In a Field of Flowers

The theme over at I Heart Faces this week is “scenic B&W.” I haven’t participated in any of their challenges for quite a while, so I thought I’d join in again.

This is my oldest daughter (4yrs old pictured). You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she had just hiked about 3 miles with us up Cascade Head. As we were packing up the car, she and her sister just played in the flowers.

My husband designed a watermark for me. Isn’t he sweet?

Be sure to check out all the talent shared on I Heart Faces:

Free Music from Amazon!

I have to share this! I found this promo code through Frugal Living NW to download $3 worth of free music on Amazon—today only. Currently (possibly today only), Amazon has quite a few good albums marked down to $1.99 for the whole album, so you can get an entire album with a dollar left over. How cool is that?! I love free stuff!

I tend to get music-deprived because I stopped listening to the radio when I had kids. I never know what words my kids might learn or what songs will be played, so I stick to my iPod. Really the only way I find new music is by listening when I watch TV or movies, and if I hear anything I like, I look up what song it was and hunt it down. I’m rather out of touch with the music world. So a deal like this is just heaven sent. Here are some possibilities (note: all images found on Amazon.com):

You could get this Christmas album for $1.99. I’m a little bummed I didn’t get it now because I saw that it has “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which is one of my absolute favorite Christmas songs.You could get In Between Dreams by Jack Johnson for $1.99. I already have this one, and I love it. Jack Johnson is one of my favorite artists.

I opted to get something besides Christmas music. I’ve been listening to this Christmas album for the past week (which is only $5 right now). I know, I started before Thanksgiving (gasp!). But when I was growing up, my mother always listened to Christmas music while we made the Thanksgiving pies, so it’s sort of tradition. Anyway, I’ve been enjoying “Winter Song” by Sara Bareilles so much, that I decided to give some of her other music a try.

I got this album for $1.99 on my $3 credit.

And I got “I Go to the Barn Because I Like the” by Band of Horses. I’ve loved that song since I heard it on a season finale of Psych, and now I will finally own it.

And finally, I got a few songs from Little & Ashley because they were free even without the credit. I’ve never heard of them, but the music clips sounded fun.

So hurry and go get some free music today! (I was not paid to post this, I just got the deal and wanted to share.)

What’s your favorite song or artist right now? Is there a certain album you’re listening to over and over? What’s your favorite Christmas CD?

Snapshots of Thanksgiving

There’s a beautiful blog called eighteen25 that started a new link party called Snapshots of Life. You go to their blog on Wednesday to see a listed time. On Thursday, everyone takes pictures of what they were doing at that time of day. And on Friday, we all go back to link up our pictures there on the blog. I’ve never done it before, but I thought it might be fun since this Thursday was Thanksgiving. So here’s what we were up to at 4:00pm yesterday:

My daughters were just finishing watching Sleeping Beauty while playing with doll clothes. These are the same cabbage patch kids and clothes that used to belong to my sister and me as children.See all the clothes? See the sleeping uncle and Grandpa’s resting feet in the background? We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at 2:00, so all the guys were in a turkey coma by this time. Even the dogs are resting (yes, they have their very own couch). Trying to put the clothes on the doll.

Trying to put the clothes on herself.

My sweetie, asleep on the couch.

My mother, who was starting to think about pie, as was I.

Hop on over to eighteen25 to see what others were doing on their Thanksgiving afternoon:

My Little Helpers

She sits on my lap. She plays with the pins on my sewing machine. She’s finally learned to resist the temptation to play with the dials . . . most of the time. I pause to let her remove a pin before I continue sewing. Her hair tickles my face.

My projects take a little longer because I have two little helpers. When I cut my fabric, I have two little girls standing by me saying, “trick or treat.” I give them the scraps I don’t need. When I pin the fabric in place, I have small hands wanting to hand me each pin, while I listen to a constant chorus of “here you go, Mommy.” We settle arguments over who gets to sit where to watch me sew. My oldest takes the pins from me and puts them in the box. When they aren’t watching, they are playing close by.

I try to keep things balanced. I try to make sure they still have some of my focus. As they get older, I hope to help them do more than remove pins. I hope they remember these moments, and I hope they learn to value the feeling of making something. I want to teach them all these things I know how to do, and I hope they will feel love in my teaching. Most of all, I want to remember these moments, when she is small enough to sit on my lap while I sew, when her older sister is sitting nearby, peppering me with questions about what I’m making. I want to remember them just like this, because as much as I love watching them get bigger every day, I know I will miss the smallness they leave behind.