Apple Picking

A friend of Caleb's from work has a couple of big apple trees on his farm place, which he very kindly invited us to pick from, so this evening as soon as my man came home from work the three of us went to pick apples. It was a most lovely evening.

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... ~ :: ~ ...

Greta Rose seemed to enjoy the experience from the Ergo on her Daddy's back. Toward the end she wanted out, though, because she wanted to pick too. We got a great lot of apples. I want to make applesauce and, if time allows, apple butter. (My mama and I have had fun making apple butter in past autumns; there is nothing quite so good as apple butter for a toasted piece of Mama's homemade whole wheat bread ...oh, the ecstasies.) I have a feeling that the amount of apples I have won't make applesauce to last all year, but at this point I don't know that I can process more than a couple of 5-gal. pails and laundry baskets full. I'll know better in future years I suppose. :)

Monday Favorites

sweetie head

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There was a seriously handsome dude cleaning out an engine in my garage last night. :)

Crunching Leaves

This afternoon my little friend and I went out to a spot in our yard full of lovely golden leaves and enjoyed our first time crunching leaves together. It was wonderfully fun to watch her discover these elements of autumn for the first time!

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sleep, little one, sleep

I saw little blueish lines of first teeth cutting through yesterday!

Evening Sky

Autumn Begins

Cabin in the North Woods ~part 3~

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Smocks for little Button Rose

I have ordered a pattern to make little winter smocks for my Greta and am so excited to have them for her! I found the pattern through Jewels' helpful link here. Yesterday I was able to go to the fabric store and get enough to make three of these little play dresses. The pattern's "View 1" is fully lined and I am hoping that that will translate into being fully reversible (for expansion of wardrobe possibilities and all).

The Lord was kind to me yesterday as I went to the fabric store. We don't get to a good shopping center very often because of today's fuel prices, so we rode along with Caleb's dad who had other business in town (I tried to be as efficient as possible because others were waiting on me, but it always takes me a bit to make the one right choice for dresses to wear everyday!) I ended up going to a different fabric store than I usually go to and found to my delight that they were having a huge sale. Two of the prettiest fabrics were $0.99/yard, the denim was 75% off, and the other three prints were marked considerably down. This was such a relief to someone trying to make lovely clothes for her little princess as frugally as possible. You can see in the picture which will go together: teal and sage with roses lined in pink, denim lined in tan with rose wreaths, and red flowers with gold stripes lined in gold with white feathery leaves. She has a couple pairs of cotton cable-knit tights to go with these, and I hope to figure out how to make some warm little bloomers for her to stay extra warm with.

I am listening to a most beautiful and autumnal playlist this afternoon. If you want a delicious "scroll" through the sights and sounds of beautiful autumn, visit The Button Willow Chronicles. I did earlier this afternoon and just left it in my taskbar so I could enjoy the lovely music.

Greta is taking her nap now. I have potatoes boiling on the stove for supper and pork chops in the oven. I used my lovely suribachi to grind some dried herbs for the top of them before I put them in. It smelled so nice freshly ground like that. I showed Greta what I was doing and, instead of swishing around in the herb powder like I was going to let her do, she thought the bowl itself was pretty nice.

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The little bouncy seat that Greta has spent many hours happily watching me keep house from is no longer much of a help. She has figured out how to get out! The minute she's in and free from the strap she starts twisting over and crawling out. She is such a busy little girl. I think I'm going to have my hands full. She wants to explore everything. The Ergo is a wonderful option if I need to leave the room she's in. She can ride in the back now, which makes laundry and dishes and such much easier.

:: egg yolks and a growing girl ::

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Greta's very first mouthfuls of solid food were had on vacation one morning during breakfast. She sampled some of my egg. (We got a picture of it, of course; maybe I'll post it later with my other vacation pictures.) She is growing fast and is getting more and more eager to eat our food. She leans forward to have a drink whenever any of us is drinking something and always wants to grab the food off our plate during meal-times. This morning was the first that we attempted to have a real breakfast time for Greta.

She sat in her highchair and wore a terry bib. I need to sew a sort of belt for her chair to keep her from sliding right out (we improvised with her blanket). She seemed to enjoy the experience of this morning's egg. I think she ate three little half-spoonfuls. She sucked all of it right off of the spoon, and then I let her chew on the spoon by herself a bit. Do you see anyone who looks like she'll be left-handed? Of course when all the excitement of chewing on her spoon was over she filled up her tummy with noonies. She likes that best of all. So... here we begin another daily rhythm with the Rosebud! ~'::

Cabin in the North Woods ~part 2~

The Lake

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