I received this for Christmas last year, and it's wonderful. It includes many originals, such as Sister Winter and Put the Lights on the Tree, as well as classics like The First Noel or O Come O Come Emmanuel.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! And let me recommend ThanksFest to you.

So sorry for the lack of posts. I have been crazy! I started way too many projects as of late. I have pictures to show soon.

Right now I want to blab about some great kids books. 3 books by Tina Davis called : See and Sew, Sow and Grow, and Look and Cook. Renata has See and Sew and we have been slowly going through the projects. We have Sow and Grow in the store and it is really great too. These books are really fun for teaching sewing, gardening and cooking and if you like a vintage look. They are beautiful books with old vintage illustrations and the projects are vintagey too. They make a great present because they are so pretty.

Now besides being pretty they have great content too. See and Sew has simple instructions for basic hand sewing skills like sewing a button and embroidery stitches. Then there are the projects which include sewing a frog pincushion, drawstring bag, baby bib, elf shoes, cat shaped purse, etc. Very cute projects using simple materials like felt. Renata is 6yrs old and she definitely needs me to help her with the projects but you can see her getting more competent with each project. The back of the book includes sewing cards and monograms you can copy. My only critique of the book is that I would have like a few more projects. There are more than I listed and a lot of project suggestions but I still felt like a few more projects would have been nice.

Sow and Grow has more projects in it, but it first begins with introduction pages about sun, water, air, "what is a"... leaf, root,plant,stem etc.. The projects in this one include growing plants from potatoes, avocados, citrus but it also has egg shell gardening, terrariums, potpourri, pressing plants, forcing blooms, etc. It is organized with projects for each month of the year. Very fitting for a gardening book. Now See and Sow is definitely gauged for girls and this one is much more unisex even though the cover has pink on it.

I haven't seen Look and Cook yet but it looks quite nice too. They would make really lovely Christmas or birthday gifts. I'll post pictures soon.

Only $17 (okay, so Amazon is $15; FREE SHIPPING!)

From the filmmakers:

"In Christopher Hitchens, [filmmaker Darren] Doane found a celebrated prophet of atheism. Loud. Funny. Angry. Smart. Quick. An intimidating intellectual Goliath. Well-known for bullying and mocking believers into doubt and doubters into outright unbelief. In Douglas Wilson, Doane found the man who could provide a perfect intellectual, philosophical, and cinematic counterpoint to Hitchens' position and style. A trained philosopher and and deft debater. Big, bearded, and jolly. A pastor, a contrarian, a humorist--an unintimidated outsider, impossible to bully, capable of calling Hitchens a puritan (over a beer).

It was a collision of lives.

What Doane didn’t expect was how much Hitchens and Wilson would have in common and the respectful bond the new friend/foes would build through the course of the book tour. 'These guys ended up at the bar laughing, joking, drinking. There were so many things that they had in common', according to Doane. 'Opinions on history and politics. Literature and poetry. They agreed on so many things. Except on the existence of God.'"

Here we make available all but the last two minutes of Will Gray's fascinating talk on The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. Blame Joffre for corrupting the very end of the talk, but it's still a wonderful presentation.

Understanding The Waste Land, Part 1

Understanding The Waste Land, Part 2

Understanding The Waste Land, Part 3

These mp3s are available to members of The Bird & Baby at no charge. We request that non-members make a $1.50 donation to the club. Enjoy!

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As a homeschooling mom I am nervous about certain topics I will have to teach. Writing, for some reason, is a hard one for me and when someone says poetry I want to run away and hide in the closet. I actually like reading a decent amount of poetry but writing it or worse, teaching it. Yikes! Luckily my husband is an excellent writer so I expect to pass a lot of it off to him as the kids get older, but for now I want to expose them to plenty of poetry so they can appreciate it and see the world in a poetic light. I think it is important that kids can look around them and revel in God's glory and in a few words relay some of that glory. Writing, including poetry, is so important in learning to communicate well. So to start overcoming my fears I am reading some poetry aloud to the kids. So I thought I would share some fun poetry books that are great for kids.

One of my all time favorites is T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Eliot is known for his dense poetry, but this thoughtful book is not dense and is great fun. He writes light poems about cats, including the famous The Naming of Cats and Macavity: The Mystery Cat . Macavity is a cat burglar who is excellent at his job.

Another fun one is Shel Silverstein's A Light in The Attic . Silverstein's poetry is more about kids and appealing to kid's sensibilities but a bit grotesque once and a while.

Ogden Nash is another great lighthearted poetry writer whom I love to read. He might not be considered on a level such as T.S.Eliot because he is so lighthearted and blatantly disregards grammar or spelling. Ah....but so fun.

The Silver Chair has a copy of T.S. Eliot's Old Possums Book of Practical Cats in paperback for 3.50 and a hardcover Shel Silverstein's A Light in The Attic for 3.50 (this book is in good condition but has a name written very large inside the front cover) or we can order you a new copy of these or Ogden Nash.

Without Miracles is an attempt at an epistemology of evolution. You know, blah blah blah, but this time with Augustine and Aristotle thrown in for philosophical legitimacy.

It's a snob's book. For example, take that passage about space aliens I read in the video below...