well big day is here. we are working on moving over to our new blog home. we are trying to figure out a few things and hoping to better understand how to add more photos and adjust some of the layout. i am so fortunate that my husband is so entrenched in this world.

we had an active day otherwise. we were hoping to attend the st. patrick's day parade here. we rarely miss it, i can't tell you all of the ridiculous weather we have endured over the years for this parade, it is usually that good. it was really damp and raining here today so we opted out which ended up being a good thing i was able to catch up in the house a bit.

later today we decided to go to the movies. our little sunshine received some funding from her grammy and poppy for valentine's day to take the three of us on a movie date. today was finally the day. we went to see the princess and the frog. surprisingly we all really enjoyed it, i am not a huge fan of the disney movie. there were a few things that i thought the could have been done differently but it had everything that i love in a movie...i laughed, cried, wanted to get up and dance, snuggled my girl and felt all fuzzy inside! it had some powerful female messages and most of the characters were respectful of each other. i guess there was some controversy over the movie but we all liked it. i remember hearing an interview about the movie on npr when it first came out, so many were very excited about its release.

we don't go to the movies very often any more but we love to take our girl, she always looks so overwhelmed by the experience. it is so exciting that with all that she is exposed to that the movies are still such a thrill for her. one of her favorite things to do is at the end of the movie when the credits and the music are running she likes to go to the front of the theater and dance to the music. she does not care how many people are in the theater she just feels like that is what she wants to do. love her confidence!

most everyday i have npr on all day in the kitchen. it makes me stop and listen or become overwhelmed with emotion and either joy, fire, inspiration, so many emotions. i just have a hard time understanding how everyone is not listening to this everyday!!!

i feel like i need to tell people about it, they must not know if they are not listening, how could they be depriving themselves of such inspiration and knowledge.

so everyday that i am listening i hear at least one story on npr and think "wow i would love to share that, that would be great to post on a blog".

so i just went to the npr site to find a few stories from today to link to and i found this picture of fred astaire and ginger rogers. i have to tell you every since i can remember i have had a huge crush on fred astaire. not much to look at you think. well i don't know, i just did and still do. ginger rogers was great too.

so i went to npr and came across this nice story about irving berlin and the song "cheek to cheek" that he wrote for "top hat". it just made me smile and brought me back to all those late nights watching fred and ginger on pbs. just makes me feel all warm and happy inside. hope it works for you too. here is a link to cheek to cheek.

here are a few links to my favorite npr shows. i will be giving you suggestions every so often of stories to listen to. hopefully you will take them wisely.

i of course listen to morning edition and all things considered in the morning and afternoon respectively, but there are so many jems in between.

diane rheem she always has the most current topics and incredible guests and she does not let people get away with alot of what you would hear on some other talk shows, she is the queen.

fresh air with terry gross i don't hear fresh air much any more because it is on at bed/reading time. she has great guests and asks the questions that you would ask.

this american life how can you not love ira glass. i am sorry but he is brilliant. someone shared a link the other day with ira glass talking about creativity vs reality. this is perfect.

wait wait...don't tell me is always required listening. it makes me laugh out loud every time.

this will be the last one for now.

the splendid table we found this on late one night when we were painting the kitchen over the summer. so many wonderful little things to learn on this show.

so many of these shows if not all are available on for podcast. hope that you will try some out. warning...you may fall in love.

enjoy!

my niece taught my daughter how to finger knit when she arrived for thanksgiving, then they could not travel without yarn all weekend. they were so cute, we went to see their cousin in a christmas story playing at Geva Theater they knit through the whole show. laughing and knitting. love this. we had a really great weekend. wonderful food and company.

It looked like we should rake this morning but it was so beautiful and what is Halloween without leaves to slosh through?

We had a really great day. We decided with all that we have been doing on the house that we should take the day off right after we took a trip to historic house parts annual tent sale. Sweetpea did not want to join us but that was the plan. In the end we did not get anything big for the house, we did find twist locks for the spice cupboards. Yippee!

But the real winner was helen. i have been casually looking for a manual typewriter for her for a while now and we found one there. she was beside herself. we came home and she typed her little heart out. daddy was very excited too. he spent a long time online trying to figure out what type it was and looking to order some fresh typewriter ribbon for her. so it is a royal 10 he thinks from 1935. we all love it whatever it is!

we also had not been to the movies in ages. we decided to surprise our girl so we blindfolded her and put her in the car. she kept peaking with just the bandanna on so i had to put my scarf over that too. this was fun. we took her to our favorite local independent theater, the little to see where the wild things are. i am sure that many of you have also heard that maybe not the best movie for smaller children. there were some intensely emotional scenes and some frightening scenes and some very sad scenes too. we all really enjoyed it. we think also not so great for younger kids we did have some discussions with our daughter after the movie to talk about all the emotional issues. i think she understood some and not others. i think that maybe she could relate to many of the emotions too. this was a very well done movie. i can't stop thinking about it 3 days later.

so this day did not seem to want to end. we had our neighborhood halloween parade then mexican buffet at our friends then finally trick or treating.

it was such a beautiful night here. it was a little crisp, clear and still. the moon was just perfect too. hope that you enjoy your day as much as we did.

here is our hermoine granger.