Scriptwriting??????

Darn you Elisa, if I hadn't read your blog I wouldn't have heard about Script Frenzy, and if I hadn't heard about Script Frenzy I wouldn't be contemplating its sheer insanity. I live a sheltered, safe little life (ok so I've been to the Grand Canyon twice -you know what I mean) and like it. I've never gone out with the girls for unnaturally colored rum laced drinks or lived in a tent on a hill or even lived in a college dorm. Although I love stories my natural bent is contemplative not plot driven. Which, darn you again Elisa may yours days be long as the Nile, gives me an idea for a story, but even that idea is all emotion and no plot. However that is exactly why I need to try something like this. Even many of of my contemplations never make it out of my head 'cause I'd rather keep them there than see them spoilt by the clumsy application of words. The painful perfectionist in me is due for one heck of a kicking. Speaking of due -I have an appointment with some new habits.

P.S. Elisa I really do love you. Right now you're just the stick that's poking me in the back urging me to stop living such a stuffy existence. I love you for it, but inertia is a hard habit to overcome sometimes.

P.P.S. I am such a scatterbrain. I'm working on one project. An idea for another one comes along, and I want to jump ship. Hence the never getting things done part of my life. My life as an impulsive, wanna be artistic, scatterbrain.

More on being tired

My mother-in-law got her shingle in the mail. She got her naturapathic doctor diploma. It's amazing the knowledge and wisdom she has amassed during this whole process. She was no sneeze before she started on this, but that woman knows health sideways and diagonal and even straight up and down. She's still learning knew stuff all the time. Today we learned a few things about me as well. On top of a few other things it looks like I'm trying to shake an epstein-barr virus. Mono and chronic fatigue syndrome are epstein-barr related -hence an easily tired Natalie. Maybe this would be a good time to learn how to rest withouth feeling guilty over all the stuff I "should" be doing. lol It's either that or drive myself nuts, and why should I do that to myself when Allen will gladly drive me there any day of the week? jk. Allen is a dear. He also makes dumb jokes. Dumb jokes are contageous.

wedding projects

I'm working on a wedding project at present. It's coming along, but since I'm having to learn my image editing as I go it's taking me a bit longer than it strictly has to. I'm doing something (almost) completely new for me, and it's really quite interesting seeing it all come together. I'll try to take a few pictures (so I can feel bad about not uploading them :D ) before I hand it off. Speaking of which my hand-off date is fast approaching, so I better get back to it. Erk, and today's one of my long days. I really better get to it.

Shoes aren't footly salvation

So I'm still getting all those flylady e-mails, and did I mention that she has a thing about shoes? As a psychological gimmick to convince my brain it's work time I don't mind it. I don't do it, but if that's what cleans your counters then yea you for doing it. What does drive me nuts are the number of testimonials concerning someone's poor pitiful feet and how things would have just been peachy if they'd been wearing shoes all the time. If you've got cracked heels and spurs and pains in your ankles or wherever I'll bet you $20 that at least 90% of the problem isn't from waltzing around barefoot. You got odd bones? Stop taking costco fake calcium or drinking that gallon of milk you can't digest very well and hit the leafy greens. Then...go butter your toast. Yes I said butter. Toss that smart/sham butter and get some real stuff that actually had a prior bovine existence. It will help you assimilate all your nutrients and stop those weird aches. If your heels still hurt try drinking more water. You could well be walking over the reflexology point for your kidneys, and if they're hurting so will your heels. If on top of this you aren't rotting your bones with a daily (or weekly) pint of rootbeer I'd say you're starting to cover some territory. Just remember, flip flops aren't satan's temptations for the downfall of our arches, and keds aren't the embodiment of bipedal virtue.

Pride and Prejudice

Oy! I'm watching the new Pride and Prejudice, and I must confess that it's worse than I ever thought. Although the clothes and the lines quoted straight from the book are gratifying, the many gaffs are perfectly appalling. For one thing hardly any of the characters look old enought to be out of highschool. I get the feeling that I'm watching a highschool play wherein most of the characters are reading their lines from a cue card off stage. Then there are the nonsensical extraneous material that could only have been perpetuated by one's who's familiarity with the work and the era was confined to hasty perusals Mr. Cliff's notes. Walking around with hair down. Gentlemen in lady's bedchambers. Money given to Lydia by Wickham. And we haven't even gotten to their removal from Netherfield. What other pleasures await me I hardly dare to think. I just hope there's plenty more dancing to be had. It would appear to be this movie's saving grace.

Coming together

I think I'm finally starting to pull my design ideas together. I think it makes a better list than a description though.

-contemporary
-blue
-wrought iron
-antiques
-simple
-collections
-red
-candles
-refinished
-comfortable
-green
-thrifted
-wood
-hand me down
-books
-cream
-nostalgia
-friends

Thrifty trios

A trio of 99 cent red begonias in a little, low terra cotta planter perfectly filling a niche between the chair and the sliding glass patio door.

A $6.00 trio of botanical prints featuring lovely, old-fashioned pink roses. Final destination still undecided but likely above the head of our bed.

I love thrift stores.

So now what?

So lately I've been thinking about what I need to really be doing with my time. Of course there's plenty of stuff I could be doing around here, but I've been musing on getting some sort of a job. There's a church nearby with a daycare/kindergarten set-up that might be fun, but therein lies part of my dillemma. For a girl who's never spent a day in a typical school (except college) I have some pretty strong opinions about things. I suppose if you were to try and classify my general bent on education it'd be something like montessori/classical. On one hand I think schools are exceedingly dumbed down. On the other I don't really like the rigid compartmentalization of our children and their activities. I also really, really can't stand the education department at university. I took maybe a couple of classes and went through some brooha when I was considering the 5th year program, and in my opinion the whole thing is largely a complete waste of classroom space. I'm not against the concept of an education degree per say, but I'm almost rabidly against its implementation in virtually every place I've considered. What do I do now? Become a martyr to my beliefs that conventional age/grade divisions are artificial and unnecessary? I might as well get a job at Hancock's (which isn't a bad idea when you think about it). Starting my own school is infeasible to say the least. Trying to get work at one without an education degree is difficult and scary ('cause curriculum and classroom management can't be mail-ordered). I suppose it's my frustrated homeschool mom complex showing again. Grrrr. Need. Guidance. Wisdom. BABIES. Something.

Hurrah!

The money was sent merrily on it's way, and my new (to me) car should be here in a week or two.

Also, after rereading more of my books than was strictly good for me, we finally got libary cards renewed! Now I can reread all the books at the libary :P Seriously, when we moved here we didn't drive anywhere near a library, so we just didn't bother. Online books and the occassional bookstore run for some really good books (and GLH ebay finds) kept us going.

Just in case anyone's interested I picked up a Dorothy Sayers, some Rex Stout, a few odds ands ends of canonical lit, travel books for vacation planning, and two books on Montessori education. Now I'm tired and ready to curl up with said books and devour them. However I have to get my apartment ready for tonight. Not too much really do, but it needs to get done.

Pain and Helplessness

I want to share something from Elisa's blog -Elisa I hope you don't mind.

I know that one day my story will flesh out and I will see this, as we all will see the pain and hurt and realize the good. Until then, I am working on how to live my day to day life. How to trust and hope. How to help my friends trust and hope as well. I am not the only one with crap going on, and I see it in my community and it breaks my heart. How do we all do it? My stuff seems like too much to carry...how can I help you carry yours? How do I speak the Truth to you when I am not sure that I even believe it? Tell you to hope when mine feels dried out? It is hard and it is broken. In the end I guess I just need to pray for God to help my unbelief. Help me hope, help me pray. Help me care for those in my life. Help me. I am utterly incapable

This is the comment I left:

Ouch. Yes. How can I go minister to you when my own home isn't in order? How can I help others when I can't even help myself? When I neglect the people closest to me? When I reach out am I running from my own problems and responsibilites- running from my own pain instead of running towards yours? Using your helplessness as an excuse to ignore my own? How can I even presume to minister to you knowing that my best words and actions can shred you utterly? How can we bear to be human?

We sing songs together at church, hug, and even chat. But how do we get to heart of each other's hearts? For me that's a very real question as I've never had the knack of making friends easily. I want to dig into the life of my church and to laugh with those who rejoice and weep with those who mourn, but I still don't know how. I suppose that's just another example of my own helplessness.

More friends to meet

Real quick I wanted to mention Cassia and Brian's blogs to which I've freshly linked. Cassia is wife of our assistant pastor and an all around beaming, quirky, awesome sort of woman. Brian is chief musician at our church, and takes a mean photo. Just found their blogs today and look forward to digging into their lives a little more.

Also, drat that Allen just when I was feeling bad about not getting stuff done he up and introduces me to a game that had me obsessively complusively building plasma sentry units and marching them around their pixelated planet. Lesson learned though. Allen cares more about whether I'm having fun than whether I'm doing dishes.

New internet friend

Elisa, a friend of mine from church, recently found my blog, and I am telling you right now to stop everything go read her. Reading her blog is like is like standing, arms outstretched, in the desert while the rushing wind sends your hair dancing out behind you and bites your eyes to tears.

Allen at work and play

There are times when this is eerily accurate.

And....we bought a car!

I called up the dealership selling the car we didn't get last night, and they offered it at 1k under the buy it now. Yeah. So why did they hoist up the BIN so high? I don't get it either. Anyway, even with dealer fees and delivery we're getting a pretty good deal. Of course now I'm sort of kicking myself for not haggling more with them, but since they price they offered was under our highest bid in the auction I really can't think we did so badly. And it has a sunroof!!! Pretty green paint and a sunroof for fun. Cargo space (for camping) and a 4cyl engine (lower gas mileage) for practicality. We should get it in around 2-3 weeks. Squeeee!

