{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ Feb. 17, 2013

Can it really be time for {phfr} already??  Here goes . . .

{Pretty}

Have you ever tried to take a picture of a black cat?  It's nearly impossible, at least for a point-and-click kind of photographer, such as I am.  He always comes out as a black, indistinct blob, but I thought just maybe since he was up against the white bedskirt and there was plenty of light that day, the results might be improved.  I was right!  I think he looks particularly handsome in this shot, if not exactly {pretty}.


This recently got replaced:

 

 

 

With this:

 



I did not love the brass and glass light fixture in the dining area.  It was hard to keep clean and smacked of the 1980's, but living in a parsonage means we can't just go changing things willy-nilly.  Besides, it still worked, which was its essential function, after all.  But one day I noticed the "candles" were quite scorched~ all black and brown~and one of the sockets kept blowing out light bulbs.  So we got the go-ahead to buy a new one.  Man of the House and I installed it one afternoon. (My job was mostly to fetch and carry and hand things up to him on the ladder.)  Despite my poor photography, doesn't it look a lot better? 

{Happy}

Last week I made a batch of homemade (and partially homegrown!) vegetable/beef soup.  We ate some, but I canned the rest, so now I have seven jars of homemade soup ready in the pantry for when we need a quick meal.  It satisfies me to know they are there!

 

 

 

As {happy} as my jars of soup make me, I'm even happier about this:

 





See the little flower bud there?  No?  Well, trust me, it is there!  The other bulbs are just beginning to poke their noses out, but the snowdrops are well on their way to blooming!  They are the earliest flowers in our garden, and once they appear, I know spring can't be far off.  The snowdrops mean the end of winter and the beginning of lots of garden work~ both flower and vegetable.  Which reminds me~ we need to get our seeds ordered ASAP!

Thanks for visiting!  Please go to Like Mother, Like Daughter for more {phfr}!

From My Commonplace Book

"The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together.  If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things~ praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts~ not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs."~ C.S. Lewis

"A garden is an evidence of faith, and it links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.  The truth is, none of us belongs merely to today; we are a small part of the whole progression of mankind.  We have a responsibility to pass to the next generation as much good as we can, and we are also responsible for those who went before us."~ Gladys Taber

". . . a wise and elegant thrift~ nothing wasted, nothing wanted . . ."~ a description in 1885 of Zilpah P. Grant by her biographer

"“For a liberal arts education is not a tool like a hoe or a blueprint or an electric mixer. It is a true and precious stone which can glow just as wholesomely on a kitchen table as when it is put on exhibition in a jeweler’s window or bartered for bread and butter. Learning is a boon, a personal good. It is a light in the mind, a pleasure for the spirit, an object to be enjoyed. It is refreshment, warmth, illumination, a window from which we get a view of the world. To what barbarian plane are we descending when we demand that it serve only the economy?”~ Phyllis McGinley

"From the hour I began to reason, and possibly from the hour I began to feel, I have been a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin."~ Russell Kirk



{Pretty, Happy, Funny Real}~ Mega Catch-up Edition (Feb. 8, 2013)

Lookee!  It's only Friday and I'm posting for {phfr}!  I'm going to make this a combination catch-up/phfr post in order to accomplish two things at once.

First of all, nothing bad happened to make me stop blogging for two whole months.  No one was seriously ill (though the flu did sweep though the house a couple times, leaving me unscathed both times), our house didn't burn down, no one was laid off, Man of the House and I didn't get a divorce, nothing like that.  Lots of the good stuff of life happened, though, and I just never found the time to blog about it.  I've been busy teaching, homeschooling, traveling, celebrating, working, playing, reading, conversing, praying, planning, and learning. 

{Pretty}

I know, I know, the angle is all wrong and I cut off her dad's head, but just focus for a minute on the gorgeousness of this baby!

Serious but sweet!  (I made that toy! :-)  )

We bought this headboard on sale at an antique shop last summer.  I spray painted it in a jiffy, but it had to sit in the garage for six months before it could be attached to the bed.  Don't ask me why.  Maybe it took that long for the paint to dry?  Anyway, here it is fully installed.  Isn't it pretty?

{Happy}

 

Every year about this time I begin to crave flowers, don't you?  When I saw primroses at Aldi for $1, I had to buy one.  It cheers me up!  And on top of that, my African violet is blooming!

