New Job and Internet silence

Happy Advent!

Sorry to have been so silent.  I changed jobs and have been internet less for quite some time.  I tried going to the local library but the branch library didn't have enough band width and I kept getting booted off.

So I am finally able to get back on and thought I would let you know that I am still around.

I hope that your advent is productive.  We are enjoying our move to St. Anne's in Livonia.  MK is in the choir and the youngest has already served twice.

The people are friendly and the atmosphere is warm and inviting. Plus it's the whole enchilada.

I probably won't be here again for quite a while again.  I am hoping to have some time to post all my Christmas projects.  I have actually been quite prolific this year, but it still doesn't seem like enough.

Take care!

Your friend in Christ,
Kate

Some more {Happy & Pretty}

My dh has been really working hard on fixing up things around the house.  He power washed the back deck and then the front porch in preparation of re-staining and doing some painting too.

This is our front porch in process.  That greenery you see are some grape vines and bamboo.

Our peaches are doing well too. Can't wait to harvest them!

This next picture is a project that has been in the process for a while.  It is still not quite finished but it is really beautiful.  My dh made it from some oak we had.  It is really pretty.  He plans to put padding on the pre dieu and upholster it too.

Thanks for stopping by!  What are you up to this summer?

God Bless
Kate

Knit and Read

joining with small things

Catching up on my Church History and trying to finish a socks

So some of my children have read this books in their studies and I wanted to firm up my knowledge of church history and since I am a History major it is no hardship.  I am finding quite interesting.  I started a notebook to answer the questions because that is how I retain information.  The socks....they are another story.

So these are socks I started in January I think.  I got a great book for Christmas ~ A Sock Knitter's Guide to yarn.  It is really interesting and informative.  It also talks about using the yarn you have to make strong socks.  So I thought I would give it a try and then ran into some snags along the way so it was put down for quite some time.  I have picked it back up and pushing through.  I told my daughter these were going to be eclectic socks because I keep changing how I am knitting the leg.

I will try to remember to post and link up when they are finally done.  I am itching to move on to something else so I am using that as a motivator to get these done!

Have a wonderful weekend!  And thanks for stopping by.

God Bless,

Kate

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

{Pretty}

I have a daughter who loves to arrange flowers.  She is working on learning more about how to do this.  She maintains flowers on our Marian altar as well.  This is a mix of shasta daisys that grow wild here and tickseed which we planted from a purchased plant last year and seems to really love it here.

This is the tickseed in the raised garden bed we put in this year.  We are working on coming up with a different name for it as no one in the family really likes the word tick and what it congers up for us...nasty parasitic insect....but the flowers are pretty.

{Happy}

Homemade Strawerry jam!  We have not been able to do this in years!  It turned out great and I wish we could make more but it is not in the budget this year.  We will have to be stingy and make sure we are eating other jams too.  MK and I worked on this together last Saturday.  We make a pretty good team. We canned 9 pints and had one left over to eat right away.  It is almost gone!

{Funny}

No funnies that I could find this week to capture on "film".  We do enjoy much laughter in the evenings though.  With no television to entrance, we usually have time after praying the rosary to joke around, play cards or board games. It is really great to listen to your children develop a sense of humor.  Some of the jokes are real groaners...but some surprise and are spot on.  

{Real}

So I walked around the farm this week and snapped pictures on works in progress.  We are clearing out brush and things that did not produce what we had hoped.  This has been a LONG time coming.  DH has finally enough energy and good sized help to tackle this job and he is going at it with a vengence. So while you are not going to see before pictures, I wanted to post some after so as things progress I can see the changes.  Plus some pictures of our garden.

cleared fence and usable gate!

a view opened back up

from across the yard clear sailing!

Stubborn green ash tree ~ gone!

Teaching boys how to repair a hydrant...more easily watering the garden now

it is very dry here this year

garlic looking good!

peppers!

new hydrant in action watering garden

Thanks for tagging along I am hooking up with Like Mother Like Daughter

My Capture of Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

{Pretty}

So at the moment the pretty is still on the camera.  I will download it tomorrow.  My daughter MK is trying hard to grow cut flowers so that we can have flowers in the house even those most of us have allergies.  She cut some shasta daisies and another flower I don't recall it's name and set them on our dining table.  It was a very cheerful thing to see when I got home.

{Happy}

This tub is clean a few times a year.  We don't really use it anymore so it collects dust and many other things it shouldn't.  I made the effort this week to clean it up some and looking at the whiteness of it when I come into the bathroom just makes me happy.  

{Funny}

Due to looking through a bunch of pictures for my daughter's graduation party, I realized that this young man has a plethora of silly pictures.  He is the one in most pictures who is doing something silly just as you snap the picture.  He makes me laugh and I thought I would share that with you today.  I admit this picture may be a little scary but he also does a very good twitchy eye Dryfus from the Pink Panther movies.

{Real}

My family is very happy to be able to share another Father's day with this great Dad!  My husband has been through much and still smiles big!

I am hooking up today with the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter head on over and check out what others have captured this week.

God Bless!

Kate

Graduation party day

Our first homeschool graduate, MK.  She is a very dedicated learner and while she had times where motivation was problem, more often than not she was the one pushing to make sure we got through her lessons.

I am very proud of the young lady she has become.  I am very graced by God to have such a daughter.  She is up to any task and really loves things that surprise me ~ Chemistry, Algebra...the logic of it all.  Most of all her faith.  I am impressed with all my younger children's knowledge of the Faith.  I find it funny when I get home and am eager to share something only to find out they already knew about that.  Guess I have to catch up.  It is my plan this summer to try to get in more reading on the Faith.

