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Creating an Elven Warrior Costume
When Ryan first told me he wanted to be an Elven Warrior for Halloween, I was intimidated and had no idea where to start. I made him look through Pinterest with me until he could give me an idea of what he was picturing in his mind. As it turned out, he wanted something that looked similar to Link in Legends of Zelda. I still wasn’t sure where to start, but we agreed that I would sew him a tunic and hat. We ordered him elf ears for a few dollars from Amazon. For the tunic and hat, I took him to a local sewing shop to pick out fabric.…
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The Bookseller
She walked down the narrow, cobblestone alley; she had never noticed the old bookstore there before. The sign outside said simply: “BOOKS Wednesdays 10-2”. She walked in to discover shelves and shelves of unfamiliar dust-covered books, not the walls of classics or contemporary books she expected to find in a bookstore. These were books about magic, fairies, spirits, and spells. The bookseller glared at her as she reached to dust off a book hidden in the corner. This was the book that would change everything. This was a six sentence story that had to include the prompt word CLASSICS. To see more six sentence stories responding to this prompt go…
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Know the Novel: Introducing Misfit Magic
I feel like I have really found my groove with writing again recently. For the past few years, any time I sat down to write, I would feel guilty and like my time was better spent doing something else. The act of pulling out my computer became a task associated with finishing my thesis and high levels of stress. I have always loved writing, but for a while I found every excuse available to avoid writing. I am so happy to be back writing again. I rediscovered the joy in writing. There are still a million reasons for me to put off writing, but I feel more committed to writing…
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The Search for the Golden Pumpkin
The vivid colors have dropped from the trees. The temperatures have dropped along with the leaves. It is cold enough that fewer kids are running around, but not cold enough for frolicking in snow. Littleton may have found a perfect solution for getting kids running around outside – a good old-fashioned treasure hunt! One by one, the Littleton Police Department has been hiding golden pumpkins around town. Each pumpkin has a golden ticket attached with a prize worth up to $250. Each afternoon they release a clue, and kids all around town scramble to try to find the golden pumpkin. It has been a really fun way to explore around…
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October Snow – Sunday Snapshots
My favorite pictures from this week are from Thursday morning, when we woke up to snow outside. The snow was a little bit of a shock since we weren’t quite ready, but both kids woke up so excited to see all the fresh fallen snow. There is something that just feels magical about a fresh snowfall. We are not quite at the time of year where the snow sticks around for the season yet, so all the snow was gone by the next day. It was a great reminder for me that I need to get my act together and clean and organize winter gear, figure out what fits and…
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Ten Things of Thankful – Week 2
This week has had a lot of ups and downs, but I have been really looking forward to doing another Ten Things of Thankful post this week. I love gratitude logging as a mindfulness exercise, and writing for a public audience really forces me to put more thought into what I am writing. 1. I am thankful for great friends and community. We have a potluck coming up Sunday with a lot of friends in the area and I am really looking forward to it. In the past I have had plenty of social anxiety, but not with this group of people. They are a really great, welcoming and supportive…
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Making a Tiger Tutu
When we talked about costumes for the kids, Saoirse really wanted to be Daniel Tiger, but also wanted to feel like a princess. So the natural solution was to make her a Daniel Tiger tutu. I had thought about making her pants with tiger stripes, but the tutu alone is perfect for giving her tiger stripes on her legs. I looked around online and found a lot of different ways to make tutus. I ultimately decided to follow the simplest tutu instructions because that also seemed like the tutu design most likely to grow with her longest. I found a great tutorial online at DIY Network. I picked up some…
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Halloween Housesitting
The job requirements were simple, she just had to spend the night in a vacant house to make sure that no Halloween pranksters messed with it – easy money. As she walked up to the door, the house was surrounded by a fog so thick she could barely see two feet in front of her. She pushed the old, creaky door open and stepped inside. She heard a door slam in a different part of the house as the lights flickered off and on. This house was supposed to be unoccupied so she shouted out to see who was there. Suddenly the lights went out and then the laughter started.…
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Resilience
Resilience. That is the word that has been bouncing in my head this week. As a therapist, it was a word that came up frequently when writing therapy goals and progress notes with clients. It is also one of the behavioral standards that kids are rated on at Ryan’s school. What does it really mean though? Imagine walking across hot coals. If you cry and scream the whole way across, but then keep on walking and are willing to try it again, are you resilient because you bounced back? Or not resilient because you cried and screamed? Do you need to cross the coals without flinching in order to be…
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The Basin – Tuesday Tour Guide
Henry David Thoreau described the Basin in Franconia Notch as “perhaps the most remarkable curiosity of its kind in New England”. Samuel Eastman said it was “one of the beautiful haunts of Nature, a luxurious and delicious bath fit for the ablutions of a goddess.” I have lived in New England for most of my life and had never heard of it until moving up here. The first time we heard the Basin mentioned was when Ryan’s class couldn’t make it to their field trip due to a road closure, so they picnicked at the Basin. I didn’t give the place much thought until some friends mentioned how beautiful it…
