Week 38 In My Notebook | 2024

Last week was perfectly fall-like! It was full of cloudy and rainy days and we were so lucky that Matthew was on vacation. Our week didn’t work out as I’d planned; we tweaked things as we went along, spent a lot of time outside, and tried to take advantage of every opportunity to soak in the ambience of the season. Here’s a few things that went right for us:

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Details:

• The notebook: Hobonichi Hon A5, which is the same as the 2025 A5 Cousin but in hardcover.
• Pen: Zebra Sarasa 0.4
• Highlighter: Mild Grey Mildliner 
• Dots: Washi Paper dot stickers

Blackberry Bluff School:
I’d planned to do a normal week of school with Bryce and Bronwyn, but it didn’t seem like we were taking advantage of Matthew’s time off by doing that. So we did our full formal learning on Monday and Tuesday mornings and then took a quick pivot:

• We spent Wednesday morning at the apple orchard, which was a great way to move our bodies and appreciate the world around us. Plus all the baking that ensues after those visits.
• It rained all day Thursday and we took advantage of it by spending the morning independently reading. Perfect atmosphere, perfectly cozy and quiet.
• Bryce turned 11 on Friday morning! He got a big stack of Dav Pilkey and Minecraft books that kept him happy and busy all day long.

Normally I’d say that something went terribly wrong if we only had two days of formal learning in a week, but these were special circumstances and we had fun while building a beautiful life. So I feel good about our decision!

Things for me:
I have a number of personal goals that I’m working towards:

• Exercise: 3 spinning sessions, 2 resistance sessions, 1 yoga session, and about 2 hours at a hilly apple orchard. A pretty good week!
• Reading: I aim to read an average of 150 pages a day. That means that some days I will read more than that and others will be less, depending on what’s going on around me. Storygraph tells me that I am about 5,000 pages behind on that daily goal right now! Last week my daily average was much less than 150 pages/day and that’s okay. I read every single day last week and that’s a good thing!
• Writing: I published 3 blog posts last week, which is my goal.
• Videos: I published 2 videos last week; my goal is 1/week. New skills learned: adding text to videos, how to cut out scenes.
• Independent learning: Although, I haven’t mentioned this on my blog in several weeks, I am still contemplating this. I’ve identified two topics I want to focus on and spent a solid chunk of time last week coming up with a plan. More on this in the weeks to come. (This has not and will not be a fast goal!)

And while crafting isn’t something I intentionally work into my routine these days, I knitted twice last week! So it felt good to make some progress on my Cloudesley sweater, however small.

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And that was our week in a nutshell. This week we’re planning to add more classical education elements into our afternoons. We were successful with this last year and took a break from it over the summer, just as a way to simplify our summer “vacation.” I wanted to wait until Colton’s school year was actually into full swing before resuming this practice and now is the time. Wish us luck on this transition!

How about you? What went right for you last week? Where did things veer off course? How was your weekend? I’d love to hear how you’re doing in the comments!