The names are drawn, the results are in, and we have three winners for my 100th Blog follower giveaway! I heard from readers all the way from Mapleton, Oregon to Victoria, Australia and I loved reading all your responses. I heard about such an array of wonderful homesteading endeavors and dreams of backyard bees, canning, growing food, chickens, goats, alpacas, mulching, fruit ...
Home is Where the Hearth is
100th Blog Follower Giveaway
To celebrate my blog reaching 100 official followers this week, I decided it's time for a giveaway. It's my way of saying "Thank You" to all of my readers out there. There will be three winners, each receiving a gift from my Mountain Hearth Handcrafts Etsy shop at http://www.mountainhearth.etsy.com/. I have been amazed since I started up this writing project at how many folks out ...
Bringing the Seasons into Your Home
With the increasingly indoor lives us modern folks are living, bringing a little of the outdoors in can really help us tune in to the natural world. I have always been the sort of person who fills up my house with rocks, sticks, feathers, nests, pinecones and whatever little things I collect on my walks and adventures. When my kids were little, I got the idea for a nature table somewhere, and I ...
Use Cloth in the Kitchen: Save Money and Trees!
Paper towels, paper napkins, and paper lunch bags. Most households go through huge quantities of these every week without questioning the cost and the amount of waste generated. Have a little spill to wipe up? Grab a wad of paper towels. Setting the table for dinner? Be sure to put a napkin at each spot. Packing everyone's lunch for the day? Fold it all into a neat little brown paper bag. The idea ...
February Snow
For the second time this year, we woke up to snow! This doesn't happen around here too often these days, so it's a big event! Everything outside the window was white. And the big flakes just kept on falling from the sky. We piled up the woodbox to keep the house warm... And kept the fire roaring in the woodstove. I made some hot mulled cider on the stove with our last jar from this Fall's ...
Winter in the Country: A Tour in Photographs
As we make our way through another mild, and somewhat erratic Willamette Valley Winter, I thought I'd share a handful of photographs of some highlights of the season. Between our one day of snow, some frosty cold mornings, torrential rain for days on end, and the balmy 60-degree weather we're having this week, I can honestly say that times are rarely dull. Out here in Oregon, even the ...
Quilt Heritage
Nothing makes a long winter night as snug as a handmade quilt to snuggle up beneath. In spite of my crafty tendencies, quilting is not one of my pursuits. The measuring, ironing, pinning and straight lines turned me away from the get go. I made a quilt once for my best friend, and some small one's for my kids bunk beds. That was it. I was done. Fortunately, we have a quilter in the family, my ...
Ma Ingalls Was a Working Mother
I'm going to delve into a potentially touchy topic here. Homemaking. I realize that my occupation is not a common one these days. If you haven't guessed by reading my blog, I am a stay at home mother. Why, you might ask, do I do this? What it really comes down to is that I am a do-it-yourself-er to the bone. I get much more satisfaction gleaning apples off of an abandoned alley tree than working ...
Twice the Adventures!
Today, my two little adventurers are nine years old. It's hard to believe it's been this many years since I first held two tiny, bundled babies in the quiet of a cold, snowy December dawn. It would take volumes and volumes to recount the journey I've been on since that winter morning, but in short, it has been wonderful, and difficult, and constantly evolving, and I'm grateful ...
Over the River and Through the Woods…
Over the mighty Columbia River, through the pine woods, and over four mountain passes we travelled to Grandmother's house for the holidays. After driving all day long, we arrived in the snowy mountains of central Washington to the warm lights of my parents' house shining through the winter night. Little white lights twinkled on birch trees through the snow, and one brightly lit pine tree stood ...