Thanksgiving week; a week of cooking, traveling and/or hosting, preparing and cleaning up. We are going to friends to help them eat a home grown bird (or two). But in addition to the usual day of thanksgiving and harvest feasting we will be celebrating Brienne's 7th birthday this week - twice. Wednesday is the actual day, crossing our fingers that her gift will arrive in time. Sunday is theFancy Nancy Goes Bowling Birthday Party. A fairly simple affair; dress up, bowling and cake. But still I anticipate spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen this week. Because what is a celebration without good food? And so I say to myself "I should take a blogging break this week". Ha! That's almost laughable. Blogging is something I enjoy immensely. Publishing my photos and thoughts almost daily - what a rush! But in the event that I do check out for a couple days I wanted to leave you all with these great reads, November's Sweet Stuff.

Mama Speak

• I consider myself a fairly energized, upbeat person. I haven't given much thought to the factors that contribute to this but The Secret Life of High Energy Parents really resonated with me.
• Somehow Earthy Crunchy's amazing parenting soup post from way back in September slipped through the sweet stuff cracks. I loved, loved, loved the metaphor of soup that Kyndale uses to illustrate parenting. So well said.

Homeschool

Nothing really hit me very much this month with regards to homeschooling.

Urban Homestead

• Someday when I finally find the motivation I will write about our family's natural body care. The only thing we buy for our personal hygiene is toothpaste (just haven't attempted to make our own yet) and as far as I know we don't stink too bad. But in the meantime you can read Simple Mom's (if you haven't already) Natural Beauty post.
• Another way back from September post found at Little House in the Suburbs, 6 lazy ways to reduce housework. I couldn't agree more with this post. The kids and I spend about one hour each weekday morning doing housework chores - cleaning, organizing, bathroom, laundry, cat care (not including breakfast clean up). The kids clean up and vacuum the play and living areas each night. And every once in a while I'll wash the kitchen floor after supper. That's about all the time we spend on non-food related house cleaning and we don't live in a sty. It's lived in but tidy. Housework - who needs it?

Recipes

Technically I don't have a recipes section on my blog but in honor of the big day coming up I thought I'd share three recipes I plan to cook this week, all found at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, my all time favorite food blog.

• Celebration Pot Pie with Pumpkin. I will use tofu instead of seitan and plan to make other g-free modifications. A special meal for our long weekend at home together.
• Pumpkin Pie Bites, my dessert contribution for Thursday.
• Sweet Dumpling Squash stuffed with Lemon-Herb Rice, my main dish contribution for Thursday.

Neighborhood

• Bartering advice for the frugal mom from Steady Mom's guest poster Tori. As a mother who has no choice but to barter (because of my immigration status - absolutely legal but not permitted to work) I can relate to this post.

Gallery

• Remember how I said I didn't know what I wanted for my birthday? Well now I do, Digital Landscape Photography.
• Isn't this colored bokeh from Four Winds Photo Journal just wonderful?

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving week.