Happy Monday, friends. Thought I would do a late-ish mid-year check in of sorts. It’s always helpful for me to reflect on a few areas in my life periodically. This is a part 1, probably…stay tuned for more. 🍄
Reading…💜
Best book(s), so far:
-Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter (our perspective in life/living a life of gratitude)
– So Big by Edna Ferber (day of small things/ our perspective in life)
– Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (gorgeous & lush/disturbing & sobering)
– A Heart Adrift by Laura Frantz (sweet & atmospheric/ Persuasion-like)
– Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (convicting character under microscope- reread)
Fanny spoke her feelings. ‘Here’s harmony! said she, ‘Here’s repose! Here’s what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe. Here’s what may tranquilllise every care, and lift every heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.’
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Best Sequel(s), so far:
– Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (family survival at its finest- Pa Ingalls shines)
–Henrietta’s House by Elizabeth Goudge (not quite finished, but completely charming story featuring characters from A City of Bells)
– Books 4-9 in White House Chef Mysteries (very unique setting and amateur sleuth)
– reread of The Chamber ofSecrets by JK Rowling (audiobook was fantastic- I love young Harry, Ron, and Hermione)
Anticipated New Release I’m Excited About:
Laura Frantz – A Fierce Devotion (Historical Fiction)
Joanna Ruth Meyer – While Darkness Remains (Fantasy)
Emily Hayse – The Dogs of War (Science Fiction)
New-to-Me Authors I want to Read More From:
Edna Ferber (Modern American classics), Brittany Fichter (Fantasy, Fairy-Tale retellings) and Chris Wooding (Fantasy)
A few reading goals beginning in August will be reading from my shelves/piles/Kindle hoard here. Less public library! I want to focus on finishing my mother schooling choices that I’ve been reading this summer.
How about you? How has your reading been so far…I’ll chat more soon on reading. My favorite hobby!
Beauty Chasing…
-walks down our nearby gravel lane
– collaging & writing for small, independent letter/zine
– keeping up regularly on my journals
– planning a state park visit/picnic, late family cherry 🍒 picking trip, bonfires, and thinking on thoughtful Christmas gift plans
-container gardening
Hello Kindle, my old friend…
What have you loved reading and chasing so far this year? 🩷🌸🪴
I’m excited to start a new little ‘something something’ here. Just as we celebrate National Poetry Month, Letter Writing Month, (thanks for telling me, Kim!), Easter, and soak in the earth coming alive. A month to celebrate newness, resurrection, and the wheel of seasons turning again. I have a few things I’m simmering, so I hope you are as encouraged and inspired as I am about a freshness blowing through the windows…
How ‘bout you? Anything brewing in your heart? 🌿🌷✨
{thus ends my 4th annual participation in the Peace Poem project ~ I ended up writing a few poems I liked and just sending the same poems to multiple people on my list. I did send out a total 28 postcards poems for February! I really do love this project, even if I do it with my own twist and timeline}
Splashes of redNew recipe we made up! Peppermint tea, a little hot water, then two scoops favorite hot cocoa mix, favorite milk, then more hot water, mix! Delicious peppermint cocoa.Rich reds…red reminds me of grace! ♥️🎄
‘Watch for the Light’ is my choice for Advent readings. All my children and I will be using some of Elizabeth Foss’ Advent reading plan/activities/recipes in ‘Real Learning Revisited’. My two older children will also be dipping into Biola University’s Advent posts.Foss uses a lot of Tomie dePaola‘s books! Excited to read these.I’m especially excited about this collection for dipping into a few times a week.
Remember how I said I wouldn’t overload my Winter DIY Woman’s Degree?! 😂🤷🏻♀️🤪🙄♥️❄️☃️ Never mind that! Here’s some of my reading ideas. I tried to categorize them here so it is easier for you to go to one that may interest you. I’m going to try crossing off/checking these off as I go. Some of these are planned possibilities and I also have my mood reading genres that I’m interested in currently. Quite a few of these are rereads, which I absolutely love doing. I realize this is excessive nerd overkill 🤓 and very detailed but I find it fun! It’s something to aim at and look forward too with the cold. I hold it super loosely and that’s why I call these ‘possibilities’. I didn’t include my Bible reading, Christian devotionals, or poetry because those three are always on the go.
Dec ‘24 – Jan ‘25 – Feb ‘25 Reading List:
Buddy Reads:
December 2024
Christmas Mummers by Charlotte Mary Yonge, online buddy read ✔️
Christmas at Thompson Hall by Anthony Trollope
(online group buddy read) short story✔️
Last Christmas in Paris by Webb & Gaynor ✔️
(online buddy read with Elizabeth B.)
January 2025
So Big by Edna Ferber ✔️
(online group buddy read)
The Man They Called Thursday by Chesterton
(preread with local friend for our HS Lit Class in our Charlotte Mason co op)
Books I’d Love to Read to my Kids this Winter:
Finish By the Shores of Silver Lake ✔️and begin The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Continue/Finish The LittleWhite Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
Read Story Girl and The Golden Road by LM Montgomery
Start the Narnia Series by CLS
Read The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery
Continuing listening to Penderwicks when we can get audiobooks from library ✔️✔️
Personal Study Challenge:
Start The Illiad (journal through it) Long introduction and 24 parts, I think? One a week over 3 months? Seems doable?
