up to

this weekend i plan to finish this advent calender i started last year. setting all other projects and cleaning aside. it has been a long. stressful week and i think i deserve a little sewing time.

i am excited about winning this give-away on ginny’s blog. her place is so beautiful and inspirational. and of course i can’t wait to get the stuff to try felting. i really need a new hobby, don’t ya think?

today i somehow got caught in a whirlwind of king arthur and high-school english history. and whilst doing so i stumbled upon this book. and it has captivated me. it is not light reading by any means. but i am so fickle right now about books that i could use something of this nature. i have a stack about a foot tall by my bed. no fun stuff. except that blog book, which i sped thru. my reading during this season in my life is mostly to keep up with the kids. but i have resorted to cliff notes. not for bedtime stories though. and then certain things in the cliff notes make me want to just start tale of two cities from the beginning. i forgot how much i love to read. for my sake. now if i could just quit taking notes on everything that i do read…..

so what are you up to??

busy hands and books

enjoyed reading.

on earth

sea clocks the story of longitude

there’s no place like space

fairyland in art and poetry

once upon a starry night

michelangelo

listening to.

the queen’s pirate and galileo and the stargazers

the song of the unicorn

discovering great artists

 the limbourg brothers

making.

their own “book of days” with seasons. feasts and holy days.

i could sit and watch this kid all day. he is incredibly amusing.

overheard earlier: “i am gonna bust your chopsticks!” he called to one of the big brothers as he chased after them. on his scooter. in the house.

and these little fabric vowel cards were much fun to paint. i wish i had time to do the whole alphabet. they don’t get wrinkled or ruined. (i don’t consider grubby little hands a threat to these at all.)

 

i felt a little under the weather again. i’m probably just overtired. i picked up this book at the library today. some of it isn’t very interesting to me. other things are really important. especially the parts about having a code of conduct with regards to blogging. but you shouldn’t have to worry about that too much here. i always try to be on my best behaviour. and with regards to spreading misinformation, i never do it purposely.

hope your corner of the world is filled with books and busy hands too!

living dangerously

 

 

has it really been 5 days since i last posted?

there has just been too much going on around here.

first of all this book is great. and i am not even a boy. but when you have 3 of them you end up loving boy things no matter what. in fact i like it so much that i could really see using it as a textbook for the rest of the year.

i am happy to report that this nasty flu is packing its’ things. and we are sending it on its’ way. we thank it profusely for all the snuggling. and stories. but the past few days have been spent cleaning up after it. it is such a messy and inconsiderate houseguest. leaving dishes and laundry everywhere. the bathroom was in need of serious cleaning and then there was, of course, lessons. two of my students started their rosetta stone online courses today. i am hoping that their enthusiasm isn’t limited to the desire to communicate with italian supermodels at some point. that could be another boy thing.

do you see my our little sproutlings? this is my bend the rules garden. zinnias. and sunflowers. etc. i am crossing my fingers. but seriously. it is nearly 95 degrees here still. something has to grow. well, we’ll wait and see.

someone inspired me to draw a little bit. not that my silly little sketches hold a candle to hers. because not everyone can draw. but a girl can dream, right? so i took out my pencils and drew a few things i’d like to see growing in my yard. and i felt 10 again. i really like feeling 10. i told you i was living dangerously.

happy tuesday. or wednesday. when you’re 10 you don’t pay attention to what day it is!

day 10 and i’m “it”

3 down. 1 to go. it looks as if my girl is going to be the last one to say good-bye to this illness. poor thing sounds like a frog when she talks. a quick library run by me this afternoon made her face lit up when she saw the stacks and stacks of good reads i brought home.

you know all those little projects we’ve been doing have only been possible because they are taking the place of formal school. and because for some reason i didn’t get as sick as the kids. i hope i don’t get deathly ill once everyone is better. that would be just my luck.

i am wondering about a field trip scheduled for tomorrow. still debating whether we should go or not. i may end up staying home and letting my husband just take the boys. i feel so bad because they’ve been stuck at home for so many days now. you know it’s bad when you are letting your kids do things like ride scooters in the house.

well, sweet christine who is just as darling as can be has tagged me for this meme, so here goes…

Six names you go by:
mom. mama. regina. precious dove from heaven (don’t laugh. my husband calls me that). monkey. and ruby begonia. both childhood names. can you tell?

