Our Homemade Christmas This year, inspired by our study of pioneer times and reading the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the boys made a log cabin “gingerbread” house. They used cookie icing, which get hard when it dries and sticks like glue to hold it all together. The logs are pretzel rods and the […]
Home Keeping
Nature Journal: A Bird’s Eye View
On our way to visit Santa, we saw a hawk on the ground beside the road and turned around to get a closer look. It was HUGE! and was holding some kind of critter down with its feet. We watched it for a minute and drove on to turn back around. When we came back, […]
Frugal Traditions: Christmas Countdown
I made this advent calendar for my boys a few years ago, and it has become our countdown tradition. It has 25 little drawers ready to fill. One year, I filled them with candy, one year I filled them with tiny plastic birds, one year was tiny ornaments, and last year was little strips of […]
Christmas Traditions
Our Christmas Wish List What is your holiday wish for your family? Our wish is for everyone to be healthy and happy. It sounds cliche, but it is true, and really, what more could anyone want? What is your Christmas morning tradition? Learning Table Dad is usually the first “kid” up and starts making noise so a […]
Nature Walk: Brevard, North Carolina
We got to explore Brevard, North Carolina for the weekend, and we especially enjoyed being outdoors in the crisp air and seeing some wonders of nature! The folks over at Imagine Childhood featured our nature walk on their site, so please stop by to see more of our adventures. The mountain range is breathtakingly beautiful, and […]
Nature Study: The Flowers
All the names I know from nurse: Gardener’s garters, shepherd’s purse: Bachelor’s buttons, lady’s smock, And the lady hollyhock. Fairy places, fairy things, Fairy woods where the wild bee wings, Tiny trees for tiny dames — These must all be fairy names! Tiny woods below whose boughs Shady fairies weave a house; Tiny treetops, rose […]
Nature Journal: In our neck of the woods
Walking in the woods after a thunderstorm and before another one started.The wonderful scent of honeysuckle and wet trees. We went on a wildflower hunt. This time, we created a photographic nature journal.
Snow Day!
School’s Out for a Snow Day! An unexpected snow day calls for spontaneous fun: Enough ice for closing the roads for ideal sledding conditions. Not enough ice to make the power go out! Inches of powdery, packable flakes for snowman building. Beckoning us outside with the promise of hot chocolate to warm us. If your […]
All Aboard the Polar Express, and SNOW!
Traveling on the Polar Express What a crazy surprise! We took the boys to ride the Polar Express over the weekend, and woke up the next morning to the beginning of a blizzard. We traveled to Bryson City, North Carolina for a magical train ride, and a visit to this quaint little mountain town. Not […]
Kid’s Ornament Swap
Homemade Ornaments for the Kid’s Ornament Swap We are participating in a handmade ornament swap with The Crafty Crow. The challenge is to create 5-8 ornaments the fit into the “Winter Wonderland” theme, “including trees, snowmen, mittens, pine cones, birds, deer, ice skating, squirrels, rabbits, snowflakes, berries, leaves, the moon, stars, icicles, etc. Basically anything having […]
Celebrating Community: Christmas Parade
One of the Best Parts of a Small-Town Christmas Our town has a Christmas parade every year. We walk down to the main street with our blankets and chairs, while the kids eagerly anticipate the next float or band to pass by. We nearly froze our fannies off at our town’s Christmas parade Sunday, but […]