peelosophy

• Odeedoh has a great post on reusing a train table.  Right now ours is at the Kuhn’s b/c of lack of space, but when it returns it maybe reinvented to either a contruction site or dinosaur island.
• I do love Soulemama and came across a tour of her home on Cookie’s Nesting Blog. Even though her style isn’t really ours, there are so many things that resonated with me.  For example, she has 3 kids, a dog and a cat in a sweet little house. We totally have her beat by one dog.  I also loved what she had to say about talking at breakfast with her kids about what they would all like to do that day and try and make a way to accomplish it – including her stuff.  Which by the way, the whole having a conversation at breakfast is a little foreign to us.  And I really loved the sweet picture of her baby sleeping on the fur rug.
• Lastly, I really enjoyed this post from Simple Mom about menu planning.  It always seems like this should be such an easy thing to do but I always complicate it.  I really appreciated her simple (I guess hence her name) approach to it with the added techie (I sleep with one therefore I am) ideas that made me salivate a little.  Sorry gross.

Dinner tonight was a new experience. There were candles. It all started because I’m reading the book, “The Intentional Family“.  It’s written by a family therapist and talks about how families can greatly benefit from cultivating family rituals.  These rituals can be anything from family dinners, holidays, couple time, vacations, etc.

So one of the rituals I am working on is our dinner time.  I would say we already had a pretty good thing going.  We sat and ate as a family I would say 70% of the week and I cooked.  After reading the book, I realized that I really wanted this time to be a ritual for family connecting.  Before the book, I don’t think were very intentional about making it a time for this connectedness, I guess it I thought it would just happen on it’s own. Read more…

One of the projects I loved doing this summer was creating and then using JJ’s Zoo Field Guide.  We are Zoo members (thank you to Mr. and Mrs. E!) and with that you receive a STL Zoo Magazine.  JJ and I usually look through it together when it arrives and talk about the animals we want to see the next time we go to the zoo.  Unfortunately, the next time we go to the zoo we have already forgotten what animals we saw in the magazine.

This time when the magazine came, we recycled it by making a Zoo Field Guide. Here’s how we did it: Read more…

Riley came over and we built a fairy house in the backyard.  Although she told me there were no such thing as fairies- I convinced her otherwise.  This is so unlike me – I don’t even know how to talk about Santa Claus b/c I never grew up believing in Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or other magical creatures.  But once I got going describing fairies to her – I couldn’t stop!!! Part of me was ashamed that I was lying to a 5-year-old, but the other part of me was thrilled that I was instilling in her a sense of wonder about “another world.” There is something important about kids going up with this wonder of an outside world.  I don’t know what it is exactly, maybe just for the fact that they do grow up so fast and the harshness of the  real world leaves no room for fairies.

Anyways – here’s a picture of our fairy house.  It was built mainly out of sticks, landscaped with white rock, the roof was covered in moss and decorated with sweet pea flowers.  And although you can’t see it from the picture there is a locust shell protecting intruders on the roof (the boys idea of course). What’s crazy about this photo is that I could not get a clear picture of it – it kept turning out kinda foggy…I’d like to think it had something to do with the fairies.

I have been playing around with the idea of having my own blog for some time now. It’s been quite an ordeal to finally make the decision. Here’s what I’ve been struggling with…

Not to Blog:

• I feel like I don’t make sense ever, not in conversation but much less in any form of written word.
• It’s trendy- everyone and their Grandma has a blog.
• Who would read it – I’ve gotten over this now b/c that’s not my point.

To Blog:

• I feel like I have things I want to remember and may want to share.
• To learn something new – I feel like it would help my brain…at least it wouldn’t hurt it.
• I want to.

I don’t have a good idea of what it’s going to look like yet. But I’d assume it will reflect the season of life I’m in now and things that I love.