More Yard Sales

Our Saturday morning date location has moved from the dump to the yard sales! This Saturday was the highly awaited local church "bargain bin." Last year we found a dog gate for the car, lacrosse sticks, and all sorts of stuff.

Here is this year's haul:

Garden hoses and storage reel, sled, 4 pots of plants & hollyhock seeds, a new hiking guide to the White Mountains (and 2 other books), 6 napkins, 2 tables, and a complete Thule roof rack system with all the locks, bars, and attachments for skis. Total price for all? $24

I'm in love with the tables (they were $1 each):



They are just what I wanted on my porch!

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bonjour from Quebec!

Hels here,

I just went to Quebec city with my seventh-grade class. We stayed at the International Youth Hostel which was a very clean and comfortable place to stay.

Quebec is a very welcoming place,


We went to the canyons (with lots of these very scary bridges to walk on),

St Anne's cathedral,


and best of all we shopped!! Our favorite shopping venture was into " Le Chateau" a very expensive clothing store. We tried on lots of fun clothes.


The best part of the trip was finding out how much French we actually know!

Au Revoir

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Yard Sale Finds

Memorial Day Weekend launches the yard sale season in Vermont. Nels and I went off exploring yesterday morning and found quite a few things.

This typewriter is a highlight. I'm not sure it was used more than once or twice and only cost $5. Lou LOVES it. She already knows how to keyboard, but now she's really *getting* margins, tabs, double spacing, etc. While learning on a computer is fine, there's a place for using a typewriter as well. Her fingers are connecting to what she's doing. It's just like progressing from pencil to pen.

Nels also found something he loves--a huge, heavy mallet for splitting the really tough logs.


I love going to yard sales, but this weekend I really noticed what a throw-away society we have. We saw yard after yard filled with stuff nobody should have bought in the first place. My biggest pet peeve--piles of tossed away plastic kids' furniture that were probably only used for a few months. It made me a sad and more conscious than ever of a world buried in stuff.

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Treasure Boxes

Would you like to see what's inside my treasure boxes? I just put these history kits together for a 3rd grade local history class. I am introducing the children to the idea that artifacts and documents can tell us about how people lived in the past.




We've already been outside hunting for the first settlers of the town. This is where I was right before the May Fair last Friday. History on the landscape you might say.

Tomorrow we're going to do some research about those settlers and write some poems. First we'll open my treasure box of artifacts and think about what we need to live--food, clothing, shelter. So, we'll look at how they cooked their food....

....made their clothes...

....and lit their homes.

Then we'll think about how they organized their communities--building roads, schools, and churches. To do this we'll make some quill pens to take notes at a mock town meeting. What shall we do about the lack of roads? Who should build them? Who should pay for them?

Finally we'll look inside the second treasure box--full of town meeting records and other documents.

Magnifying lenses with little lights on them make doing history much more fun :)

It has been fun to put this little project together. I found the cheese box at a yard sale and the ideas just went from there. I actually have a few more artifacts in the box--a pair of shoes, sewing equipment, old nails, and a handmade spoon. I found them all at local junk shops.

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Our New Teen

Introducing our new teen....in her new bed! Nels made Hels a loft bed for her birthday. We moved up an old couch from Nels's office. She's pretty excited. Nels and I agreed that she has a cooler room than either of us had in college!

She had a beautiful birthday with all sorts of special celebrations at school and with the extended family. After a day of quiet, she's now off to Quebec City for a week with her French class. She's pretty nervous because her teacher is going to make them do all the money exchanges, food orders, etc., in French. Here she is all packed up.


While Hels is nervous....Lou is excited because she's going to sleep in the new loft while her sister is gone :)

We'll miss her. Au Revoir!

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In the Merry Month of May

Dance Around the Maypole
In and out, in and out,
Weave the ribbons tight;
'Round the Maypole we will dance
To the left and to the right.

Yesterday began with the procession of the May Pole, led by the 8th graders and their 1st grade buddies. Each class then danced with the dances becoming more complicated.

Hels and her friends played for several of the dances.

She was also the official caller for the Morris dance.

