Sketchbook Tuesday and A Very Exciting Happening

As promised, here is this week's offering from my sketchbook!

And, I am pleased as punch to announce another offering I've been working on for weeks and weeks and weeks: The Paper Loom is now an open shop on Esty!  

Here's a little bit of what you'll find there, with more to come soon!

At the Table

One of my favorite blogs for a long time (about 8 years) has been SouleMama.  And one of my favorite things she posts often about is the goings on at her family's kitchen table.  It makes me think about kitchen tables I have known and loved, and all the Important Things that happen in such a common-yet-intimate space.  With that in mind, and with a very table-centric holiday right around the corner, here is the first of what I hope will become a regular feature here.  It's not a kitchen table (our kitchen is too small, so we just have a dining room.  Which suits us just fine) but it's well loved and well used, and I hope it will sometimes be an inspiration to you.

(Note: these are photos from the last two Thanksgivings ... I still don't know how it's all going to come together this year.)

Thanksgiving Tables

A couple of years ago, we hosted my husband's family for Thanksgiving dinner.  And while I own and sometimes use nice china dishes (they were my mom's and I grew up using them at every major holiday) this time I wanted to keep it simple and casual.  I used our everyday dishes and place mats, dressed up with gratitude journals as place cards.  A simple centerpiece (because we were just going to move it anyway to make room for all that food!) and I was done.  For the kids, I covered the table with butcher paper, outlined "place mats" set out some crayons and let them go to town.  Again, super simple, easy, and fun.

Thanksgiving Traditions

And while we're on the subject of Thanksgiving, here are two of my very favorite traditions.  I love them because they're fun, and because they're unique to our little family in that neither my husband nor I grew up with either of them - we started them ourselves.  And there's just something really nice about that.  

The first is a gratitude chain, where each piece of paper has written on it something one of us is grateful for.  We start writing them just after Halloween and go all the way until Thanksgiving day.  Anyone who visits our house is welcome to participate, and we keep the chain and add to it every year.  I love that when we look at it we can see how our kids have grown and matured, and sometimes we'll spot something written by an extended family member or friend.  

The second began just last year, and I wasn't sure it was going to stick until my 6-year-old son asked if we could do it again this year.  The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is the last night any of us really wants to make dinner - after planning and prepping and cooking like mad for the holiday feast, nobody feels like cooking much at all.  And so, while the kids had their annual screening of "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving", we replicated Snoopy's Thanksgiving dinner.  At first we thought it would just be funny - and it was - but it also prompted some good conversation about gratitude, Charlie Brown style.  I'm so excited to do it again this year!

How about you?  What's happening at your table?  What are your favorite Thanksgiving traditions?

Sketchbook Tuesday

Well, hello there.  Let's just get out the most terrifying aspect of this blog and stare it right in the face, shall we?

A recent page from my sketchbook.

Years ago, I read a magazine interview with children's book author/illustrator Mo Willems, wherein he mentioned how unfortunate it is that most adults don't draw.  He pointed out that people don't stop playing basketball when they realize they're not going to be professionals, but that's exactly what we do with drawing - somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we decide we're no good at it and then we quit.  And we shouldn't.  (He says basically the same thing in this NPR story.)  While it struck me, and I wholeheartedly agreed, I didn't do anything about it myself.

And then, one day recently, I saw this:

You can buy it here, at Wit & Whistle.

It was all the permission I needed to get out my sketchbook and draw something every day.  Even if it sucked.  So I did ... for a while.  But then life, as it happens, happened.  And I got too busy.  Which is a lame excuse, even if it's my only one.  Which brings us here.  I have this theory that if I decide - and promise - I'm going to, say, post something from my sketchbook every Tuesday, that I will find the time to actually put something in my sketchbook to post.  Because you'll be expecting it.  And I certainly don't want to let you down.

So that's what I'm going to do.  Post something from my sketchbook every Tuesday.  

Even if it sucks.  

Because it's good for me.  

And maybe - just maybe - it will inspire you to pick up your own sketchbook and start drawing.  

Even if it sucks.  

Because it's good for you, too.

Welcome.

The last of the dahlias.

The potato beds.

This has been the kids' garden space.
But as they become more involved in the family garden as a whole,
I have hopes to reclaim it and make it a "witch's garden" with herbs both healing and delicious.

Autumn is in full swing around here, and last week I finally put our garden beds to rest for the season.  Except for the ones with carrots in them: unless it snows, we'll keep pulling them fresh out of the ground as we need them all winter.

We're not the greatest gardeners ever, but every year we learn new things.  And every autumn when we cover the beds with leaves raked from the yard, I can't help but imagine what we'll fill them with in the springtime.  

It's one of those times when an ending feels just like a clean beginning.

Which is a little like this blog.  

Welcome to The Paper Loom, friends.