Ebay car buying woes

Ok, we've pretty much narrowed it down to a '99/'00 Honda CR-V -with a sunroof. I really want that sunroof. The issue though is actually finding one in good shape that we can afford. It can be frustrating to be sure. We just came within $600 of the buy it now price on one auction, and the reserve still says "unmet." Jeesh. Don't know why the bother using the auction feature at all. Might as well make it a BIN only auction and be done with it. There's another car coming up we might be interested it, but the upper peninsula of Michigan is a long ways away if we were to go pick it up. And then there's shipping if we didn't go up there and plane tickets if one or both of us did. I admit this is one of the times when a swimming pool full of money would come in handy. Plunk down the cash. Get the car. Go home. Done. Still, even without the swimming pool full of money, at least we aren't diving into car payments. Ick. That wouldn't be a jolly way to do things.

Car buying

I don't much like buying things on a deadline.I like to browese through ebay and wander around the local thrift stores (or the local Laz-y-Boy) until I find exactly what I want. Of course then sometimes there's a sale ending to consider and the opportunity costs, but it's nothing too bad. It's when the transmission goes out on your ONLY vehicle that things really get interesting. Cause then all of a sudden we have to decide what car we want and how much we want to spend on it and how long we expect to keep it. Yeah. And of course what I want is stretching our definition of what we can afford. And what I want is stretching Allen's definition of "want." Isn't marriage fun :D Allen for the Honda and me for the Toyota (and the one I want would be the more expensive of the two =). It will get sorted out eventually. At least we can borrow my in-law's superfluous van for a while until we find something suitable. It's just part of the ever expanding list of firsts for the not so newly wed.

Namaste

If anyone hasn't tried a Namaste mix I really recommend you do so. They're free of gluten, soy, nuts, refined sugars, and most other potential allergens. I like them because particularly because I'm trying to maintain a mostly wheat free diet (my cheats are fried chicken and communion bread), but they're good for anyone who's trying out healthier alternatives to convention cakes. I particularly like their spice cake with carrot cake variation, but their brownies are also good. When my MIL and FIL were out of town over my brother-in-law's birthday I used the brownie mix to make him a mint chocolate chip brownie cake which he really liked. Anyway, thought I would mention it.

Living with limits

I sort of apologize for that last post. For some reason my cycle just completely knocked me off my feet this time around. Well, that on top of a very busy previous week and trying to ward off whatever seems to be going around.

And I'm still not very good at setting limits during these sorts of seasons. I start setting and meeting goals. Something sets my energy level back, and I get all sorts of frustrated that I'm not getting done what I should be getting done. I don't want to be lazy. I want to get stuff done. But there are times when I don't start things because I'm scared of getting tired/busy and having one more unfinished project laying around reminding me of whatever productive thing I could be doing. It's something I'm working on. Being productive and happy during my slow times instead of getting frustrated and overwhelmed by everything else. Speaking of which I have a cake that needs to get in the oven.

A gray day

I seem to go through these. Things are going great them BLAM several days hit me once. That's sort of what it feels like today anyway. I'm tired. I feel like I might be getting a cold. My apartment is going downhill. I don't know what to fix for supper, and on top of all of that it looks like baby fever is setting in again. I was thinking that it'd be good to have a couple of months to cleanse. Now I'm starting to change my mind. Not that changing my mind would change anything. It's not something I can control. So there you have it. Poor pitiful me.

The frustrating thing is that it really isn't just laziness or procrastination. If was those I could just kick myself off the sofa and do something about it. I've just got pretty low vital energy right now. It's never been very high since I graduated, but now it's worse, AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. It's frustrating enough to make me cry. I'm drinking water, eating fresh veggies, and taking nutritional supplements. I just don't know what to do. I get so tired and listless, but I don't like spending so much time goofing off at the computer. I have projects I want/need to work on and duties to attend to, but it's so hard getting up the wherewithall to get them done.

I haven't gotten a comment on this blog for weeks, and I don't wonder at it. I've been so dry lately. My writing hasn't even been that interesting to me. Oh well. I better see what I can fix for supper.

New Furniture!!!

Well, Allen and I have been busy the last few days. I've been really wanting some living room chairs so I can feel like I have an actual living room and not just a sofa and a bookcase. Well, what started out as a hunt for chairs actually became a regular living room make-over. While pricing chairs I found a sofa. I could get it in brown. I had been dreaming of a brown sofa for the longest time. But......doubts about the suitablity of dark brown assail me. Desire for colors. Not worth the extra $150 to get brown. Utter suitability of a pleasant new leaf green for blending into my existing colors. The in-store discount credit will cover the cost of a lovely lamp which I'd need anyway to balance out the lighting on both sides of the room. Presto, sofa! Also, a lamp with a suggested retail price so far out of my budget (and thrifty sensibilities) that I can't quite believe it's sitting in my living room. Like her heroine's dresses in a GLH novel it's one of those ridiculously simple affairs without fuss or ornamentation which yet manages to put itself unequivically above all it's cheap and fussily ornamented relations - a beautiful wood base simply turned and polished surmounted by a creamy shade. The chairs are $99 wonders from IKEA in Atlanta. Barrel chairs uphostered with sturdy unbleached cotton and slender wooden legs. We've put them on either side of the bookcase and have rearranged the bookcase so that I can display my knick-knacks to better advantage -mostly my Madam Alexander dolls along with various photos and trinkets I've picked up over the years. There's a really curious people of driftwood I once found. From one direction it looks like a ship with its sails full. From another it looks like a woman with her hair and draperies blowing in the breeze. I don't even remember where I found it now.

At any rate I have been quite busy. I'd like to sort of take today off and enjoy the mild breezes blowing through my living room, but unfortunately I have to get this place ready for health class tonight. I'm so glad we can host this, but it does sort of put one on a deadline.

Hi again

I realize I haven't been posting as much recently. Part of it is that there's hasn't been a whole lot going on. I'm working on doing some cleansing, and either because of or in spite of it I've been pretty zapped the past couple of weeks. That morning routine of mine has sort of disentagrated simply because I can't get the momentum up. Now I'm sort of doing things in bits and peices throughout the day. And honestly things are sort of looking like it. My morning routine let me pull steady with the apartment and even get ahead. Feeling zapped means I breeze through one room, and just want to sit down. And this is the girl who used to go from 6am to midnight. Hmmmm, that could be why I'm still tired? lol I do think my studies took a toll on my from which perhaps I have not yet entirely recovered.

The other reason I haven't been posting is that I've been running kind of dry lately. Not too much I want to muse over in writing right now. Things will hopefully head uphill again as I continue cleansing and release some of the junk stored up in my body. Until then....things are going to be pretty boring around here.

weeping and laughing

I really can't wait to see where our new pastor takes us in the coming months. Our beloved former pastor left us under very painful circumstances, but I praise God that we have not been left shepherdless. Tom is just what this church needs. The text for his sermon this week can be summed up by the phrase "they mourned not neither did they dance." It's the passage where Jesus expresses His frustration and disgust at the blindness and fastidiousness of a generation that despised John when he came in sackcloth and sobriety and condemned Jesus as a drunk and a glutton when He came eating and drinking. But the point Tom particularly wanted to make concerned the children in the market playing together saying "We played the flute, and you did not dance. We played a dirge, and you did not mourn." He compared this to two of the main camps of Christian thought and the ways we completely miss out on the celebration and the mourning called for in the Bible. On one hand are the people who are so consumed by their own sin that mentally they stay curled up on the floor whimpering. Rejoicing has no place in a life so consumed. On the other end are the people who only read the happy psalms and sing the happy songs. The words of the hymn:

Out of the deep I cry,
The woeful deep of sin,
Of evil done in days gone by,
Of evil now within.

would only affront their bliss blinded minds. Then there are the people who refuse to sing either song because it means taking Christ's tune for their refrain instead of their own.

Tom said, and I'm inclined to agree, that our church has sort of got the dirge down. We understand brokenness and grace. That's not to say that we never celebrate but that our bent in our walks with Christ is towards mourning over our sin. It's mourning accompanied by the preaching of an all-encompassing grace for God's elect, but it's still mourning. Tom said that in the coming months he wants us a church to trying having a go at getting the wedding dance down. In our worship and our times of coming to God he wants us to taste the richness of a joyful, exultant life joined intimately to Christ. This doesn't mean that we won't ever think about our sin. It's not one versus the other but rather us as a congregation learned to laugh louder and mourn deeper. As Tom said, ultimately these two things are two sides of the same coin. A Christian mourning his own sinfulness must acknowledge a grace which he did not earn and cannot repay. The depth of our sin reveals that much for forcibly the gravity of Christ's sacrifice and the enormity of His forgiveness and love towards us. But when we are rejoicing and celebrating in our relationship with God, if we are honest, we admit we did nothing to merit a place at the wedding feast and that were it not for God's grace towards us our sins would otherwise have certainly excluded us.

He had a lot more to say, but that's what mainly caught my attention. I look forward to getting to know our new pastor and his family.

Clean Feet

My mother-in-law just got her ionic cleanse foot bath in late last week, and Allen and I went over there this evening to see what all the fuss is about. Don't ask me about the science because I really don't know. Basically it uses polarization (and electricity and ions) to draw toxins out through your feet. Think of it as a super charged detox mudpack. Except without the mud. It's really neat though. The water you put your feet in turns all sorts of nasty colors, and you get this horrid scummy foam over the top. Glad that's not inside me anymore.

