Dear Friends,
I’ve found a new home.
Feel free to drop in anytime.
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Warmly,
Gina

Much has changed since our last chat. Mainly, she has changed. My brown-eyed little wren is quickly blossoming from a roly-poly toddler into a lanky preschooler with more questions than I’ve got answers. Our days are taking on a more structured form, necessarily, and it’s been a fairly smooth transition into her own active exploration of this great wide world. I spend a great deal of time searching out our next adventure among your pages, pictures, and words. Thankfully there is a wealth of help for a bumbling mother who has forgotten how to play in the dirt and catch crickets and I need fresh eyes to see all that lies just beyond the front step. And while I don’t have time for meandering words on this wide open white space, I am finding it helpful to catalog my findings by making little lists between catching critters and snuggling with good books…ever so small collections of ideas for exploration. The new space is a bit minimalistic. Clean and simplistic. Just the bare necessities. Most of the lists will contain only three items for consideration, although there will be many lists filed under each heading. Gathered bits of goodness, sized for little people. If you find it to be a helpful resource, I’ll hope you’ll visit and submit your own suggestions. Tapping the collective wisdom of so many is a gift. Thank you for your inspiration.

MATERIALS
colored markers
wooden clothes pin pegs
bowl (be sure the pins will fit on the width of the rim)
white stickers

We’ve had so much fun with this little game and it has gotten us through more than one wait at a restaurant. Match the numbers/colors of the men to the numbers/colors of the stickers on the bowl. This requires some coordination as well since the pegs have to be turned “just so” to slide them onto the rim. I have seen this done with regular clothes pins (the sort with metal springs) but this kind is much more of a challenge for her.

Soaking up sun, earth, and words.
Discarding the shadows of winter from our corners. 
Plans for the neglected sewing machine…imagining cotton slipping beneath forgetful fingers.
Questions without answers of yet – A heart on tip-toe, wondering what’s around the bend.
Hopeful. Happy. Here.

Laughter and food with friends, old and new.
Scrubbing last year’s mud from pots and planters.
Milling about tables piled with vintage goodness in crisp morning air.
Hands and knees caked with earth and pollen.
A unexpected walk.

The space between Friday and Monday.
If you’d like to share yours, feel free to share your thoughts or leave a link to a post of your own in the comments.

Joining the Friday ritual here.

Sun spills into our windows deeper into evening. Still there aren’t enough hours in the day. Early mornings are spent outdoors, tending to tiny plots of soil pregnant with bush beans, spinach, strawberries, peppers, lettuce, zucchini and crookneck squash. We water tenderly and dream of the picking. The bulky bean sprouts made their abrupt appearance three days ago and  I explained again to the curious one that these green creatures will feed us soon enough. She stares in disbelief at them and me. Fresh soil. Fresh green. Fresh eyes. And I awe and wonder too – our shadows hovering together over stirring earth. We watch and wait.

Just returned to our nest and my little one after five days with my honey in San Francisco.
Much to share but today there are matters of the home that need tending.
Back soon!

New Life Cakes | Ann

Plastic Jug Easter Basket | Jennifer

Bookmarks | Abby

Board Game Art | Brooke

What are you loving?

While I feel compelled to share this season of our home with you, I find the act of doing so more than a bit intimidating. Namely because I am sure there will be plenty of occasion for failure, and well, that’s not pretty. But I’ve decided to step out anyway and hope that you’ll be gracious and allow a bit of floundering from time to time as lessons are learned and adjustments are made.

On that first crisp day of Autumn more than two years ago, I brought my weary body and a tiny wriggling bundle home from the hospital and something in me stirred in a way I have yet to articulate. My heart turned toward home. Suddenly the four walls and the creaky floor nestled beneath the oak became a canvas for memories…a binding for the pages of the story of us. We spoke many times in hushed voices over a sleeping babe of simplifying. Of editing our hours and days, months and years to allow space for living. Really living.

We talk and dream about land. We have an imaginary house on rolling green acres. But today, our family home is on a small suburban plot, just outside the city limits. We can throw stones at the neighbor’s houses (we don’t!) and be at the mall in five minutes. And really, we can’t complain. It’s the sort of neighborhood where neighbors call each other by their first names and children sell lemonade and cut flowers at your doorstep. It’s a wonderful place to grow up and for now, it’s where God has us. Still, we dream.

Over the past days and weeks, I’ve been pondering what it is about this imaginary place that enchants me so. And I’ve come to realize that it is not one grand thing, but a smattering of small, simple pleasures that I look forward to sharing with these dear ones entrusted to me. 

Gathering around a lump of dough…

a block of wood…

a fireside…

a table…

a whirring sewing machine…

a plot of freshly turned earth…

Breathing fresh life into the tales entrusted to us by grandfathers and aunts and cousins and passing them on for yet another retelling when we are gone.

The warm earth in our hands and fresh bread on our table.

And then the question comes: Why not now? Right now, on this very (small) plot of land, these things are not beyond reach. But I have to choose them. There is enough sunlight that I can plant beans and harvest squash and cook with herbs from pots in my window. I can stitch summer dresses and sacks. I can feed the birds and start a compost pile. I can catch rain for watering and stir up potions for scrubbing and scouring. And while we’re waiting for that dreamy plot of land I can curl up with words and pictures about chicken coops and the like. Learning. Tucking away.

But today I have time to learn and grow and play in the dirt with this little one at my heels. And as we make small, deliberate choices to simplify and savour, I hope you’ll offer your wisdom in that gentle way I’ve grown to love. And perhaps, one day we’ll look back and see a homestead built one day, one choice, at a time.

Right now I’ve got my nose buried in these…

p.s. Thank you for all of the WONDERFUL gardening advice. I love it! Keep it coming!!!