How can a sewing machine be vintage when it's only a year older than I am?

Maybe one of you knows why the stitch-length screwy thing on the front there bounces up and down while you sew (thanks, sewing machine repairman guy), and you have to hold it down with one hand while you sew if you want the proper length stitches.

Yeah, so this is my mother's "new" sewing machine. She got it the year she was pregnant with me.

It's now vintage. Sigh.

Thanksgiving runs into Advent, heads up!

Our Thanksgiving weekend is usually packed with a lot of lying around trying to digest all the food combined with frantic maximizing of the potential of able bodies to do heavy lifting. It's hard getting them to move but it's worth it to accomplish the last of the raking and other late-fall rock-bottom necessities.

For instance, getting the plow on the Suburban. For this task, you need some strong guys.

A few fun parts of our day.

 I made pies...

Giving thanks is what it's all about.

I love that there is a secular holiday that is all about giving thanks. I love that my family does their darndest to get home, even though it's really a pain. I'm already missing the ones who can't come, and I love that they miss coming home, yet wonderfully give thanks wherever they are, with a great spirit.

I'm looking forward to when we expand our family's traditions into their family's traditions as well.

I love that there are no presents and no cards and nothing but a certain menu, a hymn, and a sense that it is indeed fitting always and everywhere to give thanks!

Gearing up for Thanksgiving, and a Baking Fail

I'm trying to summon up the energy to do my pre-Thanksgiving big grocery run.

We're celebrating Thanksgiving in California for the second time, but this will be our first full-fledged holiday dinner in our own home. Last year we'd just arrived on base, and cobbled together a little feast for just the two of us in our hotel room kitchenette, thanks to some supermarket rotisserie chicken and pumpkin pie from Trader Joe's. It ended up being a lovely day.

Last year's Thanksgiving dinner. If you know the Lt., you know that no feast is complete without Dr. Pepper.

Dining room chairs Redo-in-Progress

(Thank you all for your sweet words of encouragement on my last post! I feel very affirmed.)

There are two main reasons why, as I've said before, my style tends towards the vintage/old. First of all, I tend to like old things better than new things - particularly when it comes to furniture. I love old wood. I long for interesting hardware. I swoon over dovetailed joints.

Secondly, I can't afford new furniture! Certainly not the lovely, well-made new furniture that I like (turns out I have expensive taste). And as I've been trying furnish a house with twice as much space as anywhere I've lived since moving away from home, I've found that even the generic and/or poorly-made furniture is (to my mind and budget) prohibitively expensive.

Luckily, I enjoy stalking craigslist, rummaging through the aisles at Goodwill, and lurking around antique stores, waiting for just the right thing to come up. And by "just the right thing," I mean "something well-made, but flawed" so that those pesky shoppers with deeper pockets will pass by, and I can swoop in.

Like these chairs.

Yarning along, natural child spacing, and why not to give cereal to your four-month old baby.

My book is below, further in this post.

I can't reveal much of my knitting, because, well, you know.

But I found something to do with the blue cashmerino I showed you two weeks ago on Ginny's Yarn Along, and after a rocky start in which I looked up what ssk means only didn't read the whole thing, and consequently got something that burgeoned in an undesirable and discouraging way, I am now doing pretty well.

Thanks, youtube, without which I definitely would not know certain things about knitting, at least not for a long time while I rounded up my knitting friends for demonstrations, and sorry, dear Meredith, for giving you a headache. Daughters, do not click on that last link.

If we were sitting at my kitchen table and peaceably knitting together and talking about whether to give the baby solid foods, there is something else I would tell you, in addition to what I told you the other day.

Where we live now

At this time last year, the Lt. and I were just setting out on our great cross-country temporary living adventure, during which we spent about two months living in hotels and five living in a little furnished apartment.

When we finally started settling ourselves in our new house here in California, I had a bit of Baby-Building Inertia to overcome, and haven't always been as productive or as efficient as I would like to be.

Overwhelmed? Me? Never.

Little by little, though, we've been digging ourselves out of the mess of boxes and into a real home. Nothing is by any means "done" (I don't know if I believe in "done"), but we've gotten to a point where I feel like I can start sharing some of what we've been working on here.

First, though, a little introduction to our house, which we love.

Ask Auntie Leila: Weaning and solid foods for the healthy nursing baby.

Dear Emily writes to ask:

Dear Auntie Leila,

If you're ever up for it, could you tackle how to transition from the little baby--nursing often at night bit--to the next stage (big baby)? And also introducing solids? I gather that you are a huge proponent of nursing, and I am too; I worry only that I go too far that way.

Love,
Emily

Probably the last of the outdoor pictures.

These are from last week -- right before Halloween, actually. There have been so few sunny days lately that I haven't been motivated to take photos or to work outdoors. This one sunny day we got a lot done, but nothing compared to what yet has to be done! With Thanksgiving closing in...

Knitting and reading and planning.

I'm doing this post for Ginny's Yarn Along linky, which I think is a wonderful idea.

Reading is obviously wonderful, but not so obviously wonderful to many young moms is the satisfaction of making beautiful things. And also reading often gets knocked off the to-do list because we feel overwhelmed.

Did you know that work expands to fit the time allowed? This is a true principle of life. If you had all day just to do the dishes, that's how long it would take you. If you knew in five minutes a very critical friend was due to arrive, you'd get them done and brush your hair before she got there!

New TV furniture creates upheaval in family devotions.

Well, that may be overstating it, but I've had to re-think a few things.




Because we got an HDTV.