Thankful Thursday

So it begins.

Today is the first day of the Nativity Fast for Orthodox Christians on the Julian Calendar (Orthodox on the Gregorian calendar have been fasting for 2 weeks already and will celebrate Christ's birth on December 25 with the rest of the West), and we commence watchful waiting for 40 days.  As I wrote a week ago, this year I don't have the time or the energy for a lot of things during this season, so I'm scaling back a little.  

Our new Cradle-to-Cross candle wreath arrived just in time and I set it up this morning so we can light the first candle at supper time tonight.    Our Jesse box also arrived yesterday (I got it on crazy sale thanks to a nice code from Ana's blog) and I am planning to put that together this afternoon or tomorrow sometime.  

I dug out an Orthodox Advent calendar that I bought years ago but we never seem to remember to use because I decorate the house later in the season.  My husband took the older three kids to church for a Thanksgiving Molieben this morning at our parish in New Jersey, so I had a few hours to putter around in the basement and do some sorting.  While Ponchik napped for an hour this morning, I shop vac'd the concrete floor (our 19th century floor joists tend to shed little bits of debris over time) and moved some things around to access the under stair area where my Christmas decorations are stored.  I sorted through the boxes and bins and pulled out the things I plan to put up on the eve of St. Nicholas Day on the 18th and then put everything back as it was.  Most of my decorations consist of ornaments and garland to hang them on, and since I don't plan to put up either this year, it was easy to pull out the other things I wanted.  I found my harvest wreath, tucked away in a forgotten box under the stairs and hung it up too.  It felt good to have the time to do these things.

We had our official Thanksgiving meal on Tuesday so that we could have the turkey and potatoes with all the fixings.  Tonight will be a vegan Thanksgiving meal.  Nice, but not quite the same.  I'm thankful for many things today, too many to list, so I won't start.  

Blessings for the Fast.  

Talking Tuesday: Thomas Tallis

Thomas Tallis was one of Queen Elizabeth I's court composers (although he began his tenure under her father, Henry VIII).  He produced a tremendous catalog of beautiful sacred music.  I can't begin to pick a favorite, but this one is lovely: 

O Sacrum Convivium

Original Latin (punctuation from Liber Usualis)

O sacrum convivium!

in quo Christus sumitur:

recolitur memoria passionis eius:

mens impletur gratia:

et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

Alleluia.

Translation of original Latin

O sacred banquet!

in which Christ is received,

the memory of his Passion is renewed,

the mind is filled with grace,

and a pledge of future glory to us is given.

Alleluia.

Living in a Material World

The material world is on my mind lately.  I wonder sometimes how far we have strayed from our vision of a simple life in the city (perhaps not at all, perhaps a lot; I don't have the advantage of time and perspective right now).  I'm feeling overburdened by the stuff in our house at the moment (I have four bags of stuff ready for donation, but lack the time and energy to get them somewhere since the convenient place I've been donating to for the last five years collapsed in a construction accident earlier this year).  The funny thing is what gives me energy is creating things, and I'm trying to tow that fine line between creating things that I can use and creating things just for the sake of keeping my hands busy and my creative itch scratched.

The holiday season makes me sad too.  We no longer travel to visit family for any of these holidays, and being off the Western calendar is still jarring to me, even after almost six years.  It is tempting to drown my sorrows in unproductive ways, like overindulging in food, or shopping, but as Matt Walsh pointed out earlier this week, consumerism is not the answer, nor does it help matters any.  (Incidentally, I think Mr. Walsh's article has quite a wide reach if you really think about it.  And I am thinking about it--how much time do I devote to feeding the consumer machine?  How skewed has my thinking become as a result?  I'm still pondering what needs to change in my life to pull back from what modern society says is normal, and get back to some traditional simple living.  But that is a post for another day).

