**It’s raining. Lamps are on, candles are burning. There will be a fire later (the temperature is dropping).

**My second and fourth children are Doing My Hair. Lots of brushing, braids, and clips. There was even a scrunchy stuck round my nose.

**The dishes need to be washed. I have baking projects and some little Christmas gifts up my sleeve. Maybe after my salon appointment is over?

**The other night I woke up. I woke up because Sweetsie was standing at the foot of our bed. (It was either the second or third time that night, it’s all a blur now.)

My husband growled, “Go back to bed.” (He’s completely uncivil in the middle of the night.)

Undeterred, she continued to stand there, sucking her thumb and breathing heavily.

“What do you need, sweetie?” I asked.

Her reply came as clear as an out-of-tune bell, “I’m waiting for my instructions.”

I punched my husband. “She’s sleeping, hon. Take her back to bed.”

**All this rough sleeping makes for a very tired girl at the end of the day.

And a very tired papa. Little brother, too. Heck, it’s bedtime—we should all be tired.

**I stayed up, foolish woman I am, and watched The Knit Witch on youtube. You guys are right: she’s awesome.

Now it is later. The kids are in rest time (except for a daughter that’s downstairs collecting tape and paper) (and except for a son who is downstairs looking for his leftover school work).

The childrens (that is not a typo) spent the morning making cards for a friend, and Christmas paper chains that look more like Easter paper chains.

As for me, I made peppermint lip balm and felt all sorts of mother earthy.

I made this recipe last year but I didn’t follow the instructions to stir until thick, so my balm separated into a waxy top layer and a honey bottom layer. (I’ve been using it all year anyway, despite the over-waxiness.) My failure didn’t stop me from thinking ahead and ordering little lip balm tins for this year.  I’m so glad I did, as having them ready to go made it that much easier to jump into the project.

It’s really quite simple. Just melt the ingredients together, stir while cooling, and then fill the tins.

Bonus: it makes the house smell lip-balm-licious.

I’ll be giving these away as little gifts…maybe. So perhaps it’s foolish to go writing about it here on the blog where everyone can see it? Way to be all hush-hush secretive, Self. But that’s where a no-one-reads-this-blog-anyway mentality comes in handy—all I have to do is tell myself that no one actually reads anyway, so I can get away with saying whatever I want. Illogical, but true.

The REAL reason I’m writing about the balm is because I thought you might like to give this balm a whirl yourself. (The OTHER real reason is that I can’t resist showing off a little: Look at me! I’m going all down, down, down-to-earth, rah, rah, rah!)

What’s that you say? You have no cute little tins on hand? No problem. Just dump all the balm into a mug, stick it in the bathroom cabinet, and apply liberally every time you make a trip to the loo. Do this and you’ll be sure-fire guaranteed to have shiny smooth lips till kingdom come.

Peppermint Lip Balm
Adapted from Amanda’s recipe on SouleMama

½ cup coconut oil
3 tablespoons beeswax (I used two ice cube-sized chunks)
1 ½ tablespoons honey
25-30 drops essential oil of peppermint

Put the coconut oil, beeswax, and honey in the top part of a double boiler (I used a little metal bowl on top, for easier clean up) filled with simmering water. Stir occasionally until everything is melted and runny (it takes about 15 minutes).

Remove the bowl from the top of the double boiler and stir in the peppermint oil. Set the bowl in a large pan of cold water and stir until thick and creamy (but not solid hard—you still need to fill the containers, remember). (Actually, the cold water might not be necessary. I tried it that way, and the balm on the edges of the bowl kept getting hard really fast. Just stirring it at room temperature might be good enough.)

Yield: one dozen ½ ounce containers.

This same time, years previous: Smashing for Pretty opens (and now we’re closing – check out the 20 percent off sales!)

I’m still learning to knit. It’s a long and arduous process, made all the more difficult due to my inability to “read” the knitting. I don’t know how to fix my errors, so I knit with the fury and fear of someone walking on the edge of a high cliff—one slip and I plummet to my knitting death below.

For example, I knit two rows and purl two rows—but oops, I just did three by accident, so I pull out one row of purling, but now I can’t remember if I’m supposed to knit or purl and all the Yarn Staring in the world doesn’t reveal the correct answer. And so I yell at my husband that I’m going into another room and no one may come close or I will unleash all my knitting fury upon their poor heads.

And knitting is supposed to be a relaxing activity, ha.

If a stitch gets dropped, oh woe. And whoa. When that happens, I have to set the whole project aside and wait until Sunday when I can take it to church to ask my friend to help me fix it. This friend—a woman who has been known to sheer the sheep, card and dye the wool (whatever that means), and then knits beautiful things with it (bow low, reader friends, bow low), looks at my stringy mess for a mere couple seconds and then says, Oh yes, I see. You knitted that one backwards, so I’ll just reverse that like so and pick up the stitch there, like that, and there you are, all good to go now. I stare at my resurrected project in utter amazement and say stupidly, “I have no idea how you just did that.”

I’m determined to figure this whole knitting business out. I experiment with my brown yarn, trying different patterns to see the effect, not worrying if I mess up and need to rip it all out. It’s my scrap paper, so to speak. I’m making a red scarf for my youngest daughter (I stole her yarn so I had to repay her somehow). It has mistakes in it, but I don’t think she’ll care.

