Slowly catching my breath • little pockets of goodness • catching up with things and people needing attention • trying to press into the Lord’s peace~ ✨🌿☕️♥️
Little Pockets ✨
Category: Home Educating
Monday Ponderings ♥️🌿✨ Baggins “core” (with a Side of Tookishness) Refresh Week
Hello, Friends! 😁♥️✨🌿 We are on the other side of my daughter’s wedding! It was a lovely day. 🥰🥲♥️ I thought I’d do a cozy refresh this week before I dive full force into to my autumn planning for all my homeschool and other responsibilities. The house needs some deeper cleaning and organizing, but mostly, my younger children and I need some summer cozy and fun. I’d like to bring you along and share little bits here and there. 😍🥰☺️ What are you up to this week?
🥰🌿😍✨♥️
First ‘26-‘27 Homeschool Year Purchase {Day 97} ✏️✨♥️
I’m getting very excited as I begin homeschool planning! 😍 The past couple of years, I’ve purchased a School Nest planner/record keeper, but I just never use all the features, even in the Minimalist version. I love the options and beautiful covers, but I just decided to go back to my $10 Walmart Pen & Gear brand! I love the calendar at a glance and the big daily slots. That’s really all I need. These are my ‘brain’ and my record book.
I’m rereading this oldie, but goodie and it’s making me excited and refreshed as I pray about our learning!
I’m also going back through this little gem!
Are you getting excited about autumn 🍂 or are you still in summer mode? What do you do to prepare? Honestly, we are still in summer mode, but I love homeschooling and stationery and books, so it doesn’t take much for me to fall into this rabbit hole around August! 😅I felt a bit sad because I saw the Purple Lead Plant coming up and Sumac turning colors 😨 and it made me think of summer ending. I just love the seasonal shifts! ♥️✨Happy Friday!
Wednesday Wonders {Day 95} 📚🦋
~listening to~ ♥️🌿 I just barely started a new audiobook called Dream of Kings by Sharon Hinck. It’s a perfect listen on my riding lawnmower. I have wedding programs to work on later so I will probably listen to more! I heard about this free choice in the Audible Plus catalog if you have an Audible account from the lovely Booktuber, Emily
~watching~♥️🌿 I really want to try the 1995 ‘Little Princess’ movie! 🎥 I’ve only seen the Shirley Temple version. It just came in from the library so hopefully my kids and I can watch it soon. I’m loosely participating in The Hardest Reading Challenge You’ll Ever Do 3.0😆😂, so I enjoyed watching the announcement for that, too. Albeit she’s very opinionated, just FYI. 🤣😬😅
•reading•♥️🌿~ my mood is still somewhat 😆nonfiction, and I finished up the YRE of Radium Girls (fantastic) and Do Something Beautiful for God (gorgeous!), but I feel a shift to cozy? stories. I did read one of the Great Mouse Detective stories on my deck the other night. Our weather went from boiling and smokey to gorgeous and cool! 😍 I’m most interested in finishing up my reread of Sense & Sensibility and continuing Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. I’m currently very intrigued by Artifact by Gigi Pandian (so far some language) and starting The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink! The truth is I have SO many good sounding books on my physical and kindle stacks. 🙃😍♥️📚 I’ve been ordering picture books from library because most of ours are packed away. It’s been fun to curl on my bed and read these with my youngest three. I find this gals recommendations are overall GREAT!
~noticing~♥️🌿 the details for my daughter’s wedding are slowly coming together! It’s getting close! 😱😭😍 I’m struggling staying with some of my rhythms and habits that are helpful, so trying to ease back into them for my sanity. However, trying not to guilt trip myself either. I’m finally feeling the school planning shift. Making some lists and poking around on websites. Love looking at book recommendations! Where do you look most for homeschool inspiration? ♥️
Well, that’s all, folks! 😅♥️Bless you! ♥️🌿📚☕️✨🥰
Top Ten Books That Live in My Head Rent Free {Classic Edition} 📚✨~ {Day 94}
- The Holy Bible ~ this is not always an easy book to read and I don’t understand a lot of it, but my spirit connects with it. It’s foundational to my life and faith. My favorite books are Psalms and John.♥️🙏🏻🌿
- The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry ~ this collection of Berry’s poetry speaks to me deeply. It makes me consider time and future generations in a huge way. It makes me think of now. It makes me consider life outside of self. Our lives have meaning for a greater purpose!
- Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery ~ my handle online is Amy of Hearth Ridge directly inspired by this book. There’s something to be said for hoping to be useful and a blessing to someone else in your life. How living a selfless life actually is fulfilling. Beautiful story of a daughter and father’s restored relationship bringing healing to those around them.That home keeping can be art.
- Wives & Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell ~ I can’t begin to tell you how much I love the characters and journeys they go through! The father-daughter, mother-daughter, father-son, and marriage relationship studies in this Victorian novel are fantastic. This is a beautiful story!
- Persuasion by Jane Austen ~ a lovely story of redemption and finally being able to have a voice. How one can live kindly and generously in the wake of S.S. Selfish People. 🚢
- Home Education by Charlotte Mason ~ late 1800’s to early 1900’s British revolutionary educational philosophy. This is so very Christ-centric and focused on the personhood of children and mothers. A beautiful life-giving read.
- Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher ~ a lovely story of how a child can blossom under loving and listening caregivers.
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury ~ a father and son meeting evil together face on! Underlying themes of temptation, fear, and growing older! I’m due for a reread!
- Christy by Catherine Marshall ~ beautiful story of a young teacher’s growth and learning in a rural Appalachian school. Gorgeous lessons for her as the very people she came to ‘help’ grow her so much in return. Wonderful female friendships embodied!
- The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder ~ the sheer bravery and strength of the early pioneers is astounding, convicting, and so inspiring! I often reevaluate my complaints after rereading this one. 😨♥️
I could have put Elizabeth Goudge on this list, Gladys Taber, Susan Branch, and many more poets! How about you? Which books do you think of over and over? ♥️✨🌿📚
Public Library Stack 📚{Day 92}
Ummmm…. 🤣😂😆 I didn’t realize that I had so many books checked out from library! Some are for me to preview for our upcoming school year. What should I try first? I’ve started a few. I’m liking the Yellow Rose Bride and very intrigued by Turn Right at Machu Pichu. If it’s good, I may have my 17 yo read it this coming school year. I have an Elizabeth Mann picture book about Machu Pichu, too! 😍
What are you reading today? 📚✨
Non~fiction Mood {Day 88}
Hi friends ~ I’ve been reading a lot of fluff (and enjoying it!) this year, probably due to our life circumstances 🤪, but a nonfiction switch has been flipped in my mood-reader brain, and so I hope to share about my favorites slowly. I’m still reading fiction, of course 😆, but I finally picked up this one which has been on my radar for long time!
The Radium Girls – I decided to read the Young Readers Edition to preview it for our homeschool. So far, it’s been super engaging and disturbing! 😳 Did you know about this part of history?
Another super disturbing and eye-opening book that my friend recommended is this one!
The Opt-Out Family ~ I can’t stop thinking about this one and I’m currently deeply evaluating 🤔 how I live with and my example to my children in using technology, specifically social media and video games. 🙃😱😩😖 Still not sure on everything, but prayerfully considering it all. I keep using Covid as an excuse for the level of media we use and I recently realized that, duh, we are going on that being like 6 1/2 years ago. 😨☠️
Do Something Beautiful for God ~ I’m a Protestant, but I value and appreciate so many of the great Catholic writers. I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by this book of daily quotes from Mother Teresa. I started it in the middle of the year last year and it has blessed and spoken to me time and time again.
How about you? Any nonfiction hitting you hard? What’s on your stack? ♥️✨
This Old World of Ours {Day 86} 🌿♥️
The Holy Spirit has descended on this old world of ours, and there’s a Psalm 29 powwow in Elmo (Montana) every day of the year: a grace-revealing gesture, a fresh snowfall, a friend’s forgiveness, the first migrating yellow warbler, a miracle conversion, a truth-telling poem, a pasqueflower in bloom, the good death of a parent, resurrection – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-all the endless permutations of life. The beauty of holiness. And we have ringside seats. Henry James once said that a writer is a person on whom nothing is ever lost. That sounds like a focused Christian identity to me: the men and women on whom nothing, at least nothing that has to do with life-and virtually everything does-is lost. “Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”
Amen.
