American Kate, aka Hannah Katherine Parker, has a blog that will do your heart good–encouraging you, building up your faith, and obliterating anxiety–all through the pen of a ready writer. And by “ready” I mean able, amazing, anointed! Try it, you’ll like it:
One of the many beauties of home education is the time to read, and to share great books. When I bought John Eldredge’s Beautiful Outlaw for my son Benjamin, I wasn’t worried about his not reading it. Even if he didn’t read it, someone at our house would. This I knew from experience.
Not only did Benjamin read the book, and quote from it often, he urged me to read it. I don’t think I’m unique in liking to pick my own books, and being somewhat resistant when people insist I read something. But since Benjamin is not the insistent sort, and because I know John Eldredge can be trusted, I picked up the book.
I would breeze through it, job done. Wrong. I savored this book–reading a bit and smiling and stopping to consider. As I neared the book’s end, I slowed down. I didn’t want this journey with John Eldredge and Jesus to end.
What a privilege to, if you will, have a conversation with a free thinker. A radically Christian radical.
When a book speaks to an 18-year-old young man as well as to his mother, there’s something going on. When I love a book, yet can’t quite bring myself to part with it, there’s something going on. And when a book changes and clarifies my thinking in a way that electrifies my joy in Christ, well, I just have to rave.
They’re the books my junior high principal used to entice non-reading boys, and they worked like nothing else. They’re the books beginning with cliffhanger action, getting more exciting with each page, and ending satisfactorily every time (the boy and the girl have an understanding). They’re Jubal Sackett, Sitka, Last of the Breed, and Sackett. That’s right, they’re Louis L’Amour westerns (well, a few of his books, including Last of the Breed, aren’t westerns, but they’re still great books).
By “great” I mean, for starters, they have heroes worth remembering. I remember, for instance, the Sacketts. There are certain arroyos, canyons, and long vistas that take me back to a reading moment, and I say, “Look, I think Tell Sackett’s down there in that gulch.” And there’s no doubt he’s about to do the right thing. Not the easy thing, but the right thing.
So, no, these books aren’t Putlizer winners, they don’t have endorsements on the back telling us how “poignant” they are. We won’t impress our “intellectual” acquaintances by stacking them about our living room. And if we do try stacking them, they won’t remain stacked as do all the “right” books and the “must-reads”. Rather, they will be read!
Every freeschooled bookwyrm has turn-on books. Hannah, for instance, began her love affair with books by reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Secret Garden. Her only Louis L’Amour book was The Last of the Breed. Our other three bookwyrms have read, as have their parents, every Louis L’Amour (as far as we know) more than once. Of course, bookwyms read almost all genres–anything and everything worthwhile, and some books not so worthwhile.
“Not so worthwhile” includes many recommended books, best sellers, and “must-reads” which are missing at least one of those main ingredients–worthy characters, an interesting plot, and a satisfactory ending.
Let’s stop worrying about what other people say we “should” read and let’s please ourselves with books that deliver. Like say, a real romance. Say, maybe, a Louis L’Amour.
Other lovely tea cozy ideas include but are not limited to:: making breakfast special with tea, history teas, tea parties on a budget, literary teas, dress-up teas, teas on the balcony amid falling snow, slumber party teas, If-I-Could-Travel-Anywhere teas, Christmas teas, and tea parties for no particular reason (I think of these as conversation teas).
The only rule for a tea party is: Conversation must be kind and intelligent. Tea is a most excellent place to teach etiquette, and in fact when the kids were small I often brought a favorite etiquette book to our gatherings, Manners Matter by Hermine Hartley.
Now if you don’t have etiquette books, tea sets, knitted tea cozies, and a variety of gourmet teas, don’t be discouraged. Have a coffee cozy (I use swiss water decaf mostly when having coffee with kids), or serve milk and cookies and call it a milk. A milk? Maybe a milk cozy. If it’s cool outside, heat the milk and add honey and maybe some cinnamon and nutmeg.
There are endless possibilities, but the bottom line is simply this: always be on the lookout for a tea cozy opportunity. Bliss!
One day, a few years back, Seth and Rebekah asked to go to the creek and “do school later”. I said they could go, paper and pencil in hand, and to bring back something they’d written–a story, a thought, a drawing, poetry.
Here is Seth’s offering:
I have a cathedral of willows over my head
The sound of the creek in my ears,
A hoodie under my back.
I will try not to fall in the creek.
Ack!
All this comfort, all this wonder,
I’ve claimed a little nook.
Yet all the while I wish I’d brought a book.
Rebekah wrote me a love letter, and some of her thoughts, as well as this “Spring Poem”:
The creek laughs happily over stones
I hear birdsong and breezes.
But something else is talking –
Tis neither wind nor birdsong nor the creek.