This sort of thing is useful because it provides your body with a way to detox without overloading your colon and/or kidneys -which is awesome because if you're really toxic it's so easy to overload your elimination channels. Looks like I'm going to be adding that into my weekly routine now.

The five minute miracle

Well it's starting. I made me a morning routine that I've been trying on this week with decent success.First thing in the morning after I get dressed I spend five minutes cleaning the bathroom (I'm already standing there anywhere), then immediately move to spend five minutes in the bedroom making up the bed and putting away odds and ends, then five minutes picking up the living room, and I finish with ten minutes in the kitchen putting away dishes and generally tidying things. I said this was the five minute miracle, but since my kitchen and I need a double miracle it gets ten minutes. So in 25 minutes I've cleaned the bathroom, made my bed, tidied my bedroom and living room, and cleaned the kitchen. Well, they aren't completely clean. I'm not superwoman. But they are cleaner than they were the day before. First day, I felt pretty guilty leaving rooms that I'd started to clean but hadn't completely cleaned. Now though, I'm feeling pretty good about it. As the Flylady says, "It didn't get this way in one day, and it won't get clean in one day." Things are getting better, and I'm not overwhelmed or exhausted. It's great.For the first time since I don't know when I'm getting excited about housekeeping. Next week I'm probably going to start adding in something of an evening/afternoon routine just because there are certain tasks I really don't have time to even really start during my morning routine.Overall though I'm extremely satisfied with the start I've made.

And it's gone

Maybe a quarter on an inch on the tops of the cars. And no more falling. That's Alabama for you.

Snowflakes fell on Alabama

IT'S SNOWING


It's actually snowing pretty hard too (especially for Alabama).

Fly away clutter

Well, I'd heard about her for a year or so now and had never been terribly interested in joining, but this evening I just signed up with Flylady. I've really been needing help, and I reckon I'm going to give her a try. But not the shoes. I don't even wear lace-up shoes hiking when I can get away with wearing tevas. So yeah, I understand why she says to wear lace-ups, but I think I'm just going to try getting by without 'em. :D Hey, it's hereditary. I get it from my father's side. Can't go back on my heritage :D

Seriously though, I'm hoping that her routines will help me get on with life. I've already received several of her e-mails just for signing up, and there's one thing she said that encouraged me very much. I hope she won't mind my posting an except:

Our homes are stifling our imagination. Our little creative minds have been stuffed into this cocoon because of the guilt that has been put on our little heads. We are blessed to have an imagination. We fight hard to keep from being stuffed into that cocoon. This is why we rebel against habits and routines. They look too much like the “Born Organized” people in our lives. They are a tool that helps us to emerge from our cocoon of guilt and suffocation to find our true joy in living.

I must say I can identify. I have the dickens of a time getting started on what I should do, but I don't do what I really want to do either because I feel so bad about what I should do.

Soo...............here's hoping that this helps me turn a corner.

sacks of scraps

Anna no longer has the corner on vintage fabrics. I now have a sack of fabrics from Mamaw and Nanny each. There's all sorts of interesting patterns. Not all of them are vintage, but some of them are quite pretty and usual. I can't wait to play with them. Unfortunately I have quite a few projects and chores taking first priority, but I'm looking forward to digging into them one day.

Back from Dallas

Last week we took a long weekend to visit Allen's great-grandmother out in Dallas. We'd been talking about the possibility of visiting her, so when Allen's mom mentioned that she'd been planning to drive out there we jumped at the opportunity to go out there with her. For having broken her hip she's a remarkably spry little lady. She'd got a wheeled walker, and she just cruises around her little house. Doesn't want to sit still. A trait Grandmom shares -like mother like daughter. Those two have a hard time being happy when they can't be buzzing around seeing to things. Apparently Nanny's son does most of the work now though. I think they said he's lived with her for 20 years or close to it. A long time anyway.

It was very good to see them. Nanny told us that she has 44 grand and great children. The way she's going she's going end up with a couple of great, great grandchildren. The day we left she said, "You think maybe I'll make it to 100?" I would not be surprised at all if she did. She looks younger at 94 than my grandmother did at 85.

The drive over an back wasn't too bad. I read Wives and Daughters all the way over, and my mother-in-law and I watched Pride and Prejudice half of the way back. Allen was sweet enough to drive for us so she could watch it. We make it out and back in one day each. Actually got back in time for supper Sunday evening.

Peeling off the shell

You remember learning about all those various bugs and crustaceans who carry their skeletons around on their backs? Spineless little creatures they are. I begin to think that I was brought up to have an exoskeleton. Lest you start commenting on the state of my skin and start offering moisturizers let me explain. You might say I had a pretty successful college career. Scholarship girl, super high GPA, summa cum laude graduate with a paid ride to grad school, and one of the darlings of my academic department. On top of that I was homeschooled, and we all know that homeschoolers are some of the most intensely self motivated people on the planet. I would have told you that myself. Despite what you might have heard to the contrary I was a fairly decent kid as well. In other words, by appearances I wasn't much of a slouch. However, I've come to see that appearances can really, really, sucker-bet you lie. You must understand that I bought into a lot of that description. I tended to credit my professor's creative powers when I read their recommendations (although I might add that my friends didn't), but overall I would have accepted that general picture of myself. Looking back though I see that I really had very little positive momentum. I didn't have to. Everyone else was pushing me along. Grades, chores, and even acceptance where all rigidly enforced. My single B became an echoing example of what might happen if I ever let my guard down again (or took a class somewhat over my head). I worked hard not because A's were a goal so much as an absolute necessity. I did my chores so that I might say (if even to myself) I wasn't a complete dead weight on the family -that I did in a way earn some place there. Acceptance? Toe the line or else kid. Keep your mouth shut, your head down, and get by as best you can. Fear, guilt, and the necessity of success where primary motivators during that time. The thing about them though was that although they provoked action they didn't create momentum. When you're motivated by fear you stop when a. you've met the bare requirements to appease or b. you come to a point where the effort to appease isn't worth it anymore and you resign yourself to living with wrath and failure. Guilt works about the same way. If you can never get enough done to assuage the guilt then you might as well save yourself the effort. The necessity of success is rather more nuanced I believe, but it's still confining and debilitating.
The point I wish to make here is that I had so much pressure holding me up and pushing me forward that my reaction (especially with regard to fear and guilt as motivators) was resist the pressure and hang back against it in effort to make a breathing space. My movement might have been forward, but much of momentum was zero or negative. Here's another image for you. Imagine a a thin paperback or a children's Golden Book held up between two larger books. It's secure, stable, and upright. Now imagine taking those supporting books away. It's probably going to flop over. Now think about me. All my life hedged about by pressures and necessities. All of a sudden (thank God for Allen) they go away. Oh I hear echoes of them, but the pressures aren't physically, daily, in my face running my life. In fact the opposite is occurring. Without the accustomed pressure though I flop over and end up kicking my legs in the air trying to get upright again. However, my hard exoskeleton of relentless achievement and parental demands isn't there to hold me up in my accustomed position. So I fall down again. By this time Allen is really confused, and I'm not exactly understanding this myself. And we do that for a few dozen weeks until the lights blink back on, and we can see the bits of my discarded shell scattered around the living room. All this to say -Mom's please give your children backbones instead of shells. All my life I never really had to develop the basic backbone that lets a girl decide when's a good time to go to bed. All this was decided for me. My grades, my temperament (selfish they said), my profession, my fitness as a wife and mother, my ability to cook, and even how much of my money I could/should spend on my own wedding dress were all largely predetermined and dictated to me in words if not in actions. Having broken out of a lot of that I realize that even if I do have a leg to stand on there's not much in the way of skeleton holding that leg up. It's getting better though. I'm just going to have to be patient while I wait for my new spine to grow in and make sure not to confuse limping on crutches for running on whole legs.

I do wonder though. Where would I be today and what would my past look like if I'd been taught to run like a woman instead of crawl like a spider. Moms out there. Seriously. Teach your children to run.

By the calender -a reflection

Well, Monday all (most) of the Christmas decorations were packed away for the year. There's still a few bits and pieces from my mantle and bookcase that have hung around a little longer. However, it wasn't laziness or poor planning that kept the tree around this long. Last Sunday happened to be Epiphany or the day on which the Magi are celebrated as arriving in Bethlehem and is the day that closes the Christmas season in the church calendar. Not having grown up with the Church calender (most Baptist/Bible churches I know don't much follow it's lesser celebrations) it's still pretty new to us, and we weren't quite sure how to go about celebrating this punctuation to Christmas. So....we didn't. But we did keep our tree and lights up through Epiphany and remove them promptly afterwards. Minor point though that may be, I'd like our home to start moving more in rhythm with the Church calendar. Advent, Christmas, Lent, etc aren't just occasions for changes in the church service but actually provide an organizational structure for our lives. Not having grown up with it I can't really say I understand how this looks. Obviously people often fast during Lent, but that doesn't tell me much about what to do Epiphany or Ascension Sunday. All you moms can laugh at me if you like, but I also get the impression that this is harder to do as a married couple than as parents. Parents, it seems, naturally find themselves explaining and illustrating the seasons to their children (often with appropriate construction paper activities). The act of teaching appears to shape the holidays more than anything else. A couple like us? Besides cooking some more food I'm not entirely sure what to do. Maybe for now that would have been enough. I don't really know. However, as there are several more feast days coming up before the ordinary year starts again I believe I will have the chance to practice.

