I’m off work now until January 2 and looking forward to time with my family and by myself, doing things that bring me joy and that I don’t usually have a lot of time for during the normal work weeks. I made a big pot of homemade vegetable soup over the weekend, dried some orange slices for a garland, finished a knitting project last week and am close to finishing another, finished a book… we have a jigsaw puzzle locked in, three gingerbread house kits, and I have crafting projects and books to last me until June if my free time allowed. 2025 has been a ride and I’m ready to lock the door and light the candles and shut the world out until I have to rejoin in 2026. With that said, here are a few recent pins to round out the year. Thank you for joining me in this humble space this year and God willing we will see each other on the other side.
I love this look. I have always wanted to be the kind of woman who could wear a little scarf around her neck like this and look natural but I’ve never been successful. This makes me want to try.
I have a pair of wingtips almost exactly like these but the grosgrain bows here are just *chefs kiss*.
My hairstylist gave me a bixie in October and it almost drove me insane. We had to have a big discussion before my cut last week because…
Despite our continual societal march towards industrialization, automation, capitalism and cookie-cutter consumption, there is something in the human spirit that is fascinated by the unknown. We love a good scary movie and a bonfire and a mask purchased at the pop-up Spirit Halloween store. We love our pumpkin spice lattes and Jack o’lanterns and dancing paper skeletons. There’s something in us that loves the prospect that while we wander the dark and misty streets with our kids and their bags and buckets of candy, everyone masked and gleeful, we may be rubbing shoulders with otherworldly things called over for just one night. And that after we retire to our beds, turn off lights and close our curtains, our woods and lanes and fields and churchyards are theirs for those dark hours before dawn; the hag, the horned man, the cold one, the thing that is pulled by the moon.
There’s something very Practical Magic about this house but it also feels nostalgic for me, too. A lot of houses in the small town where I grew up looked and felt like this; old farmhouses, including my childhood home and the namesake of this blog.
Nine years ago, my kiddo was still in elementary school and I decorated my car as ‘Under the Sea’ for her Trunk or Treat. I posted it on Pinterest so I’d remember it. The cool thing about that year’s Trunk or Treat is that her dad and her stepmom also participated with an undersea theme – monster kraken and octopi – and they won first prize while I won second. It was completely unplanned and the kiddo was stoked that her extended family swept the awards. (Now she is driving that car, btw…sigh).
Around that same timeframe I ran a couple of autumn half-marathons in the Sleeping Bear National Park in northern Michigan, and parts of the route looked identical to this picture.
We’re at the stage in our household where the kiddo has Halloween parties with her friends and we’ll be staying home and dressing up to hand out candy. Brandon will be Elvis and my costume is a secret but I’ll post pictures once the cat is out of the bag (probably first on my Instagram). I did manage to wrangle a family pumpkin-carving and Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown-watching session earlier this week and the weather is cooperating with cooler temps, drifting leaves, and damp streets, so we’re all in the mood. I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying the end of October and getting ready for a month of November hygge (November being really one of my favorite months for all of the cozy reasons and Thanksgiving my favorite holiday for it’s comparatively low-key, cozy vibe). Be well and remember that hell is empty; all the devils are here.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve done a pin post so allow me to share what’s been catching my eye here in southeast Michigan in these final days of September.
It’s been hot and dry here for the past few weeks and I’m more than ready for this kind of weather. Although maybe not too quickly, because the kiddo’s senior pictures are scheduled for mid-to-late October and she and I are both on pins and needles hoping that the weather holds. We want cool temps, peak color, with no rainstorms to strip all the leaves. After that it can do what it will.
My knitting projects are even more scattered than usual. I haven’t finished anything in ages and while I’d like to keep going on something – ANYTHING – to have a finished object, I have to start two new projects. It’s time for me to start my annual contribution to the Mittens for Detroit charity. But even though I pinned the two ideas above (I thought the duck mittens would be really cute for children and I obviously love the stripy pair (and they’d be warm too), I won’t have time to do anything other than a basic pair. I also have to cast on for a baby hat for a work friend, whose wife is expecting and due around the holidays. I’ve waited too long here and am in a lot of knitting hot water.
I really like this outfit although I’d wear it with my Sambas. And I never understand how women can tuck sweaters in – even a half tuck. And it’s been too hot. But everything else I like.
I don’t know if my wild femininehas revealed itself, but I like the concept of putting the ‘people pleasing maiden’ to rest.
One of the major projects that Brandon and I have to tackle in my 1962 Colonial is a kitchen remodel, but thinking about what that will entail (especially with a teenager and three cats and working from home 2 days a week) usually makes me think “hey, this too-small, outdated, not-ideal kitchen is JUST FINE!” But the day is coming and when it does, I am GOING to have a wide windowsill for plants. (Not those little angel figurines, though.) I love plants and I have one cat (Emmett I am looking at you) who is a plant murderer and will chew anything that is lower than six feet off the ground or that he is able to climb to. So my little collection of Thanksgiving cacti, Pothos, Hoya, snake plants and Pileapeperomioides are scrunched up on the mantel and high up on shelves and in less than ideal spots for their growth and display. Someday I will have a nice wide kitchen windowsill and I will have a nice little collection of plants there to bask in the sunshine.
