It’s cider season. Try this cider-brined pork loin recipe, it’s a favorite.
Easily reached 25 listens of this song over the weekend. Still playing it, I must really need to hear it.
Making my first Thanksgiving dinner this year, so I am getting excited contemplating recipe ideas. Who wants to come eat with us?
You have two more days to enter the giveaway for my new etsy shop. I continue to add new designs, too.
Posted in general
I’ve opened an etsy shop with photo cards, family rules, and more design goodness.
I love doing this sort of thing, and did so before and during my tenure as a photographer, but never on etsy.
I’d love a little help getting the word out, so I am doing a giveaway for any one item from the winged feet design store. If you’ve never used Rafflecopter, it’s simple and easy. (Though, occasionally you will have to refresh the page if the widget doesn’t show up below.) But feel free to email if you have any questions — wingedfeetdesign @t gmail d0t com.
Recently, I hung out with a few new friends, and ended up telling them about the time I had a baby in the bathtub of my parents’ house. (n.b. this post is not a graphic birth story, at all. no need to click away if you are faint of heart or weak of stomach.)
Some of you remember when this happened. Any woman who becomes friends with me will eventually hear this story. It’s personal, but also hysterical and entertaining. After telling it again with almost-six-years-later perspective, I thought it would be fun to go back and read what I wrote about it as it happened. I first wrote a blog post announcing we were in North Carolina and planning on a homebirth. Then I wrote a birth story.
The story I have told for the last several years remotely resembles those stories. It contains several of the same key facts. But overall the feel is very different. In fact, everyone’s favorite parts weren’t mentioned at all!
Perhaps, with so little time and distance, I felt like those details weren’t appropriate to share. Over the years, they became less so. Maybe I became a better storyteller, or this story is just better suited to an oral telling rather than a written one.
I have been thinking about stories and storytelling quite a bit lately, and one thought I can’t shake is that when you write a story and publish it, you lose several things. The tone and response of the audience drives a telling, and you lose that feedback. Also, you lose the control of getting to decide who hears the story and when. (There are some possible gains as well, such as preserving it for the future or even profitting from it, I don’t deny them.)
Maybe some of our greatest stories are best left unwritten. But telling them, and listening to others tell theirs, makes me feel somehow very human.
Posted in general
I love a good story, and I love to tell good stories. In theory, I’d love for this blog to be filled with great stories, vignettes of our life.
The trouble is that I have a hard time with finding a balance in these stories. When the kids were small, I sometimes told cute, positive stories about them. I didn’t want to leave a trail of all their worst moments online to embarrass them in the future. But honestly, I felt like that painted an incomplete picture of motherhood and family life, even though I appreciated preserving joyous moments.
Have you ever read a blog and after awhile the perfect husband, the gorgeous, fun children and the mom who cooks and crafts and looks fantastic just make you feel small? Realistically I know everyone has their struggles and demons but when all you see is someone’s best, it can make you feel discontent and unaccomplished.
Lately I have tried to post a little about moving and how we’ve struggled with that. It’s very real, but it’s also somewhat depressing. I’m not fishing for pity, but sometimes it comes off that way. So, I get quieter and I stop telling those stories. Then my blog gets filled with fluff, I get bored, stop blogging and I don’t tell any stories at all.
I feel more compelled than ever to write. I don’t know why, and what will come of it, but I think telling stories here is part of what I need to be doing, for my sanity. So I am going to give it a try (with some fluff mixed in for good measure.) Inevitably, some of them will be sad or a little self indulgent, I hope you won’t mind too much.
Posted in family life, general
Don’t forget free museum day Saturday! Find a participating museum here.
I’ve mentioned this before, but you ought to subscribe to Megan’s great Half-Pint Handouts blog. I have won some cool stuff!
I added another freebie to my post earlier this week, so that’s an opportunity for a $25 wine gc and 100 free moo cards.
What other free stuff is out there right now?
