Welcome to World Wide Wood, the online home of Peter, Rebecca, Catherine and Esme Wood.

Sewing Patterns Courtesy of Freecycle

What is the first thing a gal should do when faced with five boxes of sewing patterns? Take pictures and post them, threadbared style, on her blog, of course!

Some that I’m keeping:

There are some really cute kids patterns. I love the simple lines of these little dresses and rompers! One of them is already in the works. Pics are soon to follow.

Some that I’m not:

Holy shoulder pads, Batman! And I’m pretty sure that’s Meg Ryan from the later portions of “French Kiss” there in the yellow pants. Not the yellow pantsuit. I think Meg had better sense than that!

Of special note:

That’s right, folks, a Snuggie. Or at least it’s older cousin.

Check out a bunch more here.

A Great Father’s Day

Papa and his submarine girls

What better way to spend my fourth Father’s Day than eating huge pancakes and piloting a submarine with my girls, all in lovely Portsmouth, NH? There’s much to tell about today’s adventures, so read on… Continue reading…

Strawberry Jammin’

It is raining. It’s been raining for the better part of two weeks. But it didn’t rain on Wednesday, so we rushed to take advantage of the sun. And what better activity on a sunny day in June than strawberry picking!

Connors Farm in Danvers was close, not to pricey and turned out to be chock full of plump, juicy strawberries. We arrived, took a quick tour of the farm stand and collected our cardboard flat. Catherine did a good job picking. She mostly stuck to choosing the nice red berries and didn’t wander off too many times. Her main concern is that we didn’t fill all six containers. When she got bored of picking she grabbed the camera and took a few pictures. We had a nice trip to the farm!

We ate our fill of strawberries, but still had plenty left over as we watched the rain on Thursday morning. A quick search led me to this recipe for Strawberry Jam. As we had all the ingredients on hand we set forth making jam.

The method was easy, hampered only by my lack of proper canning supplies. Catherine helped with the mashing and the stirring…and the tasting! The taste is perfect- sweet, but not exceedingly so (we cut the sugar in half, for health and our love of tartness). Last night I thought the consistency was too runny, more like a sauce, but after a night in the fridge it seems to have solidified into a more jam-like substance. I’m looking forward to trying the recipe again.

You can find photos of strawberry picking on Wednesday and jam making on Thursday by clicking here!

End of an Era at prwdot.org

For the past six years, I have offered several of my friends free web hosting via my own personal web hosting accounts, under the prwdot.org domain name. I have set up and configured Movable Type blogs, Gallery installations, kept the software up to date, helped troubleshoot issues, mitigated the occasional security threat, and paid for the web hosting (which included storage space and bandwidth) that these folks used.

However, over the past few years, with the growth of our family, I’ve had less and less time to devote to running and supporting free web hosting. Though I enjoyed the opportunity to serve my friends, I found that I just wasn’t able to provide the same level of quality service that I once did. So, I’ve recently made the decision to end the free web hosting service, which will hopefully give me a few less things to think about.

In thanks to these friends for hosting with me, I’ve set up gone.prwdot.org, a domain to which their old websites will continue to redirect, and which contains links to all of their known sites, social networking profiles, or other pages. Thanks Will, Amy, Josh, Nathan, Jon, and Corey.

As a side note, this will also help out our family budget, as I’ve moved us from a slice at Slicehost to an account at NearlyFreeSpeech.net. Though I still will recommend Slicehost for folks who need a beefy, dedicated-virtual server with great support, we’re moving to NFSN because of their pay-as-you-go, bill-by-the-penny model. Web hosting will cost us around $5/month, possibly less, as we’re billed on a daily basis for exactly how much storage and bandwidth we use on that given day. I may write about NFSN in depth at a later time, but suffice to say for now I love their pricing and philosophy. While they aren’t the cheapest if you’re hosting large files or doing a lot of traffic, they are certainly very reliable, responsive, knowledgeable, and fair, and they have a business philosophy that I admire.

Three Years Home

Today marks the three year anniversary of our having Catherine home with us. We celebrated her third birthday over Memorial Day Weekend with a Bubble Blowing Party (pictures here) but to me June 10th is just as special as May 26th.

I can still remember the relief I felt walking out of Beverly Hospital with her and the joy of arriving home. She was finally ‘all ours’. There were no more nurses or doctors checking in or making rounds. No more protocols, no more tubes or beeps or cords. Just our little girl.

If you met Catherine today, not knowing the story of her first two weeks, you would have no idea she had such a rough start. Every day she amazes me with the things she is learning. She makes me laugh with her dancing and singing and jokes. She is a caring big sister and a loving daughter. She loves life and ice cream and ‘rice and beans that are not spicy’. She is polite and generous and helpful. She exceeds our expectations daily and is truly a joy.

Sweeties with my Sweetie

With the green leaves of Spring upon us and the warm air of Summer sneaking in, Catherine and I have replaced our ‘oatmeal for every breakfast’ routine for something a bit cooler- Smoothies.

Or “Sweeties”" as Catherine has been calling them. They’re thick, fruity, sweet and they fill our tummies up for days full of adventure. In the world of natural and healthy eating they’re known as Green Smoothies. We whip up a batch every morning- mine is gone quickly, while Catherine savors hers in between reading her Richard Scary books and ‘Dressing the Bear that Josie Gave me’; two favorite morning activities.

