Visiting the orchard.

 It's raining today, so let's think about...

...how I love going to the beautiful Berlin Orchards to get our apples. {Make sure you watch that adorable video with John Paul Beirne. He will explain it all to you.}

Christmas card giveaway!

 {Comments closed! Thanks!}

Here it is! The Minted Christmas Card Giveaway!



Win a shopping spree of $225 on Minted this Christmas!

The details are at the end of this post... 

A pep talk for organization.

Do you suddenly just feel very busy?

Needle-y

I love knitting, but have I mentioned that I can't count?

Bridget's knitting is the dark blue -- she's making a hat as well, according to Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Not only can I not count to 72 or 81 (number of stitches to make hat) but apparently I can't count to 7 (number suitable for decreasing), 5 (another, among others, number for decreasing), or for that matter 2 (number of knits or purls), or even one, the number of knitted rounds in between the fancy rounds that you need to get that lacy effect. Which is why the green cap is a teeny bit different from the others.

Discombobulated, but get ready for an awesome giveaway!

My computer had a conniption. It pretends to go on -- the blue light shines all right -- but nothing happens.

I'm all disoriented. I'm like a bee that has started turning left. (Did you know that bees can only turn right?) I'm like an amnesiac with vertigo. I'm paralyzed. This is so dumb. This whole post is going to be only barely coherent.

10 reasons to sing with your children.

Do you sing with your children?



I hope you do!

Quiet busy-ness.

On the right you see Bridget's homeschooling books and notebooks. They are there for easy access. We've never had a schoolroom...

{Just realized my post didn't have a title!}

I like homeschooling because I like these last days of summer to be busy but also quiet. Yes, the endless activities have started, and in the last couple of days I was literally, in the words of Joyce, run off my feet.

Might as well just go for it.

A small part of the garden's offerings!

Since this is, loosely speaking, the day I sort of, kind of, set aside for linking, and we're talking about newborn-type stuff, and there's no way to do this delicately, I am going to let you go over here to read about circumcision.

My baby falls asleep while nursing, clarified.

Dear Stephanie emailed me to question one of my nursing tips, #4.

Okay, so I don't have many photos of nursing babies in my files, although there is one below I think you will enjoy, but I thought you might enjoy some baby pictures from the past. This is me with my mom, 1960.

Try this little secret of mine, instead of "because I said so."

I'm sure I've said "because I said so" in my time. I believe I've said it all.

Maybe my new lens will come today! These photos are from July...

San Francisco mementos.

I feel pretty guilty because I'm not great at gift-giving or card-writing, especially when showing my love in this way involves calculating shipping as well as crafting times, and taking into account my commitment issues, which are that I never think a gift is expressive enough of my true feelings, and I am always waffling between being too cheap and too extravagant.

Leaning towards cheap.

Six-to-eleven year olds need less patience from you.

I dropped my camera, so you will have to be content with slightly older pictures.

I read a lot of really terrible child-rearing advice out there, and some good advice too, but one thing I notice about most advice is that it's not very particular or specific when it's most well meant.

Do what you want to!

Bridget is a good beekeeper.

So call me a harridan, but I was just a little cranky at the suggestion that we should keep bees.

Honestly? We need to mow. We need to battle poke weeds the size of young trees. Brambles, virginia creeper, crabgrass, poison ivy -- we got 'em, and we should acknowledge their mastery over us, not think of new ways to get distracted from our bondage.