Happy Birthday Genevieve!

We love you so!

Love, your BEST sisters

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

Here's a fun and easy project for the family on Thanksgiving Day while they are waiting for the turkey. We do this every year and we all have a great time standing around it and writing down things that we are thankful for. We all love it...from Grandma to our little two year old niece.
Here are the things we were thankful for last year.
Just take a big piece of blank news print or poster board (or, if you don't have that just tape several pieces of paper together), tape it to a wall, write We Are Thankful (or something to that effect) in big letters and put a big jar of colored pencils next to it. Start counting your blessings! Don't forget to take a picture at the end of the night so you can look back at what you were thankful for and to laugh at the funny spelling! i.e. last year my nephew was thankful for "Bubels". Priceless.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
♥Genevieve

Coziness...

Tea cozy picture from Salihan Crafts

This morning I woke up with a cold. Pooky. -as my sweet nephew would say. =]
But alas, it is an excuse to do all sorts of cozy things. And since the weather has been rather gray and wet (yay!) It makes it feel even more cozy. *smiles*

Here's my favorite recipe for a cozy day...
I wake up hearing rain on our tin roof and smelling the freshness of the wet earth. I look at the clock, 9:27 am. *contented sigh*...it's Saturday. I reach for my fuzzy pink monster slippers and put on my warmest sweatshirt, then shuffle downstairs to see who else is stirring. The first person I see is my Mom, with slippers on feet and coffee in hand. She greets me with a "Good morning" and a kiss. Then our dog Jebbers, wagging his tail so hard he can hardly walk over to me to give me a 'hug' and to look up into my face and ask, "Can we go play right now!?" So, I promise him we will later. Next, it's to the kitchen for a nice hot cup of Creme de la Earl Grey sweetened with a little honey. Then I sit down in front of a cozy fire with my tea and my Bible and thank God for giving me the blessing of life, home, family and the smell of bacon frying on the stove. Without Jesus, I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything, simple or great. Then I see my sisters faces and am greeted with a great idea or an inside joke they had been thinking of all night. My Mom turns on the Little Women soundtrack and everyone feels that all is right with the world. Then we sit down to breakfast and discuss our plans for the day, hopefully they'll include a walk when the rain lets up, afternoon tea, working on items to sell at the market we'll be participating in in October and playing some music later on. Of course, these are all possible plans but nothing is really fixed for certain. We could always decide to do something entirely different... it is a Saturday after all...

I hope you are all feeling 'cozy' today, as I said, I have a cold so I will most likely spend most of the day taking vitamins and scrubbing salt on the throat and hopefully brainstorming about the Bend Indoor Markets that is coming up next weekend (Sept. 25th and 26th). We, or Pretty Wit rather, got invited to participate in it! We're so excited! We have signed up for the first weekend in October and have been working on all sorts of things to sell. Here is the link if you live in the area and would like to check it out: http://www.bendindoormarkets.com/

>>If you are looking for the recipes for fighting colds and sore throats that was posted here, go HERE to find it. Thanks!<<

Have a cozy day!
Marguerite

ps Tomorrow, Sept. 19th, is Talk like a Pirate Day! Aye Avast!

Tasha Tudor Day!

Happy Tasha Tudor Day! This has been one of the happiest days ever! I'm an Auntie!... again! =] Hooray for babies, God's most wonderful creation!
We haven't done anything very astounding or exotic, we've just spent the whole day enjoying the simple and beautiful gifts God has given to us.
Tasha and her way of life are so fascinating to me. Even though our beliefs are most likely very different from Tasha's, there is a lot about her life style that is so inspiring! She loved living a good life. Simple, natural and fun (with lots of hard work)! She did what she loved to do. She walked barefoot all summer, made gifts throughout the year and kept them in a trunk until they were needed, decorated her house for holidays, played with her children, illustrated and wrote books for a living, cooked good food, did all kinds of crafts and always took joy in life!
I think if we make an effort every day to take joy in something or another, after a while we won't even have to try. =]
Her paintings and illustrations always reflected her own life and way of living.
Here are some pictures Genevieve took of the simple things we enjoy each day in our home or wherever we are.

Our cat Francesca chilling out in our vegetable garden...

Look at our lettuce! There is nothing better than home grown vegetables...

Tasha loved animals... Here is our dog General Jeb Stuart.

Yes... I do still play dress up and play with dolls AND have a marvelous time... what can I say?...

If you would like to see our doll blog go to Miss Emaline's Circle of Fashionable Friends

Today... we were a little bit preoccupied with thinking of, looking at, shopping for a certain baby =] so we didn't do much besides. However... we did make time to have afternoon tea. Something Tasha Tudor loved to do!

And it turned out to be a coldish kind of day with a little bit of rain to make it the perfect weather for a cozy day inside. We even got to start a fire in our wood stove!

On the menu was fresh pears, gluten/egg/dairy free cookie bars (actually very tasty!), mini chocolate chip cookies and...

...fresh figs! Aren't they so pretty? I actually started cutting up these figs before I even thought about having tea... then I thought, "These are just too pretty! I must have a little party to show them off." So out came the china, tea, cookies, flowers and even some table linens. It was one of those things that just kind of grows in the making. =]

It has been a wonderful day! Some time soon we're going to have our dear friend Mrs. F over to watch the Tasha Tudor videos. Yay! Honestly, I think she is even more Tasha Tudor than Tasha Tudor herself! Ha ha! No, but really.
Anyway... Thanks for reading my LONG post! I hope this day has been as happy for you all as it has for me. Good night and don't forget to Take Joy in everything. =]
xo Marguerite

"For the beauty of the earth..."

Christopher Columbus!

I was so thrilled when I heard about Miss Rebecca's Little Women blogging event! As it happens... Little Women in our house is pretty much an everyday event so I didn't have to go far for something to blog about. =]

I live in a log house in the country with my loving 'Marmee' and my two (still single) sisters. (But I think you already know that.)
Here is our home which we like to call "Orchard House".
And we do have a small orchard too. =]
We live our lives very like the March's in a lot of ways. We garden, sew, quote Dickens ALL the time, cook, put on "wild theatricals" and love everything that is simple, pure and good.
I believe the number one most played cd in our house is this -
Here is a picture of the last dress I sewed (by hand) for my civil war reproduction china doll.
"This is an afternoon dress." =]
"Butter! Oh, isn't butter divinity!?"

Marmee always makes our house so warm and homey!

But Hannah certainly is right when she says, "housekeeping ain't no joke." ha ha!I thought I'd post some pictures of our daily chores so you wouldn't think it all just happened magically.

I forgot to get pictures of the feeding of the chickens etc. Oh well... I'm convinced that if the March's would've had chickens, they might have complained about them a little. ;}

I think we could all use in our everyday lives a little bit of Marmee....

a little bit of Meg...

a little bit of Jo...

a little bit of Beth...

a little bit of Amy...

and a little bit of Hannah too!

The most important part of our lives is serving our Heavenly Father who always helps us through life's "sloughs of despond" and gives us so much to be thankful for!"Lord of all to thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise..."

[If you'd like to see other bloggers additions to this event click on picture]
Thanks for reading my post! May you all have a fun and memorable week!
xo - Marguerite