Our House in the Middle of Our Street

Fall is my absolute favorite season here in Nebraska. Things start to really cool off, colors are brilliant, and I am all about cuddling up with hot cocoa around our wood-burning fireplace. Shut me in a cottage for a full year of fall and I'd be happy! The small-town Nebraska City Applejack Festival is the start of the apple season, and what better way to celebrate the Fall and the founder of Arbor Day than heading up for some Carmel apples?! You can see last years short post here . This year some friends and I met there, and we took the kiddos to an outdoor hike, art walk, and natural materials play center called Tree Adventure . What a GEM! This place is only $15 for a yearly pass for an individual, and since one-day admission is $6.50, I opted for the pass! I will be taking my kiddos back here a LOT during the next year! (Since they are both 2 & under, we didn't have to get the family pass, which was $27.00 for 2 adults & all children). You start on a path through ...

This is a unique review here but it was so great I had to include it on my main blog instead of just BabyMast . This is a short narrative film for children by Bill Mason, titled Paddle to the Sea . It was a tribute to the book published in 1940, and was about a small boy who created aboat that could sail the open waters and see things he could not. Over the winter months, the boy worked so hard whittling him down from wood, painting him, and finally releasing him. From the Amazon website: Like The Red Balloon, Paddle To The Sea folklorically portrays a toy's journey, with a bit of added personification since the whittled boat contains a stoic Native American man carved into its seat. The film begins in a Nipogon log cabin, where a boy laments releasing his newly crafted artwork but soon realizes that setting his toy free is the only way to enliven it. Paddle goes on a number of adventures, and finally makes it to the sea after being fished out, stuck in a rut, and treated with ki...

A friend of mine asked if I could make her daughter a "Gryffindor Scarf" from the Harry Potter movies for Halloween. Sure! I love learning new things and was up for the challenge of knitting an item with changing colors! It turned out great and after the blocking, fit the little lady like a Gem! *** up next: review post on Paddle to the Sea, a short tribute film Coming soon: Review post on Unschooling Unmanual followed by a full post on Unschooling ideology.

photocredit Dear Readers, As some of you may know I host a monthly book club, born from my English major past through my voracious reader friends from Grace Chapel and my local knitting group! Although I will be doing a review of each (or send you back to the reviews I've already done of some) I am putting an open-ended invitation to read along and comment online. Here are the titles: October : People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, she's a previous Pulizter prize winner, and this is the current "One Book One Lincoln" November : Havah: The Story of Eve by Tosca Lee December : Shattered Dreams by Irene Spencer January : Gilead by Marilynne Robinson February : The Outside World by Tova Mirvis March : These Is My Words by Nancy Turner April : River of Doubt by Candice Millard May : The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger *Read a good book lately? Tell me about it!* *** Click here for some family photos of our Memorial Day weekend!

If you haven't ever heard of Alice Waters , owner of Chez Panisse restaurant , you must be under the biggest anti-cooking rock. She is the hippie version of Julia Child, a supporter of Slow Food USA , and the creator behind the Edible Schoolyard idea & introductory garden in Berkeley, California. I have a special place in my heart for Alice Waters, who writes entire cookbooks on a food group. My favorite of her cookbooks is her most recent, The Art of Simple Food . This book is about the first Edible Schoolyard, which broke ground in the middle of an unused parking lot in an eyesore middle school due to graffiti and urban cement. It is a colorful explanation of what the Universal Idea & it's goals are, complete with tons of pictures from National Geographic photographer David Liittschwager. I saw this awhile ago on my Amazon recommends, and I knew I had to read it. A few weeks of waiting from Inter-Library-Loan and I read it through in a day. It's just an easy,...

photocredit Hello again! Sorry I dropped off blogland for awhile, but we've had lots of goings-on at Our House lately. For one, our internet has been spotty all week, and whenever I sat down to look at email or peruse my favorite websites, I couldn't! To be fixed later... Secondly, our children are not sleeping in the same room anymore, they did great for a few months, but after weeks of disciplining L. with getting out of bed at night and waking up his little sister, who did not find that funny in the least bit, we've decided to let him sleep in the computer room at night (the only other room is ours!), and during naptime, which means my time of the computer has literally been chopped down to one hour a night which normally is our dinner time. Until we work out a better situation, I might not be blogging or getting online as much as I used to, and I've actually kind of enjoyed taking a huge break from the internet. Although, my inbox did not! These next few months ar...