Category Archives: home

What I Will Miss

animals, church, family, home, nature, travel


I’m driving home tomorrow, and look forward to seeing my
dear husband, and cat, and garden. Also joyfully anticipate going to church!

 

 

 

 

 

But I will miss:
1) The quiet and understanding presence of my daughter.

 

 

 

 


2) The soft cheeks of Baby C., the sweet smell of his head, and milk on his breath.

3) The calm and contented feeling that comes when Baby falls asleep in my arms.

4) The deer grazing and ruminating on the lawn front and back. It’s their home, and the fawns even take naps out the back door.

5) The forest.

6) Three cats who are different “people” from my cat. The one pictured here is Hannah, who lost an eye to an infection as a shelter kitten.

7) The whistle of the train as it passes several times a day.
Right now I’m just very grateful for the past twelve days. Glory to God for all things!

Quote of the Week–Spurgeon

buildings, church, home, quotes

“… for dear to our hearts is our home, although it be the humblest cottage, or the scantiest garret; and dearer far is our blessed God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. It is at home that we feel safe: we shut the world out and dwell in quiet security. So when we are with our God we “fear no evil.” He is our shelter and retreat, our abiding refuge. At home, we take our rest; it is there we find repose after the fatigue and toil of the day.” ~C.H. Spurgeon

(Thanks to Leslie at Abiding.)

Baby Week

family, food and cooking, home, nature, pie, travel, ,


During the week that Seventh Grandson was born, I did take quite a few pictures, but I only lately managed to make them available to my blog. I present a sketchy photo journal of my time here with the family so far.

When I arrived in town, walking was the order of the day. Behind the hospital nature paths wind about, surrounded by ponds and trees such as these birches.

 

 

I am sleeping in a room with this quilt. A grandma in H’s church made this quilt as a wedding present last year. This year she sewed a smaller quilt for Baby.

During the waiting time I sat in a corner of the hospital room and worked on potholder tops. This one uses some scraps from the crib quilt I made earlier.

After a while I did a second free-form design in aqua and purple.

In my sewing basket were two ratty and thin potholders I had basted together already. While H. was in early labor I put a bright spicy new cover on them/it. That item doesn’t need to go home with me and get stuffed and backed, so I gave it to her potholder drawer already.

 

 

Fast forward to Day 3 or 4, and Baby is wrapped in The Quilt, showing its cozy Minky backing.

I took a video of eight deer on the back lawn, while the fawns were prancing about playing with each other. And this still shot of one of the deer looking into the laundry room window. The deer often study us through the windows when we are watching them.
It was raining the first two days of Baby’s life, and when the rain stopped, the leaves had become autumnal.
Some Jonagolds that we got at the apple farm ten days ago went into this pie, which I baked in H’s convection oven. Maybe the oven is the reason it came out looking so perfect? It didn’t taste perfect, though, because those apples don’t have enough complexity in their flavor.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of the household cats, and the most curious about this new resident.

She caught her first mouse this week.

 

 

 

When Baby was six days old, H. wrapped him up in a Moby wrap and we three took a walk. We ended up at the back of their property, with its big Ponderosa pines…

 

…and their cones.
The maple tree in the back yard is changing. Baby is changing every day. I wish we lived in clans all together, so I wouldn’t have to leave one part of the family to go be with another. It’s a reminder that this world, always leaving something longed-for, is not our true home.

Blanket Love

art, family, home

My lifelong greediness for blankets might have had its beginning when I was a young girl in a small town where a house burned down. Someone in the community was taking up a collection of household items for the victims, and my father and mother, not ever known for almsgiving, collaborated on taking blankets from the household supply to donate to the family in need.

From this event I learned something, that blankets were not a given for everyone, and the new knowledge was strongly impressed on my young mind. For years it was merely an appreciation for the blessing of being warm under the covers in an intact house, but as an adult responsible for making up my own children’s beds, the formative thankfulness has combined with my sinful tendency to hoard, so that I have collected many more blankets than I need.

Many of them are hand-me-downs, even electric blankets from which I pulled the wires and sometimes even sewed up the holes. Some veteran wool military blankets were so thin I had to retire them, but even then I didn’t throw them away, but lacking linen closets I stored them between mattresses and box springs until such time as I could use them for quilt batting.

Most of these thrifty blanket plans I never carried out. My blanket love was fed by passing through the bedding department at Macy’s or Target. More sinful impulses rose up in those places.

This week, I sit here at the computer and use the mouse in my right hand to browse web pages displaying gorgeous works of love and art in fabric. My left arm cradles my sleeping grandbaby wrapped in his own cozy layers of love demonstrated through time and creativity. I feel a wealth of blankets in the world.

One particular story on the Quilt Festival site was of another house that burned down, and a woman who took her own recently completed wall-hanging Christmas quilt to the suddenly homeless and blanketless as a gift. It was many years ago, but the sacrificial act goes on warming and strengthening the original recipients and many more of us who need to get a proper perspective on making a house a home.

Lately I’ve been lightening my hoard, as pieces devolve into moving pads or cat beds, or go to my children who are setting up their own households. With the increasing mental and physical space I hope to better exercise my homemaking skills. I might even make a new blanket!