The week before Halloween, Miss F would have told you she was going to be a beautiful monarch butterfly. Then I made the mistake of saying under my breath that a “Mighty Macs” costume would have been cute. Note that I said “would have been”. However, I looked into the eyes of the girl who thoroughly enjoyed going to Philadelphia for the premier of “The Mighty Macs” (read about it here), copied movie advertisements to hand out to strangers (was upset we didn’t walk her to the grocery to hand them out), asked to call all of her friends to come see the movie, was doing basketball drills in the front yard, and now wants to be a basketball coach just like her Gram.
So, I said yes.
Thank goodness for the world series. I made it on a night when my husband had a buddy over and I just went for it for a few hours. I just traced a pattern from an old jumper. I couldn’t see a great picture of what these uniforms looked like in the 70’s, so matching the pleats was tough. I only see the hemline I didn’t bother ironing out of haste and also laziness. She doesn’t notice it though and I need to remember that.
Future basketball coach.
He was pretending to be in a bad mood but I only saw cuteness.
Protector or villain?
Little D pretty much wears this every day so this day wasn’t too different for him.
The bunch.
My annual picture with the kiddos for my birthday….with a China man’s hat. It’s very necessary. They kinda look confused, though.
1. Honeycomb Earrings from oliveandcocoa.com that I love so very much.
2. Goat’s milk caramels’ from happygoat.com. These are awesome. Truly.
3. Adorable wicker backpack for picking apples on the weekend or as a very expensive toy picker-upper. brookfarmgeneralstore.com
4.Madeline Weinrib makes amazing textiles…that is no secret. madelineweinrib.com
5. Super-cute and cozy looking sweater-cuff boots from urbanoutfitters.com
6. How perfect is this marshmallow roaster? shopterrain.com
7. This camera has been on my wish list for a while. I do miss film. lomography.com
This Week:
I feel like I was able to take a deep breath in life this week. My husband was gone, but it was still a pretty good week. This was only because God helped me see it that way. This is a heavy travel time for my husband, mostly because he’s making up for a loss right now that wasn’t his fault. It’s a tough position for him and it also demands a lot from me. I don’t really watch TV with the exception of Project Runway and Top Chef, but I was able to watch the entire Mad Men series on netflix while he’s been gone. That a crazy lot of episodes. When my little buddy was crying this week , I was remembering what I said when he was a newborn babe in my arms. I told myself, no matter what, that I would take the time to cuddle him while I could and kiss his tears away. Someday he will smell like BO and will ask me what’s for dinner. My sweet girl is ridiculously distracted by birds during school. True, I created this monster by introducing her to the Audubon books, but it’s kind-of a problem. I’ve learned to help it by stopping for bird breaks in exchange for focus. It kinda works. My middle guy is constantly telling me I don’t play with him which is completely not true because I build him a Lego set (sometimes the same one every day) every morning before school. It still hurts my people-pleasing heart to hear those words but all I can do is my best. It seems that I am constantly hearing, “Let’s get together”. No, it’s not the song from “The Parent Trap”, it’s people that I care about who need a friend. I love and care about each one of my friends, but it’s so hard to have really good connections with people when you only see them every now and then. I can only have so many people over, ya know? We do so love to entertain, but it would be nice to take a break every now and then and be the company ;) It is great to see them when I can and this week I got to see quite a few. So, you see, at the end of the week, we can only do our best, every day, to pick out the things that gave us the most joy instead of the most pain. Sometimes my best feels like a failure, but this week God gave me the peace that it was enough and I am so very thankful for that.
28 is looking pretty good so far. Oh yeah, it was my birthday this week.
Another bright side to life: I’m thankful to still be in my 20’s a bit longer…
Orange is a beautiful color, not just because it is nice to look at, but because it is a glowing representation of the air turning cooler. When I grew pumpkins last year, it was fun to see how the chill actually does make the difference between a pumpkin that is a dull orange and one that is a bright orange. It’s like the chill gives it a little fall glow.
I like to go to this little pumpkin patch near our house every year because it’s the closest thing to a country scene as you can get in the middle of a city. We tried out a new one last year with Miss F’s Kindergarten class called Oma’s, but it was sooo far away and basically in another city. It was a cute little place with an awesome cottonseed hill for the kids to slide down. We got an invite again this year but it was so warm and last year the other parents were MIA, pretty much like every other field trip, so we opted for a local family trip. The kids always want to go for the parking lot set-up with the little ferris wheel and flashing lights. I’m pretty old-fashioned about stuff like this so chances are they won’t see me driving up to one of those places.
silly girl
When there is no pumpkin class being taught, it’s a great place to hop about.