We also have kids who are getting old enough to understand the whole concept of gifts, and Piglet's birthday falls on Christmas Eve, so that is always a tricky line to navigate as well.  (And having new things in the house is always hard for a while because of all the sensory issues around here)  In short, I'm feeling overwhelmed this year.  I have our cards ready to go to the printers, but I'm forgoing our traditional newsy letter for something much more streamlined.  I dislike it on the one hand because I feel like I'm giving in (to what, I don't know), but on the other hand, I feel that it is the only way I'm going to get a card out this year.  And it does hit the highlights in a sort of micro-blogging kind of way.  I know I should remember that I have a six month old baby, who is developmentally closer to four months, and three older kids who are still young and needy, and that I'm still not sleeping well at night (up every 60-90 minutes currently), so it doesn't take much to overwhelm my schedule or my feeling able to accomplish even a small task.  Everything is done in short bursts and my brain has a lot of trouble putting coherent thoughts together (so forgive me if this is stream of consciousness-rambling)

I've decided that this year, I'm going to take it easy on myself and try to scale back my own expectations.

I'm going to print off my simple card and be happy with it.

I'm going to keep the decorations very simple and put them up in time for St. Nicholas Day on December 19.  After several years' pondering, I finally ordered a Cradle to Cross wooden candle wreath that I'm hoping will arrive in time to use for Advent.  I'm not buying anything else to decorate with for Christmas--I'm going to use what I have.  I have a good stash now and feel good about my ability to get it up and keep the kids away from it for the duration.

We aren't going to attend our annual concerts this year (Anonymous4 and Messiah); evening childcare is too complicated right now, and frankly, I'm just too tired in the evening to want to go out.

I'm going to stick with my Focus T25 exercise routine and hope that my energy levels will catch up eventually (I'm in week four; it has to start getting better soon, right?)

I'm going to try and ignore my to-do list, and not take on any major organizing/cleaning projects until I feel better.

I will limit myself to browsing on etsy.  I put myself on a shopping moratorium a few weeks ago, and have mostly stuck to it, but I did end up purchasing a few skirts in the last few weeks as it is clear that my warm winter skirts from last year still do not fit and I just needed something as my sewing time is so limited.

I'm going to remind myself (and remind myself again) that my baby is only going to be six months old once, and that when she gets older, I don't want to regret not holding her more as a baby.  Whatever it is that I think needs doing can wait.

I don't expect that these things will hold the sadness at bay, or that I will be able to stay the course for the entire season, but I do hope that being mindful will give me a place to start.

Talking Tuesday: Sarah Chrisman

I mentioned yesterday that I'm currently reading Sarah Chrisman's book, Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me About the Past, Present, and Myself, and it is fascinating.   Ms. Chrisman marches to the beat of her own drummer, and a few years ago decided to immerse herself in the Victoriana that she loved and started dressing Victorian style, full time.  She and her husband live a Victorian-style life near Seattle, and this book is about that journey, which started with the gift of a corset on her 29th birthday.  I intend to write up a full review as soon as I finish the book, because there are a lot of good talking points, but I wanted to share these lines from the book, which struck my historian's heart this morning:

"'The past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.'  Yet foreign countries have ambassadors and diplomats to speak for them. The past is far less able to defend itself; it cannot formulate rebuttals.  Perhaps that is why it is an easy victim.  Thus, an opinion has become common that everything about the present is superior to anything that existed in the past.  It is difficult for many people to grasp that lifestyles may have been different in the past, and yet still completely satisfactory to those living them.  History has no emissaries." 

~Sarah Chrisman, Victorian Secrets, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013, Kindle Edition, Location 2744.

Our Bookshelves (a really long picture post)

I saw a few of my favorite bloggers doing Modern Mrs. Darcy's bookshelf link up last week, and said to myself, "I've got to do that one too!"  We have serious books goin' on here, folks.  My husband and I are both academics, and bibliophiles to boot, so when we moved in to this house, we had 60 boxes of books. Yes, sixty.  We immediately pared down 10 boxes worth, but then spent another few years accumulating their equal in children's books, and the last couple of years weeding out from both collections.  I present to you: our bookshelves. And for the record, I have paired down one whole bookshelf these last three years, but didn't photograph the stack on my nightstand.

Starting in my office/guest room/craft space, we have two bookshelves.  This one holds the kids' baby books and photo albums from 2010 onward, plus a variety of parenting/education/writing a novel/sewing references.  It also houses my stamps and Big Shot.

A close up of the second shelf: The Well Trained Mind, Book in a Month (so useful!), The Collette Sewing Book, plus the usual parenting reference suspects.

On the other side of the desk is the liturgical bookshelf.  It holds my choir music folders from when I was directing, the Menaion for the year, two shelves of service books and other liturgical references.  The bottom two shelves are law books my husband uses when he preps his classes from home.