New year, new goals

Having recently escaped into the warm arms of grace, rules and lists and such still tend to frighten me with specters of my former captivity. However, though grace is everything the law is not void, and there's nothing wrong with a few sensible rules. To that end here are a few of the ways in which I want to grow this year.

1. Stop letting worry, stress, and guilt paralyze me and keep me from doing the things I want and need to do.
Sometimes just the thought of how much I need to do and want to do and haven't even started to do overwhelms me to the point where I feel incapable of tackling any of it. Therefore little to nothing gets done, and I feel even worse. Wash, rinse, repeat.

2. Realize that it's ok for me to take time to do the things I really want to do. Like sewing.
I'm a genius at procrastinating with the computer or a novel, but the minute I get up and start trying to actually do something I immediately feel bad that I'm not doing something else. Thus I piddle away time that'd I'm much rather be spending on productive things because I don't want to face the worry over whether I'm doing enough or the right thing. Clear as mud?

3. Pick two things everyday to do -one chore and one project, spend at least some time on each, and don't worry about whatever else I could be doing with my time.
Start breaking the habits. Spend at least a little time each day sewing, crafting, or reading a really good book.

Start here. See where we can go from here.

Quick, easy, and delicious steaks

Getting a really good steak out of grass fed beef can be a wee bit of problem since the meat, although more flavorful, tends to be rather more tough than your standard Food World cut. However, a few weeks ago while I was thawing out some steaks Allen (the king of randomly awesome research) stumbled across a cooking instructor turned blogger who claimed to have discovered a way to turn any steak (even cheap discount ones) into perfectly tender prime cuts. Allen and I aren't huge steak fans, but preparing it this way has changed our minds. If you like steak (or just have some in the freezer that needs using) I really suggest that you give this a try.

One of four

I hope no one will take offense at my posting this, but I've recently been pondering about what it means to be a family and to be in a family and...this is going to be a little personal. I suppose a careful reader might have picked up that my family and Allen's family are pretty different in how they view family relations. I've been pondering this for a while now, but something happened yesterday that drove it all home for me. We were sitting around the table at Mamaw's asking the blessing when I heard my father-in-law thanking God for his four children. Allen only has two other siblings. The fourth child mentioned was me. This didn't really surprise me since I'm called "daughter" twenty times for every one time I'm called "daughter-in-law." However, I immediately went back to another time I heard someone talking about four children. One morning, before I'd left my room, I heard my mom saying very vehemently that she had four children. My mom has given birth to three daughters and two sons. Most people would say she has five children, but she wasn't counting me. I've been turning the phrase over in my mind ever since -"four children."

"I have only four children."

"Thank you God for my four children."

Damnation and acceptance in the same phrase. Joy and heartbreak in the hearing.

Happy New Year everyone!

I just wanted to pop over and wish everyone a very happy New Year. This is going to be my first New Year's in town with my new family, and I'm looking forward to it. I've got some black-eyed peas cooking on the stove preparatory to taking them down to Mamaw's. Apparently my father in law needs/wants to see about something on the farm, so we're taking dinner down with us. Should be fun! Feel free to comment here with your New Years traditions. I'd love to hear about them.

chicken veggie soup with curry

This was another oops meal that will likely go into my repertoire. I came up with it when the pot of soup I made ended up being a bit bland. It's really exactly what the title says, and it's great for spicing up your usual chicken soup. Here's a brief rundown of how I made mine.

1 1/2 lb Chicken
1qt veggie stock
1qt chicken stock
1/2 c brown basmati rice
1/2 c pearl barley
carrots
onions
celery
zucchini
garlic bulb
salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste
curry powder to taste (btw 1/4-1/2c)
water enough to make soup

Chop it all up. Throw it in the pot. Simmer till supper time, and enjoy.

waiting to homeschool

Lately I've been discussing some employment type opportunities with my in-laws. Theres several options we've discussed -some of them related to her natural health work. However, the more I look at it the more I realize that my first desire is to work with children. The problem is that there are several barriers to my doing so. Firstly, I have very little desire to go back and pick up an education degree. The education program in many places (from my limited previous research and experience) is something I don't care to touch with a ten foot pole. Their approaches and goals are often diametrically opposed to what is desirable and good in an educational program. Unfortunately it's often hard to get a job at even a Christian school without such a degree. There are Christian colleges were I could pursue either a second bachelors or an alternative masters, but neither Allen nor I think I'm quite ready to dive back into that lion's den. Those considerations aside, I don't particularly want to have charge of an entire classroom of 30 identically aged children each doing the exact same thing. An alternative to that is Montessori, but I can't find any Montessori training programs in the state, and I'm not sure about distance training in that field. Traditional tutoring might be an alternative albeit not a particularly attractive one. On top of all that...I don't do vaccines. Not anymore at least. I got the full complement (including hep and all that) growing up, but I don't particularly intend to get anymore if I can help it. And of course schools and all that generally require you to have everything under the sun. If you really add up what I want to do you end up with me poring over curriculum catalogs and a half dozen rugrats running around the living room. In short -homeschooling. Of course you can really homeschool unless you have kids, and I don't seem able to have kids right now until I can take care of my toxicity problem.It is a might frustrating. Particularly when I'm still getting people asking me what I'm going to do.

Thoughts on blogging

It's rather funny really. I love visiting Trina and Anna's blogs and browsing through all the pictures, but when I come to my own blog I rarely think about pictures except in the halfway guilty "I bet someone would appreciate seeing some" way. Funny isn't it? The thing I like in other blogs in not the thing I most enjoy doing with my own. Instead, I babble about this and that as the steady stream of words flows from my finger tips. I alway intend to post pictures, but I rarely actually do it.All the upload and wait sort of detracts from my spontaneous joy of sitting down and musing aloud through my keyboard.

Christmas reflections

No matter how old you are there's something special and exciting about piling every pillow and blanket you own on the living room floor (with the air mattress) and curling up to watch a favorite movie -especially if there are Christmas lights involved.

Chocolate fondue with fruit and cheesecake makes any movie better.

Hot buttered rum is delicious.

Playing Carcarssone with your husband at 3am while sipping a second buttered rum, while not recommended for everyone, is thoroughly enjoyable. Just don't plan on getting up early the next day.

Fireplaces are more fun at Christmas.

Homemade breakfast on Christmas Eve morning (or for brunch) is still a great idea.

Christmas lights you saw as a kid in mom and dad's car look different when you see them again with your husband in your own car. That's still one of my favorite houses though.

Christmas at the farm with Mamaw and my in-laws is special.

Overall, it was a good second Christmas.

a gradation of style

Pity I haven't the patience to get a picture up, but I think I can describe it fairly well. On my mantle you will find a rather tasteful arrangement of evergreen sprigs and holly berry garland punctuated by the gleam of white lights glowing like fallen stars in the greenery. Draped across the holly garland a plastic prism-studded garland glistens like a frosty fretwork. At either end I've placed my little village pieces -the house on one end and the church on the other. In between, framed by the greenery and garland, a manger scene of figures poses in the soft light. Next to the fireplace, just to the left, my little half-size tree is covered in a wealth of family ornaments. The table it sits on is covered by a gray fleece blanket decorated with patches and cutouts of deep red and frosty white and blue stitched in green thread. Then to the left of that is a bookcase draped with a single strand of colored lights. From right to left I have a somewhat elegant mantle, a familial tree, and a rather college student-eque bookcase. Rather amusing I must admit, but it honestly didn't feel like Christmas until I had a strand of lights draped over my bookcase for no very appreciable reason. Rather a hodge-podge, but I like it.

Happy Holiday?

I know I haven't been doing that much posting lately. Things have been busy. I've been tired. Plus the stress oozing out of my eyeballs. Sorry for the not so happy picture. It's just that our second Christmas is proving to be more frustrating and hard than our first one. Who would have thought of that one? Of course the first Christmas was all novelty -new city, new tree, new us, visiting family as a married couple! Now...it's not so new. On top of that my energy levels are still down. On top of that we aren't staying with family and therefore being able to sort of just drift with the tide of "familiness." This year, it's just us for the most part having to make Christmas work together when neither one of us really had to make Christmas work before. Before marriage our parents planned things out, and we helped/participated to greater or lesser degrees. I loved to help make it happen, but I didn't bear the weight of it. Sitting around the living room watching Holiday Inn while the fire crackled merrily to itself wasn't something anyone had to really plan because it was just part of the fabric of Christmas. Mom did most of the meal and party planning too. Us girls just showed in the kitchen to help. I suppose this is the part that a lot of you young ladies were looking forward to when you got married. I was to in a way. I just didn't expect the learning curve to be so steep at parts. On top of that my family isn't exactly being....cordial. Didn't see them last Christmas. Haven't talked to Dad more than a few minutes this Christmas. May not get to even see him much less anyone else again this Christmas. (And no my parent's aren't separated. It's a long story.)

Anyway, it's not as though Allen and I aren't having a good Christmas. It's just that having a good Christmas is taking way more planning and communication than I ever dreamed. Two different sets of traditions and assumptions though. It should not have surprised me.

Christmas is coming....

You know how things will be going all crazy for a while where you're running around all stressed out and then something just clicks (usually after a lot of communication and a bit of elbow grease) and you wake up one morning feeling great? Well the past week or so I've been stressed on top of stressed on top of stressed. Family, gift buying, housecleaning, Allen, friends/church -even though I haven't been technically that busy the sheer weight of everything had pretty much been bowling me over. Of course Allen and I picked just this time to stop communicating effectively with each other...