During Sunday school yesterday, I sat beside a friend who was knitting a sleeve for a sweater. She had the four needle thing going, plus a washer as a marker (or something). I watched, fascinated. I kind of even understand what she was doing.

My goal for this winter: learn several different stitches, and learn to make hats, socks, and mittens. Next winter, a sweater, maybe. Am I being completely unrealistic?

I’m not the only one getting into the knitting spirit. My little boy has persevered with his knitting. He knows how to cast on and knit row after row. However, his rows kept getting shorter and shorter, thanks to all the stitches he dropped. His knitted creation (too short to be anything) is one step from the garbage, but hey, it kept him happily occupied for many, many minutes so I’m not complaining.

I even hauled the kids’ knitting projects to church one Sunday. I glanced down the row during the sermon—three of the kids were knitting away in unison. Bliss.

We all went to West Virginia for the turkey (that was actually a chicken) this year. My brother came, and my perfect aunt from over the mountains, and some of the Pennsylvania cousins: uncle, aunt, and boy cousins one, two, and three. We got there on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, before everyone else showed up, I went for a walk.

It’s hunting season, so I put a florescent orange vest over my coat over my hoodie over my t-shirt and set off up the road. A gun banged in the distance, and I hadn’t even crested the first hill before I spied a dead deer in the gutter (not a result of that banging gun). I started to feel like I was in a war zone and I took a closer look at my florescent orange vest. How many square inches did it cover? How many square inches do hunters have to wear? Did I have a sufficient amount of square inches? And while my front and back were draped in orange, I wasn’t so sure about the side view. Would a gun-happy hunter mistake me for a walking deer in a blue coat? But then there was a lull in the shooting and dead deer spying and I kind of forgot all about how much I resembled a deer.

And then I ran into Eddie Murphy. I’m not sure which is which, but they both reminded me of Shrek’s donkey, so I promptly named one Eddie and the other Murphy. I could practically hear the thoughts running through their heads.

Eddie: Oh, will you look at that! It’s a person that’s trying not to look like a deer! Dang, ain’t she smart?

Murphy: I don’t know about you but I think we need that orange thing a lot more than she does. Our owner is a total dumb ass leaving us outside this time of year.

Eddie: That’s right, Murf. We are in constant danger of gettin’ our behinds pinged. I just know, before this is over, I’m gonna need a whole lot of serious therapy. Look at my butt twitchin’.

By the time I got to the top of the hill, I was hot. I took off my coat and tied it around my waist. And then I looked over and saw my shadow walking along beside me in the ditch.

What with my hair in a ponytail, my hoodie up around my neck like a tied cape, the orange vest fluttering behind me like a fluttering cape, my coat tied around my waist like a short skirt and the sleeves poking up all sword-like, I looked exactly like a knight. (Or at least my noble shadow did.) I squared my shoulder and lengthened my stride.

When I was halfway home, I heard a gunshot in the direction of my house. My father had been out hunting when I left—perhaps it was him? Thirty second later another shot rang out and I gave a little skip of hopeful happiness. A minute later and there was another shot. Oh dear, I thought. Problems. And then, Or maybe I should think, ‘oh deer’? (Turns out, it wasn’t my father doing the shooting.)

At home I grabbed my camera and drove back up the road to take pictures for you since I almost never think to take my camera on walks with me.

And thus concludes the tale of a bright morning walk with guns, knights, two asses, and a dead doe. The End

Other things that happened:

Tools and guns…

The grownups sat around inside…

and played with plastic tools that my mother picks up at her local thrift store while the kids ran around outside…

and played with guns. (Yes, they were real, and yes, they had permission.)

(Overheard: “Don’t shoot each other!”)

Odd, manly rituals such as…

A. measuring each others arm spans. (Your arm span is supposed to equal your height, right? Well, not so for my husband. My husband is just a smidge shy of six feet tall but his arm span measures 6 feet 5 inches. So now we call him Gorilla Man.)

B. playing table football with money.

Actually, I don’t know what that game was called. All I know is there was a bunch of yelling and quarters kept hitting people in the head.

The kids sat out on the porch and watched through the window.

Conversations…

around the table. We’re big yakkers, all of us. Lively times, ya’ll.

Sewing…

I learned how to purl and am immensely please with myself.

My brother…

played the mandolin and made lots of weird faces while I tried to take pictures of him.

What a dork.

Food (of course) …

We had Feast Number One at noon: chicken and stuffing, garlicky mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, turnips and greens, kale, applesauce, and cranberry salad.

Feast Number Two: A Supper O’ Desserts. I ask you, can there be anything more glorious?

Nectarine tart, black raspberry pie, apple pie, two pumpkin pies, banana bread, chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, vanilla ice cream, and coffee.

MY MOTHER MADE ALL THE BAKED GOODS ON HER STOVETOP.

Yesyoushouldbeimpressed. (Plus, the next morning we had gorgeous loaves of stovetop bread for our breakfast toast.)

This same time, years previous: Thanksgiving of 2010, Swiss chard and sweet potato gratin, pumpkin pie