Close up of second and third shelves.  The big red books are the menaion from Holy Transfiguration Monastery.  They are huge, but well put together and lovely to chant from--they are metered for Byzantine style chant.

In the icon room next door, we have this bookshelf, which contains a few prayer books to use in the icon corner to the right, but the rest is children's literature.  The top shelf has my ChildCraft series (the first two books are fabulous for the older preschool set); the second shelf is books for elementary age kids (Chronicles of Narnia, the Little House books, some Encyclopedia Brown, etc).  The second to bottom shelf is the stuff the kids read now.

Our current reading for the kids:

When they are a little older:

And now to the living room.  We have 10 foot ceilings in the living room and the bookcases go all the way up.  The shelves on the bottom are filled with games, toys, seminary materials, and some other ephemera, but the top are all books.  And I'm a little embarrassed to report that the top two rows of each book case are double stacked.

From top to bottom, left to right: Science, poetry/19th century literature (with plays stacked behind); political science/biography, high-brow literature; philosophy, social/cultural commentary; history, low-brow fiction. Bottom shelf, left side: craft books, piano music, Greek school books for Piglet, a few coffee table type books.  Bottom shelf, right side: OED, other reference works.

From the "low brow" fiction: my favorite series of all time: Outlander (currently being made in to a mini-series by Starz!  So. Excited).  Also, my undergraduate and master's theses on the far left.  And Master and Margarita, and The Thorn Birds.  Oh, and The English Patient.  All high on my list.

The history shelf (which has been pruned rather severely since I'm no long er active in academia). Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra is one of my favorites, as it has (among other things) one of the best descriptions of the causes of WWI I've ever come across.  Also, Remnick's Lenin's Tomb, which is the best book about the collapse of the Soviet Union (in my opinion).  Oh, and Land of the Firebird by Suzanne Massie is great too--a cultural history of Russia up to the mid-20th century.

The top shelves (Dostoevsky--my husband's favorite), Sherlock Holmes, and other assorted "good" literature.

Social/cultural commentary: I loved The Shallows (Nicholas Carr), The Big Necessity (Rose George), Crunchy Cons (Rod Dreher) and Coming Apart (by Charles Murray).  I could write essays on each book and discuss talking points for days, but will leave them for another day.

The other bookshelf in the living room:

From top to bottom, left to right: languages (Greek, French, Russian, German), popular theological works (C.S. Lewis mostly); lives of saints/writings of the Fathers; Bibles, commentaries, extra-liturgical texts (the green books), more lives of saints; the writings of the Church Fathers, Ancient Christian commentary; (bottom shelf, left hand side): children's books, far right side: coffee table type books.

Some lives of Saints:

Whew!  That's it!!  I do tend to squirrel books away in closets, and let's not get started on the ebooks on my kindle app, but this is mostly what we have.  I confess that I feel slightly bereft if I don't have something to read, and am usually reading about five things at once.  Currently, I'm reading Victorian Secrets by Sarah Chrisman on my kindle app, and I'm going to write up a review as soon as I finish it.  It definitely has some interesting talking points.

7QT: Sewing Curve

--1--

More sewing creations!  This week I made a blouse and a skirt.  The blouse is the same pattern from last week, but with a different DS Quilts Collection fabric (I used another of her fabrics on my yellow skirt--her stuff is seriously great.  Her patterns have a wonderful feedsack vibe to them.  Just don't search by the collection on the Joann website because it misses about half the fabrics.  Just look under premium quilt fabric collections).  The blouse came together fairly quickly, but I had to go back and correct the front and back pleats, and also fix the sleeve length.  It is a little bigger in the shoulders than the other blouse, and a bit looser in the bust for some reason, but that is fine.  The other blouse is a pretty close fit.  The buttons on this blouse are so fun--they have a great little detail down the middle of the button, and they come from my grandma's stash, so that is even better!

