My current 12th grader. 😭♥️ Through all the messes and mayhem, I’m so thankful for home education. I’ve loved spending time with each of these people, it’s been the hardest and the best thing I’ve done. Counting my blessings.
Love 💕 occasionally reading quickly through the Gospels in KJV…
I jumped on the shovel edge in my daughter’s pastel rainbow crocs. I found myself falling backwards, feet up and over, crocs, scattering. I burst out laughing, after mentally checking my ache-y, forty-something self for injury. I sure hope nobody I know saw me in the front yard of my parent’s home. 🤪😏👀 I planted the bulbs with my five year old as he stared at me with wonder. “Ok, ok, kid,” I thought, “it’s pretty unusual to see your mother shoveling and sweating, not to mention falling over.” Ha. 😂
We just finished this as a read aloud. We all adored it! 🕯️🪔🕯️
I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ parable of the sower {Matthew 13:1-9} in relation to being a mother. Could it be that the enrichment of their soul earth is our primary, creative work? Our magnum opus? It’s sweaty, unseen, thankless soul-shoveling work. We add manure, pull out weeds, we prepare the soil with truth, beauty, and rich, good things. Why? By faith, slowly, we trust that eventually it will be ready to receive the seed of God’s Word.
My daughter made bread and I used up leftover rice for chicken, veggie, rice soup… 🥣 ♥️
Weaving in and out of this preparation, we grow in our gardening skills ourselves. We limp around on our bruised backsides 😏, callused palms smarting, and keep strewing bits of life and light. We stretch and use all the God has given us. RM’s song “Wildflower” stuck with me deeply after it was first released. He is speaking on his creativity journey, but the idea of growing a lasting, perennial ‘flowerwork’ instead of an instantaneously burnt out flaming firework. The bright and flashy is gone in a second. Long, lasting work takes a kind of death and humilty. Once the seed is tucked into the earth, it’s a work of long trust and patience. Motherhood and our creative work both need this mustard-seed faith and fallow season.
“Flower field, that’s where I’m at
Open land that’s where I’m at
No name, that’s what I have
No shame, I’m on my grave.”
~RM, English translation, Genius.com
The character Isobel in the YA fantasy, An Enchantment of Ravens, found out through her painting, the stark emptiness and abject horror of immortality. It’s not glamorous to work, live, grow old, and die while serving, creating, and loving, but it’s human. The created of a Creator creates. That makes it enough. It’s prayer and worship. Thankfulness by fullness of being. So much around us is so empty and vacuous. Without true meaning. A life of meaning means toil, back breaking, long-haul work with faith.
“I ask where you could be right now
Where you go, where’s your soul
Yo, where’s your dream?”
~ RM
Four years of reading journals! Blue sparrow one is my new one… ♥️♥️♥️I left Goodreads and have loved this tactile way of creatively engaging with my reading.
So, where do our dreams go? They are still right here. Transformed into something human AND Spirit-powered. They may change form, a weaving in and out all that we are doing. Seasons of our servanthood with the gifts we’ve been given promise new morning mercies. Just as I can surely count on the perennial return of my mom’s tulips and daffodils, I can trust this slow, quiet blooming process is working in my children and in me, too. Thanks be to God.
Sweet, dirty little feet…💕💕💕
How about you? How do you view relationships and creativity? How are you cultivating a culture of creative work while maintaining closeness and connections to your faith, family, and friends? I’d love to hear any thoughts! I’m still trying to flesh out what this all means…
Hello, my old friends, I’ve {finally} come to talk with you all again! 😄🖤
These last few weeks have been a mash up of glorious warm, leaf crunching, rattle-and-rolling weather with a side of gorgeous rain. November is definitely here in all her glory. The clouds and sky have been spectacular!
I’ve been hunkered down a bit with family, homeschool, and church responsibilities, so my online fun 😅 has had to be kept to a minimum. I’ve still been reading, and it’s been a lovely respite to our full and busy days. A few of our outside responsibilities are lighter during the last part of November and December so that will be nice to catch my breath.