But things are slowly getting back into shape. Allen and I pushed and got a few things done so I won't wear myself out trying to keep house and get Christmas projects done. We're communicating better, and I'm probably going to try making a batch of wedding ring cookies today. Since they're purely sugar and flower I don't make them but about once a year, but they are heavenly. Technically I could try making them with wheat flour and alternate sweeteners like maybe succanat or xylitol. I've done it with plenty of things before. Sometimes though there's just not a substitute for white flour and super refined sugar. The gingerbread though I'd be willing to play with. I have to wonder what a pastry grade wheat flour and/or something like succanat would do for the flavor. Maybe a small experiment is in order?

Almost done!!

I've almost finished all my Christmas shopping! I have literally three more things to get before I'm all done. Hurrah! Now if only Amazon will deliver the goods in time.

Over the river and through the woods...

This evening Allen and I went to Mamaw's to help her decorate for Christmas. Even though she's quite spry and still gets after the cows she didn't think she was up to dragging everything out of closets and storerooms and getting it all set up. So we volunteered to help. It's a good thing we did too 'cause even with all three of us working it took over an hour to get everything sorted and set up. It really was fun though. Allen and I pulled out boxes and set things up, and Mamaw superintended getting everything into the right place.

It's funny though. In some ways I'm still trying to figure her out. At first glance Mamaw is just a genial farm-girl who grew up during the Depression. She likes beans and tomatoes and living out her cattle farm. She never throws away a piece of string. On the other hand, she got an engineering degree long before female engineers were PC-hip and actually worked in her field for a time. She also reads books about the history of India and other far off places. She's definitely not someone you can read with a glance. One thing for sure though is that she's got a heart as big as all outdoors.

After getting everything set up we went back into the kitchen for cookies and coffee and left-over birthday cake. I suspect that we'll next be over there for Christmas day with all the family. Last year was my first time to go down there for Christmas, and it was so much fun. We had all kinds of good food, and we had the greatest times swapping gifts. Instead of everyone buying for everyone they have a dirty santa style gift swap. It's hilarious. The standing joke is that Aunt Sandra brings an ornament of some sort and Aaron tries to get it for target practice. I think someone has always ended up rescuing it though :D In my blog description I mentioned new traditions. I think this qualifies.

linky linky

I just popped over to Serena's only to find a whole wealth of crafting ideas (and some lovely pictures). Since I don't have my lappy back yet I'm putting the linky here, so I don't lose it when this lappy goes back to my father-in-law.

http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=291

I live on the surface of the sun

Or so says one of Allen's co-workers from up north. While he's up there slipping on copious quantities of ice I'm blogging with the sliding door on my patio open. Somehow the calendar got turned back a month or two, and it's been 70-80 outside today. I was thinking about trying out my fireplace sometime this week since we stopped and got some wood. Maybe not?

After all my years down south I still don't get warm Christmases. I know snow is practically impossible but lets at least have some hot cocoa weather. I feel like I've put up my tree too soon.

What makes the holidays special

Trina has posted a list of things that make the holidays special to her and invited other bloggers to do the same.

-What is your favorite holiday tradition? Growing up that was Christmas Adam. Although technically Christmas Adam is the day before Christmas Eve (haha) it became something of a movable feast in our family and was celebrated with cousins and grandparents on a convenient weekend prior to Christmas.

-Have you started any new traditions with your family that you didn’t practice growing up? Does making and decorating gingerbread men count?

-What do you love most about the holiday season? Probably the lights. I love to sit back and look at all the candles and Christmas lights glowing around our home. Beautiful or whimsical Christmas lights in a neighborhood make me fairly childish with enjoyment.

-What do you like least about the holiday season? The heartbreak. Every ugly and hurtful thing pierces that much deeper when all around is the glow of expectation and delight. Christ is the light of the world, and at Christmas time He seems to strip the shadows from our lives so that every beauty is brighter and every pain harsher.

-Anyone close to your heart that you’ll be missing this year? My family. Also, we thought there would be a little one for Christmas this year.

-What is your favorite holiday food? Ummmm, hard question that one....My mom's wedding ring cookies, my aunt's spiced cider, and chocolate pie.

-Do you have a great recipe to share? Mashed sweet potatoes. They're healthy, easy, yummy, and essential to any family holiday meal (in any family I've been in).

hurrah for ebay!

Anna over at pleasant valley schoolhouse posted a Christmas reading list of Grace Livingston Hill novels. On that list she included Astra, an old favorite of mine which I unfortunately no longer had the pleasure of owning* until now. I bought five books (including Astra) for just over $2 a piece. Not quite thrift store prices, but it sure beats anything else.


*One of the hazards of getting married is that books which you and your sisters sort of held in common often become books that are reluctantly left behind. But, my library is growing again!

God chooses busy men

Growing up, did any of you read Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories? My family had quite a few of those, but there's one I've been thinking of in particular. I don't remember many details beyond the one statement, but here's the story as I remember it.

There was a boy who used to dream about becoming a wonderful man such as he read about in his books. He loved to read and dream so much that often he was late at his chores. One day the father sat down to talk with his son. The boy told his father all the things he wanted to do, and the boy asked his father if perhaps he too might grow up to become a great man. The father then pointed out all the chores the boy left undone or did sloppily or in great haste and told him that God chooses busy men. The father reminded his son of David called out from the fields, Gideon called on the threshing floor, and the Apostles called away from their nets. Later that day the boy could be seen out by the woodpile murmuring to himself "God chooses busy men."

Lately I've been reminded of that story quite often -most recently after seeing the businesses that two mothers (Nancy Wilson's daughters) run. I want to do something cool like that (whine). But you can see quite plainly that these businesses grew out of the work of their hands and the passion in their hearts. They did something for themselves and their family which grew into a business. Their busy hands are bearing tangible fruit. It rather makes me wonder what would happen if I got busy. Maybe just gingerbread :) Maybe something more. I suppose you don't know until you get there though. Anyway, this is just something I've been thinking about.

Doodle, doodle

My very generous father-in-law loaned me his laptop for a time, so I can once again blog at nooning with impunity. One reason I'm grateful is that over on the Puzzle Pirate's forums it's time for December Daily Doodles. They're a series of creative challenges that are posted fresh everyday. So far we've created a Doodle trophy, drawn a picture, written a poem, and compiled a list. What's fun for me is that I'm doing some things I haven't done in a while. Drawing and poetry are not my forte, but I really had fun coming up with my entries. The drawing entry used a program called artpad which actually makes a little movie of your brush strokes. It's really quite a lot of fun to play with. Considering my inexperience with drawing in general and drawing programs in particular I was rather pleased with what I did. I'll have to hop on Allen's computer and crop my screen shot to post here since this computer doesn't appear to have gimp installed.

The Lappy's down :(

I must sadly report that our Lappy (the one I use) is down for now. Hopefully we should have it back and repaired in a week or so, but for now blog posts are likely to be short and sparse. I can use the desktop some, but with Allen working on it and both of us wanting to spend some of our play time on it....Anyway, I'm getting crash course in real life.

(The absolute worst part is that a lot of my Christmas music is on it.)

still house painting...

Maybe I'm not very fast; maybe these just take a really long time. Either way I'm still not completely done. Also, when I went to the craft store I found a little church to go with it. Right. Like I really need another thing to paint. Fortunately that's not nearly as complicated, and I've been able to get a lot done on it already.All I have left now on the house is the snow. Some of you northerners will no doubt get a hearty laugh out of the way snow is clumped artistically over these two buildings. Or maybe not. I'm from Alabama. What do I know about snow?!?

House painting...

While I was out one day I found the most adorable little house. Since the price was already reduced, and I knew Allen wouldn't mind; I bought it. It's really cozy looking with darling little front porch and little third story gables. Now of course I have to paint the darn thing, and it's taking forever. However, it'll look lovely up on my mantle with my other Christmas decorations.......Did I get you? Can we at least pretend I did? It really is turning out to be so adorable that I'm not sure how much I'm going to get done until I finish painting it. There are so many little nooks and crannies to reach that even the smallest task (like painting the window sills) is taking forever. And of course I've practically run out of white paint. Looks like I'm off to the store. Hope I can get out of there without bringing too much home with me....

This train is bound for glory...

Sometimes I think it helps to think of housework in terms of salvation or rather in connection with my own salvation. We have been saved (justified); we are being saved (sanctified), and we will be saved (glorified). Since I am currently a walking talking baptized communicant at my church I think I can safely pronounce that I'm in the "being saved" part of the trip here. That means that I'm on the train and headed towards the resurrection. I'm going in a certain direction. Even though I might not see that the train is moving I can trust that it is so because...well God said so, and I reckon His word is good. How does that have anything to do with housework? It's the direction I'm moving. If I think of housework as this long trip that I don't have to complete all at once that frees me up to dash, crawl, stumble, vault, meander, and through various means progress towards the end of housework. Since I'll likely be doing some sort of housework until I die this is actually a pretty good analogy. I'm not going to get all the housework done at once. Sanctification isn't going to happen in me all at once. In both cases I just sort of keep chugging along knowing all along it is God who wills and works within me and that it is not of myself. Now, don't carry this analogy too far. I certainly say "I vacuumed the floor" where I can't say "I accomplished x for my sanctification." I'm a five point Calvinist, and I say that God did/does it all. But you get the idea? This train is bound for glory, and my dishes are bound to be washed. Not all at once. A little at a time. And if that's the way God washes my soul it's certainly good enough for my laundry.

