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Showing posts from 2007

Baby!

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Paula Kathleen "Polly" born at home December 31, 2007 1:21 AM 8 lbs, 0 oz born hand first (!), reaching out to explore the world already, and with a full head of black hair, a first for us. As usual with newborn pictures, the photo does not do her cuteness justice. Mother and baby are doing well. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! An Explanation of the Names: Paula after St. Paula, friend of St. Jerome and collaborator with him on the Vulgate Translation. Also in honor of the upcoming Year of St. Paul (2008-2009) to be proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI. "Polly" after Lady Polly Plummer of Narnia :) Kathleen after her paternal grandmother. Thanks for all your prayers and good wishes!

Christmas Nativity 2007

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Blessed Christmas! I keep hoping that my next post will be a baby post, but I am now two days overdue, and the baby is not yet coming, so I might as well make a Christmas post during the Twelve Days while I wait and quilt and wait... One cherished treasure from my growing-up years was a little porcelain Napcoware Nativity scene which I received for my confirmation. Alas, when my car was broken into during the time I lived in New York City, it was among the things that were stolen. Unlike most of the things from my trunk, though, I really missed this Nativity scene. Then several years ago, I was able to replace the set, thanks to Ebay. So every year I particularly enjoy setting it up on my dresser with different background pieces, and occaisonally showing off a new acquisition (there are approximately eight other figures that could be part of the set which I still don't have - ah, the thrill of the hunt). This year during my pregnancy I was fortunate to receive a "blessing part

St. Lucy's Breakfast

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"This is the shortest Advent ever!" one of my girls exclaimed yesterday. I am inclined to agree: due to upheavals in moving rooms around, we couldn't find our Advent calendar or Advent wreath until last week. And while the Advent Calendar is at last in its familiar place, there's no room for our hanging Advent wreath, due to new light fixtures. So we are wreath-less in the fourth week of Advent, a telling sign as to how behind we are. For instance, I meant to post this photo of our St. Lucy's morning breakfast by the fire last week, but only got to it now... I actually had a few other Advent posts I never got to. I will mention how glad I was that I did manage to find our little Lucy doll . We purchased her from Magic Cabin Dolls last year, and she oversaw the holiday table with the help of an overturned pot and some plasti-tak. Our main course was Monkey Bread (eaten too fast to be photographed), which my husband and oldest daughter delight in making. Since my o

A Book With Santa as Saint

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While pondering a few years ago why my children have never seemed to have difficulty understanding that Santa Claus was actually St. Nicholas, I came across this book in our bookshelf, which I had purchased for my oldest son his first Christmas: Country Angel Christmas by Tomie De Paola . Then I realized that perhaps this oversized thin picture book is part of the reason. De Paola is a great storyteller whose greatness does not lie in his consistency. Some of his books, like The Clown of God or Our Lady of Guadalupe , are masterpieces. Others are forgettable fluff. This book, as a story, is somewhat in between, though I think the illustrations are among his best, particularly if you are fond of country-style-simplicity. This lightweight, pleasant story is set in Heaven among the "Country Angels," a homier and humbler brand of angelic being, whose friend is St. Nicholas. Although he is only part of the background, serving as a friendly mentor to the young trio of angelic hero

St. Nicholas Day preparations

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Tonight is the night when your children may exhibiting extra-good behavior combined with a sudden rare desire to locate both of their shoes, for tonight is the Eve of St. Nicholas. We found that once you surprise your children with candy in their shoes for the first time, the yearly ritual quickly establishes itself. So, if your family celebrates St. Nicholas day, you as a parent will probably be readying some shoe-sized treats for stealthy delivery late tonight. My typical tradition is to give books, usually from the annual library sale. Here is a picture of last year's toddler shoes. I was lucky with my candy finds: the church bazaar sold candy canes decorated with marshmallow Christmas figures and chocolate cake-lollipops. Also in the shoes was a frosted gingerbread cookie and a jingle-bell bracelet, respectively made by my two oldest girls. This year I'm packing the shoes with discounted lunchboxes from a fall school sale. I just hope I have enough gingerbread cookies!

