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?
Barn swallows are still here 🥹♥️Healthy meals ♥️🌿Summer read alouds winding down- so many lovely books! ♥️🥹✨Penpal catching up 📝🖊️📚📭💌📨 New homeschooling goodies…a fresh Calendar of Firsts! Keeping track of things we see in nature each day together. 🕸️🕷️🦉🌲Making my own sugar free iced coffee. Froze leftover coffee for my ice cubes so it isn’t watery! ☕️🧊Trying new planner this year. I’ve used a Walmart one for 13? years so this may be too much ‘fire power’ 😅, but needed to shake everything up! Notice Jimin 😜on cover to inspire me to keep going! 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜Sneak peek 👀 of a few of my favorite summer reads! Many of these are rereads and actually I listened to a lot of these on audiobook this summer, but I’m ok with them being all-time-and-forever favorites! 📚♥️Chicory 🥹🌿my late summer friend
How about you? What are some blessings shining out? ✨✨✨
Planning for autumn, deck flowers, and black coffee in my Betsy, Tacy, & Tib mug…Pulling out my owl vase , a few black-eyed beauties from my weedy flower bed…Good bye, summer mugs…have a good rest in the cupboard…love all the green 🌿🌱🪴🌲🌳Welcome, Autumn mugs…you feel new & fresh 🍁🍂🍄🍄🟫Butterflies and moths everywhere…🦋🦋🦋Mysterious and swoony 💗paths…where does it lead? Restored steam tractors and my hubby’s sheer delight in this 150 Case…spark show was lovely! I really loved the quiet tinkling noise this tractor makes. It’s so peaceful compared to the truck pulls! 😅 Interesting and inspiring story about the restoration/reproduction of this road locomotive. Peaches and new library reads… 💕Sky & clouds…such gifts 🩵🤍🩵🤍🩵This photo. What a brave dad! 😂😍🥹♥️
•refreshing spaces for May••new journals from friends, sticker-ed and ready for use••snack-y lunches••thrifted beauty••current folksong showing up••cute shoes in favorite color found thrifting ••one child really enjoying music lessons, practicing Riders of Rohan music at 10:00 pm! 😅♥️•
~What little gifts are popping up around you? 🥰🌿🌷🪺🪴~
Time’s waters will not ebb, nor stay; Power cannot change them, but Love may; What cannot be, Love counts it done. Deep in the heart, her searching view Can read where Faith is fixed and true, Through shades of setting life can see Heaven’s work begun. O Thou, who keep’st the Key of Love, Open Thy fount, eternal Dove, And overflow this heart of mine, Enlarging as it fills with Thee, Till in one blaze of charity Care and remorse are lost, like motes in light divine; Till as each moment wafts us higher, By every gush of pure desire, And high-breathed hope of joys above, By every secret sigh we heave, Whole years of folly we outlive, In His unerring sight, who measures Life by Love.
She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.” The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy.”
What is inspiring you or bringing you joy currently? Please join me in comments, in your journal, or on your blog!
🌷I’m grateful today for…🌷
||for newly minted 14 yo daughter 🥰||her delight in completing her Redwall Series collection ||reliving memories and enjoying photos of almost 2 months of participating in a local production of The Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe, what a wonderful experience and lots of new friends ||people who devote themselves to care for others in dangerous or difficult places|| those who are adoptive or foster families || new to me music, Sarah Sparks || for Jane Brocket, Sarah Clarkson, Tresta Payne, andTerri Conlin’s email newsletters, full of beauty, encouragement, and delight || for my church ladies Bible study on Philippians||
||sunlight on forsythia and Charlotte Mason, glimpses of spring hope || springy play lists || for little boys who ask for Christmas trees 🎄 during spring snow storms || friends who send me videos and photos of our local Aurora Borealis sightings || prayer 🙏 || daffodildowndillys and the promise of tulips 💐 || clothesline flapping noise|| cat snuggles, whiskers and darling purring with contented closed eyes || lovely return visits to favorite reads, in this case The Alpine Path by LM Montgomery || warm, brown sweatshirt and oversized cozy black sweater || warm, cozy glow of lamps||
|| birds daintily eating dog food on deck|| wrestling with a short piece on Gerald Manley Hopkins for friend’s magazine ♥️🌿✒️📝||time away with hubby learning about serving our world with love, with a bit of space for quiet contemplation|| delicious, quiet breakfast with our pastor and his wife|| enjoying the nooks and crannies of our hotel|| long car conversations with my husband ||birthday surprises arriving and special food ingredients waiting on countertop ||little boy excitedly helping me wrap gifts for sister|| trying how to figure out how to send a surprise to Canadian penpals 💜😏🤓💌📬📦 💸🤑😂|| lovely books stacked everywhere here to dip in and out of||
||our friendly local public library || a felted bit of sunrise, gift from a daughter, shining into my soul||magazines +coffee + Trader Joe’s + my sisters = ♥️♥️♥️||contemplating books that impacted as a woman/mother/caretaker in an ongoing series|| sunshine 🌞 in Wisconsin, never take it for granted ||plan to take daughter & friend to craft store and fancy ice cream 🍦 soon, she’s so excited ||
I believe this is “La Discessa dello Spirito Santo” mentioned on pg 155, School Education by Charlotte Mason ~ so gorgeous! {Google image} If it’s not the right one, oh well, I still love it! 😂♥️
•monochromatic children playing in school yard, black & bright splashes against the drab gray of early spring• puddles fizz-pluming under my tires•theater life, two children’s makeup-encrusted smiles, as they see me gazing up at them, role reversal•spring yard clean up, imprints left in the soaked grass• bags of purge waiting to be someone else’s treasure•ruddy grinning cheeks, watery eyes, runny noses, muddy springy play, cold wind grasping at straws•
