Living and Learning: The Week Ahead...

Watching
The Trio and I have just a couple more chapters in our latest book,  The Railway Children.  It is such a wonderful read!  Once we have finished it, I want to watch the the television movie based on the book with them.  It's at our library, but if you can't get your hands on a copy, it is also on YouTube in its entirety.

Reading
I have just begun reading Middlemarch in earnest (I was dividing my time between it and The Granchester Mysteries which I finished this past week).  Have you read it?  I am finding it very slow going, but I am already up to Book 3, so am invested in finishing it!

Inspiration
Jane G. Meyer is not only a wonderful children's book author and bread baker extraordinaire.  She also makes the most darling things out of the pine needles that fall from the Canary Island Pine growing in her backyard.  The little basket in the photographs above is her handiwork!  If you would like a pine basket (or trivet, or coaster, or plate charger) you can!  All you need to do is visit Jane's blog and request one via her e-mail address.  The cost for one of these lovelies is just a free-will offering to her church's building fund.  Isn't that a good idea?

Kitchen, Pantry, Table
I've been spread a little thin this Lent and decided to make dinner planning/execution a smidge easier for myself (especially since we're feeding a friend most nights and also preparing a freezer meal for an elderly couple in our church a couple of times a month).  I've been making a massive pot of soup (I double or triple the recipe) and then all I do each weeknight is make some sort of side to go with it:  a big salad, a loaf of fresh bread, baked potatoes, etc.  It's been working very well and has cut down on a lot of work for me.  I prepare different things for weekend dinners and we have a potluck supper on Wednesdays following Presanctified Liturgy, so it isn't too tedious to eat the same soup four nights.  It's also been pretty economical since the soups are vegan!

Learning
In an effort to introduce The Trio to more poetry, we've been reading a poem each morning at breakfast.  I'm currently reading through The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but have already gone through the books on our shelves to have a few more anthologies at the ready.  Some of the books in our stack are:  Outside Your Window, The Real Mother Goose, Be Blest, A Child's Calendar, Treasury of Children's Poetry, A Child's Book of Poems, Around the Year, and Listen, Children, Listen.