Making Fairy Houses With Our Mom

Where do I even begin! I have been sick as I said and it has felt like it dragged on a long while. I am finally really starting to feel better. It is so awesome!!! None of the children are seriously sick right now and so it feels like things are looking up :) I had felt like I really needed something to help me feel happy inside. I felt like that would make all the difference in being strong enough to kick this sickness. It had such a deep grip and I could not shake it. I felt discouraged and exhausted and was begging for sunshine!!! I couldn't think of something to do that would make me feel really happy. I think I was just too sick. Thankfully my mom's birthday had been coming up and before I even got sick I had planned this day with my mom and sister's. We all met at my sister's house. She lives in Richmond. We had this sort of magical plan we had come up with and yesterday we lived the plan. It was what I needed. It nourished me and nurtured me and helped me feel like there was hope just peeking around the corner.
So we started the day by driving to Richmond. My sister had this little sign on her door. It was so thoughtful.

 


After we all arrived (with the exception of one sister who was too ill to join) we went straight to the beach BECAUSE, miracle of miracles, the sun was SHINING!! After a rather harrowing drive there because as my sister says, she is a RICHMOND driver (whatever that means), we roamed the beach looking for driftwood and soaking in the sun AND doing little photo shoots. It was fun and cold but warm and perfect.

After we picked up copious amounts of driftwood and curly bark and other treasures we started doing little photo shoots

 So after soaking up as much sun as we could we headed back to my sisters for tea.

 After feasting on really yummy and healthy delights we got busy doing something we had never done before. It was so fun (and complicated) and amazing. We made little fairy habitats out of all sorts of treasures we had collected. We needed hammers, nails, drills, screws, glue guns, shells, driftwood, bark, pine cones, moss and the list really was quite exhaustive. We chose this because my mom is a lover of all things whimsical, fanciful and beautiful. We thought she would love this; and she did. We each made something totally different and hers was the most impressive by far. We had such fun and I think we all felt little again. It was something we will always remember.

                           
                                       This one wasn't done but the shape of it is so beautiful.

                                             This one is not finished either. Isn't it so cute!!!

 I love the shape on the actual bark and the blue sparkly door and adorable ladder on this one. Each one was so unique!

                   This one is my mom's. It is an actual house. It is amazing and totally adorable.

Happy birthday to my mother. She has taught us to love and cherish so many beautiful, precious and special little things ~ we are so thankful for that in our lives  as we have each carried that on in our own way ~

 

1940's Style Home

This house has 1940's personality.

 When you walk in the front door you are in the living room. I dont think the front door was ever really used. When you walk in the back door to your left is this little laundry area plus a closet next to the basket you see just a glimpse of in the right hand corner. There is also another closet that is a pantry straight in front of you when you walk in the door.

 When you walk in the back door you have the laundry room to your left and straight ahead is a tiny hallway that leads to the master bedroom. This is the light in that bedroom.

 The Master bedroom.

  If you stand at the back door and turn right you walk into the kitchen. It has pretty decent cabinet space.

 If you stand by the stove and look towards the back yard this is the little eating area and that door that is open goes to the back porch laundry area

 The view of the kitchen from the open door.

 This is the living room. You get to it by walking through that door you see above you from the kitchen and turning left.

 Another view from the living room. You can see a tiny part of the front door.

 The quaint bathroom. Pretty cute :)

 This is one of the bedrooms. There are two besides the master bedroom. Each one has a closet that is a decent size which is nice. There is also a linen closet.

 There is some pretty amazing wall paper in one room.

There are a couple things I love about this house. Number one is the closet that is by the washer and dryer  because it fits your brooms and vaccum etc and the cupboards above the washer and dryer.I love that there is a pantry. I also love that the living room is a pretty good size. I love that there is a linen closet and I love that there is a shop in the car port to store things in. The back yard is wonderful with a couple fruit trees, a garden space and the previous owner has fed birds and squirrels for years!!! She has quite a few bird feeders she is leaving.

The back yard is fully fenced. This lady never smoked but she did own cats so there has been cats in the house. That is important to know if you have allergies. It is super cute, compact and practical this little house and vintage in its decor. I hope this gives you a good idea of what you are working with :)

Rainy Drive

 Lately I have been sick and I can't seem to kick it. I think it is just this time of year honestly. I have said before that it is rainy and grey for days on end and I have not really left my house for a couple weeks. That being said ~ on Sunday I had to get out. I went for a drive and at first I was just a bawling mess. I was so tired and drained and crying is great for helping one feel better in one way or another! So I had a good cry and when it was done I had been driving around my favorite area trying to spy signs of Spring. I had brought my camera but had decided I was too sick to pull it out. Then I turned down a road I had never been down and spied something in the distance that I could not resist attempting to capture on my camera. So here he is and THEN I realized there was more and I tried to capture them also:)

I had decided to head home but just as I was getting into my vehicle he started to bray and it was so loud I felt like he was trying to tell me something. I drove down the road closer and realized he had a leetle family!

