monadnock mama

Kelli Ann Wilson November 16, 2013

Field Trip // Woodell & Daughters Sawmill

Today I have a special treat for you! Lillia’s class recently went on a field trip to Woodell and Daughters Forest Products in Langdon, NH. I brought along my camera thinking that I might take some photos for posterity, but I ended up handing it over to Lillia instead. I figured that, since she’s only 10, she would take a lot of blurry pictures and/or ridiculously up-close portraits of her friends. I was so surprised when I started going through the photos that she took. They are actually quite good — very artistic! She took a lot of photos, so I curated a little collection for you. All of the following photos were taken by Lillia with absolutely not guidance or instruction from me, using the manual setting on my DSLR. I have not cropped or adulterated them in any way, other than to boost the color a little in Photoshop (which I do to most of my own photos). We also visited a farm so I will post her photos from that part of the trip tomorrow.

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Kelli Ann Wilson November 5, 2013

lillia turns 10!

My “baby” is a decade old. Wow.

[Note: I accidentally left my camera in my car overnight so the lens was too foggy to take decent pictures. I had to use Damian’s camera. I’m definitely not used to it anymore, so I apologize if the quality of these pictures is not great.]

Check out this amazing Minecraft cake that my mom made!

Poor Lillia was so sick on her birthday. We had to pry her out of her bed.

But, she perked up considerably once the presents appeared!

Zane was pretty pleased with his gift, as well. As you can see, he’s something of an expert when it comes to power tools.

An adorable cat amidst the rubble.

If you ask her to smile these days, this is what you get.

We love her anyway. Happy Birthday, sweet Lillia!

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Kelli Ann Wilson November 5, 2013

halloween 2013

I know I’m a little bit slow getting these pictures posted. I’ve been really sick. And, I share my computer with a tween (who just turned 10 and her mother still hasn’t posted photos from her birthday…).

This year we had a little black kitty (his request):

And, a Creeper. Some of us are a bit obsessed with Minecraft right now. She and her friend Enrique made plans to go trick-or-treating together. It is so interesting to watch her growing up, and to remember how I felt and behaved at her age. