First Snows and Simple Pleasures

Winter here in the Mid-Atlantic area has been rather hit and miss these past few years. Last year we didn't really have a winter at all (or none that was really discernible) while the year before we were hit with Snow-Maggedon!

Four year old Little Guy has been desperate for snow for quite some time. He was rewarded with some flurries last week, on the first day of Winter, and a couple of inches on Boxing Day, or the day after Christmas Day. He was giddy!

Snow shoveling and sledding in just an inch or two of snow isn't easy, but it was enough to make him happy.

His morning was made up of such simple pleasures ...
Two inches of snow.
Hot chocolate with marshmallows.
Playing with his new wooden marble run.
Robot pajamas.
A tub ... and a shower! (One was to get clean, the other to warm up after playing outside).
Playing with Grandpa D and Grandma S, who are visiting from overseas.
Snuggling under blankets.
Reading his new book (The Tomten, by Astrid Lindgren) again ... and again!
Yogurt for lunch, when the rest of us were stuck with stinky (blue!) cheese.

A happy boy.


What are your favorite Simple Pleasures?  Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you.

A Nature Shelf! {week 4, December 2012}

The last Nature Shelf post of the year!

It wasn't until I put this final Shelf together that it struck me that these three Gnomes look like the Three Kings too! I love the serendipity!


What are doing this week to bring a little bit of Nature into your home? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

The First Snowflakes of the Season

We love doing crafts as part of any celebration. It is one of the top ways that we celebrate anything, in our home!

For the upcoming winter celebrations this year, we decided to go simple with our paper snowflakes. Easy to make, and The Little Guy had so much fun practicing his scissor skills.

And his looking through little holes skills!

We had originally planned to cut a couple and paste them up directly onto one window. But we got pretty enthusiastic about cutting our snowflakes!

We ended up making enough to cover every window on our downstairs level.

 

Such an easy, fun, low cost, quick little project; I have a feeling we'll be making paper snowflakes for a while!

And what have you been crafting on, to decorate your home. Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Food Waste Friday ... A for Effort, F for Follow Through

I just love The Frugal Girl blog. Really - just love!

Each week (well - most weeks) she blogs about her food waste, a kind of public declaration, aimed to reduce her own food waste. And she invites the rest of us to join her!

After last week's trip up over my veggie bin, I thought the worst was behind me. Apparently not ...

The fresh produce hurts the worst. And the apples in particular; they are my beloved Nittany apples *sob*

I also lost a batch of Breakfast Muffins (aka, my leftover oatmeal muffins). They usually keep for quite a while, but for some reason this batch went moldy really quickly.

And the rice bread was a left over from the time period that we had 12 month old Little Boy on a restricted diet to help with his eczema. He liked it well enough when that was the only bread option, but once he had access to real bread, this loaf was pushed aside.


And how was your food waste this week? Feel free to share here, or on the Frugal Girl blog; I'd love to hear from you!