A Small Gift for a Small Girl

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Last Christmas, I decided to buy my older girls "heirloom quality" dolls, as they were both reaching the age where they can take better care of their playthings. Plus, (deep sigh) I know that my oldest girl's time with dolls is limited as she will pass the age of ten this coming year. I chose Nova Natural's Peruvian-made dolls as their present. The dolls were an investment, but they are still gorgeous, have held up well after a year's worth of playing, and the girls still refer to them affectionately. The problem was that my youngest daughter, age 2, loves the dolls as well, but I wasn't so willing to buy her a 14" doll. First of all, there was the cost: secondly, from a beauty-lover's point of view, a larger doll just doesn't look right being hauled around by a toddler. So I went hunting for a smaller doll. And once again, Nova Natural solved my problem by choosing to introduce the Kusi doll this year. I snuck my doll out of its Christmas wrappin

Preparing for the Baby...

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You would think that after having six kids, babies would become "old hat." But the paradox is that each sucessive baby becomes more precious. Is it because you recognize how short a time babyhood actually is? I feel as though I spent all my time with my first baby anxiously awaiting milestones: lifting the head, rolling over, crawling, walking... But now, I'm more delighted in the baby just being an infant, small, helpless, utterly adorable. And with every new baby, I try to gather a few things that are special and new just for them. As I prepare for my December 27 due date, here are a few things I'm setting aside: a silk-and-wool infant cap from Nova Natural . It's dreamily soft and finely made. A thrift-store find of a never-used cotton velour sweater in soft green. Also from Nova Natural : a spiral crystal rainbow maker. Hang one of these in the bedroom window and your baby will have rainbows to play with! (I actually was so enchanted with this one th

Thanksgiving Antipasto

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Growing up Italian, one part of the fabric of my life which I assumed that everyone else knew about was antipasto , "food served before the pasta." What I knew as antipasto, most Americans refer to as appetizers. But the food that was served before a festive meal at my relatives' homes seldom resembled canapes or stuffed mushrooms, nor was it simply chips and pretzels. I look back on the ritual now and realize that the antipasto course taught me how to serve a feast that didn't revolve around starches and sugars, and how to keep kids from being excessively "sugared up" during holidays. At my mother's home on Thanksgiving Day, eating begins at noon and continues into the night. During the morning, someone (usually my tireless Aunt Pam) spends a few hours cutting up every conceivable kind of raw vegetable and arranging them on a silver platter: zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, celery, bok choy, squash, broccoli, cauliflower. Then at noon the antipasto course

Favorite Things: Simple Patchwork Quilts

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I quilt, but not elaborately. For some reason, given today's frenetic lifestyle and the perennial lack of time to do most good and worthy things, I can't ever see myself attempting one of those elaborate quilt patterns where you spend hours cutting up shapes and then more hours sewing them back together. I love how they look, but not enough to actually try to make one. It just doesn't make sense for me, on some fundamental level. (Please understand I have no philosophical objection to anyone else doing it, though!) But quilts made of simple squares make sense to me: because I do still occasionally sew, and I know what it's like to find a small amount of material and to sit and drink in its beauty, and long for enough of it to cover an entire bed. Hence, when you have a large amount of small bits of beloved material, sewing them into a quilt large enough to cover your bed makes all the sense in the world. I made this quilt of favorite bits from an upholstery shop (blessi

Wanted: Joshua Bears

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Before it gets closer to Christmas, I wanted to post this special request: Last year for Christmas, we collected teddy bears for our Christmas tree in memory of our son Joshua who died. Joshua's family nickname was "Teddy Bear" and so we decided that for Christmas, we would decorate our tree with quality teddy bears. We gave some of them as gifts to any children who visited us during Christmas. And after Christmas, we donated them to a good cause: I gave them to a disaster-relief nurse who is taking them to expectant mothers in Africa. This year, I am looking into making a donation of the bears to our local hospital and emergency services. So I am searching for medium or smaller-size brown or beige teddy bears (please no white or pastel or colored! These are "boy" bears :) ), either new or good-as-new (they can definitely be "played with" and "handled" but they probably shouldn't be in such bad condition that a thrift store would refuse t

Second-Generation Rennovators

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We had an interesting All Saint's Day, starting when I came upstairs and found broken drop-ceiling tiles on our girls' room floor. "Um, Mom... could we take down our ceiling?" my daughters asked. Apparently it had been bothering them as much as it has been bothering us. Drop ceilings can be very nice in their own way, but they certainly can look out of place in a farmhouse bedroom. So my husband and I said yes. And after I made them cover their furniture with bedsheets, the girls went to town I had to help them, of course, but with the help of a hammer and claw, it only took about two hours, including piling all the tiles in the garage and putting the twisted metal frames into the truck to go to the metal recycling factory and vaccumming the room. And now the ceiling looks like this: Ascetically, it doesn't look great, though I feel at last like there's "breathing room" in their little bedroom, whose ceiling always felt cramped to me. But a few sheet

