Author Archives: Tricia Edgar

About Tricia Edgar

Tricia is a mom of one daughter. She's into recycling, gardening, and strange and wonderful crafts. You'll often find her tromping through the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Last-Minute Teacher Gifts

It’s nearly Christmas. Are you looking for a homemade teacher gift for your child’s teacher? Teachers work very hard all year, and Christmas is a good time to show them how much they are appreciated. Whether you’re making something for a soccer coach, Girl Scout leader, or your child’s classroom teacher,here are some ideas for last-minute Christmas gifts. 1. A homemade card I volunteer in a number of ways in the community. I always appreciate the thought behind a homemade card. I don’t need a lot of things, but a message of love in a card is always appreciated. 2. … Continue reading →

Looking Toward the Light: Centering Spaces and Rituals in Your Home

It is snowing today, and it is quiet. It’s still early in the morning, and everyone else in the house is asleep. This is the time when I can write, and it’s a time when I can be by myself, cultivating my introverted self. This is the busy season, and it is also a season that is dark. This time of the year brings families together, and it is also a sad time for those who have lost friends and family – during this year, during any year. My aunt died suddenly and tragically at Christmas time, and my father’s … Continue reading →

Holiday Sanity-Savers Around the House

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, and the crazy is in the air. If you’re trying to figure out how to manage, here are some ideas that I use to calm down. Prioritize You may like a clean toilet bowl or a clutter-free house. You may want to do all of the Christmas activities, and then some. You will likely need to prioritize. What can you slack off on during the Christmas season? What’s really important? Set out some priorities so that you do what you really want to do instead of running around like that proverbial chicken. … Continue reading →

A Homemaker’s Christmas

What is a homemaker? A homemaker is not male or female, young or old. A homemaker is a person who builds a house into a home. Helping someone find the tools and skills to create a home is a wonderful gift. How can you share the homemaking love this Christmas? Give Inspiration I’m giving out a lot of homemaking inspiration this year in the form of jams, cookies, and canned fruit. I love to share what I’ve made, and sometimes it inspires others to do the same. Give Family Recipes I’ve done this a couple of times, and I’ve also … Continue reading →

Sweaters That Will Make You Cry

  Can a sweater make you cry? Oh yes. Yes it can. You may think that this is about the annual search for the ugliest Christmas sweater. It is not. This is about the lovely story of Loes Veenstra. Since 1955, she kept busy knitting over 500 sweaters, which she stored in her apartment. A woman named Chris Meindertsma discovered the sweater collection. She wrote a book featuring the sweaters, which document many eras of sweater knitting. The sweaters will also be featured in a display about life in Rotterdam. Yes. So why am I crying? It’s because of this … Continue reading →

Now’s the Time to Prune!

Deck the halls with loads of branches! It’s pruning time again. Actually, you can prune many different sorts of plants at many times of the year. What we’re talking about is winter pruning. Winter time is a quiet time for plants. Many deciduous plants have already lost their leaves and have gone dormant. This means that they are no longer actively growing and making food. Winter pruning means that you prune trees and shrubs while they are dormant. If you prune deciduous trees and shrubs in the winter, this will help them grow more in the spring. Winter pruning reduces … Continue reading →

Simple Decorating for the Christmas Season

We’re heading on into the Christmas season. Next weekend we’ll put up our decorations – we wait until December 1st to do that, no matter how tempting it is to do it earlier. If you’re decorating on a budget, it’s quite simple to look festive with virtually no money. You don’t really need to wait in a lineup to get the latest blow up Santa from the store, although you can if you really want to. But sometimes simple is just as effective and much less expensive. Create paper snowflakes out of white paper, tissue paper, and scrapbook paper and … Continue reading →

Decorating With Gratitude

It’s Thanksgiving. This means that around the country, people are sitting with family and friends, sharing food and family time. Perhaps that family is a family of two, or it might be a family of twenty and counting. Perhaps that family is a family of friends and neighbors, of people who are dear to you. It may be that you are alone today, sharing this time with your own thoughts. Sometimes it can be hard to feel thankful. We live in a time of great change, when families are challenged to live within their own means and the means of … Continue reading →

It’s Fall – Time to Redesign Your Garden Space

What are you thankful for today? Today, I am thankful for my new garden up the road – a borrowed garden in someone else’s yard that is so much sunnier than my own. I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with mulching techniques and garden design. In my own small garden, I’ve had to be quite creative about space. I live in a townhouse with a tiny yard, and my tiny yard doesn’t really have room for a big garden bed. For a few years, I tried having a garden bed, but it just didn’t make sense. It was … Continue reading →

Simple Teacher Gifts For Christmas

The carols are blaring and the decorations are out, and I am tempted to put my head under something minty-scented until January. Although I love the giving aspect of the Christmas season, its commercial bent gives me a strong desire to flee. But then there’s the problem of homemade. In this world of busy and this world of “but I don’t know HOW to make things,” how can you create homemade Christmas items for teachers, friends, and family and have them delight in what you have made? Over the next two weeks, I’ll explore some super simple ways to create … Continue reading →