Letting Go a Little at a Time

During a recent family trip to King's Dominion, I snapped this picture. I didn't realize its greater meaning until I was reviewing the photos from that day. This sweet girl is growing up, and letting her go on her own is hard for me to do. I created this simple layout to capture my feelings at this time in our lives.

 Template from One Little Bird/Paislee Press/Biografitti - Epic template pack. Kit is called Innocence from Wild Blueberry Ink.

Our Kind of Pumpkin Patch

We took advantage of the last hour of glorious sunlight on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and headed to our favorite pumpkin patch. With 12+ years of visiting pumpkin patches annually, we have had time to decide what brand of pumpkin patch is "ours." We've done the large agri-entertainment circuit - Belvedere Plantation in Fredericksburg, Cox Farms in Centreville. We've done the more home-grown but still a several-hour destination -- Snead's Farm in Fredericksburg, Cows n' Corn in Midland. We've done corn mazes like The Corn Maze in the Plains. We've even done a couple of trips to local farms that are no longer farms but have been transformed into housing developments now. In the end, we've decided our favorite is Owsberry Farm in Jeffersonton, right over the Culpeper County line.

It's really just a field with pumpkins and squash growing in it. And yet, there is something magical about that field. The kids spread out, a few looking for the perfect round pumpkin, but most looking for something different - a knobbly white squash; a long, curved crookneck; a bagful of stripy miniatures. When you've gathered your treasures, you get to weigh them - and if you guess the weight of your pumpkin, you get to pick something off of the "free" table. The kids love guessing the weight of each piece, comparing it to known quantities and deciding if its more or less, bickering with each other up or down a pound. We end up doubling our bounty with the freebies. "Entertainment" is a simple stacked pyramid of hay bales, and occasionally, a short hayride around the field. And that's it. There is no entrance fee and we come away with a renewed sense of happiness for not only the bounty of fall, but also for the bounty of this year of our lives.

Resolutions

Daffodils blooming by our creek

 I spent today in a training class for Girl Scouts. 15 women met in a park shelter and learned from two intrepid instructors how to cook over charcoal, wood, and propane fires; how to plan a camping menu; how to clean dishes with minimal impact to the environment; and some program activities to take part in with our troops.

This was outside of my comfort zone. I am very verbal with the kids about being outside in nature daily, but there are so many reasons that I don't follow what I preach. Not enough time. Pressing household chores. Too many bees (I'm highly allergic to yellow jackets and hornets). This spring I did allergy testing and discovered I'm allergic to almost every tree there is and most molds. The excuses keep piling up.

But after this outdoor training, (well, to be truthful, after the long sleep I took after the training), I am pledging to follow my own mantra of mandatory outdoor time each day, even if I can just eek out 15 minutes on the really busy days. This time refreshes and recharges in a way unlike anything else I've experienced (like a great yoga class). It's different from how I feel after reading, which is a soothing but rather escapist entertainment. Being outside in nature is grounding, centering, and clarifying.

The work of poet Mary Oliver illustrates this so clearly. She often starts her poems with a nature scene - observing a scene or encountering an animal - and ends with personal, startling, and powerful statements. Read her poem The Swan, which ends:  
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Yes.

When does it all change?

I am loving that I can make my girls happy with such simple things now.

• The 10 year-old is thrilled to have me curl her hair for 10 minutes.
  
• The 7 year-old loves to read me a book in bed.
  
• The 4 year-old wants to climb on my lap after dinner. Every night. 

When do the requests for hair curling and book reading become cell phones and driver's licenses? How simple it would be to just remain like this, with three sweet girls who want to ride bikes, paint fingernails, and at the end of the day, climb on momma's lap. 

One kit, many looks: Studio Calico's Sweet Shoppe kit (February)

I subscribe to 2 wonderful kits: Studio Calico and The Scrap Room. I love being able to receive fabulous new scrapbooking kits each month without even leaving home.

February's Studio Calico kit was called Candy Shoppe and totally inspired me. I created 5 layouts with the basic kit (no add-ons) and have 1 full page of paper and many scraps to pull together another layout or some cards. I love how many different looks I was able to get from just 1 kit. All materials were from this kit, with the exception of some AC Thickers and stamps added for titles.

Titles are linked to the gallery at Studio Calico. 

Would you like a spot of tea?
Everything from kit, except the yellow AC Thickers. The ribbon is stitched down into a ruffle.

They share a sweet tooth
Lots of machine stitching - through the hearts, and in the border. Design from a PageMaps sketch. "They share" is stamped with SC Addy stamps.

1st grade commute
Clouds stamped from SC stamp. Title is AC Thickers. The bird is paper pieced from Stampin' Up punches.

A Girl's Best Friend
Everything from the kit, except AC Thickers for title. 

Just Dance Face-Off
Design from a Scrap Room sketch. Title is AC Thickers and a sans-serif stamp set that I had.

New Year's Resolutions

This year I am keeping it simple. Here are my resolutions:

1. Pray more
2. Move more
3. Blog/journal more

I think these 3 things are crucial to so much - spiritual health, physical health, and emotional health. Movement and reflection.

For my "one word" for the year, I am still aiming for balance more than anything else, so that's my choice.

Thankful in 2010

Free template from Paislee Press
Papers from Wishing Jar kit by Paislee Press