Sunday

We've had a rare weekend at home, no big plans or expectations. It was great.

We spent Saturday around town, seeing friends, at the children's museum and walking around downtown. Today was great, a cold clear day with time to be productive around the house. This is my idea of a good Sunday morning - tea, crafts, catching up on stuff online.

I was able to finish up a few fall crafts like this needle felted pumpkin

and make progress on some handmade holiday presents like these socks

(I've actually gotten all the way to the heel since this picture was taken)

This afternoon we went to Hope Gardens, a local community garden for an open house. What a great organization - you can pick and pay for produce, you can lease a plot, and you can go on any Saturday for a work day. It was great to look around and let the little one run through the garden making friends with everyone.

Since last night was our first frost we spent some time outside rearranging in the garden and making our last batch of pesto - yum!

What a great weekend at home!

Long Weekend

We had a wonderful long weekend, full of family, babies and playing outdoors, some of my very favorite things.

I love this time of year so much, cooler weather, watching kids go to school and finding a new routine. The leaves around here look like the end of summer - over ripe, over saturated and a few are even starting to turn orange! It's so nice to finally be able to spend more time outside, our to do list is growing with activities that require cooler weather - beach trips, river trips, apple picking trips, trips to the zoo, museums, hiking, camping and more. We've also been spending more time in our own backyard. I'll post some pictures of what we've been doing later this week, but here's a sneak peak

our first backyard bonfire.

My Weekend Conundrum

We spent most of the spring going out of town every weekend, it was really fun but exhausting and it took its toll on all of us. But for the past few weeks we've had open weekends, usually we have one or two things we need to do but they're around the area and don't require overnight stays. Even more recently we've had a couple weekends in a row with no real plans, it's been such a relief. Or has it? I'm having a conundrum I'm hoping you all can help me with.

My conundrum is this - when I see that we have a weekend that has no real plans - do I make some? My inclination is to see what my friends are up to, is there stuff going on around town, is this our chance to go check out that cool park, see if we can squeeze in a date night or make a day trip to the beach or some other local attraction. Generally, I like to do. Especially right now, there is sooo much cool stuff happening in our area. But I know that having a weekend where we stay home and piddle around the house, cook meals and eat them together, go for walks around the block and generally do nothing has a lot of value as well. B would prefer more of the stay home and piddle weekends I'm sure, but he enjoys the stuff going on around town as well. So what do I do? How do I find some balance? If I don't stay home and piddle when I get the chance, those weekends will be long gone and I'll want them back. But when I see and hear about stuff going on that I want to do, it's hard to give it up to stay home and do 'nothing'. Isn't the 'nothing' unstructured time where some sweet family memories are made though?

Does anyone else struggle with this?