Makin' A List

A few weeks ago I shared the picture of the two girls as our Friday moment. What I didn't share was the two pictures before it, the ones of Emma making the list. I just adore this series of pictures and couldn't let another day pass without sharing them here in our space. These pictures capture both girls so perfectly- but especially our Emma. She's always been a hard worker this girl of ours-always wanting to help and be in the mix of whatever job, chore or task is going on. Her papa and I have no doubt that her can-do spirit and dedication to whatever is being worked on is going to take her very far in life. xo

In Our Garden

This garden of ours continues to impress us as no other vegetable garden that we have had in the past has! It's so full and lush, and each day seems to yield more items than we were expecting. The cherry tomatoes and snap peas are being eaten about as quickly as they are ripening, and we have our first red slicing tomato. too! The cucumbers are out of control this year, and Dave and I have chatted about giving them something to climb next year. It would be lovely to get them off the ground and not have so many vines to move out of the way of other plants. The two sweet sunflowers are just such a lovely dollop of yellow against all the green leaves of this lush garden of ours. The potatoes are going along beautifully too, though our harvesting of them is clearly still a ways off yet. We discovered our first butternut and acorn squashes the other day! I had forgotten we had planted both types! Our sweet piggie Ginger is loving the garden, and we are loving that it's fenced in so she can be out with us without making a mad dash to get under the rhododendron bush! That piggie sure can run fast when she wants to! There's talk of adding a fourth raised bed for next year, and maybe a nicer fence and an archway over the gate for Grace's Morning Glories to climb. They are just starting to climb up the fence, but I can already tell that they are going to make this space even more enchanted than it already feels! xo

Front Fence Restoration

From the very first moment that we laid eyes on this sweet old farmhouse of ours we couldn't get over how much picket fence there was. Not only was the entire backyard fenced in, but the front yard had picket fence as well (along with a gate and an arbor). In the ten years that we have lived here this front fence has taken quite a beating each winter thanks to the snowplows. Last autumn, as we were preparing the house for the winter we decided to remove the rather broken front fence. It was in need of some serious repairs and we didn't want to have anything else happen to it. Keeping the pickets became even more important after we learned that each picket, when bought new, is $3.00 a piece. As we have roughly 300 pickets for the front fence alone there was no way we could justify buying new (especially as these really were in fine condition overall)!  From each section he would need to remove the pickets, remove the nails and then sand each one before he could even think about painting them (the painting was clearly the easy part of this project). He spent many days just prying nails out of the pickets and then just as many days sanding. Thankfully due to the lovely weather that we've had these last several weekends he was able to get much of the painting done outside, and was finally able to assemble the first section of fence. It went up today and looks simply incredible! We cannot wait to see how gorgeous it looks when this project is completely finished! Now, the big question is, does he make a small gate or not... xo

Homemaking

From the time they were walking (and even earlier when they were in the sling or the Ergo) the girls have always helped with whatever needed doing around the house. Be it dusting or canning or gardening they've always been a part of making our home our own. I love that we've always had that "all hands on deck" approach to whatever it was that needed doing and I think it's because of that that the girls never bat an eyelash when there's a job to do (after all, how many seven year olds and five-and-a-half year olds do you know that easily and eagerly put in twenty-four hours painting a fence?!).Over the last couple of months we have gotten back to a dedicated "cleaning day" (as the girls call it). From the moment we bought the house (almost ten years ago) Saturday became cleaning day. As I became a mama I fiddled with cleaning day. I found, at least for me, that when the girls were babies and toddlers that it was easier to break the work up and do one or two set tasks each day instead of dedicating a whole day once a week to doing the cleaning. Now that the girls aren't so anymore we've gotten back to Saturday being cleaning day. Don't get me wrong, we are always cleaning each and every day, "straightening up as we go" as my Mom would say, though now on Saturdays we dive head first into whatever's on our list. Together we make that days list at breakfast, and as we complete each task the girls take turns checking them off. We are all loving our cleaning day. It's wonderful to work together to make this home our own, and it's wonderful to see all the pride they have in the work that they do. As the saying goes "Many hands make light work". We couldn't agree more!