This next picture makes me very, very, very happy!  Sweet Pea loves being read to, even at six months old!  And Girl of the House has a wonderful lap perfect for storytime.

Sometimes I can hardly believe that my baby has a baby of her own!

 

 

Girl of the House made this for me for Christmas and I love it!  She made it entirely of scraps and fabric we had on hand and quilted it with thousands upon thousands of the tiniest stitches you ever saw.  She worked on it for months.  I love the jumble of colors and patterns!

{Funny}

For Christmas Day itself Man of the House, Girl of the House, and I were at home.  (Something about a Christmas Eve service followed by a Christmas Day service makes traveling 500 miles for Christmas difficult.)  But we left the next day for a week with Girl Out of the House and That Boy.  Girl 2 requested Christmas crackers and I found fun ones with tuned whistles inside and instructions for playing Christmas carols.  But alas, one of the pitches was missing (a defect), so whenever we got to that pitch, we hummed it . . . very badly.  It made for quite the hilarity!  (I guess you had to be there.)

 

 

 

A glamorous baby!

 

 

 

 

Girl 2 and I are enrolled in Man of the House's beginning Greek class.  Girl 2's 16th birthday was Monday and her grandparents sent her a Greek New Testament.  She was excited!  She couldn't wait to show her dad, and while watching them both ooooo and aaaaah over it I was struck by the delightful nerdiness of my family.

 

 

 

{Real}

As I mentioned, we visited Girl 1 and her family for a week after Christmas.  Traveling at this time of year can be iffy, so we diligently and duly checked the weather forecast ahead of time, and it looked pretty good.  An inch or two of snow was predicted for the Indianapolis area, but pshaw! that wouldn't stop us!  So we set out bright and early Boxing Day morning for a 500 mile trek to the hills of Appalachia and were stopped dead in our tracks one and a half hours later by what eventually amounted to a foot a snow!  We sat at a complete standstill for four hours and never did see exactly what the hold-up was, though we could guess by the number of tow trucks passing us on the shoulder.  There is nothing more tedious or seemingly unending than being stopped on the highway and not know why or for how long.  *big sigh*  We eventually toddled our way to a hotel and hunkered down for the night, arriving a day late at Girl 1's house.  It took us all day to go two hours from home!  If the weather forecast had been accurate, we could have waited a day at home and saved a lot of aggravation (not to mention money) and arrived at the same time! 



Join Like Mother, Like Daughter for more {phfr} fun!

Checking In . . .

Hello!  For various reasons I haven't posted in two months, but I am hoping to re-enter blogland more consistently in the future (hope springs eternal!).  My reasons for disappearing are not serious, but it's just that blogging kept getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list, after Christmas shopping, Christmas celebrating, traveling, teaching, studying, Girl of the House's birthday, and myriad other things.  But I'm going to try again.  I want to make a mega-catch-up post in the near future, but in the meantime, you can enjoy this picture of Girl of the House and Sweet Pea reading together:

If you're still out there, pop by the comments and let me know! :)

More later!

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ Dec. 9, 2012

Have I really been AWOL since November 11??  Has it really been a month minus two days since I last posted anything?? Shame on me!

Let's just call it all {happy} this week.

Have you heard of "Stir-up Sunday"?  It's traditionally the last Sunday of the church year~ the Sunday before Advent~ in which English housewives stir up their Christmas puddings, a delicacy which normally has to sit for several weeks before being cooked for Christmas dinner.  There's a double meaning in "stir up":  In Anglican churches, the collect of the day is

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 

Hearing "stir up" on a Sunday morning at the end of November, women would be reminded that it was time to think about their Christmas puddings.  In Lutheran churches, the last few weeks' collects have begun with "stir up," so if we Lutheran women didn't notice it on Stir-up Sunday, we'd still be reminded in time for Christmas, though we might be scrambling a bit. :-)

I knew I would be busy on Stir-up Sunday, so I availed myself of Stir-up Saturday and mixed up my husband's favorite Christmas treat, fruitcake.  Not exactly a pudding, I know, but, like pudding, fruitcake needs to ripen for a few weeks as well, so . . .  Here are a couple pictures of this year's fruitcake~

 

 

This is a heavy, dense, not too sweet cake made all the heavier by the addition of half a bottle of rum or whiskey.  It's now well wrapped and sitting on my pantry shelves, awaiting Christmas Day.