Tis Spring.
Remember field trips–the best part of school? It didn’t matter where you went, just that you got to go outside!
Since the kids were small I have seized opportunities to go outside–school on a quilt in the back yard; school as we pulled the littlest child on the biggest quilt in the red wagon. We didn’t call it school as we ate dusty blackberries picked from the roadside to enjoy as we read Timothy Tattercoat by Maryel Chaney.
But oh, the lessons learned. Years later we didn’t call it school when we climbed and scooted and grunted our way to the top of the tallest rocks in the mountains behind our house, and stood reaching for the sky and talking of dreams.
I certainly don’t call it school when I demonstrate the ultimate in relaxation. Sometimes, no matter how enthralling the book I’ve chosen to read on my quilt atop an aspen leaf/pine needle carpet, I fall asleep in the sunrays shining through the trees. Whiling away afternoons celebrating the short but glorious Rocky Mountain summer is a lesson in, well, does it always have to be a lesson?
There is nothing difficult about any of this “schooling” – watching butterlies and humming forgotten tunes, telling stories of my childhood, experiencing my children. Perhaps more than wondering what the lesson is for my children, I should consider the message: Life is wonderful.
Breakfast breads are lifesavers for me. They are healthy, easy, filling, economical, versatile, and delicious. I begin with a baking mix of sorts (NEVER buy these). In other words, I mix and match flours, leavenings, dairy, nuts, spices, and dried fruits–depending on what I have on hand. All you really need to know is that something close to three cups of flour and three teaspoons of baking powder (or ONE teaspoon of baking soda) and one teaspoon of salt equals a baking mix. You can use powdered milk and then add water, instead of liquid dairy (or your liquid of choice) for a surprisingly good (sometimes superior) result.
So, when recently John left at 5:00 a.m. intending to pick up his breakfast on the road, and the kids were asleep, and I was hungry, I asked the question, What can I cook that will be good when the kids wake up, but delicious for me to eat ahead beforehand . Breakfast bread!
On this particular morning I had only two cups of whole wheat flour left, (usually I have flax and almond and coconut flours), one cup of quick cooking oats, some rice cereal, and about a cup of unbleached white flour (time to get groceries). I stirred these together with sea salt (always use more than the salt-stingy baking recipes call for, especially at high altitude where increased salt helps with rising), baking powder (the baking soda canister was empty and the baking soda boxes were in the laundry and bathrooms, or so I figured) so I added a third egg, figuring that would also help with the rising (always a concern at 8,000 feet above sea level).
The fruit going bad was apples, so I chopped a couple of those and added spices as though it was apple pie (if you haven’t ground your nutmeg, cinnamon sticks, cloves and allspice in the coffee grinder yet, you haven’t tasted spices–I’ll tell you a cautionary tale about this at the bottom of the post – see the P.S.).
Now for melted butter and/or coconut oil, vanilla flavoring (look into making your own–so very elegant you will be) honey and real maple syrup (molasses would have been good), evaporated milk and water (out of milk).
Finally, for the “optional” (per many recipes) ingredient which I consider essential for good breakfast bread: Nuts. In this case I used walnuts, but ordinarily I would have also added sunflower seeds, which are cheap and healthy (surprise, I was out of sunflower seeds, too).
If I had chosen crushed pineapple rather than apples, pecans would have been good, with maybe some orange juice concentrate and lemon flavoring.
A peanut butter bread is delicious (substitute for some or all of the butter). I love this with a glaze made of still more peanut butter, honey (or sweetener of choice/availability) and a drop or two of orange essential oil.
If John were home I would have made pumpkin bread to have with cream cheese, scrambled eggs and vanilla almond tea (I recommend Republic of Tea).
I always make a small bundt bread with this batter, leaving enough for a loaf pan or muffins, some of which goes into the freezer for those days when I just don’t want to cook breakfast, or for when the kids want tea party goodies.
Have your breakfast bread with coffee, tea, or milk. And joy.
P.S. The picture at the top of the post is from another day, another breakfast bread, and as you can see, I don’t always grind my spices. As for my caution: You must hammer up your cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, etc, inside a baggie or other enclosure before putting them in your coffee grinder. Ask me how I know that if you don’t do so, you will soon be buying a new coffee grinder. As for that bit of leftover spice in the coffee grinder? Not a problem – it just makes your next cup of coffee extra good.
You don’t have a bulk spice source in your town? Look on the net for bulk spice distributors. Just know that you’ll be getting LOTS of spices (great savings). I double bag mine and store them in the fridge (used often) and the freezer. And remember, bulk spice distributors also carry vanilla beans for that homemade (divine) vanilla flavoring.