So that’s about it for this morning. I have to get out for a quick run and then I’m off to help the kiddo’s marching band at one of their competitions this afternoon (pray for them; it will be 80 today and blazing sun, in full uniforms. These kids are absolute troopers).
Happy Friday! It’s sunny here in Michigan today but chilly, thanks to a northeast wind sweeping across Lake Huron out of Canada. We had to cover up our baby plants last night. We’ve had a couple of nice days, but I think we’re all more than ready for sustained warmer weather.
This week’s edition of recent pins is dedicated to a book genre I loved as a kid – the girl detective! A few of my favorites: Trixie Belden (I own the complete series), Nancy Drew (of course), Kay Tracey, and Meg Duncan. I think it’s interesting that the format for many of these stories included motherless (or fatherless) women (Trixie being the exception). Meg’s mother had passed, and her father had an ‘important government job’ and was frequently away from home. We know that Nancy’s mother had also passed, and her influential attorney father Carson Drew, while a strong figure in her life, relied heavily on his housekeeper Hannah and left Nancy to her own devices frequently. Kay Tracey had lost her father, and lived with her mother and her older brother Bill. Trixie, by comparison, was more relatable for the average reader – she was 13, had to do chores, had a family structure, and yet STILL managed to get into hijinks and mysterious, creepy situations. She was tomboyish and frequently felt less attractive than her chums Honey and Diana, which felt familiar to me. She rode the bus, wore jeans, hated math and sewing, wanted her own horse – no Mustang or roadster, no titian hair, no handsome boyfriend like Nancy or Kay.
Despite their different backgrounds and characters, these were all strong female role models in an age before we were regularly told “you can do and be anything you want”. The covers of these books are artwork in and of themselves – the illustrators usually did Trixie dirty but the Nancy and Kay Tracey covers are beautiful and dramatic. I’d love to have a few framed and hanging in my office.
For the most part, these books were written by ghostwriters under pseudonyms, sometimes several authors contributing to one pseudonym. This is an interesting article about Nancy’s creators (and if you’re interested, there’s a great book out there called ‘Girl Sleuth’ by Melanie Rehak). Trixie’s creators are harder to pin down. Julie Campbell wrote the first six books, and after that, Western House Publishing created the ‘Kathryn Kenny‘ pseudonym to continue the series. Kathryn Kenny was multiple authors, both male and female, and although I loved the entire original series, there are subtle changes in voice and characterizations as the books progressed.
I would have gone crazy for this cake at a certain age (umm, like 51)!
I liked paper dolls as a kid, even when I was too old to play with them. I vividly remember a rainy day, requesting my mom to make Trixie and Honey paper dolls for me and she complied, with an outfit or two each. I wish I’d saved them. I would have loved these.
And would it be immature or weird for a 50-something woman to carry a suitcase decoupaged with Nancy Drew covers and images? Nah, I don’t think so either.
Despite what has been a mainly gloomy and wet week, I managed to get outside for a run one day. The rain has left the streets pooled and clogged with mud and winter detritus. The red-winged blackbirds, my March friends, were loud in the reeds and the sky overhead was changeable, one moment swollen and sullen, the next breaking with sudden and blinding sun. All of this made me feel, friends, that despite being in the teeth of winter for what feel like a long time, no winter, or freeze, or storm, or cloud, or desolation, can last forever. There is always hope and as that great wheel turns and turns, we shall have spring again.
And with that very solemn intro which does not at all match what will be a fairly fluffy post, here are a few recent pins to slake my thirst for the season ahead.
Believe it or not, I actually have two of these types of old lanterns in the basement. They’re so cool but I’ve never known exactly how to use them to their best advantage! Link here.
Similarly cute idea. I have been growing morning glories on a rusty old trellis on the east side of our house for a few years now and this would be a fun addition once they start filling out.
This is the general vision I have for the southwest corner of our yard, under our pine trees. I love hostas and ferns, and buy a few every spring to gradually fill in. I doubt we’ll ever have a water feature but I do want a nice stone birdbath for that space and the colorful birdhouse is sweet!
*From the post title. The final line of this poem always feels so significant to me (probably also because it is the last line of Ariel, and this line leaves too much unsaid; her fate was coming fast to meet her), full of a mix of emotions as these tiny creatures are summoned forth again to rise with the spring, no matter what obstacles they face. Joy, despair, survival, fight, death, rebirth.
“Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas Succeed in banking their fires To enter another year? What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring.” (Wintering, by Sylvia Plath)
We are headed off for a long weekend in northern Michigan – we have a Frozen 5k to run on Saturday morning (it is going to be COLD), a rental cottage further north, and a couple of planned days skiing and snowboarding (and maybe knitting in the lodge for one member of the travel party who shall remain nameless). But I’ve had some really pretty images swirling on my PInterest feed and wanted to quickly share them before we leave!
I’ve been saving my Harney & Son’s tea tins to reuse as knitting needle holders in my home office but I also love this idea and this one as well. I’ve made candles in my old tins before, as well. (I may or may not have actually ordered tea from them because I loved the tin it came in.)
I’m going to have to knit these fellows for the same reason as I loved the fish tattoo a few weeks ago.
I’ve never had much luck with seed starting indoors. I don’t have the space for it, and Emmett is a voracious plant-chewer. But I wonder if this idea would work for just a few tomato plants…
Six Ten 