Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

    I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!

Monthly Archives: October 2009

cooking in my kitchen

The kitchen floors were replaced today.  Or I should say over-placed, since the original linoleum is now just underneath the new stuff.  I celebrated by making dinner from scratch (clam chowder) and chocolate cakes with Will.  Later this week we will also say goodbye to the royal blue counters! I was feeling pretty good about […]

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my turn to be the lying bastard landlord

One of the things we were very excited about in our move was to get away from our neighbors.  There’s the homeschooling family of 7 across from us whose children are overly fond of dressing up in chamo and playing militia up and down the street, the teenage girl next door who, while an amazing […]

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the one where i call uncle

For the last week, our thermostat has been set to 65 degrees, all day long.  I first noticed that this might be a problem when Will voluntarily began wearing clothes.  The next hint was when Nic said he couldn’t wait to run some errands so he could “go sit in the car where it’s warm.”  […]

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october snow

This is why we moved out here.  It is gorgeous. We came home last night to find our babysitter wearing two pairs of pants and about four shirts, huddled underneath a blanket with a towel shoved in a window crack.  So cold, yes.  But gorgeous, also yes. I had a trash the dress shoot scheduled […]

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a 1940s wife

Sometimes I look in my fridge and freezer and pantry and think “surely there’s a dinner to be made here.”  And if I was a mom in 1943, I would know how to take that can of pinapple chunks, the frozen log of sausage, and the half top of stovetop stuffing and not only make […]

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“old timey organic” or “would you like some eggs with that lead?”

I can’t pinpoint exactly where it started, but I got sucked into the dream of an old fashioned better life.  Animal Vegetable Miracle, The Gentle Art of Domesticity, the constant discovery of the new and terrifying ways that we’re poisoning our children with pesticides and Happy Meals and vaccines and toys from China all fueled […]

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