•bookish mugs for bits & bobs, gifts from friends • soft-colored sticky tags, enough to share• splashes of color against red-brown brick• discussing Grapes of Wrath, sipping oat milk latte, and conversation with a sweet friend• foam heart on latte, day of small things• little boy with bandana, ninja, he says• blocks on book shelf in alternating pattern• epic soundtrack as I slip through gray countryside, just a hint of green under her skirts•an unexpected flash of stain glass•
•little bodies being compass roses, pointing arms north•almost 14 yo birthday gift buying, disconcertingly not little girl things anymore • shafts & shadows of longer sunlight •shockingly orange chairs• midwestern goodbyes •surprise book won, Katherine Wentworth by D.E. Stevenson • reviewing, revamping, & renewing rhythms• charming nooks & crannies•
•wee flicker of little candle ‘Christmas at the Burrow’• the warmth and deepness of freshly ground and French-pressed black coffee in Christmas mug•the glimmer of light off the gingerbread men salt & pepper shaker•little, snowy glass cottage trinket•reading Beauty Chasers with Annie, chapter by chapter, discussion•Sophie racing around the house, her orange-y tail twitch, her sweet whiskers, her ‘cat-ti-tude’•the glow of the old-fashioned Christmas tree lights • Ella’s Christmas spirit and excitement• a juicy, sweet pineapple• Gideon’s love of baths•Schielch animal dioramas everywhere• a friend talking books with me• zoom reading nights with online kindred spirits •Peanuts postage stamps from dad•rubbing coconut oil into little chapped hand•dipping deliciously into aggressively happy by Joy Marie Clarkson•finding swirls, sparkles, and wind sighs in the coldest time of the year•
The work of humanity is to see one another safely home. ♥️
What is inspiring you or bringing you joy currently? Please join me in comments, in your journal, or on your blog!
🍂I’m grateful today for…🍂
“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness 🕯, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 🪔
2 Corinthians
|| searching for cemeteries || diluted sunlight, cool breezes|| another daughter enjoying Black Beauty || learning about Stalin, fascinating discussions || nature journaling paraphernalia spread out || wild flower weed bouquets || candle-lit chili suppers ||cardamon cinnamon, those words AND the new tea || new notebooks || orange-y, brown, green, and purple-y pens ||the wonderful words: russet • plum • golden • scarlet• || roar of wind through remaining leaves ||
|| chasing words || trees at local arboretum, so many varieties in one delicious spot || Joni Mitchell’s songs, art, and dipping a little into her biography || #380 of the Creative Pep Talk Podcast || Vincent’s letters to Theo || acorn tops in bottom of tote bag || box of raspberries || piece of paper birch bark || zoo ticket memories repurposed as bookmark || kitty sleeping on me, all stretched out, so warm || watching “You’ve Got Mail” with hubby, an autumn tradition || golden hue of this time of year || thrifted moccasins ||
|| perusing earrings and rings while thrifting || little animal vignettes in surprising places about home || Tombrow pens 🖊 || stickers of trees and acorns ||my little one falling asleep on me while reading the Tailor of Gloucester || every morning, his soft squishy Ezra Jack Keats poem and snuggling moment with me || Old Farmer’s Almanac tidbits || mums and fat squat pumpkins all in a row || cardigans swinging from back of all the chairs -|| new pencils, crayons, and composition notebooks ||bells ringing on church ||
What are you noticing today? I’m so grateful for the little gifts all around me! 🥹♥️
What is inspiring you or bringing you joy currently? Please join me in comments, in your journal, or on your blog!🍃🍂
I’m grateful today for…
🌿this quote🌿
“…Love watches, and sleeping slumbers not; weary, is not tired; straitened, is not constrained; frightened, is not disturbed; but, like a living flame and a burning torch, it bursts forth upwards and safely over-passes all.” ~Thomas A Kempis
||Psalms 143|| delicious words swirling around me|| first homeschool co-op of the new school year, seeing friends and “meeting” new ones in the musicians, artists, and writers we will be enjoying together||my baby sister’s 30th birthday ||daughter’s excitement over hairdo change and getting ears pierced||celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary||
||golden-tinged September🍂🍂🍂||son’s excitement about helping friend work in Colorado||beginning Christmas planning|| The Secret of Nightingale Wood by Lucy Strange – enchanting!||P.G. Wodehouse audio books, hilariously ridiculous || “Honey in the Rock” by Brooke Ligertwood|| “Find Me in the River” by Delirious||an Oswald Chamber quote texted to me from my sister||
||Jesse Ahmann’s instrumental cello on YouTube ||foggy pauses||cool, crisp early morning air, with a hint of autumn||laundry snapping on the line||hubby finding a praying mantis on lawn||hard but good conversations||duvet put back on bed, cool and soft||Amish woodsmoke on the wind||bits of red-tipped sumac peeking around bends in the road||Bull thistle fluff blowing in the air, sunset blazing through it||
||Middle-Earth mornings ||harvest moon shining on my face as I awake from sleep||new tea, cardamom cinnamon coming in the post||letter writing to friends in Canada||homeschool mom chat||autumn stationary perusing||journaling saving my sanity||listing gratitudes helping rightly order my heart||purr of Ghibli, our adore orange tabby kitten||piles of books to try and soak in||
How about you? Anything just really bringing you joy currently? Watching anything good? Reading? Creating? I’d love to hear. Happy End of Summer, friends. May you get the chance to soak in the remaining warmth and light of the year! 🍃🍂🍃 Peace & love, Amy 🍎🍏🌾🍂📚🍂🌿🍃📬🖤💌☕️🫖🌾🍎🍃🍏🍂♥️🖤🌿✍️📬💌🖤
