Homemaking on the Homestead

  It's no secret to those who know me, I am not a fan of winter! I don't like being cold, I don't like the long dark gray days we can have here in the Pacific Northwest and long nights. Each year I seem to go into a winter funk. Last year I decided to try something new and that is, learn to embrace each season for it's uniqueness and difference from the last. Find the positive, find the blessings. As long as I continue to tell myself I don't like winter, I won't see anything different. Here is some of what I have discovered. Winter is a lot about resting. The trees that look dead are not dead, they are resting in preparation for the spring. In the past very little to no traveling was done in the winter. People rested. Not the rest and sleep type rest as life still has to go forward each day. The type of rest that you do when you can't move about as easily as other seasons. The type of rest where more time is spent at home with family or friends. Maybe ...

  Daily life is made up of routines. Those simple things we do that make life flow during the day. I've thought a lot about routines since hubby retired almost a year ago now. We have our morning routines. Hubby starts the fire to warm things up and I get the coffee made. After that we sit by the warmth of the fire, sip our coffee and talk about our plans for the day. He usually has some project he's working on or weather providing he is outside doing various tasks. I have home things I work on, chat/text with family, work on YouTube videos. And so the day begins for us. In the afternoon I usually have either a cup of coffee or sometimes I'll have a cup of tea. The tea makes me smile and remember and think of the days when my daughters were young and I was homeschooling them. In the winter afternoons our routine was to make tea and have some homemade snack. Sometimes it was just a slice of warm, just out of the oven bread, with butter, if it was baking day. Other day...