Blouse: Made by me, Simplicity 1880

Skirt: 1970s polyester skirt, Haberdashery brand, via ebay

Blue cardigan: Merona (old, from Target)

Earrings: 1950s vintage, from etsy seller

Necklace: Frenchie's Antique Mall/Cafe

--2--

Shirt: Thrifted Ralph Lauren boatneck (via Second Time Around)

Skirt: Me made, Simplicity 2314

Maracas pin: thrifted

It's no great secret that I'm a fairly novice sewer.  I've been sewing for a long time, but I've not developed a lot of skillz, if you know what I mean.  I kind of just bump along, figuring out as I go.  My mom (and my grandmother before her) were great seamstresses.  My mom made her wedding dress and used to make all her own clothes.  She made various garments for us girls when we were growing up, and made my wedding dress when the time came.  Unfortunately, one cannot learn sewing by osmosis, so I only picked up a thing or two here and there.  My recent foray back into sewing has only served to highlight the depths of what I do not know about sewing.  (Sometimes my ignorance is so deep and so wide that I don't even know that I don't know.)  Enter the zipper.  I've never been happy with the fit of my Cowboy Joe skirt (picture above), and my sister is thinner than me, and said she'd love to have it.  So I sent it to her a few weeks ago with blessings for happy outfits.  The next time I spoke with my mom on the phone, she said, "do you know how to put in a zipper?"  I responded that I had put the dumb thing in about 3 times before giving up and declaring it good enough.  "You know there is a method to it, right?"  Uh, no. So off to Google I went, to find "zipper insertion tutorial, with pictures."  And there I happened upon this blog, which had numerous great tutorials, including a good one on zippers.  (I tried Colletterie and Gertie's first, but didn't find a good tutorial on either).  I also found one on sewaholic for a hand-picked zipper, but am filing that away for later.  I spent about an hour this morning fixing the zipper on the yellow skirt and bringing the waist band in a bit (it came out too big in the waist).  

--3--

So my first attempt at the skirt this week didn't go so well; the inseam pockets weren't right, the whole thing seemed too big, the hem was awful, it hung weird, made me look really really fat, and I was ready to chuck the whole mess into a corner and call it a waste of time and $7.00 (the fabric was a crazy-on-sale suiting from Joann.com).  In the end, however, I decided to unpick the sideseams, remove the pockets, insert the zipper correctly and redo the hem.  Suddenly, it all came together!  It fits fairly well now, and while the hem isn't perfect, at least the skirt is wearable now!  I realized looking at the photos that it needs a good press (again!), but that is okay.  For $7.00, I'm feeling fine about this skirt.  I might even try and salvage the navy swing skirt I flubbed last week.

Blouse: LLBean via ThredUp

Skirt: me made, Simplicity 2314

Brooch: 1940s dangle via Charlotte

LL Bean wellies (different colorway)

--4--

And since I'm sure you are dying to know, the pin I'm wearing today is a 1940s dangle pin, and it is one of my favorites.  I bought it from Charlotte of Tupennce Ha'Penny fame, and it was my first piece of period specific jewelry.  It is a little Alpine hat with dangling hiking boots.  

--5--

You know what are absolute genius?  Raisins in little boxes.  I love them for the kids, especially when we are going to be somewhere that they have to stay relatively still and quiet, because they keep them busy!  They spend so much time trying to get the raisins out of the box, and then eating said raisins, that it is the perfect thing.  My husband dislikes them because it is extra waste for the packaging, and they aren't very economical price-wise, but a peaceful doctor's visit or grocery store run is worth it, in my opinion.

--6--

Yo-yo-yo! We have a six month old in the house! (I'm feeling kind of 90s lately...no excuse).  Ponchik is still recovering from the plague (our pediatrician thinks it may have been RSV), but she is getting better, slowly, slowly.  Mostly, she just wants to be held, and given a lot of attention from her siblings and parents.  In other words, a typical fourth child.

--7--

So.  Exercise.  I'm still doing Focus T25 with my Facebook challenge group, and you guys.  It is the end of week 3, and I'm tired.  Sosososososotired.  I still have seven weeks to go, and I'm feeling a bit daunted.  I still mostly like the workouts, and my challenge group is pretty awesome, but getting up at 6:15 every morning (including Saturdays!) to work out after being up with the baby so much of the night is really wearing thin.  I'm completely catatonic by 8:00 p.m., and just feel limp during the day most days.  I keep hoping it is going to get better at Ponchik improves, but yowza, it is a tough slog right now.  (And yes, I will take some cheese with my whine, thankyouverymuch.)

Go see Jen and the other takers of quick!

