free downloadable chore chart

We have just started doing the  chore thing with Eva and I have been looking for a way to get the whole system organized, so I was positively thrilled when I just happened upon this free chore chart over at Apartment Therapy that you can download over at ModEco Kids.

My favorite part of the chart is the line "This is how I contribute to my family."  Of course our children contribute to our families in far more (and far more important) ways then merely doing chores!  Still, I think this is a really important aspect of family that often gets overlooked today.  Many kids don't feel necessary to their family.  They feel that their family could get by just fine without them.  I think we do great service to our children's work ethic, character and self esteem when they see they they have a role within the family and that them filling this role allows the family to function at its best.

Well, I didn't mean to go off on all of that but...

Get your handy chore chart right here.

everything's amazing and nobody's happy

OK - I know only three people watched the video in my last post but that's okay.  

This is for you three -

thanks Valerie!

Corn Maze

Yesterday Eva's school took a field trip to the Corn Maze.  Oliver, Eva's Grandma (Ziggy) and I tagged along.  It was autumnal fun for all: barnyard animals, hay ride to a pumpkin patch, pumpkin picking, getting lost in a ridiculously large corn maze, grilled corn with paprika.

 

Let's just say that this will be an annual event, field trip or none. 

What are your plans for this coming weekend - this could be just the thing.  Family outing, fun date...

Click here to find a corn maze by you.  Or an apple picking orchard?  Or a Pumpkin Patch?

It's fall!  Get outside!

National Forest Signage

I've spent a fair amount of time in various National Forests over the past month and each time the views and surrounding have been nothing short of glorious.  But there has been one shocking delight in my viewfinder that I wasn't anticipating.  I am falling in love with National Forestry's signage.  I am expecting to lose quite a few of you with this one.  Nonetheless, as my ardent devotion continues to grow, I feel now is the time to speak up. 

I tried finding the script font and found instead that it was a custom job, hand lettered.  A much as I love a good font, this certainly added to the appeal for me.  And the cookies and cream color combo?  Delicious.

Clearly the signs - with their off kilter shape and jaunty script look kitschy and nostalgic.  But they work, they just really work.  Last decade, next decade - there is a sweet timelessness about them.  I can only hope that these will never be updated, that the look will endure.  In this cases I'm gonna have to stick with the old adage, if it ain't broke...

What are your thoughts, either way?  Are these signs faded or fantastic?

{images: Colorado Guy, Eugene Carsey, Ron Niebrugge}

the lost art of penmanship

I love beautiful handwriting nearly as much as I love chocolate.  And for those of you that don't know me, I love chocolate a bit too much.  So I was half fascinated and half heartbroken when I read the slate article "Why Your kids Have Such Terrible Handwriting and What to Do About It" by Emily Yoffe, that Tawny sent to me on the dying art of lovely handwriting.  The article details the reasons for the rise and fall of perfect penmanship and asks the question, in this computer age, if it even matters.  Well you can guess how I feel on the subject.  I hope to be nearly as stringent in my children's lesser academics (like mathematics) as I am with the important subjects (like reading, writing, art and of course, handwriting.) 

The article also discusses the opposing views of Palmer style of handwriting - what most of us learned - versus Italic script which was popular in Europe and America since the Renaissance. 

Yoffe's article makes a great case for the latter and I must say that I am tempted to give it a go.  Nan Jay Barchowsky is has been championing this dying art of Italic script for decades and offers her course in book form.  It is available here.  I think I will be getting it myself, or at the very least, my kids.  End of subject.

Heritage Restorations

Ya know when you come across a new product or company and you fall fast and you fall hard?  That's how it has been for me and Heritage Restorations.  My sister sent me that link to this company and within five minutes we were on the phone ooohing and ahhing. 

This is the description from the site:

"At Heritage Restorations, we locate, dismantle, restore, and re-erect 18th and 19th century timber frame barns, hand-hewn log cabins, gristmills, and other historic buildings. These time-tested, hand-crafted structures are then finished with modern, innovative, energy-efficient designs and materials. The completed structures make beautiful and unique homes, guest houses, commercial spaces and even.....barns!"

Totally fantastic. 

Check out these before and afters:

Yeah, I know, right?

And this one.

I want to go to there.