Three things you are wearing: a t-shirt. a pullover. and a crocheted shawl i bought at a thrift store.

Three things you want very badly right now: for an elf to sew the kids’ halloween costumes. without any mistakes. for my girl to get better. and a million bucks. no, better yet 100 million so i could share it with you all.

Three things you did last night/yesterday: read some of the nuts and bolts about knitting. trying to figure out increases and decreases. made turkey burger tacos. washed every single dirty dish in my kitchen.

Two things you ate today: chocolate covered coffee beans. chicken-rice-creamy cilantro and cheese.

Two people you last talked to on the phone: my mom and my EF.

Two things you are going to do tomorrow: clean the bathrooms and carve pumpkins.

Your three favorite beverages: triple shot espresso with breve cream. green tea with vanilla soymilk. earl grey tea with half and half and a pinch of sugar.

now if you can hardly contain yourself because i am  just  so darn exciting and you want to play along too….then consider yourself tagged! just leave me a comment so i can read. i don’t always participate in memes, but this one seemed harmless enough. although i felt sort of like i was baring my soul with the childhood nicknames thing.

setbacks and bright sides

still under the weather here. the two little ones had a minor setback. early wednesday morning was met with a lot of coughing and fevers again. this is day #9. and i am tired. it is chilly and windy outside. which doesn’t help. my hands smell like garlic and vicks.

the bright side to all this: shadow puppet shows, jack-o-lantern lights, spooky icecubes, bat cut outs and funny sandwiches made with cookie cutters. if i didn’t know better i’d think we just might really be having a grand time with this visiting flu. perhaps that’s why it doesn’t want to leave us. 

or maybe it’s just all that vicks i’ve been sniffing.

halloween and saint’s day costumes aren’t even close to finished. but i am wondering if they’ll even be well enough to go anywhere. we are expecting sunny weather this weekend saturday. so that is yet another point for the bright side.

so if there’s all that brightness what am i griping about, right? it doesn’t really matter that i haven’t been able to start my sit ups regimen. or bake that apple pie i’ve been dying to make. (and not necessarily in that order.)

so i’ll be going now. i am being summoned. someone-somewhere needs something.

hope you are able and willing to find at least a few bright sides amidst any setbacks you might be experiencing too!

almond butter leaves

because we have all decided that cooking with butter is a wonderful thing and i don’t want to bore you with all the gory details of my sick family i will share with you this bit of baked loveliness we made before things went south. 

almond butter leaves. they were soft. yummy. buttery. and for the second batch we added a teaspoon of pumpkin spice which was really just wonderfully fallish.

i can’t tell you much about doubling this recipe because we made it twice.  some of us are still so enthusiastic about baking that we don’t mind doing things twice. there is actually less fighting about who gets to measure what this way too! but that’s just here of course. your children might get along perfectly lovely whilst baking.

oh, that’s right, i was supposed to be giving you a recipe….

almond butter leaves

1/4 c. butter, softened

1/4 c. granulated sugar

1/4 c. confectioner’s sugar

1 egg

1/4 t. vanilla

1/4 t. almond extract

3/4 c. flour

1/2 t. baking powder

-pinch of salt

1/4 c. milk

*optional 1/4 c. finely chopped nuts

heat oven to 350. grease and flour pan. (we were super generous when we did this step). in a large bowl combine all ingredients. blend on low-speed 1 minute, scraping bowl often. beat on medium speed 2 minutes. pour batter into prepared pan. bake 20-22 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. cool in pan 5 minutes; turn out onto cooling rack. cool completely. makes 6 leaves.

