I had a lifestyle session with a local family just before Christmas. We had a challenge on our hands given that it was the darkest day of the year – literally just hours after winter's solstice. Rain kept us inside their cozy English farmhouse where we worked to catch a few glimpses of Christmas at home in a large family like my own, with some kids close by and others spreading their wings and flying around the world.
I am grateful to have shared a little bit of it with them.
Been feeling a a bit crunched for time this week. So much so I have been tongue tied over here. Looking at her sweet face I am reminding myself that it is more important to become like a little child this season than to be uber grown up and organized and caught up and any number of words I am not at this moment. Only one thing is needful and if I rush I am going to miss it.
Still, I really hope all the bathrooms are clean before company arrives.
That is about how my Martha vs Mary debate goes these days. : )
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I sat down and used some of the templates I have to gather together all the pictures we have taken lately. I admit to being ambivalent about it. Scrapbooking was my first photography love. But I have gotten spoiled seeing the images so large on my screen. It's probably not practical to print them all ginormous however (see me still not completely reconciled to that reality lol) and I am determined to get them printed more regularly. So I am testing the waters here.
Jury is still out. So I will post both why don't I. There now that I have published and unpublished and republished I feel much better. : )
At any rate you can click on the image to open it a little larger and see the journaling. One thing I am wild about is the new software I have been working with. (image at bottom) It is like putting my kids into the pages of a children's book. Now THIS is like two of my favorite worlds coming together.
Thumbs up on that.
Here is a funny. At least I crack up every time I see the pic of that sign on the straw stacks. The fine print says to queue up here. Getting queued up in England is what you do instead of standing in line. Queued up rhymes with my new favorite British saying 'clued up' which I first heard on a escalator. The man was asserting to his friend that, "She just isn't 'clued up' about this!" You can bet I am on the lookout for chances to use this one. Being as snarky as I am ashamed to admit I can be, I will probably find one.
If you are still reading I send you my hearty appreciation. I peeled apples for applesauce all day, then we sat in fruh-EEE-zing weather through a football game after dark. Brr. It's possible my brain hasn't thawed out yet.
There you have it – my ramble for the day.
We have picked a lot of apples this fall, but since we didn't realize we could until they had begun to fall there were many on the ground too that were rotten. We learned that these can spread disease to the trees. Since we have a compostable rubbish bin along with our regular bins we have been gathering the yucky apples and fallen branches as we can.
The children just adore the orchard. Working in the trees reveals some basic gender differences. The girls reach for apples one at a time, carefully depositing them into their bags. The boys just LOVE picking up fallen apples. You can see by the looks on their faces. I was just amazed at their enthusiasm. Wanna know why they look so gleeful?
Two at a time were pitching apples from one side of the orchard towards the bin. Another one would lift the lid just so, creating a backboard of sorts for the apples to slam into. They were keeping score of how many buckets they made. At least until it looked as though there was a fair possibility of someone getting clocked by flying fruit and I had to put the kibosh on that.
So yeah, that's how we get our kicks around here. <g>
I hope your weekend is full of chores-made-games, crazy laughter, and antics of all kinds.
What a difference a couple weeks makes. It is the difference between short sleeves and stadium blankets. Between sunscreen and umbrellas. This is the way of it every autumn. Early in the season the sun beats down and by the end we are shivering on the sidelines. Rain or shine they are on the field however, a fall tradition in this family for nearly two decades now.
I hope you are playing hard this weekend. What says fall fun in your family?
I had forgotten about these images still on the phone from our shopping trip to Cambridge earlier this month. Maybe you'd like to walk along?
We start this leg of the trip strolling through the marketplace late in the day as things were wrapping up.
Starry Sky Journal 