You can find more here.

far foods

Due to my reading choices as of late, I have been immersing myself in the concepts of slow food and eating local. So when I just spotted these images on swissmiss, they really shook me. Perhaps it takes a visual like this for people to see how ludicrous some of our choices are.

You can read more about the far foods alternative packaging concept here.

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse

Can you humor me with just a little more talk of Alice Waters?  I started reading her authorized biography a couple of days back and well, it just as the tag line says - "romantic, impractical, often eccentric and ultimately brilliant."

There are these two paragraphs, in particular, that I keep coming back to:

 (p.31)  "Much of the food that Alice had most loved was la cuisine du marche -   market cooking.  She had seen in in action many times.  A French housewife would stroll through a village market, sniffing, appraising, thinking.  If some farmer's basket of bristling, just harvested cardoons struck her fancy, and a particularly nice rabbit was hanging from the butcher's hook, the Frenchwoman would devise in her mind a rabbit-with-cardoons dish and then shop for harmonious accompaniments...the housewife would compose her bourride as she paced along the quay."

and then this other:

(p.37)  "Alice took to Martine immediately.  Alice's notions of French elegance were somewhat general; Martine's were highly specific.  Martine knew how to draw the perfect warm bath, just the right temperature, with a perfect little vase of flowers on the windowsill.  She knew how to arrange the curtains so that the light filtered through just so.  Martine had learned from her mother to search through the marches aux puces for the thing unanticipated but just right, and now she and Alice began to haunt the Bay Area's flea markets together."

For me, these seem to encapsulate many American womens' obsession with France.  I am no Francophile but without hesitation I can admit to being enviable of their je ne se quois.  And such a perfect phrase that is, for even if the French do know, they're not telling.  In the meantime we Americans live our lives: plastic water bottles, take-out food, Target & spray tans.  But it isn't our fault, it isn't our fault I tell you!  The French have been perfecting this je ne se quois for centuries.  Our mothers could not teach us what they never learned.  So instead we spend more money on more stuff thinking that this will give us style or grace or elegance.  Quite the opposite occurs. 

And perhaps, subconciously, that is what this blog has been to me.  An experiment in learning the subtleties, the small nuances in the everyday that make our living rich and beautiful.  I want to be a student of these things.  Will it change the world?  Most assuredly not.  Is it of supreme importance?  Again, no.  But I belive it will change my world, and the world of my children and theirs.  That it may effact our friends and our extended family.  That it may altar all us.  And that is more then enough.

learning to cook through a book

Though I have been cooking meals for years I would never go so far as to say that I can cook. Somehow, cooking out of necessity and really being able to cook are two totally different things.

I want to know how to cook.

And though it seems like a lovely notion to be without responsibility, living in Paris, and able to attend Cordon Bleu to begin ones culinary career - that is someone else's story and most assuredly not my own. If I want to learn to cook, it's going to be through a book. Or perhaps, four.

These are the ones I've been eyeing and I think that they would make for a well rounded education - so far as the basics are concerned. Here's what I'm going for: I would like to prepare meals the are simple, delicious, beautiful & healthy. That's doable, no?

If you have been or were to be taught to cook through a book - which book would it be?

garden of eatin'

I have to say that I'm loving this idea of "eating the view".  As a side note, Sean & I are midway through the "John Adams" mini-series.  I am left utterly appalled at how poor my knowledge of US history is.  Fantastic film so far.

video spotted here.

family reunion

My mother was going for a nostalgia feel.  It was a family reunion, after all.  So daily vintage tablecloths were arriving at the door, all courtesy of ebay.  For food, she went with fried chicken and spiral cut ham.  There was baked macaroni & cheese,  bacon & cheddar deviled eggs, dipped strawberries, carmel apple pie & strawberry short cake.  Oh, and root beer floats.  

We had a watermelon-seed spitting contest and there was some races and baseball on the back lawn.  

More than anything else, there were hours spent with the people that we love and haven't had good time with in years.  These kids that I grew up with, now have children of their own.  And we had the ridiculous joy of getting to see them run about just as we did so many years before.

It was nostalgic, yes.  Tablecloths or none.  

And it was the perfect way to end our month in Chicago - (though my heart is breaking a little bit today.)

