Category: Walks

Cozy Saturday Chat 🎃🍁✨🍂

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Hello, Friends! 🍂✨🍁 My kids and I did some much needed yard/deck garden cleanup as well as a foul pile in our basement. 🙄🫣🤣 Feels so good to have it done! ☑️ Today is a gorgeous gray, fallish type of day with a gentle, breeze swirling the leaves. 🍂 We aren’t huge Halloween 👻 celebrators, but I did use a few stickers in my to-do list!

I’m loving working on my list, because now that those two big projects are done, I can turn to journals, penpals, and READING plans/crafting! Squee!

Starting setting up my new 2027 Daily Pocket Moleskine! I glue a lot of the pages they have in front together and use them for my purposes and will seasonally decorate the month pages. I don’t usually pre-decorate the daily pages unless I know I’m going on a trip etc! I love the little touch of creativity waiting for me each morning. ☕️

Letters going out to pen pals !! and if I could just find my packing tape, I could finish a package and letter! 😂🙄😡 I am slowly catching up and I’m so excited because I have a few new penpals in my list next! 💌📬

Hubby got me these flowers this morning! 💐 😻♥️✨what a blessing!

I’m finalizing my thoughts on Victober 2026 and hope to come back soon to chat a bit about what I read! Spoiler, I had a WONDERFUL Victober! So thankful! 🥹

Turning a calendar page…bittersweet. 🥹♥️✨
Fun picture books from the public library! ♥️✨😻 We especially LOVED Applesauce Season! Thanks, Jen, for the recommendation!

Homeschooling is going pretty well, thank God! A few adjustments here or there, but we are getting into a groove. My oldest/senior took a duel enrollment class and did well! Sound Foundations dyslexia curriculum is going well for my current two dyslexics! I finished A Lion to Guard Us with one of my youngers and it brought back memories of reading it with my 21 yo old! 🥹🥹🥹 We are actually really enjoying Colonial/American Revolutionary time period. It’s a newer batch of kids this time through! 😂 The Chronicles of Narnia has been such a blessing AGAIN.

I have lots of little reading plans and hopeful ideas and dreams for writing and creating in the new coming year. Isn’t it lovely to have something to look forward to? ☺️😍😌 How are you? Anything new and neat you are creating, planning, or dreaming of? I’d love to hear! 🎃✨

✨dreamy✨

Peek into my Public Library Stack (Part 2) and Reading Mood Shift and Random Thoughts 📚✨

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Creepy books I checked out to try! I’m still mostly interested in Labyrinth and The Poe Shadow. That’s because the are historical mysteries with archaeological/ephemera elements.
Waiting for the 3rd in Hierarchy Series so I tried the author’s backlist. Not what I want at this time!
A seasonal friend recommendation and a retelling of sorts from an author I’ve enjoyed before.
Cozy, illustrated reread!

✨Just like that I feel sick of my darker, adventurous mystery/sci fi titles I’ve been checking out of the library and I’m turning more to my cozy, comfortable reads. What are your go-to types of books when in need of something comforting? 🥰♥️☕️ Some books I choose to stick it out with and be disciplined. My light reading, I’m much more flexible with quitting if I’m not ‘feeling’ it. Do you read every book you start to the end?

I’m thinking classic-feeling, character-driven, children’s literature, cozy mysteries, and of course, continuing my Victorian literature selections for Victober. I have plenty of Victorian classics choices to keep me going all autumn and into winter! I also have plenty of favorite niche type book stacks around my room, many of them on my 50×50 list. Also Im a big rereader of favorites for comfort. I’m hoping I can keep this mood up for the rest of the year!

I’ve been reading the Holy Bible in New Living Translation this year and I’m loving it so much! I just finished Hebrews and was blown away with its challenging beauty. 😍♥️✨🙏🏻

I’m seriously decluttering my online stuff. I go in spurts with reading apps and social sites. It’s time to let a lot of it go. I’m truly an analog lover and my energy levels need to be turned toward home and those around me. It gives me more brain breathing space, too, to write regularly, collage, walk, dabble in photography, journal, and write pen pals, which are all things I love!