Mad for Plaid!

Today, I'm guest posting over at This Felicitous Life about wearing vintage style as a mom--hop on over to check it out!  And for a gratuitous outfit post, I'd like to add this plaid dress (and also link up with ChatterBlossom's Mad for Plaid Thursday Thrill) which is a current fave in my fall wardrobe.  It is some kind of combed cotton-poly blend and is so soft and comfortable.  It buttons down the front, so super nursing friendly, and you know how I currently feel about butterfly collars!

Outfit details:

80s-does-40s plaid day dress: Rose Above 

Ann Taylor Loft cardigan: Goodwill 

"Everitt" label 1940s hat: prima_mona on ebay

Foot Traffic Cotton Tights in Heather Mocha: Sock Dreams

LLBean Mid Wellies

Belt: hand me down

Necklace: Frenchie's Antique Mall

Earrings: hand me down

Sunnies: retronetty on ebay

Cute baby: not for sale. (ha!)

Talking Tuesday: Karyn Thurston

Today's quote comes courtesy of blogger Karyn Thurston, and with this one line, I realized how much time I spend putting value on easy and painless things, and how very wrong it is.  There are some things that are valuable regardless of ease or not, (like making a nutritious meal), but the emphasis that I tend to put on the easy is not right.  I give up too quickly if something is hard or painful, and I'm missing out on the opportunity to learn and grow from that pain or difficulty.  I'm missing out on the chance to change.

"We have got to stop telling people that things should be easy and painless. We live in a culture that equates ease with value -- the easier it is, the better it is; if it hurts you, something is wrong. Reality check: sometimes things that are hard and painful are also really, really good."

~Karyn Thurston, "10 True Things About the First Year of Parenthood" on Huffington Post, November 11, 2013

7QT: Quickety-Quick, Lickety-Split.

--1--

Finished blouse!

My big ta-da!: The blouse is finished!  I can't say enough how pleased I am with how this blouse came out.  It looks exactly like what I had in my head.  I used Simplicity 1880 and modified the bodice to be a blouse (read: I lengthened all the pieces by 7").  I had intended to make it a long sleeve blouse, but didn't quite have enough fabric for it.  I could have done three quarter length sleeves, but they didn't really look right, so I went with plain old short sleeves, which actually gives me more options for the blouse anyway.  

This is one of those times when I can't recommend enough to do a muslin first.  I definitely learned a ton about the pattern by doing the muslin and saved myself from making a muck of the finished blouse as a result. Now that I've made it twice, I'm definitely making this one again!  It's not perfect, but I really like the fit.  I'm still too scared to do real button holes (it closes with snaps, which is actually super nursing friendly), but I'm not too concerned about that.  I'll get there eventually.

--2--

The matching swing skirt, however, not so much.  The fabric was some old polyester bottomweight from my grandma's stash, and it was a bear to work with.  It refused to press properly, and the hem was a beast to hand finish.  I got all the way to the end of the skirt, and went to repress the hem, and the fabric melted!  Right in the front, in an area the size of my palm.  I felt sick.  I tried cutting off the hem and rehemming a little shorter, but I'm basically unhappy with the whole thing now.  The old hem wasn't great, and the new hem is fairly terrible, and now it is shorter than I like.  The upside is that I've fixed the fit problems I was having with the pattern, so I feel confident to make it again with different fabric.  I also figured out how to put pockets int the side seams, so that is useful.  Live and learn, I guess.

--3--

Ponchik is still sick; she has had several fevers this week and every night is an endurance marathon of epic proportions for me.  She basically wants to nurse all night, and she is coughing, wheezy and miserable, so I don't have it in me to refuse her.  At least she is no worse.  And frankly, she is happier sick than some other of my children are when well!  

--4--

Yesterday was a toddler clothing bonanza around here!  Two friends dropped off girl clothes and some shoes for Birdie (and, eventually, Ponchik).  Birdie immediately seized a white crochet hat from the pile and has been wearing it non-stop since (I did say she couldn't wear it to bed).  I think it makes her look like a Q-tip.  A cute Q-tip, but a Q-tip nonetheless.

