Happy Halloween!

from Glinda the Good, the Wicked Witch of the West, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, and Dorothy...

Costuming #3

Hopefully our scarecrow will like his costume a lot more on our big day because to say that he is not a fan of it would be a gross understatement.  He found it tolerable until today, when we added the completed hat.  Not. A. Fan.  The only picture I could get that was not blurred by his swinging head (in an attempt to remove the hat) was this tear-filled one.  This one was also extremely easy.  Some felt, some rafia, some old fabric and an orange romper.    We are off to see the Wizard...

Costuming #2

Here is our scary lion!  I knew our second child would not need much convincing in the costume department--he loves everything about them, especially their roars!  We don't make much of the looking for his courage part and we have one happy trick or treater!  This one was a cinch to put together--got the idea here and made some modifications.  And tomorrow... the cutest scarecrow I ever did see!

Costuming #1

For possibly the first time in my life, I started planning our Halloween weeks in advance and finished the costumes over a week before Halloween.  Our costumes are almost always put together in the 11th hour and we generally look like a ragtag bunch.  Not this year.  The hubby and I had a costume party to attend last weekend; this jump-started the preparations.  My sewing machine has moved downstairs for the month and our dining room is, um, slightly messy [it is becoming harder to convince my children to clean up their toys at the end of the day when mine are all over the floor, and the table, and the rest of the dining room furniture].

First up in the costume postings is my dear little Dorothy.  I actually fear that she is going to be my dear little grumpy Dorothy, as she was persuaded into this one by her brother, her grandma, and her mother {first choice: baby mermaid}.  I modified the lazy days skirt pattern by oliver + s for the jumper by adding a bib and straps.  Buttons and buttonholes were new to me (so that is what that funny little square is for on my sewing machine.)  So today, Dorothy.  Tomorrow one very SCARY lion...

Spirituality and Our Children

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different than the adult of today.  It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has a fairy godmother in its soul.    

 -Francis Thompson

For The Love of Trees

I am not sure quite how it happened but I grew up knowing next to nothing about the natural world.  Aside from an interest in all things animal-related, I was completely ignorant.  I mean, until a few years, I could not have distinguished between an oak and a maple tree.  Really.  Nothing.  


Now my kids and I are making up for lost time.  Recently, I have become fascinated with all things tree.  On our recent trip to Vermont, I picked up a pocket guide to identifying coniferous and deciduous trees and took it on a hike with us.  Wow are there lots of species of pine trees!  And they all look so similar to these amateur eyes!  Every day I "discover" a new to me tree right in my neighborhood.  Yesterday, a Tulip tree and today a Gingko.  


Amazing what we can find when we open our eyes, isn't it?  There is so much beauty all around and if we can just escape through that gate, that bolted door in our head, get out of our mind and into the world--we can really live, even if only for moments at a time.

Collecting Herbs

This spring I planted various herbs in the ground, in pots sitting by the window sill and in our raised vegetable beds in the backyard.  This fall I am taking note of what worked and what did not work so that next year I will know better.  Sadly, my kitchen herbs (those on the windowsill) suffered an early demise despite my best efforts.  Those are still a mystery to me considering how much attention I gave them.  


Those that I planted in the ground along the side of our house had varying degrees of success.  I planted three varieties of rosemary and none of them grew vigorously.  Rosemary has always been a hardy one for me so this came as a bit of a surprise.  Our Lavender, on the other hand, as grown splendidly--we have loads of it stored up for the winter already.

The Lemon Verbana, an herb that I knew nothing of before this year, has completely cast a spell on me.  I love everything about it--it's woodiness, the spring greenness of its leaves, and my oh my, the smell...