Baby Birthday Treats

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When a baby has a birthday in our family, there's certain things I like to do to celebrate. While I'm not a "no-sugar" mom, I definitely am interested in limiting my two-year-old's intake of celebratory sucrose, just so that the day after birthday day is not a sick day. :) And while I love presents as much as the next birthday person, it never seems right to burden a baby with big presents on a birthday. So here's roughly what I do for a toddler birthday, particularly one where there is no party outside of a family party: I buy balloons. One big mylar balloon for a one-year old, or two balloons for a two-year-old. The balloons aren't decoration: they're presents. If you don't know what I mean, watch a baby with a balloon sometime and you'll understand that these fascinating items are actually transient, disposable toys that give delight for a day or two, then vanish, just like a birthday. Another great birthday treat is croissants: I bought my

Catechism from Apple Harvest

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A catechism-of-life lesson I tend to give my children when we go fruit picking is, "What does this tree tell us about God?" When He says He will look after our needs, how does He do this? Is He sparing, giving us only what we need? Or is He generous? Does He give us far more than we could possibly ever need The children look at the branches heavily laden with fruit, and at the fruit scattered everywhere on the ground, so much that you can barely walk without stepping on one, and they conclude "He is generous!" Amen!

Fall Breakfast: sausage and apples

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My husband is our breakfast cook on the weekends, and one of his specialties is sausages cooked with apples. Simply fry the sausage in a covered pan on low heat, covered with sliced apple rings and sprinkled with brown sugar, until the apples are soft and the sausage is cooked through. We indulged a few weeks ago: here is one small portion with a buttered scone and cup of tea.

Celebrating the Lord's Day

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Following my upbringing in a charismatic covenant community, our family does "Celebrating the Lord's Day" prayers before and after the Saturday night and Sunday night meals. A sort of combination of the Liturgy of the Hours Evening I and II prayers and the Jewish Sabbath prayers, it's a tradition we retained when we drifted away from regular charismatic expression. I love the simple ritual of it, and the aura of solemnity it always gives our Sunday evening dinners. We made our own booklets out of parchment printer paper, as you can see. To make your own, you can download a PDF of the prayers here . And here is a page that gives some additional links. (Note: Blogger seems determined to blog these URLs for some reason. So here are the direct links: The PDF is http://sos-nar.com/Lord's%20Day%20Materials/Celebrate.pdf And http://sos-nar.com/lord's_day.htm is the additional resources link. Cut and paste them into your browser window if you have to!) My daughter

Clothing Organization part 6: And So It Goes...

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Filling out the final categories, casual clothes, turned out to be the hardest for me, because I have a lot of casual shirts. Plus we're still in the middle of "warm fall strangeness" and it hasn't yet become cold enough for me, in Virginia, to definitively put away my tank tops (I'm wearing one now). And there is the matter of my still-expanding pregnant waistline, which makes negotiating the lower half of the wardrobe tricky. So I cheated on the 35-item system - for now. Once the cold weather goes in, I shall banish the final remnants of the summer wardrobe and hopefully will report on having 35 pieces alone in my closet! Thanks to those of you who read and enjoyed this series: many of you raised questions I'm still pondering: including how to apply this to young children. I think I may do that soon: my toddlers have too many clothes right now. I used to have a system in place when I had two children, but I let that fall by the wayside. When I revisit

Clothing Organization part 5: Dress-up clothes

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To me, one of the funnest parts of being a woman is being able to dress up. I thank God I am not a man, forced to wear a suit and tie as the only socially acceptable way to celebrate. So even though the life of a housewife might not seem as glamorous as the life of a socialite or executive, I enjoy having some nice things in the till for a night out on the town. And even Sunday Mass, that weekly celebration of a more celestial sort, provides time for adornment. So, continuing on with the organization, my job was now to cut down my fall Sunday wardrobe to seven pieces of clothing. Fortunately this wasn't too hard this time around: staples for Sunday dress-up for me include my black wool suit (Talbots and going strong!) which fortunately still fits a pregnant figure, and a white silk blouse. I'd purchased a blue print skirt-and-blouse set on clearance (mostly to match a favorite vintage purse) and I can mix and match the suit and that set quite nicely. I also included a brown 80&

Random Moment of Beauty: Baby and Cocoa

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Just to post to say I really, really want to get back to posting my clothing series, but life has overwhelmed me just now. But I will get back to it, I promise! In the meantime, hope you enjoy this picture of the baby enjoying hot chocolate milk on one of the rare cold mornings we've been having this fall.... (It's actually the Reliv chocolate supplement, but she thinks it's cocoa, and I don't mind!)

