. when the clock struck we hung our heads and trudged back to pack up camp.
we stopped by the red store for french madeleines and coffee and sang all the way home.
The Great Media Garage Sale
we had a fun time today selling at the great media garage sale.
our street was a wall to wall yard sale and it was great fun meeting new people and seeing old friends as they stopped by to peruse and chat.
we sold a bunch of things and gave lots of tours of our backyard too.
i wasn’t much in the mood this year to look around. but i did buy two sweet hand made appliqued pillows made by my neighbor’s daughter to give to the girls for christmas.
the highlight of my day was meeting a blog reader and her lovely family who stopped by to say hi (and even buy a few things).
it was so nice to meet you tracey. i am so glad your husband said something;)
A Get-away Cottage
these were the last two photos i took before we headed home yesterday.
it was a blissful week with absolutely perfect weather!
we spent the week with my parents, my sister and nephew. (the first photo is of the grandkiddoes and their grandfather, Bop.) our good friends have a house across the lake from the one we rent which makes for great fun paddling back and forth for play, dinner and drinks and late night card games and bonfires.
days were spent swimming, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, reading, knitting, crafting, going on walks, picnicing in the cemetery, foraging for wild flowers, apples and berries, playing board games and cards and dreaming of our own lake house one day.
we ventured off mid week to the town of Honesdale for some antiquing and a library book sale.
we stopped for lunch at a little art gallery/cafe to find the atmosphere homey and quirky and the food delicious.
we all shared 6 pieces of dessert…. 2 slices of peach crisp ,2 slices of upside down apple crumble and 2 slices of pink lady cake (all made with locally handpicked fruits). we drank 2 pots of teas and then headed back to the lake for a swim and a nap.
it’s a magical place. i felt it the first time i laid eyes on it 6 years ago.
it is one of the the only places i dread leaving. being a homebody that says a lot.
we have been trying to buy a particular piece of land on the lake with a little cottage for a year now.
we have hit a few bumps along the way but we still have hope and keep dreaming and drawing up plans of making it our own.
living in a small home with a small property right in the center of town is perfect for us.
but having a getaway cottage less than 3 hours away surrounded by farmland, a 60 acre lake and woodlands full of mountain laurels and pine. with beavers, and wide mouth bass below and great blue herons and bald eagles above. with enough land for fruit trees and brambles, beehives and a cob oven. where it’s at least 10 degrees cooler and you need a quilt at night even in july. where the night sky is dripping with stars you didn’t even know existed. where you can sled and skate and cross country ski and fish through the ice to the water you were diving in to just a few months ago. this place, this cottage on the lake… well that would be a dream.
a dream that i know one day we will make come true.
what dreams have you made come true? being inspired by the dreams of others will help keep me motivated!