 

 

 

There is a little gingerbread thing going on on my miniscule kitchen windowsill~

 

 



The ornaments were made by my grandmother, who departed this world a few years ago.  Remember when making things from felt was all the rage?  In the '70's I think it was . . . The little gingerbread bag was made by the director of the preschool where I taught about 20 years ago.  It's still as good as new!

Join Leila for some more {phfr} fun!

 

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ Nov. 11, 2012 (Master Bedroom Edition)

Given its small size, it seems a bit ambitious to call our room the "master bedroom," but since it is where the master and mistress of the house sleep, I guess it qualifies.  So I am joining Like Mother, Like Daughter's {phfr} master bedroom challenge.

Well, technically, I'm not.  I did not do a thing this week to make our room a better place, but I haven't yet shown it to you since we painted, and I will give you a peep at an upcoming improvement.

{Pretty}

Here's what you see as you enter~

The walls used to be the color of cardboard.  Very dull and depressing.  I know that color, teamed with black and white, is all the rage, but I'd never get out of bed if I woke up to that.  We like more color, so Man of the House and I chose this blue to match a shade in the quilt.  It's a shade darker than I thought it would be, but it is a very pretty color.  Much better!

I made that quilt, by the way, the only one I've done.  Here you can see it in our old house and read a little about the process of making it.  My mother embroidered the pillows.  They look great with the quilt!  I'm still contemplating what to do on the wall above the headboard.  I'm thinking maybe a decal, similar to this one. 

Here's what you see on the other side of the room~

I am not in love with the dresser, though we've had it for twenty-five years, and it was not new then.  I laugh about it now because that's exactly the style of furniture that is in all the stores now.  Only ours is not in retro style.  It is actually the real thing!

{Happy}

This rocking chair . . .

. . . sits wedged into a corner, leaving barely enough space between it and the bed for us to get through, but there it remains anyway.  It's an old chair~close to two hundred years old, we think~and could use a coat of paint.  Man of the House's grandfather used to sleep in it while he was on call as a volunteer fireman many years ago.  It's a very comfy chair!  The afghan was made by my grandmother, and the pillow by my mother.  (You met her last week. :) )  That little corner contains a lot of family history!

{Funny}

We love the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A.A. Milne.  Our family conversation would be greatly impoverished without all the Pooh quotes laced throughout ("Tut! Tut! It looks like rain." "I must see Owl's sponge!  Oh, Owl, Owl, that isn't a sponge. It's a spudge!" "It's a useful pot to put things in." "'He's going round and round.' 'And why not? I like going round and round.'" "I'm a bear of little brain.")  When Girl of the House was small, her room was decorated with a Classic Pooh motif, and these are her bookends, only right now they are in our room because she doesn't want anything to happen to them in her . . . er. . .  shall we say, less than pristine room?

 

 

They are, of course, from the story where Pooh eats so much at Rabbit's house that he can't get out through the hole and gets stuck.  Notice the left side:

 



 

 

 (I apologize for the darkness of these photots.  It's an exceedingly dark corner for pictures!)

{Real}

We bought this iron headboard and footboard at an antique shop.  All they needed was a quick scrub and a spray of white paint.  It did not take me long to do it last August, but alas, they have been in our garage ever since.  They are waiting patiently for Man of the House to have time to attach them to our bed.  He's a little busy to spend time thinking about beds other than falling into one at the end of a long day.  The bed and I can wait. :)

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ Nov. 4, 2012

We have had a very busy and very fun time at our house the past couple weeks.  Girl Out of the House and That Boy were here visiting with their very adorable baby.  I was in grandma heaven!  Naturally, all of my pictures this week will be about their visit.

{Pretty}

 

So many pretty things!  Here's just a sample~

Sweet Pea, of course.

Girl Out of the House bought these flowers!

 

 

Sweet Pea with her Grandpa

 

Girl Out of the House is lovely too!

 

 

{Happy}

 

Sweet Pea was very happy (and fascinated!) when Girl of the House practiced her viola~

 

 

 

 

She loved to swing with her daddy!

 



 

  

{Funny}

 

Sweet Pea's hair is in an awkward, Harry Potter-esque stage . . .

 

 

 

 

And she's not sure what to think about peaches! 





 

 

 

 

At the zoo~

 

{Real}

 

My mother was able to visit too and meet her first great-grandchild. 

 

 

 

Four generations~

 

 

Join Like Mother, Like Daughter for more fun!