I got 100 Moo cards free for shipping, and I’d love for you to score some too, here’s a link.
I also got a $25 gift certificate to ONEHOPE wine through klout and 5 to share with whomever. Go here to claim one.
Posted in general
So, I am in my third week of being without my laptop. Somehow, I am blogging lots more. Michael has been kind to let me have at least an hour in the evening, and I have been writing posts with my limited time.
I am trying to find a good rhythm for posting, from days and times to topics. If you have any thoughts about that (more ____, please no ____…) feel free to chime in.
This week I re-read My Name is Asher Lev, which I always tell people is my favorite book. There comes a point where your love for a book is so great that its hard to consider it objectively. Asher is consumed, driven by his gift and I wonder sometimes if my devotion to him is induced in part by envy. I want to be so compelled to create I can’t stop myself.
Still endeavoring to keep spiritual formation in mind while I am in the margins. I am seeing my sin. That’s something.
Posted in general
Some delightful happenings of September thus far (in no particular order:)
+ a nice visit with family
+ coffee with a new friend
+ starting to decorate our new place
+ hours with my nose stuck in a book
+ the feeling of control elicited from experimenting with our carpool schedules to see what works best for all of us
+ cool, sunny weather
+ my first run with Kate
+ finding a random Williams-Sonoma outlet in between school and home (and Pottery Barn & West Elm, too.)
+ neighbors throwing a porch party with pizza, popsicles and beverages of all kinds
+ another neighbor renting a giant inflatable slip & slide
+ birthday cards and texts and calls and facebook messages
+ discovering Lexi sleeping like this:
Posted in family life, general
It’s bad enough I can leave my house, turn twice, and find my way there, but passing these signs twice a day is adding insult to injury.
Posted in general
Things look different around here. I changed the theme up, because I was ready for a change. In more “catching up with the rest of the blogosphere” news, you can now subscribe to comments. Regrettably, I can’t figure out how to let you log in with your twitter or openID accounts (feel free to suggest a plug in, kind readers.)
I also switched up the way I integrate facebook to encourage substantial conversations to happen in just one place. So far, RSS graffiti has been quick, reliable and worked well on the whole (as long as I post longer than 3 sentences.) The historian in me rejoices in the prospect of not having two comment threads happening at once when I write something people want to talk about (you know, every six months.) Facebook is great for leaving a quick like or short comment and I certainly welcome those bits of encouragement.
Over on goodreads you can read my review of a sweet middle grades novel, The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson.
School starts this week and we are all thrilled. Hooray for school!
Posted in general, technology
S’Mores Pie: I use semi-sweet chocolate and large marshmallows (my kitchen is candy thermometer-less – birthday wish!) I broil the final step on low until the marshmallows are big and puffy and then high to brown. It’s easy and delicious.
Half-Pint Handouts: Megan gives things away. You can win them. I’ve won TWICE. Yay for her diligence in securing great giveaways and hurrah for winning things.
New Orleans Snowballs: My favorite summer treat, but since we moved away from Austin, we have not coexisted with a place. Apparently one just opened in Birmingham to mock me. If you happen to be lucky enough to live where they serve snowballs, get yourself one, stat.
Downton Abbey: Only 7 episodes long (each UK season series is too blasted short!) but so marvelous. Must see during the summer hiatus.
I’ve been in a creative funk, one that even made reading difficult, for the first time in who-know-how-long. But I’m making progress, and blogging might just help me on my way. And so, I hope to be utilizing this space more often.
If you are accustomed to getting these posts via facebook, it’s been pretty spotty as of late, not posting for days or even a month. Of course, you can subscribe using a feedreader but I’ve finally added email subscription if that is most convenient, four years after the rest of the internets did. There’s a box on the right sidebar to do so.
I am very smitten with pinterest since our move. You can find me there and explore for yourself. Email me (first initial last name at gmail) if you’d like an invite to come join the fun.
Posted in general