{all photos by me}

Linnet

Let's just be honest right off the bat.  I don't sew.  I mean - I really don't sew.  Can't attach a button.  It's embarrassing.  I do want to learn how.  And after perusing Linnet's site, I want to learn now. 

Do you see how many images I used from their site?  Ummm...that'd be 58.  I may have just created their spring catalog - that's how ga-ga I am over their offerings.  I'm considering just strewing their ribbon and notions about my house and calling it decor - it's all that beautiful.

quickie: the 3/50 project

I have been seeing this all over the place but I just needed to share it here in case you haven't:

quickie: win a Madsen cargo bike

Ok, first off - I love this bike.  Do you know how stoked my kids would be to travel in this very fashion?

The thing is, I could maybe win it!  Oh, and so could you!

Get the deets here:

hope chest

 

I've never actually known anyone that kept a hope chest, that I can remember, so I'm unsure where or why the desire began.  I do have a deep love for traditions embedded with meaning and purpose (and a deep disdain for traditions lacking in those.)  Perhaps that is why the now nearly extinct tradition of preparing a  hope chest for one's daughter appeals to me so. I have been trying to research the topic some and there is surprisingly little out there.  Here's what I know.  A trunk of some sort is set aside for one's daughter as a place to store up mementos, heirlooms and practical tools for the time when the daughter is off to care for a home & family of her own.  Just typing that line sets my mind going with all the little lovelies I could fill a trunk (or truck) with for Eva.  And then once she is engaged (should she choose to marry) I could set to work on her trousseau (another dying tradition) to add it.  Of course I'll have to throw in a Le Creuet French Oven & skillet...

The fun part is that over the years, Eva can help me choose and prepare items for her hope chest.  It something fun for us to work on together.  We will also surprise her with new additions on her birthday or at Christmas.  And one day, when it's time for her to leave home for good - she'll take with her a chest filled with memories, treasures, love & hope.  Can you tell that I love this tradition? 

And can you guess what Eva is getting for her fifth birthday? 

Yep, me too.

If you are interested in preparing one of your own, this book is perhaps the best resource out there.

{images: illustration - mjkersen, chest - Lane Furniture, dishes- Royal Copenhagen, button jar - the fish knits, linens - Georgie Sharp, knitting basket - Martha Stewart, family Bible - Tad2106, Le Creuset - Dyxie, wedding dress - wiseacre, sewing kit - overmilkwood, wine glasses - Arte Italica, baby booties - woolybaby, cookbook - Kate*, apron - Tanya Whelan, bathroom items - Arte Italica}

Le Creuset

It began with Shauna's mention of Le Creuset. You know when you have long, silently admired something and then a simple mention of it sends you into that altered state of adoration. Yeah, that's what happened to me this week. I have been wanting a cast iron skillet for some time and just haven't done anything about it. I was thinking of the simple Lodge type, and my brother-in-law received just that one, this past Christmas. His whole household now adores it and uses it for just about everything.

I began to look into my cast iron options. Of course, Le Creuset was the one calling my name.  It's beautiful & functional (Oven, freezer & dishwasher safe.  The stoneware is microwave safe as well.)  I like quality & beauty.  I also love buying things that I can use & enjoy and then pass on to my children.  I would rather spend more on something made to last a lifetime (or beyond) then replace something every few years. 

As a sidenote: my mother had the flame colored pieces while I was growing up but she got rid of them because they were too heavy. Hence, I missed out on my birthright and she missed out on a killer set of arms.

My family mocks me mercilessly about my champagne taste and beer budget.  And it's true,  Le Creuset is not really whithin the realm of my possibilities, but... I have found a loophole. In an effort to make gift shopping easier, my mother-in-law is ever trying to talk me into starting a collection. The thing is, I'm just not a collection person. At least unless it has utilitarian purposes. Do you see where I am going with this? I think I have discovered the perfect thing to collect. And my mother-in-law never again has to scratch her head as to what to get me for Christmas. Perfect.

The only problem left now is committing to a color. When you are laying down $100 for a skillet, there's no looking back. And how does one guess what all or any future kitchens may look like? It's a quandry. My husband has voted to go red and go all the way with it. While red certainly seems like the most classic and sophisticated choice, I'm waffleing. In my present state I am leaning more towards choosing a few colors and having a more ecelectic mix. Something that says "don't expect this meal to be flawless just because I have fabulous cookware." I feel like perhaps a mixed set places the expectations a little lower. Oh, and it's just plain difficult for me to commit to one color, they're all so fun.