--5--

Birdie isn't really great about smiling for the camera (she tends to look more like she does in take #4), so I was pleased to get this shot one day this week:

--6--

And because I've been stuck at home for the last three weeks with sick children and have done precisely nothing except nurse sick kids, sew, do laundry, make food, read blogs, and watch Netflix when I collapse in a heap in the evenings, I've got nothing much else to add.

This photo captures so much of Ponchik's personality, I think:

Our copy of Bembleman's Bakery arrived this week and made me so happy.  We had it growing up, and it is just such a fun story.  

--7--

Oh wait, one more thing.  I found the series Coal House At War on YouTube this week and it is highly addictive and wonderful, especially if you love the 1940s.  It is the same concept behind Frontier house, 1900 House, and The 1940s House (all good!), but set in 1944 Wales.  The original Coal House series was on the same set but in 1927, and is equally riveting.  (Between Coal House, Coal House at War, and the Fireman Sam fest my boys had last week, the voice in my head currently has a Welsh accent).

 I've mentioned a time or two that I'm an historian, and what interests me most about the past is how people lived.  These sorts of series make life in the past accessible for the modern mind, and also point out to me ways that I could be simplifying things.  My favorite thing about Coal House at War was how the children played outside with each other, and how the community developed around the dooryard and the kitchens.  Yes, it was cramped, and difficult, and lacking in modern conveniences, but there was also something good about it all.  It reminded me very much of our experience at the monastery in California, which is off the grid in the Shasta mountains, or of my experience in Central Asia on the edge of Lake Issak-Kyl, a place that lacks indoor plumbing and modern kitchen convenience, and electricity is a bit dodgy at the best of times.  There was something so good and simple about that life.  I don't know how to bring it forward to this place and time, but I intend to keep thinking about it.

Okay, go see Jen for more Quick Takes!

Welcome Stampers!

Those of you who read this blog in Feedly may have noticed a bunch of posts show up this morning.  I don't know how many people read both of my blogs, but I've decided to combine them and make life simpler for myself.  This blog is where all new content will be published, and I've imported all the posts from the other blog to make referencing easier.  The old blog will stay up, but I don't plan to publish new content there.  From now, all my creative endeavors, essays about city living, thoughts about food and raising children, vintage fashion, etc. will all be here.

If you would prefer to receive Urban Simplicity in your inbox, please let me know!

Talking Tuesday: Molly Sabourin

"Home is ideally where family members return to for refreshment at the end of a hectic day. How much unnecessary tension, stress and chaos are we allowing to enter? Guard the windows, the doors! Lock out that which robs us of our peace and attentiveness. Relax, unwind, be present, be still." 

~Molly Sabourin, posted on her Girls Gone Great Facebook page, 10/30/13

7QT: Mid-Plague/Post-Plague Edition

--1--

So I wrote last week that we were in the middle of a respiratory epidemic and all the kids were down with it.  Given Piglet and Birdie's underlying respiratory conditions, I wasn't too hopeful that we were going to avoid an ER visit with Birdie, after Piglet had one mid-week.  Last Friday, I put her down for a nap, and neglected to give her the usual mid-day tylenol (we were alternating anti-fever meds throughout the day to keep her crazy high fever reasonable).  She woke up mid-afternoon hot, and just sat on my lap like a lump.  As anyone who knows her will say, this is highly unusual.  She just sat there a long time, not really saying anything, or moving.  She wouldn't walk around, cried every time I put her down, was very listless and super hot.  Around 4:00, I thought I should probably get her some ibuprofen sooner rather than waiting until closer to bedtime.  Almost as soon as that thought crossed my mind, Birdie started seizing from the fever.

This isn't our first go-round with febrile seizure with her (she's probably had about four by now), but this one took years off my life.  My husband had come home early and I hollered at him to call the doctor.  Her arm was twitching weirdly, she was drooling and completely unresponsive.  Then she started turning gray and stopped breathing momentarily.  At this point, we called 911 and got an ambulance.  After about 3 minutes, she finally stopped twitching, coughed a bunch and started breathing normally again (she stopped breathing only for a moment, but was breathing very shallowly during the rest of the seizure).  The dispatcher told us to undress her and lay her on her side to prevent her from choking and wait for the EMTs.

