Tag: rituals

Birthday Rules for Birthdays that Rule!

by Karen, posted in Uncategorized
Triple Berry Pie from Cherie's

Do you have any special things that you do to celebrate your birthday?

I usually make a detailed plan every year that also usually runs amok. Over the years I’ve come  up with a framework for myself that can create the potential for a nice day.

One thing about making a plan in advance: be prepared to abandon your plan at any point during the day. Do not let your plan get in the way of you taking advantage of anything that comes your way.

So…Here are my ten rules for a birthday that rules for 2010:

  1. Take the day off from work. I repeat, do not work on your birthday. This is your (first) gift to yourself.
  2. Go out for a nice (big) breakfast, or else have someone deliver your favorite small baked good and coffee to you in bed.
  3. Go to see the ocean! Even better, take a walk at the ocean.  If for some reason you just can’t pull that off, then see it online with the Wells Beach Webcam. It’s better than not seeing it at all.
  4. Go to the bookstore. Browse to your heart’s content. You will know you are finished when a book finds you that you can’t go home without.
  5. Nap!
  6. Have some birthday cake, but leave the “cake” part open to interpretation. Your cake this year might be a little pie from Cherie’s in Kennebunk.
  7. Check email selectively; only open well-wishes from friends, family, and colleagues. The rest can wait.
  8. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want! No matter who you are, you are not surrounded by mind-readers.
  9. Buy all the newspapers that you can that have the “Born Today” section in the Horoscopes. It will give you your forecast for the year ahead. It’s fun to see how different (or similar) to each other they are, and fun to look back over the past year to see how accurate (:)) last year’s forecast was.
  10. Take a picture! or take lots of pictures! You will only be this age once.

Do you plan your birthday out or just let it happen?

10 things i’ve learned about roosters

by Karen, posted in family, raising chickens

It all started off innocently enough; 26 chicks in a small cardboard box arrived in the spring…we learned some things from books and friends in advance, but some things are learned by doing, through “on the job training”.  1.when ordering new chicks from vendors, you often will not receive all female chicks . this is not good for several reasons, which leads us to …. 2. boy chickens often do not play nice with each other.  3. boy chickens grow up and start crowing pretty darn fast. 4.The dollar store earplugs don’t work. 5.Putting a pillow over your head does work some, but it interferes w/breathing, so can’t be a long term solution. 6. no one in the family hears the crowing at 3:07am except me.  (DAWN I  could handle; but 3:07AM?)  7. “free to a good home” is not an effective advertising strategy for this purpose; you can’t GIVE away a rooster. Nobody wants them, or certainly nobody wants more than one. 8. Except some people do; they will take all you have, as long as you don’t mind if they eat them. 9.. A friend with  a farm may offer to take them, so they can “free range”, which is a euphemism for “being eaten by hawks”.  10. the bottom line? we would do it all again. in fact, we have, several years in a row now. it has become one of our spring rituals. 🙂

here are some resources to get you started if you are interested in learning more:

1. http://www.idealpoultry.com/

2. http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/index.html

 

happy easter

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, good grief, tweens

one of my favorite holidays growing up was easter. my father loved easter, and always went out of his way to make it fun for us. we had the requisite easter baskets, usually one of the prepackaged, pre-filled ones from the closest department store (we were a family of 4 kids born in 6 years, after all), but i always loved mine. the best part of the day was the easter egg hunt. dad would fill the plastic easter eggs with small change and “hide” them around the house (my father was disabled and not-so-agile, so most of the eggs were at about waist level, in plain sight). we would race around until we had found them all.

this year is the first that neither of my kids believe in the easter bunny anymore. here’s the funny thing about that though: they both still expect baskets and booty from the fictional bunny. as a mother, i certainly don’t want to disappoint them, but this year i wanted to focus on “less is more” and so i scaled things back some. instead of large, overstuffed baskets, i made them easter bunny bags to hold their candy (http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/holiday-ideas/easter-table-decorations), an idea i got from Good Housekeeping Magazine. they were easy to make, and more importantly, they were quick, since it was 10pm on easter eve before i got to actually assemble said bunnies. the other good thing about these little bunnies is that they form an enclosed space within which the contents must conform; no candy or toys spilling out over the tops and the sides…another reminder for me not to go “over the top” with filling them.  i did, of course, fill the plastic eggs with small change for the egg hunt. even though the morning will be rushed, with us getting ready to drive an hour and a half to have dinner with family out-of-state, and the older child getting ready to go to work, we will have our traditional egg hunt.

i would not want to miss that opportunity to honor my dad. 🙂

what easter rituals does your family have? are they carried over from your childhood?

spring ritual

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, gardening, italian

my italian grandmother always said her birthday was on the first day of spring. actually, every so often she was right; her birthday was march 21st, and spring is usually on march 20th, but not always:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox).  one sure sign that spring had come when i was little was The Making of the Dandelion Salad. my grandmother would send me out into the yard to gather dandelion leaves. this wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds. there were rules that must be followed:

1. leaves must be chosen from plants that had not yet flowered, otherwise they would be too bitter. 2. you had to look for plants that were far from the road, otherwise the exhaust from passing cars would poison them 3. leaves must be washed at least 3 times, because they were pretty dirty, what with actual dirt,  plus who knew what manner of animal had befouled the leaves in some manner? 4. the salad must always have olive oil and red wine vinegar, salt and pepper for dressing. that’s it. 

as i’m writing this, i realize one of the implicit gifts from this practice: nana always told me why i was being asked to do something a certain way. that was as important to me when i was 10 as it is to me now.

do you have any rituals from childhood that you remember? do you still practice any of them? who was an unsung hero in your childhood?