Yarr!

This is a really neat game I play on-line. Allen got me started. Apparently the developers decided to make these little widgets...

Beauty and heartbreak

Wandering around the blogworld I've been impressed by the beauty people seek in their lives. One loves the sparkle of Christmas lights reflected in children's delighted eyes. Another seeks the solace of a brooding November wood. And the one who turns to the wood is mirrored by another whose heart lingers over streetlights at dusk and a brilliant tree glittering in the square. Our hungry souls ever cry out for beauty. I think it's because God always intended us for it. Born into a garden, beauty was Adam's birthright, and our redeemed souls long for their heritage. This side of heaven no true solace can be found, but that doesn't stop our ever seeking and cherishing the flash and glow of beauty whenever we can find it. Yet in the cherishing is another pain. Moments pass. Brilliant sunsets become ordinary dusks. Enchanting twilight gives way to damp, chilly night. Tempers snap and ankles twist. Visits end. Moments float away on the wind. And because we know this our hearts break over a beauty that will not remain and cannot fully satisfy.

Chugging along

Well, as I hope you can see by my previous posts I'm still plodding along. I haven't been doing much writing lately, but I really think I need to get back at it. I often think better when I write, and there are times when I think even my dull posts help organize my brain. My mother-in-law has continued to help me as I try to get myself back in shape. While attending a seminar I noticed a quiz on stress in one of the booklets. It said that if you scored 300 or more stress points you needed to seriously evaluate your life and health. Guess what. I scored at least 300 points and depending on how you counted some of the events likely a good bit more. In everyday terms that means I am simply stressed out, in, up, down, and probably sideways. It's put a tremendous strain on my mind and my body, and I'm still in recovery mode. Right now the prescription is a simple one. Work on re-evaluating my mental habits and hit the amino-acids to help build up my body from the tiniest cell upwards. I was doing a fair bit more, but we're paring it down to see what kind of results we get from this.If I can (through God's strength) change my mental habits and get out from the daily burden of destructive head chatter then the physical should fall into place. It's not easy, but Allen's helping me. One of the things that I think it helping me the most right now is a preparation of Bach's Flower Essences that I have. They work rather like homeopathics except that they work on the emotions rather than working directly on the body. Often times I'll physically feel better, but that's because the flower essences help balance my emotions and mental processes which in turn helps to balance me out physically. They aren't a cure all or any sort of opiate or anti-depressant in the prescribed sense. They simply give you a little nudge in the right direction. A bit like a mental booster seat. While they don't replace the Scriptural renewing of the mind, they do help while you're on your way there.

In-law/out-law

Families are funny things. Right now I find myself being both an in-law and an out-law at a time when family presses around us the closest and which house for Christmas ham can be a tearful decision. Over Thanksgiving it really started hit me how much we take our ways for granted and how many ticky little traditions can blow up in our faces. How firm is the menu? When are the pies cut? Who does the flowers? Candles? China? Sweet potatoes? Stuffing versus dressing? There are a million tiny ways to get aggravated and fed up. I experienced a few of them just recently and will probably encounter a few more in the weeks to come. Part of the tension likely stems from my being the first daughter to come into the family with a list of family recipes and an itch to play in Grandmom's wonderful kitchen. There is an aunt who married in, but it appears that her accomplishments lie elsewhere. Then I walk in there bearing recipes and traditions from three different families, and...hmmmm....we're not so sure of the rules now. I suppose I could say that I'm the odd one out, but I think it would be more accurate to say that I'm the odd one in. I'm the new girl in their kitchen not knowing through long years tutelage just how the bread should be laid out and cut for stuffing or the gravy stirred. But then they don't know that the familial feast is never finished without sweet potatoes. However, with a lot of grace we managed work with and around each other to produce a wonderful Thanksgiving feast.

The challenges I've faced trying to fit into a new (and very welcoming family) have been somewhat magnified by the fact that there's a kitchen not 15 minute's drive from the one where Grandmom stirred up her magnificent gravy which should have been open to me and could have been a real time of coming home to the old traditions of cornbread dressing and sweet potato casserole eaten sitting around a large round table. That's the kitchen I grew up in. Sadly I don't even know if anyone was even there Thanksgiving. They could have gone camping (another common practice growing up) or to visit my aunt. I don't know. Maybe one day I'll be able to go back and be the daughter of the house working with my mom and my sisters to put the traditional meal on the table. Until this I suppose I wait and learn to be a wife in my own house and a daughter to my in-law's family.

Knock your socks off giving

I found it. The Christmas present that makes you sort of bubble up and want to call the recipient just to tell them that you've found them the Christmas present that you've been unconsciously waiting to give them. Yep, it's really Christmas now. Now for the long wait to see eager hands reach out and grasp the gift. Can't wait.

Best Mashed Sweet Potatoes

I like these better than sweet potato casserole. Inspiration came from childhood memories and the most wonderful sweet potato fries at a restaurant down in Gulf Shores, Al.

4 large sweet potatoes peeled and diced
2 tbs sucanat (dehydrated cane juice)
1-2 tbs cinnamon (to taste)
1/2 tbs vanilla extract
salt

Boil or steam the potatoes with a light sprinkling of salt until tender; drain; and mash. Mix in remaining ingredients until potatoes are smooth and uniformly seasoned. Yields approx 15 small (Thanksgiving when the table is overflowing) or 8 ample (main dish and two sides) servings.

The secret ingredient is the vanilla. It makes all the difference. Despite the small amount of added sugar the end result is very sweet so adjust the proportions as needed.

Happy Thankgiving....

Well not long after that last post I packed up and headed to Grandmom and Granddad's house while Allen went up to Montreal for training on some software he needs to use. He'd been sick the week before (and still is somewhat even now), and I wasn't doing that much better. Plus, it was Thanksgiving week, and my dear hubby was flying out of town. It could have been worse though. Although the training lasted from Monday thru Friday the higher ups ok'd Allen to only stay for three days which meant that he was able to come home in time for Thanksgiving dinner.Speaking of which, even most confined to giving orders from the kitchen table, Grandmom is a fabulous cook. At the last minute we got word that more family from Georgia was coming, and she just up and changed her menu to accommodate a few more grandkids. Granddad and I were pressed into doing most of the chopping and mixing. I made the pies. Also the mashed sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes were a family staple at holiday meals back home that I've introduced a couple of times to my new family. We usually made them into a sweet potato casserole (NOT with marshmallows on top), but I actually like them mashed better.

It was so good being with family. I do enjoy seeing everybody.

This morning I decided to bite the bullet and join the Black Friday Mob out at the mall. The sales weren't really that spectacular for the most part, but I did manage to do about half my Christmas shopping for this year and part of it for the next. There's a game store in the mall that sells the neatest games. They almost never run sales, but today everything was 30% off.I stocked up. All in all a successful day.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I'm back!

Hi everyone. I didn't mean to stay away so long. I just went off into the woods for the weekend, and then I never really came back here. (Thanks for the shout-out Trina). I suppose words simply haven't been coming that easily recently. Often times they don't when I'm wading through an endless sea of blah. It starts with a bad day where I don't get things done and sort of spirals down from there. Eventually Allen and I are both thoroughly frustrated, and I feel completely paralyzed and ashamed at the amount of catch-up that has to be done. Then there's the holidays approaching and my sluggish metabolism to deal with. Oh yeah, I found out that my "fire" (or metabolism) is more like an ill-built, smudgy, smoky campfire than an efficiently burning furnace. Imagine how you feel when your fire's like that. Pretty lethargic. Imagine how that helps you to maintain a positive attitude about yourself and your work. Yeah, it hasn't helped me much that way either. There's a few other things on top of that, but we won't go into that right now. I'm starting to see the light a little, but it's sort of uphill work at the moment I'm afraid. Anyway, that's my update. I'll see if I can post a few pictures of our camping trips the past month or so.

buggy, cruddy, uggy.....maybe?

Allen and I have both been pretty out of is this week. I don't know if we're fighting bugs or what. Drinking more water would probably help though. Anyway, it's not so bad but that we're planning another little excursion before it really gets too cold. Once we get there things will be fine since neither of us feel like doing much and (frankly) there's not much to be done. It just makes the actually getting there part that much harder though. I need to go cut up some veg to take with us. That's the main thing. Once our clothes get out of the laundry we should be mostly ready to go. Storing everything in bins means not that much to scrounge out and pack.

/me goes to find some music on pandora that will inspire vigorous activity.

How we slept out in the cold....

Sunday afternoon we left for our first ever camping trip together. A string of events had pushed our departure back to Sunday mid-afternoon, so we were eager to get to our campsite and set up our tent. Then one of our front tires shredded about an hour out of town. After a little finagling Allen got the baby (emergency) spare on, and we limped on towards Walmart to find a new tire. Sunday afternoon where else you going to go? We arrived at Walmart around 6:00. They finally find us a tire that fits. Then they finally decide to actually put it on the car. Something over an hour later we pull out of a (now mostly dark) parking lot and turn left just hoping we can figure out how to get to the park from there. Maps don't work. A sign pointing left with the words "to Mt Cheaha St Park" does. We bump along through rural Alabama for awhile before we come to the park. A little more bumping and we come to a campground with a gate and a one lane road leading out of it. We decide to head onward. We finally arrive at a sign with the blessed words "camper registration" emblazoned on it only to find no one there and no night drop. Instead a sign instructs us to wait for the ranger on security patrol. Fortunately that's not a very long wait. We toddle along according to his instructions only to find that the ridge top he recommended for tent campers is very dark.Very. And this is our first time. We keep going until we find a lit area in what turned out to be the trailer area of the campground. At the time we didn't care. There was a bathhouse across the street and a light on a pole a few yards away. Since it was by now completely dark we settled for visibility and began to lay out our tent. I will say that except for the fact that tent pegs that bend and get caught on a hundred small rocks so that you can't bang them in the ground are a temptation to profanity that no good Christian girl (or guy) should have to face in the dark at 40-50 odd degrees, the tent went up very smoothly.