It’s a gorgeous day, blustery, and sunny here! ✨Happiest Tuesday to you! ♥️

Monday Ponderings ♥️🍁

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‘Pencil and Paint’ by Eleanor Farjeon

Winter has a pencil

For pictures clear and neat,

She traces the black tree-tops

Upon a snowy sheet.

But autumn has a palette

And a painting-brush instead,

And daubs the leaves for pleasure

With yellow, brown, and red.

p. 90, A Poem for Every Autumn Day, edited by Allie Esiri

Wednesday Wonders 🌾🌻🧡🍂💛🤎🐌🦗🕷️🕸️

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Rain coming! Smells heavenly!

Listening 🍂 ~ I have many things I want to listen to, especially from the Living Education Retreat. I’m looking forward to finding an uninterrupted moment so I can take notes! Looks like a wealth of knowledge here! I also want to try a recommendation from a friend, The Story Girl Podcast. I’m loving the audiobook of Firebird by Kathy Tyers. It reminds me of Star Wars, I’m liking the characters. We’ve been listening to this as a “call” to our morning time and we all agree it’s so invigorating and beautiful! 🤩

We own the Winter and Autumn collections in this series and really love them!

Watching 🍂 ~ I’m trying to limit Booktube to the weekends. My children recently watched The Sheep Detectives and said it was really good! I hope to try it this weekend?! Honestly, my brain space/power is SO low with all the outside things started!

Reading 🍂 ~ I just finished Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahara and it was a compelling police procedural mystery. A little grittier content wise, but I loved the writing. I liked the characters a lot even if a bit more overtly morally gray than I like. I’m slowly plugging away at The Virginian with my buddy reader and am loving it! Very well written and funny! I’m reading a couple chapters each morning of The Brothers Karamazov, and wow. 🤯 I’m also enjoying the second in a sci-fi series, Arabella and the Battle of Venus. We finished The Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden in my other group. Wow. 😮 It was dark, gritty food for thought. Not a favorite!

Noticing 🍂 ~ September is lovely, still summer-ish, yet shifting to autumn. The younger four kiddos and I went on a wonderful nature walk this week. 🤎💛🧡 It was so fun seeing old ‘friends’ again and noticing new treasure.

What are you listening to, watching, reading, noticing this week? 🥰 ~

•leave it all•

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I replied, “But my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose. Yet I leave it all in the LORD’s hand; I will trust God for my reward.”

Isaiah 49:4, NLT

~

Make Room 🏡 {Day 63}

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I could stare at our skies forever around here.
Getting out some different coffee mugs for summer!
See you next spring!
Eclectic birthday gifts! 🥰♥️
Kids were so happy!
Smells heavenly!

Better is a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting-and conflict.

Proverbs 17:1~

Simplicity makes room for relationship. ♥️🌿 Relationships with God, others, and everything real around us. It’s ok to love home, slow routines, and regular boring rhythms. I’ve been thinking about how on an extended social media break I start to slow down, revel in my mundane tasks, realize I don’t have to keep up with anything other than getting meals on the table and washing laundry occasionally. I can have long times with my coffee steaming into the early morn, Bible flipped open, hummingbirds approaching. I can listen and chat and make Rice Krispies treats with my little boys. I can read or not read, wear my favorite comfy flannel from a thrift store with no need for more. I can walk with my music and the wind. It’s so refreshing. It doesn’t need to become more than it is, some-holier-than-thou move, but lets me step out of the stream of a vague unease of missing out, the guilt and fear of not keeping up. ‘They’ want you to feel that way. So that you need them or whatever it is they’re selling. It’s unbelievably freeing to step back and let it swirl by. It makes me want to pray more about how I use social media and maybe stepping away from forms of it that aren’t bringing me joy and enhancing this quieter, contemplative pace.

~ 🌿♥️

Hello, Luna + Quote for reflection 💚 {Day 60}

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Is it possible to live forgiven and not carry great loads of guilt, to participate in the salvation of the world? Is it possible to love and grow into a relationship with another person in which we are enriched and enhanced and built up? Is it possible to bless and be blessed? To give others the best that is in us and not the worst? To receive from others their best and not their worst? Yes. It is. As everyday realities, these births are wonders, whether as a new baby in the world or as a new creature in Christ. We are launched by acts of love and promise into ways of seeing and being. Our first birth thrusts us kicking and squalling into the light of day. Our second birth places us laughing and worshiping in the light of God. Like Issac. Laughter. Amen.

