We do chores around here, kids included. So the gift of not having to do those tedious chores is always appreciated. I’m trying to get the last of the holiday gift stuff together today – wrapping presents, stuffing stockings, etc. – and I put together some “Santa Slips to slip in my daughter’s stocking. These are…
Holidays
5 Solutions To The Kid Gift Problem
The problem: your kid has a lot of friends, and wants to give gifts to every single one of them. With your money. Of course, it is absolutely wonderful that your charming and thoughtful child is thinking of his or her peers over the holiday, and you want to encourage this independent spirit of generosity. You just don’t…
Putting The Harvest Back In The Harvest Festival
Thanksgiving is my favorite of the celebratory checkpoints in the Fall-to-Winter Holiday Season. Putting aside the historical – ahem – issues regarding the origin story of Thanksgiving, I can really get behind a good celebration of the harvest and a day dedicated to gluttony and loosening one’s pants. This year’s Thanksgiving was a bit different because we…
The Turkey Vortex: The Next Five Days Of Your Life, In Crayon
Happy Thanksgiving, all. I’m off to go prep for dinner. Have a warm and wonderful holiday, completely free of fried-onions-in-a-can. See you next week, if I’m not sucked permanently into The Turkey Vortex. What are your plans for the mass of leftovers the Grand National Gluttony Festival will inevitably leave you with?
5 Holiday Gift Ideas For The Male Domestic Geek
Black Friday is just around the corner, and let’s just suppose that your idea of a good way to spend the morning after Thanksgiving does not include any of the following: Waking up at 4am to queue (I haven’t done that since the last time Pink Floyd went on tour). Receiving trampling injuries from someone…
Garden Fresh Produce For Thanksgiving
In the Maritime Northwest, with only the most basic of season extension techniques, you can celebrate Thanksgiving as a true, local harvest festival. Kale needs no protection, and looks glorious bathed in crackling frost. Chard won’t make it unassisted through a snap of real cold (teens/low-twenties around here) but protected by a cheap plastic tunnel…
Autumn Decor, On Accident
Several weeks ago, I took the kids to the pumpkin farm, where I loaded up on edible squash to supplement to lackluster harvest I managed to home-grow this year. A bit after that, I asked my rural-living sister to pick me up a few bales of straw at non-urban prices when she came into town….
A Very Homestead Holiday
I hate to be the bearer of exhausting news but the holiday season is right around the corner. Personally, I think it’s obscene to see Christmas wrapping paper and Halloween candy on display at the same time, but there it is. This is the world we live in. Image from Premier Packaging, shared via Creative…
What Moms Want, What They Really, Really Want
Chances are good that if you are reading this you are a mother (much of my readership being female and of a certain domestic bent). Chances are excellent that even if you are not personally a mom, there is a mother in your life: perhaps your spouse or the woman who brought you into this…