Allen set up the guylines and hacked at a few (fallen) branches for a fire later, and I mixed up some breakfast hash (since by that point we weren't waiting a couple hours for a proper supper to cook) to scramble up in my dutch oven. Lesson one about dutch ovens. Let them warm up a mite before putting food in them. Everything stuck that night I didn't. Nothing stuck the next morning when I did. It was good though all the same. Not but that we probably would have eaten it if it wasn't very good. We were pretty hungry by then. We couldn't figure out the camp stove that night, so tea had to wait for the morning. We did, however, get a decent fire going. Thank you Dad for all the times you showed us how to build campfires!

Then we turned our faces towards the drafty nylon cave that was to be our night's shelter. Did I mention it was cold? The low that night was in the upper 40's. Also it was very, very windy. We had the side of our tent momentarily reaching out to embrace us more than once that night. Praise God though that everything held. Also praise God that one of us thought to bring our little space heater with us. I know; I know. That's cheating. You have to remember that for the past maybe 14 yrs I hadn't been out in anything other than an RV, and before that it was a pop-up. Drafty tents in late October just weren't part of my upbringing. Or Allen's. So we turned the space heater on our heads and covered up with several blankets and managed to pass a tolerably comfortable night. It was still chilly and the wind was louder than an RV generator, but we did fine. Next time though I hope we remember to bring our pillows :D

The next day was absolutely gorgeous. While I started some hash Allen heated up some water for tea on the camp stove. There's something very soul satisfying about walking down a camp road through the woods with a mug of hot tea in hand and an oven on the coals back at the campground. The leaves had just started to come out in brilliance. All around you could see green woods punctuated by scarlet leaves or dappled with yellow ones. If the weather is nice we just might give this a go again in the next week or two and try camping on the ridge top. There's one site in particular with the most magnificent view imaginable in a camp site. However, it's pretty wide open, so I don't think I'd hazard it unless the wind is rather calmer than it was Sunday night.

Anyway, that is the story of how we slept out in the cold and had a really good time.

Tired

One birthday to celebrate (cake and lunch courtesy of yours truly) + getting ready for out first tent camping trip + cleaning up the apartment = very tired

Add in staying up later and getting up earlier than usual and you get one very tired girl...and guy. Allen is helping me with dishes and laundry.

A soft Autumn day

A cool, wet spell has brought some soft Autumn days upon us. I wish I had large windows overlooking damp trees that I could fling open to the tangy fall air and a wood stove so that I could feel the crisp air mix and melt into crackling wood warmth. I would mix up a big pot of cider and make donuts and sit in front of the fire and read with the sweet, cool breath of Autumn on my face and a glowing fire at my toes. Unfortunately I don't have either a wide breadth of windows or a wood stove. I do, however, have all the makings for a beautiful cider and a kitchen full of potential. Ever since the weather turned cool I've been wanted to do a proper breakfast with eggs and sausage and all the trimmings, so that is what tonight's supper shall be. I'm planning to fix eggs, sausage, bacon, grits, homemade hash browns, hot spiced cider with rum, and perhaps even some donuts. Healthy person that I try to be I'm going to cut up some apples and cantaloupe to round out our meal. How's that for a little fall inspiration?

And thusly the feast concludes! Huzzah!

Every year they conclude the feast with a lottery of sorts to determine next year's monarch by seeing who finds the coin in the cookie. Only this year no one found it, and they had to put a marked coin in a bowl with the exact number of coins as participants in it.



...and here I be with the good Captain Gregory -thrice gracious monarch of next year's feast. Huzzah for the king! Huzzah!



(I can't wait to go back next year. I'm going to try and get Allen and his brothers to come with us too.)

Huzzah! The pictures continue! Huzzah!

And verily we were entertained with Dance,Song,Swordplay,Juggling,and Storytelling. (Alas that I haven't good pictures of it all!)



-an SCA singer



-verily he was a man of strength!



-and agility!



-a storyteller

One more thing...

You can't see it in any of the pictures, but my hair is actually all the way down to the waist of my dress. Pretty neat I thought.

Let the pictures commence! Huzzah!

Herein shalt be discovered that which hath so long occupied the maid Natalie. And verily thee may discover for thyself what merit her work doth mayhap contain.



The feasting hall




Here's a not so awesome picture taken at the feast.




Back home -at 2:00am after a very long car ride.




I almost forgot to mention that at the beginning of the feast some people went around recruiting for a "surprise" fashion show (no one who wasn't in it was supposed to know), and yours truly was one of the participants!

A few notes on my ensemble

The guards on the sleeves and skirt hem were typical of Florentine dress in the 1500's and (in my case) handily covered some machine stitched hems. I'm not sure if the placement of the guards on the upper portion of my sleeve would be correct or not, but when I found out that I'd cut the sleeves too short I figured I had to have something to cover up the new seam. The sleeves tie onto the dress at the top shoulder with the ribbons. They simply pass through small loops made with lacing cord that I tacked onto the inside of the sleeves and shoulders.

The skirt is simply gathered with the back of the skirt being slightly fuller than the front. The skirt itself is simply a rectangular piece of linen 120" long, cut along the selvage, gathered, and sewn up the front. The bodice is interlined with a hemp corded lining. You can see what that looks like below.



The bodice is spiral laced, and for the rings I just used the loop part from a package of ring and bar type fasteners that I got at Michael's. I still feel like I need to resew the front part since the sides don't remain parallel when laced tightly enough for support. The bodice pattern itself is a modification of a commercial pattern (McCall's I think). I took out all the extra shaping seams (over the bust and in the back) and just used the center back, side, and front to provide the shaping. I also readjusted the shoulder's outwards slightly and fiddled with the neckline front and back.

The chemise is made according to Jennifer Thompson's pattern, and would be very nice actually if I hadn't inadvertently cut the back piece too short thereby messing up the neckline. As is, it's actually rather small, and I'll likely make a new one at some point if I'm going to be wearing it very much.

I'm wearing a snood I found a while back at a vintage clothing store. I actually came up with a good way to keep it on my head. First I put on a skinny elastic heandband. Then I clipped some barrettes over the hair band on either side of the center of my head ie ( -b--|--b-). On top of all that I slipped a modern,invisible hair net -making sure that I looped the front over the edges of the clips. Then I just put my snood on over that, again catching the front edge under the barrettes. It stayed put very well. Apparently the Florentine women wore a band around the forehead to keep their's in place, but I didn't have time to contrive one before we went. This worked very well though.

Other than that I'm wearing a necklace I got from my grandmother and some black chinese mary janes with grey knee socks.

Huzzah! Huzzah!

Well despite having to rip out all my lacing rings so I could take about 1/2 inch of either side of my bodice and having to figure out a way to piece out my sleeves to make them longer and staying up till four o'clock Saturday morning only to get up six hours later to finish my dress just in time to iron it, get dressed (mostly), and dash out the door I did in fact finish my dress! Ok, so there's probably tweaking to come. It's wearable. Next week I'm devoting to posting all those picture that I keep promising to post and never do. So look forward to more pictures and less verbiage in the immediate future.

Here's a short list to pique your curiosity:

Captain Gregory
The ladder that would not fall
A Pawn King's Castle
Pirates in the Sky
Village-on-the-Man
.....there will also be clouds.

getting close....

I nearly done. All I have to do is hem the skirt and sleeves, add the lacing rings, thread my lacing cord/ribbon for the bodice and sleeves, and tack down the bodice lining. I think that's all. I also want to try and make a small little pouch purse to carry things in when I go to the feast, but that's optional at this point. I'm going to try a little trick to avoid having to hem the whole thing by hand and attach some guards to the skirt and sleeves edges. They'll add a very correct decorative element and hopefully hide my machine stitches. Otherwise everything that would show has been hand stitched. I did get a little unperiod yesterday and use some double sided fusible tape to finish the front seam edges. It wouldn't been necessary if I'd sewn it up the right way first, but I'm new to french seams and front laced bodices, so we'll call it good. You'd also laugh if you saw the hem to my camicia, but since no one can see it I'm not worried. I'll put a decent hem in it later if it really bothers me. For now I'm off to my lacing rings.

stitching away...