i’d kindly like to thank and acknowledge the nordic ware  company for their sweet maple leaf muffin pans and this recipe!

these are the kind of leaves i wouldn’t mind scattered all over my yard! they are actually nourishing. (and yes, the dirt and chicken poop could be a minor deterrent.)

well wishes

thank you, thank you well wishers. your sweet notes were so lovely to read. so i am sharing my flowers with you. they are from one of my sister-in-laws. she is just the nicest sister-in-law ever. and i say that even knowing that she’ll never read this. doesn’t even have a computer. but look at all those flowers from her beautiful garden…maybe i’d have a garden like that too if i didn’t have the internet!

can you see i am trying to find ways to be fashionable even though i am sick. one has to be creative you know. after days and days in just pj’s. these little socks made my morning.

daddy has taken the well kids to the pumpkin patch and to buy another rocket as the one they launched yesterday disappeared. i am deeply saddened that i can’t take pictures of either of these endeavors so instead i will use my free time to sketch and plan my bend-the-rules garden. more on that later. when this tired feeling is gone.

i’ll leave you with an up close of those flowers. and some well wishes from me to you….stay healthy friends. and if you can’t, then at the very least find your prettiest socks and put them on. they will make you feel just a little bit better.

 

 

where the sick things are

they are here. and i am one of them. so in the spirit of making the best of a bad situation i started this:

a perfectly imperfect monster softie for a little boy who had us all very worried with  a terrible fever. unfortunately middle son had it the longest. 5 whole days and the cough isn’t even completely gone.

we are experiencing it all. fever. chills. coughs. sore throats. body aches. watery eyes. throwing up. etc. and the nice thing is that everyone doesn’t get it at the same time. instead it creeps slowly into every day. making me (us) feel like …will. it. ever. end?

 tomorrow will mark our second week of being hosts to this nasty virus. hopefully we’ve seen the worst of it. especially since no one is getting that awful H1N1 shot. i’ve made up my mind.

i am running out of things to do with the younger sick kids. my throat hurts too much to read aloud. i guess we’ll stick with stories on cd and activity books for now. as for me i don’t care much for t.v.and besides our eyeballs hurt so bad that they feel like they’re going to fall out. (note: this has not stopped the bigger boys.)

well, if you’ll excuse me i am going back to my bed. a stack of pillows, a cool quilt and a book on the art of the renaissance  awaits me. and i’ll be shutting my door so i can’t see the dirty dishes multiplying. or the piles of barfed upon laundry.

my husband is really trying to help. but his way of helping is by building a rocket-from a kit-with the children who aren’t too sick. and we won’t discuss the kind of mess that is making on the kitchen table right now. glue. paint. scissors. you name it. why he didn’t just go for the ready-made one will forever remain a mystery to me because i am not even in the mood to ask.

ps. i want to to formally apologize for a few errors in this space lately. i don’t know what is with me. i spelled earl grey incorrectly. i didn’t even really notice until i picked up another box the other day at the store. forgive me that i didn’t rush home and fix it.

and then a reader kindly pointed out that robert frost, not robert louis stevenson wrote o hushed october morning mild……and i did know that. but for some reason my fingers didn’t and so they went and typed the wrong thing! for crying out loud i was reading it out of a book with big huge green letters on the cover that said ROBERT FROST.

so just know, my dear readers, don’t always trust me. and feel free to point out any misinformation that i might be spreading!

one last thought:  bloggers really should have editors!