--2--

All I can say is that I'm glad she kept breathing on her own after that momentary stop because the EMTs took f-o-r-e-v-e-r.  I do know CPR, but still.  Scary.  They took her right into the ambulance and my husband hopped in with her.  I was so glad he'd come home early (a rare and unusual occurrence!) otherwise I don't know what I would have done with the other kids.  Her fever was 105.  They gave her more anti-fever medicine at the ER (we'd given her a bit at home before the EMTs got there) and ran some tests to see what might be ailing her.  Negative chest x-ray, negative for UTI.  So they sent her home with instructions to dose around the clock to keep her fever down.  

By Saturday night, however, she was coughing non-stop, her fever was 103 with constant dosing and our pediatrician decided it was time to start an antibiotic for bronchitis.  She has improved steadily since, although her cough is still fierce.  

--3--

Boo complained of ear pain on Saturday, and by Monday was completely miserable, so we kept him home and the pediatrician diagnosed a double ear infection that was bad enough to treat.  So as of right now, my three older kids are on oral antibiotics.  As if keeping up with that dosing schedule weren't enough, we were still dosing for fever, for cough, plus their normal medications.  I felt like my head was going to explode.  

The view in my fridge.  Cue exploding brain now.

Added to that was keeping up with my own dosing schedule, as my illness really blossomed over the weekend and settled into my chest.  I'm taking Robitussin CF around the clock and trying to conserve energy where I can.  Ponchik has been sicker this week too, with goopy eyes, nasal and sinus congestion, and nursing more often, so that has been an additional layer of complication.

--4--

On the whole, however, I can say I've felt pretty even keel mentally.  I credit starting Focus T25 on Saturday and sticking with an early morning workout schedule this week.  (I wrote about it briefly on the other blog on Wednesday).  Despite coughing my lungs up and generally feeling unwell, those 25 minutes seem to set my day off on a good pattern.  I'm participating in a challenge group on FB and it helps me so much to be accountable and stick with it.

--5--

1943 clothing edition from the UK

I got this little book in the mail yesterday and it is so great.  I bought it for the WWII historian in me, but there are lots of great tips and tricks too--I hope to use some of them in the future!

Ways to fix or size up a dress.

Clever ways to save a worn shirt.

--6--

Got it! *Fist pump*

I spent a bunch of time yesterday afternoon puzzling over my blouse pattern.  I'm making a blouse out of the top part of Simplicity 1880 and having a go at a butterfly collar.  The collar attachment was driving me bonkers.  It seemed like there was twice the amount of material there should be on the edge of the front parts, and it just did not want to attach properly and lay right.  I was really getting discouraged and ready to throw in the sewing towel after getting so much energy and excitement about it, and then I put down the muslin and walked away for a little while.  I looked at a similar blouse in my closet to understand the construction and then suddenly it occurred to me that I had made a mistake with the facing that was messing up the collar now.  Suddenly, it all worked after I fixed that piece!  Amazing.  Now I have to do a sleeve mock and make sure that works, but I'm hoping to sew the real blouse next week.

--7--

Birdie has just figured out the zipper on a Hefty ziploc bag.  She spent--no joke--30 minutes zipping and unzipping that bag one day this week.  It.was.fabulous.

Go see Jen for more Quick Takes!

Foodie Friday: Sausage-Zucchini Tart

I've made this a few times now, and it was good each time!  I got the recipe from Real Simple magazine, and I didn't really change it much.  The second time I made it I used mini zucchinis, and crumbled up some feta cheese and that was especially nice, as all the pieces on top of the tart were the same size.

Sausage-Zucchini Tart

1 package puff pastry (I used Pepperidge Farms and used both sheets)
1-2 T. Dijon mustard
1/2-3/4 # mild italian sausage
2 regular or 6-8 mini zucchinis
1 block light feta cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper and place thawed puff pastry on them.  Prick all over with a fork.  Spread Dijon mustard over crust, leaving a 1/2" margin.  Cook sausage in a skillet, breaking up into small pieces. Do not over cook. Remove from skillet, and spread crumbles evenly over pastry.  Slice zucchini and add to the skillet (do not remove oil first!)  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover skillet.  Cook until zucchini sweats a little and starts to look translucent.  Remove from skillet and spread evenly over crust.  Break up block of feta and divide between crusts.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.  Cut into slices before serving (I usually cut each square into 6--in thirds one direction and in half the other direction so each piece has a bit of crust on the edge)

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Makes 12 large pieces.