Well, I've got everything cut out except the sleeves which I'll wait to do until last so I can accurately fit them to the bodice. The skirt is sewn up except for hemming it and attaching it to the bodice. I'm a little disappointed with the skirt because despite making it a full 120" wide it really doesn't look as full as I expected. Hopefully it will look better with the chemise underneath it. Right now though I'm working on making the corded interlining. It will add a lot of time to the project (when I don't have a whole lot of time anyway), but I'd rather take more time to do something that will look nice than wish I'd done it when it's too late. According to Jennifer Thompson's website (which has been an absolute Godsend to me)there's no documented proof that this is a period technique, but it does give the correct silhouette. Since I'm not sure about my abilities to make simple linen lay the way the portraits show, I'm going with the cording. Just pray that the bodice actually lines up right when it comes time to lace it all up.

mixed emotions

I have a few friends at church who recently had their first babies. One family had a little girl and another a little boy. I found out that one of the women is planning on going back to work full time in a few months. I really hope I'm not looking down my nose at her, but I admit that I have a hard time hearing that. Somewhere between political theory and Romantic literature I decided that more than college or a career I wanted to be a stay at home mom. Then I thought that time had arrived, but it hadn't. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was up for the task, but it's the direction I wanted to go. Now seeing other people seemingly ready to pass up the very experience that I desire...it's kind of tough. However, the woman who recently had the little girl told me that she was going to be working between 1-2 days a week (along with another woman who recently had a baby), and they were looking for someone to keep their babies. Given that I don't have a lot of recent experience with babies, I think it'd be wonderful if I could keep one or both babies at least sometimes. I really do have the time on my hands, and I would love to help. Even though it might hurt a bit I can't help thinking it would do me good to spend some time in this way. We'll see what the Lord has in store though.

dress update

Well, I've gotten my chemise cut out an mostly sewn up. Somehow I didn't cut it out quite right (a fact I didn't realize until I'd sewn it all together with french seams), but it only really affected the back neckline. It should be fine. I still have to finish the neck line and hem it, but I intend to leave that until I get my bodice made just to make sure everything lines up. Speaking of which I made two mock-ups of my bodice today, and I think I've just about got it right. I started with a side lacing costume pattern which I ended up switching to a front lacing pattern simply because it's hard enough to fit a self supporting bodice on yourself anyway without trying to fit the sides while you're still in the bodice. It took a lot of finangling and a lot of "Here, Allen can you pin this here. No, here. Ok, now can you repin it this way." before I got something approaching satisfactory. Even though I had to do a fair bit of retracing I'm glad I went ahead and bought a cheap pattern to work from since it gave me the shape for the back and gave me my basic forms to work with. Eventually maybe I'll be able to draft my own patterns but for now I'll stick to modifying what I have. Tomorrow I'll make one last mock-up to check my latest adjustments and start cutting the dress out of my linen.

How do you decorate?

I've been thinking about the things I've compiled in the last year of marriage and the different categories they fall into.

Here are some of the things I've collected and enjoy:

Metal and metal work objects like my sconces and brass candlesticks

Earthenware dishes

cheap glass tea candle votives


What do you have in your house?

More scraps of decorating.....

My darling husband just put up a few of my more recent acquisitions. I now how two small star shaped wrought iron candle sconces flanking the mirror above the mantel and another metal piece in the shape of a coat rack hanging up beside the bookcase in the entry way. The sconces I found at Linen's and Things for $10. I've been on the lookout for something like that, and at $10 for the pair I think I found a deal.

One day I promise to post some pictures. Now though I need to get started on some soup. Allen's younger brother is coming over for supper, and we're having Pasta Soup and cornbread with cheese and crackers for nibbles. For dessert I'm planning on having lemon curd with whipped cream (maybe some chocolate too -we'll see). There's also cider if they want some. Since I'm feeling rather festive I might just make this into a feast of no occasion with candles and such. I love being able to have Allen's family over.

So much more to this than I thought....

So I start my humble little blog because I get a kick out of having a place to just record some of the things I'm thinking or doing or seeing. Then people started reading my blog, and I started reading some of their blogs. Now I discover there's this whole world of blog rings, carnivals, contests, and awards that I never knew existed! I'm beginning to see that serious blogging requires some serious work. I sense a new world ahead just waiting to be explored. After my dress is done though. Absolutely not getting into any of that now. Seriously. I mean it too.

Not quite Jim'n Nick's: BBQ Chicken with onions

My husband and I really enjoy bbq, and for my birthday he ordered me several bottles of sauce from a chain in Tennessee that made some of the best bbq sauces I've ever had. So I decided to see what I could do with a little chicken and my crockpot. The result is something delightfully reminiscent of a pulled chicken bbq sandwich with a side of onion rings. I did say reminiscent. If you want to taste the real deal you'll just have to hightail it to Alabama and get yourself some Jim'n Nick's. If you can't though this chicken should answer a few of your cravings. Also, it's just plain good.

Ingredients:

1 1/2lb Chicken thighs
2med Onions sliced and separated into rings
4-5 slices bacon chopped into 1-2in pieces
BBQ sauce
salt
olive oil
braggs amino acids


Directions:

I boiled my chicken pieces briefly in water seasoned with braggs, salt, pepper, garlic salt, and a few herbs. I honestly don't know if the seasonings made that much difference. I mainly wanted to get the excess fat off them so it wouldn't all end up in my crockpot. I really think it's your choice. While the chicken was boiling I sliced my onion rings and tossed them in the bottom of the crockpot with a little olive oil, salt, and braggs. Mix about half the bacon with your onion slices. Remove chicken from water (if boiling) and coat liberally with bbq sauce, mixing in the rest of the bacon as you do. Arrange the chicken pieces on top of the onion rings, and set your crockpot to cook on low for at least 6hrs. Since there was so much liquid I used a couple of slotted spoons to remove my chicken and onions to a bowl before serving.



I served this dish with baked sweet potatoes and our typical steamed broccoli and carrots. Since I was feeling a little more creative I went ahead and whipped up a special topping for our potatoes. To do this I melted 1 stick of butter together with a little sucanat (dehydrated cane juice), 1/8tsp Vanilla extract, and a handful of finely chopped pecans. Yummy.

Praise for Pandora

Even though I'm a tad miffed that you can't search by subject or genre Pandora is pretty sweet. For those of you who don't know what it is, Pandora is an on-line music site where you can make your own personal radio station by "seeding" songs and artists. Pandora then plays songs that have the qualities exemplified by those songs/artists. You can refine your station by giving various songs either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So far I'm really enjoying it. You can make several stations, but my favorite one by far I seeded with Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, Il Divo, Adrea Boccelli, and several others. I get the most wonderful mix of broadway, opera/classical, pop. They've even managed to dig up a couple of songs I really enjoyed but hadn't heard in months or years. If you care to sample my taste in music you're welcome to visit my stations. I'd love to hear about what kind of music you like. I'm always on the lookout for more good artists.

A plague upon my whims!

I've been up to my ears in a writing contest for an on-line game I play periodically. I've never really been the contest sort, but I've spent the better part of last night and this morning hammering out an entry THAT ISN'T DUE UNTIL THE END OF THE MONTH! It's great fun, but I really need to be having fun on some of my other projects -like that Ren dress I need to make that has to be made in ten days. Why can't I be excited about things in the order I should be excited about them? Speaking of which I need to get excited about some chicken or heaven only knows what we'll be having for dinner tonight.

my culinary sidekick

I'm so glad that Debbie and Grandmom introduced me to really good steamed vegetables. Otherwise I'd be languishing in salad land or really badly prepared broccoli land. Nothing wrong with a good salad except the fact that I'm not the kind of person who enjoys eating salad two meals a day seven days a week. Three or four times a week is fine by me. Steamed broccoli though is wonderful. I'm not talking about limp, anemic broccoli that's had it's very soul steamed out it. That stuff is about as tasty as wet buttered cardboard. I'm talking about broccoli steamed lightly, served bright green and still a trifle firm to the fork, and made better still by an accompaniment of herbed butter and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. This is broccoli dressed up and asking for a date, and it's a great counterbalance to a meat and potato hash like the one below. For variation I've also steamed it up with some carrots and/or squash for even more color loaded nutrient impact. I try to cook up enough so that Allen and I can fill half our plates with steamed veggies. If it wasn't for this I don't think Allen and I would eat as healthily as we do now. So if anyone out there thinks that putting veggies with a meal is too much work, try steamed up a little broccoli. I didn't even really like broccoli once upon a time, and now I eat it quite frequently.

Corned Beef Hash

This is an old favorite of mine that I remember Mom and Grandma making for lunch sometimes. There were plenty of times when a plateful of hash seemed like culinary heaven to me. It's great for times when you want an easy meat and potatoes meal, but since I'm really trying to hit the veggies more I steamed up a quick side of broccoli to go with it. My mom made it with canned corn beef. However, since Allen doesn't care for canned meat I made this hash up with a pound of corned beef from the deli counter.

Ingredients: (measurements approximate)

1lb Corned Beef well chopped/shredded
4 lg potatoes diced
2 med onions diced
2c beef broth
salt/pepper
garlic
2tb butter

Directions:

Place meat, onions, and potatoes in a large pan with the broth. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, and add in about a tablespoon of minced garlic. Cook on medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 30min or until the veggies are done and the liquid has been absorbed. Stir in butter. Adjust seasonings to taste if necessary, and serve with green veggies.

We're Home!

Over the next few days I'll be uploading some pictures of our trip. We really had a lovely time, but it's very good to be home and just be the two of us again after spending most of the week with family. We're still figuring out how to fit all the different relationships together -wife, husband, son, daughter(-in-law), brother, sister(-in-law). One of Allen's brothers mentioned to me, "Instead of being one of seven, you're now half of one." It's a very simple statement, but it captures something that I needed to hear. When I'm in a busy family situation like that it's all too easy for me to feel like just another voice in the crowd and not like half of a separate but related team.

Anyway, pictures to come. First I need to unpack (and find the camera cord) and get ready for church group tonight.

This sounds like fun....

Trina and her wonderful team of bloggers over at All that is Good have decided to do a book month for October. I really can't wait to see what books they come up with. In honor of their month I'm planning on taking some time myself to comment on a few books that I really enjoy. I'll probably start with the list I gave them and throw in a few other random comments as I go. This will all have to wait until next week though because tomorrow we are off to the BEACH!