~Eugene H. Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire , note mine in parenthesis
Quote for Refection {Day 84}
I am not going to write this month of the influence others have over us. What I wish to prove is, that if even indifferent people can influence us so much, you must have equal influence over the people you are with. We had better face the fact that we must needs influence other people’s tempers, feelings, opinions, actions. Let us consider how. Let us go through the world in a happy making temper—there is nothing so infectious as a smile, unless it be a frown. Our children are dull and tired, our friends are cross, and our work is trying—don’t let us take these things as grievances, overwork and overworry is the cause. We begin to be sorry instead of cross, and one cordial kindly glance or word dispels the cloud.
“A merry heart goes all the way,
A sad one goes a mile, O.”And the merry heart never goes alone, but carries a cheerful company along with it. May God keep our hearts sweet and merry for others’ sake as much as of our own.
~Emeline Steinthal
‘Influence’ Essay from PNEU ~ I invite you to read this whole essay and discuss here! Do you agree or disagree? ♥️🌾 Thinking and praying a lot about my heart attitude going into this next coming school year. 🙏🏻
Wednesday Wonders {Day 82} 💦🌊💧
~listening to~ ♥️🌿
I happen to notice that I was listening to ‘Swim’ by BTS while reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Serendipity! 😅💦💧🌊 I picked up this narrative poem for Jane Austen July because I believe Coleridge was a contemporary of Austen’s. I think 🤔 it sounds familiar, I may have read it before! The albatross! 😳😂
~watching~ ♥️🌿I did end up watching the 2020 ‘Emma’ film with my daughter and meh. 🫤 It was ok. I liked parts of it. It struck me as sort of goofy. 😂 A n*ked backside right in the beginning was weirdo, too. Oh, well. I liked the actors that played Mr. Knightly and Miss Bates. I’m allowing myself one Booktube video a day in July and it makes me be very choosy. I really enjoyed Chantel’s yesterday.
~reading~♥️🌿 I have massive piles physically and on my kindle, 😂📚 but I’m mostly finishing up The Opt-Out Family and working on Moby Dick. I also just barely dipped into Jane Austen’s Bookshelf of which I enjoyed the first few pages immensely. I haven’t borrowed anything new from public library (July challenge), just reading from my stacks and Kindle!
~noticing~ ♥️🌿
My hollyhocks are wonderful! 😁 I may have mentioned before that they are biannual and these self-seeded, so I forgot about them! 🥰😻😍What happiness!
What are you listening to, watching, reading, and noticing? ♥️🌿📚 Chat below, friends! ~
Thursday Haiku ✨{Day 76}✨
opt-in to sunlight
scroll the heavens for clouds
prioritize real.
A.M. Pine 🌲♥️
Favorite Second Quarter Reads: 📚2026📚 {Day 71}
Happy Saturday, folks!
June is coming to a close and with that I realized that I have another quarters reading favorites to pick! I’m grouping them by loose genre for your convenience!
♥️🌿✨CLASSICS✨🌿♥️
- Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery ~ continues the story of Anne Shirley! Marilla and Anne have a new challenge of raising two young children of Marilla’s cousin. Davy seriously scares me! 😱 Lavender Lewis and Echo Lodge, The Mrs. Morgan Visit, Paul Irving, the freckle juice, the blue willow ware platter, Mr. Harrison and Ginger, his parrot, not to mention the Avonlea Improvement Society aka A.V.I.S! This book is one of my absolute favorites of the series!
- Mistress Pat by L.M. Montgomery ~ sequel to Pat of Silverbush. Just a delightful story of a young woman dreading change and growing up. The characters, nature, and sweet simplicity are wonderful. A wee repetitive and I don’t love love-triangles, but Judy Blum and the cats make it all worth it!
- Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame ~ A timeless story of friendship, bravery, and how anything out of order in our lives can rule us if we aren’t careful. Looking 👀 at you, Toad. I loved listening to this (again) with my children.
♥️🌿✨CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL✨🌿♥️
- What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Mishima Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts ~ this is an unique novel of individual stories tied together through random connections and a rather mysterious, cookie-eating, felting librarian. I love how each book helps that individual person find something they needed and how each person randomly shows up in the lives of the others in a way that really helps. Some might find this simple, but it really touched me and made me think. The light splash of magic realism was lovely, too.
- Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech ~ Gorgeous, heart wrenching story of a marriage, parenting, love, and contentment. Twins in a group home have had a horrible childhood and get taken in by Tiller and Sari who are disillusioned by the mundane. Dallas and Florida need a home and help the couple realize the beautiful life they truly have. The twins are shown unconditional love for the first time. They all work together to stop villainy they uncover at the children’s home!