Clothing Organization part 4: Finding Daily Mass clothes

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So -- now the challenge after ruthless paring down was to separate each of the remaining pieces of clothing (which still numbered way more than 35) into one of the five categories I'd determined: (see the circle chart below) 1. purple circle: dressing up, the 'glam' clothing 2. red circle: daily Mass and shopping or visiting 3. brown circle: yard work, super casual clothing 4. green circle: ordinary casual clothes for housework (not as casual as #3) 5. blue circle: Sunday Mass clothing I started with the category of going to daily morning Mass, which right now I do three times a week, and I have this "thing" about not wearing pants to Mass. Like I said, I tend to use any excuse to dress up. If you check the chart below (and ignore how horribly I numbered it) you can see that I was trying to fill out this category by picking eight items that I could wear to daily Mass and for slightly dressy occasions, like visiting. Two of these items had to be able to be worn in

Clothing Organization part 3: Detachment and Appreciation

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The first part of organization is ineviably, paring down. And that brings with it the sometimes heartbreaking exercise of detaching yourself from things you once loved. (Yes, loved in the lower, materialistic sense, but nevertheless, loved.) So, in my effort to cut down my wardrobe, I gathered all my clothes from off-season storage and the cranies of the laundry basket and heaped them on the bed. I did the same with all my accessories: purses, scarves, shoes, and jewelry. Then the winnowing began: ruthlessly purging the unfit: clothing that was stained or getting straggly, clothes that really didn't fit me except in my fantasies, clothes that I never got around to wearing, and so on. Then I further winnowed out the remaining spring and summer clothes (farewell blue and green, till summer when we meet again!) as well any clothes that won't fit my third-trimester-pregnant figure. Also excised were maternity clothes from the last baby that were just too worn or out of style. I con

No Matter What Happens, Blessed Be His Name

Forgive this intrusion into the Clothes Organization series, but I thought it might be of interest to some... This past summer, I gave a talk called "No Matter What Happens, Blessed Be His Name" at the Midwest Catholic Family Conference . It was the first time that I spoke about losing our son, Joshua Michael , in public. It was a hard talk to give, but I'm told that it helped people in the audience who were going through their own bouts with suffering. In the talk, I retell the Biblical story of Job and share how I found that God's story about suffering had real applicability to what our family experienced. I just found out that the talk is available on CD from St. Joseph Communications for $7.00. To order, call Monica at 1800-526-2151, ext. #413. Or, you can email her at monica@saintjoe.com . The item number for the talk is #MWCFC07-CDM#8.

Clothing Organization part 2: Back to the Drawing Board

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Thanks for the encouragement, all! So, in the effort to pare down my thrift store wardrobe, I spent about a week trying to come up with a template that would work for me. It had to be specific, because my wardrobe is no ordinary set of clothing. No indeed, it is specially tailored to the tastes of one person in particular: my husband Andrew. Andrew likes two kinds of clothing on me: polished, simple, Audrey-Hephburn style clothing in strong colors and soft textures, and totally casual farm clothing like checked shirts and jeans. No prints, no muted or muddy colors, nothing too dramatic or too flouncy. Just simple, cute clothes. At least that's what his taste has currently evolved to this season. Of course, Andrew's never actually come out and told me this. Are you kidding? No, this is based on thirteen years of careful research, note-taking, and stealth inquiry. Because as most women can tell you, men are rarely forthcoming about what they like in clothing, and the question, &q

Beginning Clothes Organization...