He found out it ate leaves and was pretty thrilled.
This is so true to his character. One minute he’s here, the next he’s off to find trouble.
Love my sweet girl.
Everyone needs coffee for a walk in a corn maze.
We found this little Acrea moth caterpillar in the maze. We took him home and checked out his stats a bit. He also went on the hayride.
The haze is setting in at this point.
This sweet man in the yellow shirt has been at this pumpkin patch/Christmas tree farm for as long as I can remember.
I love that.
Vacation is a wonderful thing. We recently got to go back to PA to see some family and friends, the Bloomsburg Huskies play (the special teams coach is my father-in-law), and attend the movie premier for “The Mighty Macs” (about my mother-in-law…check it out here and here). It was a fun yet very exhausting trip. I’m still glad we took it. It’s very difficult to squeeze everyone and everything into a 6 day trip, but we made it happen! If there’s one thing I’ve learned about travel and family it’s that you can never make everyone happy so you might as well make the best choices you can considering all and move on with that choice. In any case, I wanted to bring a piece of Pennsylvania home so we could talk about our trip and what we did. So, as we were pulling away, I grabbed some moss from the grass by the fence and threw it in a bag, hoping security wouldn’t snatch it away. I threw a few orange and red leaves in for good measure. Thankfully, it made it all home with no questions asked, just a few raised eyebrows.
At Papa Ed and Grandma Trudy’s house. We all loved the green. Look at my sweet boy :)
All of us with Gram.
All of us with Papa Ed and Grandma Trudy.
Back to the fantastic moss. Isn’t it lovely? To make sure we could enjoy this moss for a long time, I decided to make a terrarium.
To make a good terrarium, you have to make sure the moisture is balanced enough for the moss to be alive but not grow mushrooms. Mushrooms are cute, but the kind that grow in this dirt are very much not. You’ll need soil, small rocks or pieces of gravel (about the size of aquarium gravel), charcoal pellets (to keep odor at bay), and your moss of choice.
Of course the project lady herself was involved. I can’t think of one thing I have done, of late, that has not involved this girl. Am I creating a monster? If so, at least she’ll be a productive monster.
So, we layer the materials as follows. I realized afterwards that my rocks should go on the bottom for drainage. Sorry.
R O C K S
1/2 D I R T, moist
C H A R C O A L P E L L E T S
1/2 D I R T, moist
M O S S
The idea is for the moist soil to keep the moss wet enough, while not getting moldy and soggy. I spray mine every now and then with a spray bottle.
Here are the layers and Miss F adding the finishing touches. This mushroom is actually from my super-cute pincushion from Hi Tree. It is a felt tree stump, like below.
Cute, right?
You shouldn’t need to re-moisten it for a LOOONNNG time. If you do see moisture on the lid, remove it for a day.
Enjoy your vacation!
I missed InstaFriday so I changed the name to suit my needs :) This is where I make use of some of those camera pictures few people see.
Last week we had the privilege of going to the premier of “The Mighty Macs”. It was pretty cool because it just happens to be about my mother-in-law, Cathy Rush. The movie is the incredible story of her time at a little school called Immaculata University, as their women’s basketball coach. This was a time when women’s basketball was still an afterthought. Cathy managed to take a team with no gym and no equipment and turn them into a 3-time national championship winning team! Pretty amazing, huh? It just so happens that my husband was conceived during the first season, which is a fun little tidbit for our family. It was great to experience the energy of the premiere and 2,000 people filled to the brim with excitement. We all are excited to see what happens with this movie.
So, go see the movie!! We just took 20 people on Friday :)
Heading into Downtown Philadelphia.
At the premiere, standing in front of the team bus from the movie.
Cathy in one of her many interviews.
Miss F getting ready for an interview.
Telling everyone how proud she is of Gram.
The radiant Cathy Rush.
The actresses who play the team members: Katie Hayek, Kim Blair, Meghan Sabia, Kate Nowlin, Taylor Steel
Marley Shelton who plays Sister Sunday
David Boreanaz as Ed Rush, Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia, and their families
Carla Gugino as Cathy Rush
Miss F gets a better view from one of daddy’s buddies.
A sweet girl asks for an interview
Visiting with some of the nuns.
Miss F and Miss Immaculata
Getting ready for the movie! We are excited!
Miss Gugino and Miss Shelton being recognized for their work in the film.
Mayor Nutter
All of us with Cathy and James Malinchak.
Ed Rush/ Papa Ed talking with Tim Chambers, Director and Writer
The two fashionable ladies.
Some of the refreshments, pictured here in our parking garage. We had to get our 6 year-old home, but managed to snag some soft pretzels and mustard and a few mini cheesecake sandwiches.
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