We have a college graduate as well.  Another VERY motivated daughter.  She has a degree in Music and Psychology. 

She would probably not be happy with me about this picture but it is the best one I could find.  She is a very entertaining young lady. When times were tough she would leave us random silly pictures on my husband's camera.  We are very proud of all she has accomplished as well.

Thank you Lord for gifting us with two such wonderful young ladies.

Thanks for stopping by!

God Bless,
Kate

Just a Quick Check in

Hi,

I just wanted to make sure I put something up this week.  It has to be short ~ I have prayers to go say.  It has been an interesting week.  I have much time to read and learn more about my faith this week.  I keep asking God to help us either get closer to tradition or to bring tradition closer to us.
So far no move...but I am thankful for the time that he is taking to prepare me for such a move.  I have learned over the years that when I come across something three times, I need to pay attention.

What have I recently come across three times?  You need to pack up your stuff and move to a traditional community where you can receive the support of like minded people and be close to daily reception of the Sacraments.

Okay ~ so we are pondering how to do that.  We are just in the pondering stages at the moment.  We will ponder and pray and see what happens.

In other news...MK turned 18 this week!  She was pretty excited for her birthday but not because of the number.  She was excited because it was a day to celebrate.  We have another celebration for her next week...Graduation party!  Looking at how little time there is between now and then I am a little intimidated with the amount of work that needs to get done.

The garden ~ the garden is coming along nicely.  The dh is doing a fine job this year of maintaining a truly beautiful garden.  He went out and bought some really nasty smelling spray to get rid of the raiding rabbits.  It seems to be working.  He also is employing the help of our two teenage boys in mowing the yard...or acreage. :)  The boys are adjusting to doing such fine manly work.

House work ~ My dh agreed that painting another room right now is not a good idea.  So the craft room will remain white till fall.  Then he went out to LOwe's and bought a 5 gallon pale of a pretty blue semi-gloss because it was only $50.  This is how we have painted before ...so now we need to decide where this might best fit.  A nice problem to have really.

That should be good for now to have brought mostly up to speed in my rather ordinary life.

Enjoy your weekend and make sure to keep Sunday holy ~ rest, read, pray.

Kate

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

{Pretty}

This is horseradish blooming along with comfrey.  We renovated this front garden a few years ago and now it is full of perennials that have taken over.  I just realized this year how pretty the horseradish blossoms are. And yes, you can definitely identify the plant by the smell.

{Happy}

This fuzzy picture is a jar of kumbucha.  My daughter finally learned how to make this on her own.  She is currently the only one drinking it.  I plan to soon once she gets her method down.  This is a  great drink for summer.  I like to do a second ferment with fruit and then it is almost like soda only not so sweet.  She is learning that she can do it her way and not the way is was done before by a person (her father or myself) who was distracted by other things and left it a little too long.

{Real}

This is the family favorite.  She is getting up there in age, but still can make us laugh.  She is a miniature sheltie who thinks she is a MUCH bigger dog...until she gets around toddlers...then she hides.  

Lots of funny this week, I am glad to say that we laugh a lot in our house.  None of that usually gets recorded in pictures though.  Sometimes you just have to enjoy the moment.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Head on over to the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter to share in each other’s everyday joys and struggles!

God Bless,

Kate

What we have been up to this Spring

We - really my dear husband - has been working on home improvements.  We decided that the children are old enough to paint their rooms with no fears of them messing it up.  We let them assist in picking out colors which they did an excellent job of by the way.  

Sorry that the colors don't show up very well.  The first two are one room which is a very nice blue; the second two is a blue/green that depends upon the light which color it looks more like; and the last two are of a very elegant pink room.

We are all very pleased with how it has turned out.  There is one more room left to do and then all the upstairs rooms will finally have color.  It has been put on hold due to summer approaching and the need to plant food.  Food is definitely more important than me having a finished craft room/office.  So we will do that at some point toward the end of summer or beginning of fall.

Some of the things we have discovered: how awesome our kirby vaccuum is.  My husband has been cleaning the carpets before he starts to paint and we have the correct attachments for this and it works great!  We have friends to thank for this as they gave us their kirby because it was just too heavy for them to use.  I have growing teenage boys so they can lug it around.  It is good to have such generous friends.  The boys also study while my dh cut in the rooms.  So, the older boy will be cutting in the ceiling and paint the ceiling of the craft room.  A good skill for them to learn.

That's it for now.  Hopefully the next post will have pictures of the garden! 


God Bless,
Kate

What ever happened to....?

So reading some of the things being published and said on the forcing by coercion of the President of the US on the public schools, I am wondering what ever happened to adage to love yourself just as God created you.  It seems that while confusion may exist there is also some form of self loathing underneath it all.

I just finished listening to a long video post by Ann Barnhardt on Diabolical Narcissism  The root of it is self-loathing.  It is so sad that we have become a society that so hates itself we are willing to impose that self-loathing on everyone.

Yes, I think it is wrong to open bathrooms to any and all without reference to a person's physical sex.  If you don't think that the door is also opened to abusive people you are kidding yourself.  No one wants to say that perverts are going to take advantage of it.  

Has the society really gotten that darkened in their intellect?  Apparently so.


Mary, Virgin Most Powerful, pray for us. 

Boy it HAS been a long time

Hi Just a short note to say that I am coming back.

It has been an interesting two year hiatus.  Lots to discuss.  I am getting braver.  We will see if anyone can handle it.

I think I can take this up and make it worthwhile.  Thanks for all those who have been checking in and being disappointed.

See you soon.  REALLY. :)