Half a moon! 😌
I’ve been struggling a bit to get the jumble up here *taps brain* to down here *taps blank page* and all I’ve got is my ‘word salads’ as I call them. I’ve been dumping impressions, ideas, words, what’s going on in the moment, etc etc etc into my ‘dump/empty’ brain journal. It’s kinda all I got currently. I see a few phrases in these riots of ramblings that I might want to use/explore later so it’s a start, right?! Ray Bradbury loved his lists and worked on stories from them YEARS later. I’m counting on this Bradbury Magic to transfer to me. 😂 Of course, Mr. Bradbury wrote a 1,000 + words everyday no matter what. ☺️😍🥰
I’ve been thinking a lot about mirrors after revisiting The Mirror Visitor Series, how Ophelia can only travel through them when she sees her true self in the mirror, no disguises or wishing for something different. It’s been tying into the opening chapters of my reread of A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle. She’s speaking on creativity/writing here:
If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me, ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die. ~ L’Engle, p. 28, A Circle of Quiet
Commonplace journal. 📓 A beautiful, new-to-me, song! Sophie 🥰🥰🥰
How ‘bout you? How are you doing? Any creative threads to follow lately? I’ll leave with a few more photos and a wish and prayer that your week is full of true Joy no matter our circumstances. ♥️🖤♥️
Highly recommend! Beautiful 🤩 “Exit, pursued by a bear.” 😂A favorite spot for prayer and contemplation. 🖤😌🙏🏻 So many friends and family in heavy circumstances. We make our own fun here. 😂I want to read this whole book! A friend is reading bits at our Charlotte Mason co op and it’s gorgeous.
Happy Monday, my friends. A new week, with no mistakes in it yet. ♥️
“And straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
Hello 👋 ~ it’s been awhile! Life got a bit life-y and I had to step away. I’m back, though, and excited by all the bits of loveliness and joy around me, if I really take the time to see.
Gratitude list..
~reading about the prophet Elijah the Tishbite, in 1 & 2 Kings~
~Irish Spring soap 🧼 smell, packaging saved for bookmarks~
We’ve been enjoying Josh Garrels ‘Rise’ and Andrew Peterson’s ‘Sowers Song’ together as a family. Our homeschool hymn and folk song are current favorites, too!
Reading…
I’m deep into my Victorian selections which I’ve been talking about a lot, 🤣 but I have plenty of light things to try/reread in between my tomes! Have you read any of this stack? 🤓🤓🤓
Watching…
I’m so enjoying Chantel’s beautiful lifestyle vlogs, especially her reflections on life and nature footage. I’m also so excited to continue watching this channel and I got via Kindle her debut novel!
Noticing…
I absolutely love driving down the road with leaves falling on my van and then glancing into the rear view mirror for the swirl up and around of the leaves as we drive through them. Sigh. 😌 🍁🍂🍃 We have gone on a few nature rambles and plan on a couple of more soon with friends.
How about you? What are you listening to, reading, watching, and noticing? 🖤🍂🍁🍃💀👀♥️🍄🌕
My 5 yo and I have been so enjoying the illustrations of Michael Hague. He is an intriguing artist as his drawings are so charming yet have an element of mystery and creepy deliciousness to them. We are slowly collecting books illustrated by him. Does your family have a favorite illustrator? We have SO many, but I’m diving deep into a few this year with my younger two children. It’s such a delight! ♥️Happy October, Friends!
The Marble Faun is American, but the right time period. It was a recommendation from Jennifer Brooks, a favorite Booktuber that unexpectedly passed away this year. 😞 I’m reading a Christina Rossetti poem each day and buddy reading on Voxer Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell. I found a Librivox audio version which has different readers for each chapter (not my favorite), but there is difficult colloquial language that the readers are better at than me. Deerbrook is being put on hold so I can buddy read it with an online friend later this year. I have so many Trollope books to choose from, but I’d love to pick up Barchester Towers sooner than later. This is the group read and I have it on my kindle…I didn’t love-love Lady Audley’s Secret, but I liked it enough to give another Braddon a try.Nicholas Nickleby by Mr. Dickens I started in September and I’m listening while following along. It’s hilarious in the midst of Dickensian misery. 😂 I’m really enjoying it! Creepy tales from Mrs. Gaskell that I’ve wanted to try! I have these in my Kindle.Chantry House by Charlotte Mary Yonge I started in September and I’m really enjoying it. I read Dynevor Terrace by Yonge this summer and didn’t love some of the characters portrayal, BUT overall, liked it. A Victorian play is one of the prompts for Victober and I found an audio version of ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ and his famous ‘Pygmalion’. I’m going to give them a try!I just recently heard of The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. I’ve never heard of this Victorian author.The Coral Island sounds like a fun adventure story. My son’s Sherlock mug! ☕️ ♥️
Just a ‘few’ of the Victorian items I’m trying or considering reading…it’s part of Victober fun to way overestimate how much one can get to during October! 😂😂😂 I’m planning on continuing during November and December, too! The “BER” months are perfect for classics. 😁🖤🐦⬛ I have piles of lighter, easier reads for inbetween the dense reads. Here are a few more Victorian things I’m considering…
‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw
Woman in White by Wilkie Collins audiobook
Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope
My Lady Ludlow by Elizabeth Gaskell
A Dark Night’s Work by Elizabeth Gaskell
Children of the New Forest by Frederick Merryat
Treasure Island by RLS (reread, possibly listen with my children?)
