lately...

Lately I’ve been enjoying the major snowfall we’ve gotten in the past week (with more tonight possibly), and loving how it causes a general "slow down" to local society. Snow always takes me back to being a kid too…waking up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to peek out of my window and immediately running to the tv to see if my school ran across the screen. Then I’d stay in my pjs all day…even throwing snow pants over them…and get the most out of my free day as I could. To this day, I find myself still checking out the window first thing in the morning, and love that sense of excitement I still feel when I see all of the white. So magical.

Lately I’m working on being more intentional with my purchases. We all know that I’ve mentioned a household overhaul, so I really shouldn’t be bringing anything into my home, but if I do it’s because it’s utilitarian or something I know I will cherish as the years pass. Like this sweet-as-heck honey jar. I went down to Pastiche at Main (where I sell some of my goods) to drop some stuff off, and it was like all of the stars had aligned the 10 minutes I was in there. I work out of a half gallon jar of honey, where there is about 2 inches of honey left at the very bottom…nightmare when I just need a little spoonful for my tea. Could this vintage trinket be anymore perfect?!

Lately I’ve been working on lots and lots of foldover clutches and random-sized pouches to use up my first round of fabric from the Fall. I’m heading to the fabric store next week to choose and stock up on material for the second collection of foldovers for Spring. This stack will be heading down to Pastiche at the end of this week, and a few will be available at the farm store. I want to keep one, but I can’t decide which one! It’s definitely between the black/white or blue with crosses. Although, I am thinking about continuing on the black/white pattern for Spring…I don’t think I did many in that print for the first collection and it’s such a nice pattern & weight. So maybe I’ll grab that last blue one…arghh…I just can’t decide!

Lately I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my new couch! It took me a trip to Charlottesville and a couple of trips to Roanoke to find the one, but I knew it the second I sat on it…my hardheaded self just didn’t want to believe it at first. I sat on this couch at the store in Roanoke while I was looking at fabric options for another couch I thought I wanted, but couldn’t stop petting this one saying how much I loved it. I thought it was too big for my space, so I didn’t even think it was an option. Then we went back to the store a second time to look at fabric again and I was drawn to this one, again, like a magnet. So, I listened to my gut and had her delivered a couple days later! She’s perfect in my living room, so comfortable, and just feels right. Love it when that happens.

Lately I’ve been totally obsessed with Julia Rothman’s new book Nature Anatomy. I look through it over and over, the cover is great, the size of the book is great, and it’s full of so much important and useful information carried out in such a perfectly illustrated way. We use it in homeschool as a reference book - we just did a Weather block and used one of the clouds/environment illustrations to copy. I went ahead and ordered Farm Anatomy (that had been sitting in my Wish List cart for ages), and look forward to using that one during our Farming & Gardening block this Spring. My little student loves them too, which makes our lessons all the more exciting! Thumbs up!!

So that’s the first installment of what’s being going on lately at mi casa…I’d say 2015 is off to a good start….