After taking a couple pictures I realized these guys needed some help. If you look at them closely notice the state of their feet!!! I took down their address and I am hoping that as a result of a phone call I have made soon they wont be in such pain. Our meeting served a purpose. They made me smile and hopefully their quality of life will improve soon. The computer I use to write is breaking and I am also still sick so neither of those two things make for a lot of inspiration. However Spring is in the air :) I am excited!!!!

Sick After Christmas and Beyond

   It has been a long January and so far February hasn't been all that 'short and sweet' either. We have such a shortage of sunshine here and every year after Christmas sickness seems to invite itself over for an extended visit. It has NOT been fun because we are then basically quarantined for weeks on end. This is the case again and we are sick. I am sick to and when you are sick, and nursing a lot, and not sleeping much, it seems to take being sick to a whole new level.
  We have had a couple different sicknesses but the one I have right now includes days of fever and head aches which render me pretty helpless. Anyway yesterday was a lower than usual day and although it ended well enough (because my sister and mom were rock stars) I had a moment where I heard myself say, 'I just generally suck at life.' I really felt that too. I looked around at my children who had each eaten about six pieces of bread before 10am and who were refusing to touch any other food. The house was a disaster and gross. The children were being unkind to me ignoring me, refusing to help do anything and being rude. It was mutiny on every front. So as I changed a diaper and the baby fought me tooth and nail, someone else was crying and refusing to attend a fun outing, I felt too weak to shower or fight another fight about eating healthy and I just felt like running away!
  It has been this way for a while ~ the rudeness and unkindness directed at me and it has worn me down. So I was questioning myself about my ability to parent these strong children. After trying to bring back to myself many different sessions on healthy parenting and counseling sessions about self esteem the thought that trickled into my mind was...'I cannot let my children's attitudes about me define how I feel about myself.' That led to ~ 'Don't let how you think about yourself be defined by how you are treated by anyone!'
So I just had have to say ~ To all the mom's who are holed up in their messy houses...who are human snot rags, who are tired and dull eyed, who feel like they can't go on....Hold your head up okay ~ There are a lot of good, worthy, beautiful things about you and you've got to know it! Take a moment, gather yourself back together even if you are hurt and tattered and it feels like there are mere remnants. Realize this battle to raise these children into human beings that will be amazing has some pretty horrible moments but you are not alone. I am here and once again I am seeing that my children are reflecting how I feel about myself. I have been feeling like a piece of dirt, a bad mother, a failure, defeated, down ~ but really I KNOW perfectly well that I put all that aside a long time ago.
  I sat a couple of them down and we had some words and I told them that enough was a enough. By the end of the day everyone was doing much better.
  Mothers ~ we are gems, priceless, worthy and no one said it was supposed to be easy right? We keep soldiering on. Shower those little sweethearts with love on Valentines day and don't forget spring will come. It always does and the sunshine, flowers, blue sky, it will make all the difference in the world!
 

Hauling Wood

  What are you up to this weekend? It is Saturday here and right now my husband is outside chopping wood. It is such a satisfying sound. We do not actually have a wood stove and we got in trouble from the fire department for having fires in our back yard a while ago, however we have a lot of wood back there because when we moved into this house we had to chop down a tree. It has all been stacked up against our fence for months because I was holding onto hope that we would get a wood stove, but it is not to be.
   I was out side for a while this morning just carrying wood in my arms to my husband so that he could chop it smaller or use his chain saw to make it smaller. We then used a wheel barrow to take it to the road side of the fence so anyone could have it for free. Wood is such a blessing to have. As I carried it I marveled at the bark, the grain of the wood, the colors, the smell. When I grew up on our family farm our main source of heat was a wood stove. When my husband and I moved into the first home we bought we had a wood stove in the basement and a fire place in the living room. When we lived on our farm we had a massive 'king' wood stove that heated our entire house. I LOVE wood heat. I love the ritual of filling the wood box. When I was little I remember cold frosty nights, filling my arms with as much wood as I could carry and working as fast as I could to fill the wood box. I remember the spiders, the wood bugs, the dust and bark left on the front of your coat and your arms. If you piled it just so you could get about six or seven in your arms and still see over the pile. Our wood box was pretty big and it took a while to fill in the dark.
   I love the challenge it is to light the fire in the first place. Sometimes when I was young my mom and I just could not do it and it meant a cold cold night. My husband is a pro at getting a fire started. I love sitting in front of the crackling fire. It is inspiring for some reason. It is also adds a special sort of light and warmth to a room. When we moved to this house I really wanted to put a wood stove in. We were not able to for various reasons but I miss it. Just the little bit of time I spent carrying wood today brought me back to lots of happy places and made me thankful for the opportunities I have had. I am thankful for all those loads of wood I carried when I was young living on our farm. For the hours spent stacking the wood pile. For the strong arms of my father who spent so much time chopping the wood into usable sized blocks. There is something organic, something hearkening back to age old times, something that reminds me of earth and light and sustenance. The tree and all it is giving. Today a neighbor from down the road came and gratefully took every piece home. He takes his large family camping every weekend and the wood was a blessing. He even raked up the mess the bark and sawdust left on the other side of the fence for us.
 A wood fire ~ one of the most relaxing and mesmerizing and totally beautiful things we were gifted to use for heat. It brings warmth, protection and light in the darkness.