Now that we are officially past the first of December, I can start talking Christmas, right? We go big on Christmas around here. We’ve been listening to carols for at least a couple of weeks, the house got all decked out right after Thanksgiving, and our giant tree has been up since last weekend. We

I hated history growing up. With ministry exams to pass it was always more focused on memorizing dates than on telling any kind of story. Between this and the fact that Canadian Thanksgiving is in October and actually focused on giving thanks, I pretty much dodged the whole Plymouth rock love fest mythology of the

I’ve never been a fan of any kind of needlework. It’s tedious to me and points out all of the conflicting aspects of my personality. I chafe against the idea of a pattern telling me what to do and I don’t feel comfortable or confident enough to make up my own patterns as I go.

It’s still rough and incomplete, but here it is… November has never been my friend. When I was a child and we lived in the depths of the North Maine Woods, it was the single most hated month of my life. November meant hunting season and having to layer up in orange and stay close

Can we all just agree that time changes are the most ridiculous thing that we do as a society and be done with them once and for all? That said, falling back is definitely my preferred mode of messing with our collective concept of time. I desperately want to be a morning person, and earlier

My son and I have spent the last 48 hours doing a delicate dance between cultural appreciation and appropriation. At his request, and despite the fact that we have no Mexican roots, we decided to make a version of an ofrenda, or memory altar, for the Day of the Dead. He was utterly fascinated with

Authenticity is hard. Those are the first words I wrote on this blog.  The Simple Chicken’s origin story begins with me in a painkiller induced haze after having my tubes tied. I was shook at the thought of no longer being able to have another baby, even though we had decided it was what was

My soul has been washed clean with apple cider and I’m feeling grounded in the season in a way I have not for two years. We live in an area that usually has a festival for every thing. The end of winter is ushered out with Maine Maple Sunday, Spring is celebrated with a festival

Do you ever hit a point where you don’t want to do something to such a strong degree, that you have one of two choices, run like mad in the opposite direction or throw yourself into it completely and just embrace the suck? Fighting with the technical problems of this blog is that for me.

“Find out what each character cares most about in the world because then you will have discovered what is at stake.” I love character driven writing.  You can feel the difference when something comes from the characters and when they are merely puppets in a plot.  It’s the main reason I do not read a