Permission to Nap: Taking Time to Restore Your Spirit by Jill Murphy Long is the book to back up my thoughts about napping.
Taking a nap is one of life’s great luxuries. Like the first birds singing in spring breezes, and rivers rushing with snowmelt. And like the way everything glows in the evenings after the rain, and the rainbows–double and even triple rainbows! Those are right up there with falling stars across New Mexico skies at midnight, Oklahoma sunsets, the smell of sage in a Wyoming thunderstorm you can see coming for miles, and the sound of the wind in the Colorado pines.
Wildflowers, fat marmots, brilliant cardinals and croaking toads–these joys are available to us all. And when you add a really good story to gently fall asleep to, say Snow in April by Rosamunde Pilcher, with sunshine bathing your face . . . . Let’s just call ourselves blessed. And rest.
Hormones, Health and Happiness by Stephen F. Hotze, M.D. with Kelly Griffin is a real find.
It is written by a former establishment medical practitioner who followed his
wife’s advice to the kids – in a nutshell, “Don’t follow the crowd.”
Disillusioned with modern medicine, tired of not truly helping his
patients, he prayed with his wife for a solution. “My prayers,” he says,
“were answered as they so often were – in a form that was both an
opportunity and a challenge.”
The book’s beginning: “Are you sick and tired of being sick and
tired? Are you weary of doctors who won’t listen to you, don’t
understand you, and offer only prescription drugs as the solution to
your health problems?”
The ending? I’m not there yet, but I’m enjoying every single page of
this marvelous book – awesome for men, as well.
A house is a place to shelter for the night. It warms the body, but not the soul.
A home is a place of refuge, restoration, rest, relaxation, and replenishment.
Do you ever wish someone would come in to your house while you’re gone and clean it, organize it, and best of all, decorate so it feels welcoming when you open the door?
Well, here’s the bad news and the good news. You’re it. Yes, that’s a ton of work and you may feel a little learning-disabled in this area, but the satisfaction gained from cleaning and organizing and making your house a home, a nest, is beyond measure.
Put on some motivational music (Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock and Roll should get you going, or Phil Driscoll’s Soldier will work if it’s a real battle you’re facing) and get started.
Put a load of laundry on (if you don’t have a washer begin by gathering up the laundry and putting it by the front door in preparation for a trip to the laundromat) and put the dishes in the dishwasher and/or in the sink to soak as you go on to the next thing. Now clean the bathroom(s) and then break for fun. No, I don’t mean bon bons and a TV show (NO daytime TV in a place of refuge). I mean a break for some decorating.
Rearrange some furniture and hang pictures in places they’ve never been. Use things in ways you haven’t before. Maybe even use an entire room in a new way. Try a different spread on your bed, especially if the one you have is one of those “in-style” atrocities so many of us have, in some fit of insanity, mistakenly purchased (there is a demon grouping in Hell responsible solely for the design of ugly home furnishings).
Now, back to work. After things are picked up, clean the floors, dust, and wash the baseboards. Did I say this would be easy? Anyway, I haven’t said anything about washing windows and screens or cleaning the utility room, have I? There’s no rest for the best, and as the HOME keeper, you’re the best.
What about your horrid closets and the mess under the kitchen sink?
That’s for another day, a day you need extra therapy. That’s right. There’s not a shrink on earth who can clear your mind like a cleaned out and organized closet.
So, now it’s looking lots better, you’re feeling lots better, and the house is feeling more like a home. What else can you do?
Cook something that smells delicious (bread is always good), or simply put some vanilla and cinnamon in a pan of water and put it in the oven on low heat. Open the windows and let in the light. Put out stacks of books that won’t impress anyone with your amazing intellectual tastes. Include colorful and fun books, crayons and coloring books, easy puzzles, joke books, and especially beautiful children’s picture books. Don’t have any? Yay! You get to go to the library. Not now! When you’re finished, or next week, whichever comes first.
Put on beautiful music and be sure there are throws, quilts or blankets on the couches and chairs. Decorate with Monopoly, Clue, Pictionary and other forgotten board games. Set one up on an end table, ready for play.
And now, it’s time for tea. While the water’s heating, go take a quick shower and put on something comfy. It’s time for a nice cuppa and a not-particularly-memorable but quite easy-to-read book.
If you’re still feeling a little blue after all this (not really likely) change the tea to hot chocolate. Stir up some raw sugar (or use honey and add after mixture is warm) with a little salt and some cocoa. Add milk, cream, half-n-half, powdered milk, or evaporated milk (or any combination thereof), vanilla flavoring and/or almond flavoring and heat until almost boiling, stirring often.
Serve in just the right mug with extremely well-buttered toast and don’t even think about calories. If you think you could use more protein after all that work, go for it – get a second cup of hot chocolate.
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