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Let’s get this clear: A handmade gift is one of those gifts that can go terribly wrong. If it doesn’t fit, is the wrong color, wrong style, or if it’s just plain ugly, it can’t be returned.
That said, I’ve been thinking about handmade gifts that have a good chance of being well received. Here are some ideas.

One of the best parts of fall harvesting is the baking that follows. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been freezing lovely orange bags of butternut squash and also lighter orange bags of pumpkin.  I saved aside enough to make both butternut squash bread and pumpkin bread, and it was a great pleasure to […]

Some time ago, I blogged about picking and working with mulberries – Wild Blackberries, No, They’re Mulberries . One thing that makes mulberries more time-consuming is their little green stems.  You can see them in this photo of the mulberries that we had picked. I learned a lesson in simplicity from those mulberries.  Funny how […]

Sometimes daily life can seem like drudgery, something to just be tolerated. When I find myself feeling this way, it is almost always because I have been focusing relentlessly on a problem that overshadows me. It might be a looming deadline, a bit of family drama, or something of the sort. It might be nothing definable; I’m just in a rut and forgot to even think about finding joy in life.
Getting back to enjoying life, rather than enduring life, is really quite simple: look for things that bring you joy.

I’m not sure what I like most about picking raspberries – the pretty scene of the red berries against the vibrant green leaves, the anticipation of eating the berries, or the opportunity to spend some time with Chris. Our raspberries turn a beautiful deep shade of dark red when they are ripe. In the early summer, they start out as hard, little brown buds that seem to me to look like dried up raspberries. With a little patience and a lot of rain and sun, the berries begin to turn white, then green, then pale pink, then orange-red, and finally dark red. The dark, yet vibrant, red berries are ready to pick.

One way I have found that keeps me working out every morning is to have a variety of workouts and routines. I will get attached to one workout and look forward to it every day, but eventually will start to feel a little bored with it. Once that starts, I immediately search for and find other workout videos, either from buying them on Half.com or Amazon.com, or by searching for them on YouTube.

Since the free workout routines on YouTube allow for more variety at no cost, I gravitate toward these first. Plus, most of the purchased workout DVD’s have sample routines on YouTube, so I can try them out before spending money on a DVD without knowing whether I will even like the workout.

“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.”      ~Frank Lloyd Wright     Almost two weeks ago, we bought four chickens from a local microbiologist.  Despite the oddity of buying from someone whose interest in chickens seemed to be somewhat scientific – he was interested in […]

There is a snow storm raging outside as I post this.  The storm probably sounds worse than it actually is.  The wind is roaring and occasionally rattling the windows, but most of all, it is blowing the snow into smooth curved drifts around the yard.  I’ll enjoy listening to the wind just before I fall […]

A couple of the foods on the list are a little extreme (avoid all bread, for instance), but several of them have solid, surprising reasons for being on the list. Here at Simple Life, we believe that the foods you eat can have a profound affect on your health and emotions. One of the fundamental parts of simplifying your life is learning to nurture your body and mind.

The flu is making it’s miserable rounds again. Symptoms of this year’s flu are coughing, sneezing, fever, nasal congestion, overall weakness. There are two really powerful things you can do to either avoid getting the flu this year (and any other year, actually) or to reduce the intensity of the flu if you do get […]