Possible joining of a few BookLoveJenna’s 2025 online book club – I’m interested in Praying with Jane Eyre, The Love Letters, and Letters of a Portuguese Nun in the winter selections. I’m very slow with nonfiction, so this group may help me finish? This is a very big maybe. I did too many buddy reads/challenges this year andI’m not going to put as much pressure on myself.
Till We Have Faces and Miracles by CS Lewis
Read a memoir: Merry Hall by Beverly Nichols and Isle of Dreams by Susan Branch
Fantasy:
I’d love to continue reading ‘The Stormlight Archives’ by Brandon Sanderson- I’m in the middle of Words of Radiance. My older kids are so excited for our preordered 5th book in this cycle. I think technically there’s some short stories/lore to be read inbetween the 5 massive books out. I enjoy his work, but they are a bit more intricate and political than I usually like so these are a loose goal mostly to be reading something with my young adults.
Reread The Fellowship of the Ring by JRRT
Ember Blade by Chris Wooding
Continue Dune Series with Dune Messiah
Reread Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Reread The Night Circus
Continue Byzantium by Stephan Lawhead
VictorianThings/Cozy Reads & Rereads:
Finish Nicholas Nickelby ✔️
Finish Woman in White
Finish Deerbrooke ✔️
Reread Anne Series
Reread Emily Series
Finish Moominvalley in November
The Enchanted Sonata by Dixon ✔️
Skating Shoes by Streitfeild
Start Elizabeth Goudge Reread/Complete 2 Yr Project with Pilgrim’s Inn, Gentian Hill, and Towers in the Mist
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Start Romola by George Eliot
Current Reading Moods:
Classic/cozy mystery/spy
Cozy domestic & holiday
Dips into creativity/writing nonfiction shelf
Cozy fantasy
Deep middle grade/children’s literature, classic or with classic feel
Victorian Lit
This above is a CRAZY unrealistic🤪, but fun “bucket” list for this winter! Haha! 😆 What are some things on your list? I haven’t made many home keeping, home educating, or health goals yet. I’m still thinking on that. I think I have my focus phrase for the coming year, so maybe I’ll share that eventually. I’d like to update here on the blog as a fun way of checking in and narrating/processing what I’m learning or enjoying. We’ll see. Holding it all loosely, remember, Amy?! 🤣
Teeny, gorgeous snowflakes.
How about you? Do you plan things out a bit? Or fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants? I really love making seasonal lists! Chat with me in comments, please! I’d love to hear your thoughts! ❄️🌲♥️❄️🌲♥️
Be certain of this: When honest love speaks, when true admiration begins, when excitement rises, when hate curls like smoke, you never need doubt that creativity will stay with you for a lifetime.
~Ray Bradbury, p. 46, Zen in the Art of Writing
Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground-you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip.
~Anne Lamott, p.28, Bird by Bird
What a teacher or librarian or parent can do, in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I’m concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.
~Madeleine L’Engle, p.46, A Circle of Quiet
Thinking on these bits today! Happy Wednesday! ♥️
p.s. – I’m officially closing out my two reading projects from this summer! I’m still dipping into some picks, but hoping to make a new few goals for myself during the quiet, winter season. Overall, I am pleased with what I read. I probably will be less 😏 ambitious in my next goal.
It’s a cold, ill, rainy wind that blows no good today. Soooo, of course, that makes me think of books. Ha. Who am I kidding. EVERYTHING makes me think of books. 🙃🤓😌😏😂♥️
I wanted to give you a heads up on a GORGEOUS nonfiction writer I’ve found this past year. Her writing is poetry to me. I’ve almost finished up Slowing Time by her as it’s set up seasonally so I am waiting for the winter section. She is of a different faith tradition than myself, but ties her practice to nature and the seasons so beautifully that I find I can pull out things that speak to me as a Christian.
I think she has only four books, so I hope to collect the last of hers which I’m waiting to find called The Book of Nature.
Have you discovered a new-to-you writer/artist/singer this year?
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.”
Somehow I’ve lost my way with writing (and in general, creativity). Words and the authors (all artists, really) behind the ink have watered my soul in ways I can’t even begin to express. I want to find my way back to putting pen to paper, expressing memories, emotion, ideas, and ultimately, hope.
I’m starting by finding a few things to spur me on, but really just writing down anything each day. You start by doing. You continue by consistency. It can be randomness, but it’s out of my brain and it’s concrete.
Collage is probably the best way of describing the way I want to write and create. A simmering ephemera soup of colors, ideas, and encouragement. Incidentally, I also make collage art. I’ve just started doing it a bit more consistently. I recently realized that I’ve always collaged in some way, through scrapbooking, junk journaling, quilting, collecting words, and a little bit through photography, too.
How ‘bout you? Are there creative areas you want to resurrect in your life? Have you considered how different seasons of life, and circumstances (for me, covid, years of all little kids, distracting social media, health challenges) have made it difficult, but not impossible to come back to these areas.
A.M. Pine - Hearth Ridge Reflections 