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The change of seasons brings about the inevitable changing of the wardrobe. I'm forever trying to come up with some organizational model for reining in the amount of clothing in my closet. About a decade ago, I first formulated the plan known as the Seven-Dress wardrobe, (also known as Liturgical Dressing ) which worked well - for a while! But I confess I found it hard to maintain such a minimalist approach to dressing, and age took its toll on both my figure and my ability to regularly sew myself a new wardrobe. Now, some ten years after writing the above article, I'm back to my old standby: thrift store dressing, and for some reason, keeping up with the fashion scene has become more important to me as I age. But when you shop constantly at thrift stores and through bags of hand-me-downs, wardrobes have a way of ballooning out of proportion just as much the closets of those who hit the mall every Saturday. I still find myself in need of a template, a directive for how much

Starting Homeschooling

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Sorry I've been on hiatus, but we just started homeschooling again. I'm with the Classical Conversations program, and our group just started this past Tuesday. So - given that right now, I am busier than I have ever been in my entire life - I put off starting school till the group program started. So I spent last week organizing homeschool material that will hopefully be moved into the new addition sometime next month. But right now I am fortunate to be able to fit everything into a computer armoire, due to my husband's generosity in buying it for me when it was on sale two years ago. The armoire hides the messy avalanche that schoolwork had become over the summer, but now the avalanche is eradicated and safely filed and labeled in our file box system. Everything else is organized in four wooden magazine files from IKEA (which sadly, don't fit binders, their one flaw), two metal bins which slide onto shelves below, and in a desk organizer, which is not the Truly Useful

Catherine Fournier's House: Mirror on the Wall

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Here's another photo and commentary from Catholic writer Catherine Fournier : One of the nice things about moving into a new house after living for a long time (in our case 18 years) in one spot, is that you discover new things about your furniture and decorations. Suddenly, in a different arrangement or in a different light, that chair or dresser you took for granted takes on a whole new beauty. This mirror was my mother-in-law's; she inherited it from her parents. Initially, I didn't find its ornate, elaborate style terribly appealing, but a mirror is a mirror and it was useful in our bedroom. As you can see, it's not very exciting hung against a plain white wall (though the cutie in the reflection is quite nice!) I only kept it when we were moving because it was a family-piece and may well have been one of the first "beautiful" objects her parents bought after spending years struggling as Ukrainain settlers in Manitoba. But in our new house, with its much

Help Save Oliver Hill Farm!

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A few months ago in June I blogged about visiting Molly and Bill McGovern and their delightful little family farmette, Oliver Hill . This weekend I received a plea for emergency help from Molly. They were able to buy the farm because they purchased a sub-prime loan: at the time, this was their only option. Last year, they lost their baby son Oliver to SIDS, and then Bill lost his job as a result of all the time he took off to take care of his family during the crisis. Not to be kept down, Bill started his own business as a home health care aide, Oliver Hill Home Health Care . As an aside, he is thriving in the business: he's a big teddy bear of a man with years of emergency medicine experience. He specializes in helping older men with their health needs in their homes: for those of us who know Bill, this job is a perfect fit for his warm, compassionate personality, and his clients and their families have nothing but praise for his work. Molly has been holding classes in sewing and

Catherine Fournier's Upstairs Hall

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My friend, Canadian writer Catherine Fournier , kindly allowed me to post some photos of the rennovation of their upstairs hall, with commentary. Thanks for sharing, Catherine! Upstairs Hall When I arrange a room and begin to decorate it, I think first about what the area will be used for, who will see it, then traffic patterns, then about ease of maintenance (keeping it clean and tidy.) I usually try to develop a theme for the colours, pictures and knick-knacks. In the case of our upstairs hall, it started with finding a (safe) place for our statue of Mary; somewhere where she’d be properly and respectfully seen without being in danger of being knocked over, always a hazard in the large-footed & large-elbowed Fournier household. Once she was in place I realized that this transient zone –in my opinion you can be a little more overstated or emphatic in an area where people just pass through than in a room where people sit and stay – would work well as a “Marian devotions” area. This

Plastic Elimination Campaign: Kids' Swimming Pool

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At times I feel like a snob for admitting it, but plastic things really upset my sense of beauty. I can tolerate it in the house at times (yes, I do own Tupperware!) but when it comes to plastic outside, the contrast between the artificialness of plastic riding toys, swingsets, etc. and the vibrancy and realness of the natural world is jarring. So whenever I can, I try to find ways to eliminate outdoor plastic fixtures. I find that for babies, a galvanized metal tub makes a fun wading pool. While it's not really big enough to swim it, it definitely takes the edge off the last hot days of summer. And even bigger kids like to soak in it. I've found that one of these tubs (we just "upgraded" from a 30 gallon to a 45 gallon model this summer - $25 at the hardware store) and a good sprinkler is all the water fun my small children need. And this fall, we can use it for bobbing for apples. :)