(I'm liking the mix of carribean, white/dune, kiwi & dijon. My husband thinks I've lost it.)

If you were starting a collection of kitchenware that you hoped to have for a lifetime - what color would you choose and why?

Labour and Wait

Labour and Wait is another one of those shops that has stolen my heart with it's simple mundane perfection.

Yep, more house hold goods that I am swooning over.  I know, I know.  I have issues.

composting

Here are some of my favorite composter options:

A good, sturdy, basic option.

If you determine that portability is important.

The creme de la creme.

Good for getting the kids involved.  

A how-to guide.

Compost bucket for kitchen scraps. 

Do you have a composter that you are really happy with?  Please fill us in!

{All items are available at Smith & Hawken except the Roly Pig which is available here.}

Earth Day

I think there are a bunch of old hippies scratching their heads trying to figure out when "earth friendly" went mainstream.  And though that comes with a lot of hiccups and myth, the day is long overdue.  

Happy Earth Day!  

Each Earth Day I want to choose a new "kind to earth" baby step for the coming year.  This year, instead of just talking about it, I want to actually start composting.  In fact, we may just need to go ahead and buy a composter as our families Earth Day present.  

What about you?  

Are you committing to any baby steps today? 

{image from inhabitat.com}

light-hearted parenting

As soon as Jora mentioned this article, I knew that I had to check it out.  As soon as I had checked it out, I knew that I had to post it here.  It was written by Gretchen Rubin from the Huffington Post and the piece is entitled "10 Ways to be a More Light-Hearted Parent."  I was so thrilled to find this, as the topic is something that I am continually pondering. 

One of my Twelve Commandments is "Lighten up," and I have a lot of resolutions aimed at trying to be a more light-hearted parent: less nagging, more laughing. We all want a peaceful, cheerful, even joyous, atmosphere at home -- but we can't nag and yell our way to get there. Here are some strategies that help me:

1. At least once a day, make each child helpless with laughter.

2. Sing in the morning. It's hard both to sing and to maintain a grouchy mood, and it sets a happy tone for everyone--particularly in my case, because I'm tone deaf and my audience finds my singing a source of great hilarity.

3. Get enough sleep yourself. It's so tempting to stay up late, to enjoy the peace and quiet. But morning comes fast. Along the same lines...

4. Wake up before your kids. We were so rushed in the morning that I started getting up half an hour earlier than my children. That means I can get myself organized, check my email, post to Slate, and get my bag packed before they get up. It's tough to wake up earlier, but it has made a huge difference in the quality of our mornings.

5. I've been researching the hedonic treadmill: people quickly adapt to new pleasures or luxuries, so it takes a new pleasure to give them a jolt of gratification. As a result, I've cut back on treats and impulse buys for my kids. The ice-cream sandwich or the Polly Pockets set won't be an exciting treat if it isn't rare.

6. Most messages to kids are negative: "stop," "don't," "no." So I try to cast my answers as "yes.""Yes, we'll go as soon as you've finished eating," not "We're not leaving until you've finished eating." It's not easy to remember to do this, but I'm trying.

7. Look for little ways to celebrate. I haven't been doing holiday breakfasts long, but they're a huge source of happiness. They're quick, fun, and everyone gets a big kick out of them.

8. Repetition works. A friend told me he was yelling at his kids too much, so he distilled all rules of behavior into four key phrases: "keep your hands to yourself"; "answer the first time you're asked"; "ask first"; and "stay with us" (his kids tended to bolt). You can also use the school mantras: "Sit square in your chair;" "accidents will happen," "you get what you get, and you don't get upset" (i.e., when cupcakes are handed out, you don't keep trying to switch).

9. Say "no" only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, "All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle."

10. When I find myself thinking, "Yippee, soon we won't have to deal with a stroller," I remind myself how fleeting this is. All too soon the age of Cheerios and the Tooth Fairy will be over. The days are long, but the years are short.

Have you found any good strategies to cut back on the shouting and to add moments of laughing, singing, and saying "yes"?

{image by mainemomma2007}