 

afternoons and evenings

because it has been so hot i have  forgotten how much i love fall afternoons. the weather. the way the sun shines just so. making everything golden and bright. it is probably a lot like the very early morning. but i have never been a morning person so i don’t always appreciate its’ beauty.

today, captivated by that beauty i vowed to bring the kids outside every day around 3. no matter what they are doing they have to bring it outside. we have plenty of chairs and a table.

do you like how the jack-o-lantern doubles as a place to collect nature treasures we find on our walks. we started out with just a plastic mummy who came along for the ride. but as you can see we had quite a haul by the time we were done. we were especially on the look out for twigs as my girl is working on some twig furniture for her fairies.

the only creative thing i had time for were a few simple little ghosts. i have been told our house is not spooky enough. too many pumpkins. so i am hoping between the spider webs and the ghosts we are progressing to a higher level of ”spooky”.

i started dinner really early again today. i am never sorry when i do. it makes our afternoons and evenings so much smoother. i browned two roasts in a little bit of olive oil and spices. marinated them in soy sauce, garlic and red wine. 2 buck chuck from trader joes. and let them cook slowly for about 2 1/2 hours. while we were outside i kept getting little whiffs and they smelled so yummy. i also made rice and a lentil stew. just lentils, carrots, onions, butter and olive oil. have you noticed i put butter in every thing? really i do. and i always try to justify it by adding olive oil too.

it is evening now. everyone is in pajamas and ready for bed. but i hear cutting. and drawing. and now someone just slipped me a note. it is really a picture. it is me and him. on a magic carpet ride he says. i could really go for one of those about now. but there is still so much to do around here. so at least for now i think we’ll stay put. and with that, i will say goodnite.

an earl gray day

i am sharing the name of my new favorite tea in todays post title. at least it’s my new favorite tea for this week. 2 bags of earl grey, vanilla soymilk and a dash of organic sugar. i don’t have the slightest idea what bergamot is. but i like it.

i just realized that i am suffering from a little deja vu or groundhog day. depending on how you look at it. as i found myself in the kitchen. making lunch. it is wednesday again. piano and guitar lesson day again. and there i was making spaghetti. again. only this time i did not use a jar of some overpriced organic sauce. today it is just good ol’ hunts traditional.

so if it is just a bad case of groundhog day i have learned my lesson. i spent less money this week on sauces.

the deja vu thing could just very well be that this is my life. love it or leave it. and maybe i haven’t really learned anything because i could swear that by wednesday of last week my kitchen was cleaner. what did i do differently?

maybe i didn’t have the blahs. maybe i wasn’t trying to read and understand a tale of two cities so that i could share long drawn out conversations about gothic themes in british literature with my totally disinterested teenager. who btw is currently napping with a blanket over his face. bored out of his mind.

maybe i’m bored out of my mind too. the most exciting thing that has happened to me today was when in said kitchen, attempting to tackle said mountain of dirty dishes, i somehow squeezed the soap bottle and a bunch of little tiny bubbles came bouncing out. floating up into the air they caught the light reflecting in the window from outside and were so colorful and pretty.

being at home too much can be a dangerous thing, wouldn’t you agree? this post just might very well reveal me to be on the brink of insanity. at least maybe a mild case of it.

my girl is standing at the window whistling to the bird next door. it is answering her back. that insanity thing could very well be genetic.

must. attempt. to socialize the children. this. week.

i really loved the discussion over at jaimie’s regarding introverts and extroverts. i have sort of been thinking about the whole issue a lot lately anyway since my girl had a crying fit the other day because she was lonely. the boys had been gone all day with dad. my parents came and went. it was just me and her. and i was no fun because i was feeling under the weather. anyway, after a few aspirin-for me- and a nap i invited her on a bike ride. it was a good distraction for both of us. fresh air does wonders. but the whole incident left me thinking about not just her mental health, but all of the kids.

but i’ll save that for another post.

and i’ll close with some constellation cards.

aren’t they lovely? we were sorely disappointed to miss the meteor showers last night. middle son was terribly sick with a cough and fever. couldn’t really see the logic in ripping him out of bed at 2 am to take a trip outdoors. it sounded so adventurous and fun. at 8 or so last night everyone was willing to go. but when i failed to wake up for the alarm i had so carefully set for 2 am i knew it just wasn’t in the stars for us to venture out.

maybe next time.

and i didn’t even entertain what superwoman would do in a situation like mine. she probably never even has sick kids.