After the dancing, the games and feasting began. There was lots of strawberry shortcake. The cake walk always brings the most excitement--it's a musical chairs sort of game with the winner getting a cake. The cakes were a sight to behold this year:

The lollipop cakes are always popular

The adults all gazed in rapture over this maypole cake

but the talk of the day was Mr. Snake Cake

I have to note that Hels won her first cake in 10 years of May Fairs. Hurrah!

My favorite part of the day was watching Lou and her 2 friends play violin for the cake walk. All by themselves they had composed a sweet little round to the song "Oh How Lovely is the Evening". It was quite beautiful.

On the spur of the moment, Hels and her friends set up a jewelry booth to benefit their 8th grade class trip. They made $100! Lots of Moms were walking around sporting new earrings made by Hels.


Put little children in pale dresses and flower crowns with lambs and bunnies and you get serious spring cuteness.


This little girl not only got to pet the lambs....she had also just won a cake. She was one happy little girl.


The 2nd graders made Hels this crown for her birthday. Isn't it beautiful? I love the relationships that the older children have with the little ones at our school.


The fair ends with the arrival of Lady Spring and King Winter. The girls all trail Lady Spring up to the hill.

The boys all cluster about King Winter (who throws ice at them).
Should winter stay? Wouldn't it be nice to play in snow and ice?

They duke it out with a massive tug of war. Of course spring wins the argument.

I walked down the hill to my car yesterday so grateful for this day where we could stop and just celebrate the turning of the year.

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Preparations for a Fair and Feast

A lemon cake to bake....
















Gluten-free chocolate cupcakes....

Fiddle tunes to prepare...


A mysterious project in the basement...


It has been a busy afternoon but the white shirts are ironed, the cakes are baked, the tunes are learned.... it's birthday and May Fair time!

Can I just say how awesome it is to have a kid who makes her own class birthday treat....4 layers, lemon filling, lemon frosting, strawberry glaze...a masterpiece.

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A Song of Spring

This weekend was a song for spring. It began with the girls' spring concert Friday night. Here is Hels walking up to the church for the performance. The capstone of the evening was Vivaldi's Spring. It was truly glorious--the best children's concert I have ever heard--and I left so grateful for the musical education my girls are having. The girls were so proud.


Since I was a child, Mother's day has always been about the garden. We always gave my Mother a big hanging plant. My weekend was filled with thoughtful garden gifts from my family. Lou brought me a refreshing strawberry/mint drink in a champagne flute as I weeded my perennial garden.


Nels dug up a new garden bed and placed this stone at the end. We then headed off to a beautiful little farm in a deep valley that sold $3 perennials--all divided from her very old garden beds. We got forsythia, strawberries, and some other beauties.

I had been wanting to create a shade garden in a corner of our house. Hels helped me transplant ferns, solomon's seal, violets, and lilies of the valley. I hope some of it lives--the ferns are looking a little shocked.


Dinner included fiddleheads (which the girls doused with hollandaise). I like this little bit of ephemeral food--we talked about other little ephemeral spring creatures we had seen and heard throughout the day including the peepers, a little snail leaving a silver streak across the drive, and the red-spotted newt who I discovered deep in the earth.

From Vivaldi to new gardens to ephemerals in the woods. This weekend was more than a song of spring--it was an orchestral suite.

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Spring Cleaning

We've had a weekend of spring cleaning.

Nels built some shelves for a craft closet (!) and cleaned out downed limbs in the woods. This turkey popped in to see what was up.


Hels washed windows, cleaned their bathroom, and scrubbed the appliances.


Lou made us dinner--stuffed shells and chocolate chip cookies--and ironed shirts.


I washed floors, woodwork, and everything in between. I used my favorite new "green" mopping system which is vinegar/water in a good spray bottle, a rag, and a dutch rubber broom.


Goodbye old mop. I no longer have a mop graveyard in the basement--all those busted mops are at the metal recycling. Now I just toss the rag in the wash and don't worry about stinky sponges that never seem to get clean. The floors now feel heavenly on bare feet.

I ran out of vinegar this winter and turned to some old cleaning supplies such as "Mr. Clean" and Windex for a few weeks. I was reminded that things seem much cleaner with vinegar. I now have a jug of vinegar and spray bottles under every sink.

Although it is still quite cool and the leaves aren't even out yet, it seemed safe enough to swap out the down jackets and snow pants for the rain jackets and crocs.

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