Happy Mother’s Day

from all the mamas and their offspring at Farm School!
Callie the calico cat and some of her kittens,

Laura’s 4H cow-calf pair, Bunny and Benny,

Oreo the Speckle Park calf,

Happy Easter from Farm School

(The picture is from last summer, but the good wishes are current!)

Just because

Two of my favorite things — out-of-print, vintage children’s books* and presents — combined as free printable gift tags, from the generous and talented doe-c-doe. Download them here as a PDF file. Can’t you see the one above tied to an Easter basket?
* In this case, English Is Our Language 3, published by the [...]

All I have

We’ve been celebrating today with handmade chocolates

that I see from happy, chocolate-y faces were worth the late night last week, cards (Laura has recently taken up quilling, thanks to one of her Christmas presents and to Frankie too who gave me the original idea), easy crafts (the Hershey’s Hugs in the little papercraft boxes from [...]

Backlog: Winter fun 2: Christmas Eve

The kids went skiing and tobogganing at my inlaws on Christmas Eve afternoon. Tom and the kids groomed the ski hill and cleaned out the chalet at the top of the hill. I arrived around four, just as the sun was setting; I believe that’s one of my children on the way to [...]

Happy anniversary, George and Martha

Twelfth Night in Historic Camden County

Illustration from The Granger Collection, New York
And it’s always nice to have a holiday excuse to post one of Anna’s recipes, this one for Twelfth Night Cake

On the twelfth day of Christmas

my true love gave to me,
twelve lords a-leaping.
At first I considered the Lords of the Dance.
Like the Nicholas Brothers,

Or Russ Tamblyn in “West Side Story”.

Leapin’ lizards.
Or Baryshnikov.

Who is so good he gets two pictures.

Lordy lordy.
But then I thought of my darling children and their shining faces on the twelfth day of Christmas, and knew it [...]

Fruitcake weather

I know my parents for certain and probably some readers consider the more severe winter temperatures up here (-18C this afternoon, around 0 F, and with a bitter wind) “fruitcake weather”. As in, suitable only for fruitcakes like us, content in the ice and snow and it’s not even December yet, for Pete’s sake.
But [...]

Thanksbirthday celebrations under way

Yesterday we celebrated Davy’s seventh birthday and Thanksgiving. He was delighted to have turkey with all the trimmings, especially cranberry sauce, for his birthday meal, and I was happy to have a leisurely day to prepare, and a leisurely dinnertime to enjoy, our harvest feast, which included all of the usual suspects along with homemade [...]

Happy Thanksgiving from Farm School

and O. Henry:
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives it [...]

Semicolon’s November Recipe Round Up

Sherry at Semicolon has put out a call for a Recipe Round Up she’ll be hosting later this month, on Wednesday the 14th. As Sherry explains,
The November Recipe Round-up count down begins here and now! The category is Holiday Recipes, and I’m specifically looking for those special Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hannukah recipes that [...]

Happy Halloween!

We’re heading into town — kids in costume, of course — after lunch for music lessons and errands (it seems I have several parcels, with any luck Cybils-related, to collect). And once all the music lessons are done, we’re meeting friends for a quick non-sugary supper before the kids head out for trick or [...]

Poetry Friday: Poems for the First and Fourth

A Happy Canada Day and Happy Independence Day to all, with some poems to mark the occasions.
Rivers of Canadaby Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
O all the little rivers that run to Hudson’s Bay,They call me and call me to follow them away.
Missinaibi, Abitibi, Little Current–where they runDancing and sparkling I see them in the sun.
[...]

St. Patrick’s Day: One thing leads to another, and the mist that do be on the bog

Last year’s more conventional entry
This year’s less conventional one, from ‘Tis by Frank McCourt, which I’m rereading while awaiting the arrival via ILL of his Teacher Man:
I walk through Woodside to the library to borrow a book I looked at the last time I was there, Sean O’Casey’s I Knock at the Door. It’s a [...]

Happy New Year [aka the Cybils shortlists are here!]

So happy new year, happy sledding, and happy reading ahead!
We’re off sledding today with friends from out of town, so in the meantime I’ll point you toward the Cybils website, where the five finalists for each of the children’s literature categories are being posted today. First up — Poetry!
It was a pleasure and an honor, [...]

Poetry Friday: Christmas Magic

When Laura was a wee babe, I discovered at our Goodwill shop the charming Random House Pictureback holiday anthology, Diane Goode’s Christmas Magic: Poems and Carols. It was published in 1992 and is probably out of print but worth tracking down, especially because Diane Goode is the Diane Goode who did such a marvelous [...]

Solstice

Our resident snowy owl flew overhead this morning not once but twice as we did chores, a sign, the kid and I thought, of the day’s importance. We celebrated by helping pack food hampers and toy bags at the local Santa’s Anonymous effort, and now the kids are stringing up some extra outdoor lights they [...]

I triple-dog dare you

Just in time for Christmas, the cockles of my heart are warmed to learn that one of my favorite holiday movies has come to life:
Switch on your leg lamp and warm up the Ovaltine. The Christmas Story House and Museum will be ready for visitors starting Saturday.
Imagine being inside Ralphie Parker’s 1940s home on Christmas [...]

New and noteworthy, for holiday giving and receiving, for children of all ages

And in no particular order:
Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beth Krommes
The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems, compiled and illustrated by Jackie Morris
D’Aulaires’ Book of Trolls by Ingri and Edgar D’Aulaire, recently reprinted by New York Review of Books Children’s Collection
Exploratopia: More Than 400 Kid-Friendly Experiments and Explorations [...]

Boo!

We started the morning with the usual round pumpkin-shaped pancakes, gussied up with orange paste food coloring, triangular cutouts for eyes and noses, and pumpkin sprinkles for mouths. And orange milk, of course. Then, on the way to do chores, the annual Halloween morning tradition of posting the “No Hunting” signs, since deer and moose [...]