Taken at Ft. Laramie

kitchen window garden

cozy together

The babies and I spent a night at the farm and had such lovely minutes with the folks.  Among other normalish-home-day things we did, I pulled out Mama's stash of magazines and found all sorts of pictures to cut out to make collage calenders for us for the coming year (a project I am very excited about!)  Olivia worked on her beautiful layered colored paper art and took turns soothing Mister Tired-&-Teething.  We listened to an exciting audiobook and drank hot tea that Mama brought to us on a tray.  Spiced apple candle and a red geranium.  Simply lovely.

~Our happy afternoon craft table in the sunpatch at Mama's yesterday.~

What else did we do?  Ate wonderful food cooked & baked by Mama and Livi, enjoyed watching Greta pretend to cook & can, sang songs, drank lots of hot tea, washed dishes, did a few housekeeping dailies, relaxed (I did!), watched a Nigella Christmas episode on the laptop at bedtime, enjoyed being together.  

Pictures taken by Mama & me 

ta-da!

My man's project is finished!
A shiny, stainless-steel smoker.  Isn't it a beauty?  Designed by himself and built in our garage.  Firebox, smoker, cold smoker; custom grating, smoke-regulating doors and a handy pull-out shelf.

It's a beast...

but Caleb can handle it

without much apparent effort. :)



Easy-to-latch shelf



Off to its new home it goes to cook good things.