♥️🌿✨COZY MYSTERY✨🌿♥️
1. Secrets of Shakespeare’s Grave and Tower of the Five Orders by Deron R. Hicks ~ delightful adventures involving a brother and sister trying to help their father save the family publishing company! This is set between Georgia, USA and London, England! Clues, puzzles, mysterious graves, Shakespeare, bookish etc! Just so fun!
2. Gladwynne Grant Gets Her Footing and Takes the Stage by Lisa R. Howeler ~ I absolutely love Gladwynne and her grandmother! Gladwynne comes to live with her grandmother and gets a job as a reporter for the small town newspaper. The mysteries and scrapes Gladwynne finds herself in are intriguing! I love the wonderful town’s people who made these two cozies so sweet! Light faith elements. I have the third on my kindle, I can’t wait to continue!
✨🌿♥️MYSTERY/THRILLER♥️🌿✨~
1. Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon ~ A great installment of this long police mystery series following Venice police detective Guido Brunetti! He follows his nose in this one and uncovers corruption in a religious order! Very creepy and I absolutely loved Guido’s family, coworkers, and the Venice setting. These are gritty with explicit crime violence, fyi.
2. The Crown Conspiracy by Connie Mann ~ I found this one free in my Audible Plus catalog! A morally gray Robin Hood art forger type 🤣, Sophie returns stolen art work to rightful owners by stealing it herself and leaving behind convincing forgeries! The money funds her and her best friend’s rescue group getting women and children out of trafficking. Sound weird? It gets even stranger! 😂 A missing royal painting shows up that has far reaching implications. Lisa and Sophie find themselves running for their lives! A secretive group of women show up to help! Charlie’s Angels anyone? 🤣🙃 This was a bit far-fetched and convoluted, but I ate the audiobook up! 😅♥️ Heavy violence, just fyi.
♥️🌿✨FANTASY/SCI-FI✨🌿♥️~
- Deathmark by Kate Stradling ~ Fantasy retelling of The Blue Castle! I found this so intriguing with the cleric/religious villains being extremely disturbing. This one looks kind of dark from its cover, but actually had a sweet, gentleness to story even though the characters found themselves in a difficult situation.
- Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine ~ Space-punk pirates running between London and colonized Mars. Great found family, autonomous, strange creatures, and more! This really worked for me! Highly recommend!
- Huntress by Carrie Cotten ~ This took me a minute to get into due to flashbacks and story set up, but then I loved it! Told through the eyes of Duncan and Cyrene, two opposing local leaders, one hidden from the other after treachery and betrayal, a generation removed! This was so well-written, and the Christian Faith themes, while heavier, pretty seamlessly woven in. Loved the characters, slow moving, Celtic, medieval world. No overt magic. I’m continuing the series soon with The Viking!
- Flame Theory by C.F.E. Black ~ Slow start to this rags to riches, high-stakes, hidden identity dragon rider school story! 😂 I really ended up loving the characters and the sacrifices one character makes for another! Friend group was so great! This has some lovely Harry Potter vibes and it was well-written and the dialogue good!
🌿♥️✨HISTORICAL✨♥️🌿~
- Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer ~This was an absolutely ridiculous Regency-era story that I really enjoyed! It just worked for me. Another story where the main male character is secretly a good guy, but comes across cold or indifferent. The jibes at the weathy English. “ton” and the familial relationships were great.
- Arabella by Georgette Heyer~ Regency-This was a delightfully silly story about an impoverished beauty who lies to two wealthy gentlemen after overhearing them disparaging her! Hilarious happenings ensue!
- Little House in the Highlands by Melissa Wiley ~ Slow start, but lovely story set in the Scottish Highlands based on the life of Martha, one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ancestors. Loved the family, cozy, home-y-ness of this!
✨🌿♥️NONFICTION ♥️🌿✨~
1. Homeschooling: You’re Doing Right by Just Doing It by Ginny Yurich ~ Slow start (again) for me but I grew to love this former public school teacher’s thoughts and evidence on the benefits of homeschooling. Reassuring and encouraging!
Whew! 😅 ♥️ That’s a lot! Hopefully, you will find something for yourself or your family that you’d like to check out! Happy Reading!
