Two grandmas, three visits, four weeks. Good thing Mike and I love our moms and the girls love their grandmas because our front door felt a bit like a revolving one for a while there. It was really great to spend time with them though and the girls are so lucky to have such great [...]
I work in a forest and the view from my office window is like looking out of a tree house. It sounds great, and usually is, but lately I’ve been staring at my computer all day and have hardly even glanced at my treee-house view, much less actually set foot on a trail. The work [...]
Posted in Holidays, Nature, Thanksgiving, The Outdoors, travel on Nov 20th, 2012
It took 12 hours to get here. 14 if you count the hours before sunrise Mike spent straightening the house and getting things in order so the housesitter doesn’t have to deal with our dirty dishes and kid clutter. The “Can we see California yet?” and “I’m hunnnngryyyy!” and “She’s copying me!” were in full [...]
Back in February I shared a tutorial for these seed paper valentines Sairshe and I made for her classmates. Making seed paper is easy and the finished product is beautiful to use for cards, gift tags, ornaments, garlands (like I made with our leftovers), and anything you would use paper for! Often people wonder how [...]
Posted in Canning and Food Storage, Gardening, Recipes on Sep 15th, 2012
Mike and I recently got 5 pounds of basil. Combine that with the large amount we have growing in our backyard and we are swimming in basil. Five pounds of basil is a lot. We had bowls and buckets of basil in the kitchen and more stuffed in the fridge. Good thing I love basil. [...]
Posted in Children, Family, Gardening, Spring on Mar 26th, 2012
Oh, Portland. I love you but this weather is a little ridiculous. We don’t get much snow here, especially not in March, but on the third day of spring we woke up to an inch of snow. Sairshe was a little sad to see the flowers she planted covered in snow. By the time I [...]
Posted in Gardening, Holidays, St. Patrick's Day, The Outdoors, Uncategorized on Mar 17th, 2012
You can find my writing today at the EcoEtsy blog where I have a post up all about clover and eco-friendly lawn care. Fitting for St. Patty’s Day, don’t ya think? In real life I’m hanging out with my 2 little Irish lasses, at least one of whom is sporting a new shamrock hair clip. [...]
Posted in Gardening, The Outdoors on Mar 14th, 2012
A few weeks ago, Sairshe and I dug up some old plants and prepared a little patch of dirt in front of our house to plant some peas. Somehow that little project turned into a much bigger one. Funny how those things happen. We’ve been wanting to reduce the amount of grass that we have [...]
Posted in Children, Family, Gardening, Spring, The Outdoors on Feb 24th, 2012
I’m tired of my front steps looking like this. I try to ignore the dead plants and broken planter every day as I rush in and out of the house with 2 kids and their accompanying backpack, coats, books, stuffed animals and everything else they want to take with them into the car and then [...]
Posted in Celebrate, Gardening, Places, Seasons, Summer, The Outdoors, travel on Oct 22nd, 2009
. . . and do I have a lot to share. I certainly didn’t intend to have such a long blogging hiatus but it happened anyway. It started with my summer from hell. Soon after the lovely birthday party, summer camp started. Lots went wrong- mostly database issues resulting in registration issues and unhappy parents [...]