Eugene H. Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, p. 27 ~

Monday Ponderings: Daisies 💛🤍💛🤍 {Day 56}

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I love daisies.

You told me.

They’re so friendly. Don’t you think daisies are the friendliest flower?

~ “You’ve Got Mail”, Joe and Kathleen

I went on a daisy walk…

Maybe this will become a June birthday month tradition…

It was SO hot, but I absolutely loved it. My body doesn’t love cold anymore, and the sky, clouds, fragrance of the air was sublime.

Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

~Matthew 6:26-34, NLT

~

Favorite Blogs and Booktube Channels to check out! {Day 22} 📽️📚

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Happy Thursday! I ‘tried’ to group these by main genre topic. ♥️ I’m hoping to add more for reference! A few of these don’t regularly update, but there is a TREASURE TROVE of back posts!

Writing/General Memoir/Nature:

Adrienne Morris

Beating the Bounds

Merhling Muse

Words & Herbs

Poetry (among other gems):

Beautiful Messy Life

Dreams from A Pilgrimage

Kourtney Garrison

Leaf and Twig

Tea & Paper

writing in north norfolk

Essays/Articles:

Enthusiastically, Dawn

Dr. Lizzie Rogers

The Marginalian

Home/Domestic/Family:

Fancied Freedom

Gathering Light

Good to Be Home

Haven Hedgerow

Heavens to Betty

Melissa Wiley

Rabbit Patch Diary

Renaissance

Reading/Homeschool:

Sage Parnassus

The Book Worm Chronicles

Woldenburn

Booktube Absolute Favorites:

Kate Howe

Chantel Reads All Day

Miriam Elizabeth Reads

Gloria Z Thompson

Cozy Cottage Chapters

Happy reading/watching! This would be a perfect place to dive into on your next rainy day! So thankful for creativity and words! 🌲♥️😍

Wednesday Wonders {Day 21}

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•listening• ♥️🌲~

The sound of water trickling (we call the above stream the Withywindle), birds, wind, and I’m getting more audiobook time from walking and driving an hour away for a monthly book club. I have Mistress Pat by L. M. Montgomery and The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears going. The Pears book is an art mystery thriller, it’s a bit info-dumpy, but I love the art fraud case and Rome setting. Two police are helping an art historian unravel the mystery. It’s a series so if I end up liking this one enough, I can go on!

•watching• ♥️🌲 ~ I’m so enjoying checking my daffodils and the tree buds etc for any growth and changes. I did really enjoy this LOVELY journaling YouTube video recently. I was inspired to create my May reading pages. They look 👀 nothing like 😆 some of these gals I watch, but I had fun all the same. I used some kitty washi I had and a Pusheen stamp set we had laying around. I also found some more fun cute reading bingo boards on Pinterest. I find it so satisfying to fill them in here and there.

•reading• ♥️🌲~

I mentioned the two audiobooks I’m enjoying 👆, but currently, I have SO many books on the stack. I think I’m most enjoying spy/thriller/mystery archaeology type adventure stories 😆😂 with a healthy dose of classic, comfort reads. Very strange combo, I know, but I’m definitely eclectic! Below are a few ones I’m throughly enjoying.

Waiting on this next installment of Alex Rider teen spy for MI6! 😅
First one was intriguing!
New series I found that I’m trying!
The first was very violent, BUT I really liked Elias, one of the the main characters and so I’m continuing this series!

•noticing• ♥️🌲~ We have a lot of Bloodroot blooming along the field and road edges. The Robins, Killdeers, and Red-winged Blackbirds have been vocal! I’ve had two Eastern Bluebird sightings which of course fills me with happiness. 😆💙🧡🤍 We saw the male American Goldfinches donning their yellow jackets! 💛🥰 We are testing our observations on the Barn Swallows. They usually are back around my daughter’s birthday and it’s this weekend (17!) so it will be fascinating if we see them! I’ll let you know! I loved seeing my youngest get to ride a horse this past week for the first time. He wasn’t sure but then really enjoyed it. 🐴

Bloodroot
Holding on for dear life 😂😅

What have you been listening to, reading, watching, noticing? I’d really love to hear! ♥️🌲🥰