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne (my children and I are listening to this currently)
Victorian Fairy Tales edited by Michael Newton ( I read a few of these last year! I may read ‘The King of the Golden River” and “The Golden Key” with my children.
One of the prompts is a Sherlock Holmes story, but I’m just planning on watching a Jeremy Brett episode with my 17 yo son. Brett is a fantastic Sherlock!
What sounds good here? What should I prioritize? This is SO fun! 🤩😂 Let me know what you are reading that feels fallish! 🧡🖤🧡
{book cover images/interior illustrations are from Google}
Is there anything more cozy then journaling and journals? 😄♥️ It’s no secret that I’m a journal fanatic! We are trying something different this year in our home learning of combining our multiple journals into one. I’ve had the opportunity to journal alongside my children and it has been such an enriching experience. I don’t often share my children’s work, as that’s their own, but don’t mind sharing what I’ve been recording myself. 😆 So much richness! 😍I’m learning every day right along with my children. I have music lyrics, quotes, drawings, etc in here already! I treasure it. Do you journal?
What you learning or diving deep into? Isn’t life grand? 😄♥️🙌🌿🍄🌻
I’m hoping this week to hunker down into a bit of coziness. Nothing like the end of September, early October, easing into gratitude November, to foster a sense of richness and comfort. These are truly some of my favorite months. My family and I had a wonderful time with our annual apple 🍎 orchard visit, as well as our first bonfire 🔥 🪵🍄🟫🍂🍁. Sigh. 😌 So much to be grateful for! So curl up with a hot cup of tea 🫖 or coffee ☕️ and come chat with me.
We were looking 👀 for the Great Pumpkin 🎃 together! 🌞🍂🍁🐿️😁♥️Pumpkins are SO delightful, comfy, and cheerful to me! 🎃🎃🎃Chili with cheese 🧀 ♥️🦔🐾🪶Let Victober reading commence! Victorian literature + October = Victober. Lots of info about this event on Booktube or Instagram. I just informally follow prompts etc. 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
“I am a child of the Earth and heavens. I find myself at once skipping like a schoolgirl full of wonder, and hushed in awe, something like the monks whose vespers follow the unfolding of the holy hours, and the turning of the globe, away from, then toward the sun.
I am humbled by this call to take in the autumnal majesty. To sit beneath the wind-blown boughs, to listen to the acorns plonking on the roof above my head.”
~ Barbara Mahany, from Slowing Time, p.152
I hope you’ll join me in your homes, journals, or own online places enjoying the season’s gifts! 🖤🍂🐿️🍄🟫🍁🖤
Sunlight through Pampus Grass ✨My moccasin shoes and crunchy acorns 🍂🍁Late summer sunrises 🌅 Photography, seeking the light ✨♥️New copies of old favorites 🌿Gorgeous new stamps!!! I have a few penpals to catch up on! 😍✨♥️💌📬🖋️💕Healthy, easy meals 🙌♥️Always the stacks patiently waiting 😍♥️📚Just the lovely, jolly, friendly pumpkins 🎃, so many seasonal ‘friends’ appearing Unexpected delightful moments alone – HP #1 book and movie are my favorite of the whole lot. 🪄🧙♂️Homeschooling 🥰💕♥️ aka lakeschooling – I’m so grateful for spending time with my kids Oak leaves, the smell, shape, colors, crunchiness…♥️
I could go on! God’s gifts are never-ending. How about you? Anything bringing you joy recently?
“The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me, his word was on my tongue.”
King David, from 2 Samuel 23:2
Hello, Friends! ♥️☕️🌻I realize I’ve been a bit scarce as we dive into our new home educating year, I hope to get back to my 180 Day Project soon. Here’s a few shots from our week…
How was your week? Ours was good, albeit looong! 😁♥️☕️🌻🌿
A.M. Pine - Hearth Ridge Reflections 