Welcome!

Welcome to my own little online nesting spot! This is where I blog about my efforts to create a place of refuge and retreat for my family, where we can raise our daughter to be a happy, creative, and indpendent kiddo aka ER. I blog about our everyday life with a two and half year old, our attempts to cook at home more, crafting, learning, and homemaking. Here's a bit more about me:

I love to travel, going to Hawaii with my husband was a favorite trip and...
Read history books, especially ones about British royalty. Here I am meeting my all time favorite author Alison Weir at a book signing for her latest biography. I spend a lot to time crafting, scrapbooking, and am currently teaching myself to sew. My crafts can be seen here.I love to take pictures of nature and animals. I enjoy visiting National Parks, hiking, and being outdoors, but at the end of the evening I really like winding down in a hotel room. The picture above is from Yosemite, a favorite place to spend the day.We still like the great outdoors, but now someone else factors into our travel plans. Note the raspberries ER is making. Guess we know her opinion of the Grand Canyon!
I miss living in California, we lived in Northern CA outside of San Francisco and explored all up and down the coastline. When we stayed in Malibu, this was the right outside of our room. In my heart, I will always be a Californian!
I have two sweet kitties, that we adopted when we lived in New Mexico...
That's also where we added our newest member...we've since moved again to be back "home" to MI where our families are. It's good to have the grandparents nearby!
I used to be a teacher and really enjoyed teaching kindergarten especially, but...Now I only have one student, but she is the most important one I've ever had. I feel privileged to be a SAHM with her. We love doing learning activities and art projects together, you can find some of our activities here. It was my love of teaching and finding great new ideas that led me to start my other blog ABC & 123: A Learning Cooperative with my partner, who is also named Katie. I hope you enjoyed stopping by, please leave me a comment so I know you popped in and so I can visit you too!

More About ABC & 123: A Learning Cooperative:

I also blog at ABC & 123: A Learning Cooperative? I'm one of the founding Katies and we gather and share the best learning activities, lessons, and projects from around the web. We especially like to feature what our readers are doing and would love for you to be the next one!

Email us direct links to your learning activity at abc123learning.gmail.com. Not a blogger? Send us: your name - first only is okay, a short written description of your lesson and any objectives, include a photo if you have one. We'll fit it into our posting schedule as appropriate.

We ALWAYS give credit where it is due and will direct link to your post, blog, or provide your email if you'd like.