Favorite Things: William Morris prints

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Years ago my friend Joan introduced me to the art and work of William Morris , the ecclectic genius of the Arts and Crafts movement of the last 1800's. Although not Catholic, Morris was fascinated by the art that was birthed by Catholic culture, and used his considerable fortune to fund the production of paintings, books, fabric, wallpaper, furniture, and architecture that paid homage to medieval art. He sought with mixed success to raise the level of popular culture in his day and age, away from mass production and towards the appreciation of what he considered to be true culture. Ironically, he never embraced the faith of the intensely Christian culture he sought to emulate, but spent his life a child of the wind, flying from one philosophy to another. I suspect that if he was saved in the end, it would be because that his heart was wiser than his head. Above is one of his popular patterns, Briarwood Manor, one of my favorites. Different companies release new versions of

Summer Centerpiece: Blue, Orange, and Green

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Contrary to what I just wrote on my site on Facebook , I admit that there are some times when the colors blue and orange look good together: such as in nature, exemplified by these tiger lilies in a cobalt-blue vase. The warm orange-brown of the saltshakers is also a nice complement. Okay, so I would never wear orange and blue together, but sometimes they do look just splendid. But for me, I need to add a splash of green. We usually think of dark green candles as being more appropriate for fall or Christmas, but I love how they combine with cobalt blue: during the hot days of summer, blue and green is the ultimate cooling combo. And I was delighted to find this unusual bright green homemade doily at a flea market (I always look through piles of old linens for finds like this one! It was only a dollar.). Stay cool!

Joshua Memorial Stone: new

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I wanted to post this revised version of Joshua's memorial stone to thank those of you who gave us feedback on the earlier version. As you can see, we added a Sacred Heart and cross to the stone, and Ben Hatke added leaves and mushrooms (in homage to hobbits). Here's a closeup of our family crest, which we created in fun with the Hatkes years ago, but which we're making official by including it on this gravestone. The Latin motto is "audacia et prudentia" - courage and prudence. The Siamese cat supposedly stands for courage: the black hen with an egg stands for prudence. The tree represents Christ, the stars represent the Church, and our Blessed Mother is represented by the moon. It might take us two years to actually have the stone made, but I'm grateful to see the design completed at last. Thanks again for your suggestions and prayers!

Favorite Things: Colored Glass Bottles

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For some time now, I've been collecting glass bottles in different colors. I'll pay for small bottles that are cobalt blue, light blue, or green (my price is no more than $3 per bottle - usually I pay $1 or less for the small ones at flea markets). The clear and brown glass ones just come my way from medications and herbal supplements. When arranged in a group or in a line on the counter (this is the backsplash of our stove), I like the color combination. And they're great for those times of year when small meadow flowers like dandelions or daisies bloom, tempting small children to bring their mommy a bouquet on every trip outdoors.

Small Salad

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My daughter Rose created this diminutive salad for her dad's lunch one day last week, featuring radishes from her own garden. Of course they were very tiny radishes, so she made a very tiny salad. :)

Katie's Room: the Makeover

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While work on our house addition languishes between building inspections, a Christendom College student and friend of ours has moved in with us. Since the room that was supposed to be hers still lacks electricity and insulation, she's moved into one half of the boys' room for now. To make her comfortable, we did a little redecorating, and I was pleased at how things came together. So, a la Better Homes and Gardens , I'll do a price countdown: I painted a flea market dresser ($5) and a 24" high table with drawers ($10.50) blue. The blue paint was a bucket of rephrensible wall color that came with the house when we bought it (free, if you don't count buying the house). For some reason, the aquamarine that would look appalling on a wall looks wonderful on these salvaged finds. And since the room was already dark blue and light blue with a green stripe, the medium blue was just right. Feeling in a 60's kind of mood, I kept the brass handles on the table and bought

More Shopping with my Guardian Angel: Church Pew

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It's taken me a while to get this picture up. For a long time, I've been hunting for a church pew for one side of our table. A bench doesn't quite bridge the gap between wall and table, yet chairs were too troublesome fit in the narrow space. But now that antique church pews are all the rage, it seemed impossible to find one for a price I could in conscience pay. But earlier this summer, I was visiting my in-laws. The day before we left, I went down the cellar to find something, and spotted the church pew that had formerly graced their entranceway sitting in a corner beneath an old blanket, gathering dust. "Are you giving this away?" I asked my mother-in-law. She was torn: she liked it but had no room for it, and her younger daughters, who have taken over interior decorating, were adamant that it had to go. She had acquired it when someone in the 1970s had dumped a pile of old pews at the 4H hall where their family belongs. The board, anxious to get rid of