Here’s our recipe if you’re interested (amounts are approximate and vary based on what I have on hand)

In blender, combine: 1/2 cup frozen Blueberries 1/2 cup frozen Strawberries 2/3 of one Banana *note- I cut bananas into thirds and freeze ahead of time 1 large handful Spinach leaves, chopped well 1 cup (or more) Plain, No-fat yogurt Splash of Orange Juice (optional and yummy)

Blend until smooth. A word from Catherine- “The blender is not scary. It is just loud. But not too loud.”

The yogurt we have been using the past couple weeks is a batch that we made ourselves. We put our crock pot to work and followed the instructions found on the blog Nourishing Days. It came out a bit runny for normal yogurt eating, but is perfect for smoothies!

The fruit combo above is easy for us and we like it, but feel free to try other combinations. We should mix it up sometimes as well… Any good suggestions?

Happy Mama’s Day!

Happy Mama’s Day to my wife Rebecca and to Mamas, Moms, Mommies, Mothers everywhere!

Mama and her girls

From managing the cooking and grocery list, to hunting for bargains, to getting all kinds of great free stuff, to wrangling a feisty nearly-three-year old and a hungry two-month-old all day every day, Rebecca deserves much credit for keeping this family and house running in tip-top shape. She does it all while staying true to her beliefs in honoring God, protecting the environment, nurturing our children, and saving our pennies.

Thank you for being the best Mama and wife that we could hope for!

Two months, two girls, and the Importance of planning ahead

Esme is two months and two days old today. She had her checkup yesterday at which the doctor confirmed what we already know; she’s doing great! She’s gaining weight, getting taller and meeting her milestones. We are all loving her little coos and smiles and giggles. Maybe my favorite thing about her lately is that she has a little cry that sounds exactly like she is saying, “Esme”.

Long story, short, she’s awesome and we can’t imagine life without her.

Big sister Catherine is leading the way. She has been picking out clothes for little sister and showing her how all the baby toys work. I’ve found her, more than once, lying inside the ‘baby floor gym’ batting at the hanging toys.

Catherine has been charming the pants off her Mama by reciting her story books (”Mother and Gloria were inside at the table drawing place cards for the party”) and by never using contractions (”I fell, Mama, but I am okay.”) She also attended story time at the library today for the first time. We talked about how the other kids would go in alone and she had no qualms leaving me behind!

Life with two has its super sweet times and its super hectic times. I’ve found that the best way to manage and keep our sanity is to be compulsive about planning ahead. Luckily, it is one of my better qualities (if I do say so myself) I’m always mentally composing lists of things to pack in the diaper bag, noting where all the restrooms will be when we go out, categorizing to-do lists based on the number of girls napping…that sort of thing. It doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for daydreaming or creative thinking (I cram that in before bed) but it does help our days and outings run so much more smoothly.

What do you do that helps keep your days stress free?

My Twitter Rulebook

I’ve been using Twitter for a little over a year now. During that time, I’ve developed a few internal rules that help me use the system to my best advantage. These rules stem from three guiding principles:

Trust Your Friends
Time Is Precious
Ideas Need Exposure

In the following article I’ll discuss the guiding principles and then I’ll talk about the rules that help me stick to the principles. Continue reading…

Nasal Allergies and the Neti Pot

I’ve had nasal allergies for most of my life. From first grade up through now, I’ve bounced back and forth through various types of medicine, a variety of symptoms, and unpredictable outcomes.

My most recent regimen of meds was Flonase, Zyrtec, and, added just before Esme was born, Astelin. Together, These three seemed to take care of my symptoms pretty well.

However, one day recently I was playing around with Google Health. I had imported my prescription records, and it popped up some notices for me that the three medicines I was taking were from the same family, and that it didn’t recommend taking more than two at a time.

I also started reading about some side effects of the medications, particularly Astelin, and began to think about some things I’d recently been feeling: lethargic, grumpy, unmotivated, gaining weight. I had written these off as post-baby situational stress and symptoms. However, I realized that they matched up pretty well with the symptoms that other people had been reporting.

At that point, I made the decision to go cold turkey on my allergy medicines. Within a day or two, I felt that I had more energy and was not as grumpy as I had been recently. But I was still feeling my allergy symptoms. So I started to look into an option I’d been thinking about for a while: the Neti Pot. My friend Amy Walton had recommended it several years ago, but in my pride I asserted that modern allergy medicines were the best way to go and that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with pouring salt water down my nose.

Well, I’ve been using a Neti Pot for almost two weeks now, and I have to apologize to Amy: you were right. This thing is amazing! After the very first time using it, my nose felt better, and my symptoms went away. I used it two or three times a day the first week, and since then I’ve cut back a bit. I actually haven’t used it since last Thursday, and I still feel fine!

The real test will come this summer, when my allergies have typically been in full bloom. I suspect that I’ll need to use the Neti Pot more often to get things cleared out. But I’d much rather do that than take drugs that have potentially undesirable side effects! And it costs less, too! The Neti Pot kit I got was only $10 and came with 30 packets of saline mixture. You can buy a 100-pack for under $15, which should last a couple months. Or you can make your own solution at home! In any case, it’s cheaper than the $55/month I had been paying for my allergy medicine, and thus far, it seems to work even better!

So to all of the nasal allergy sufferers who haven’t yet tried the Neti Pot… give it a go! I think you’ll be glad you did.

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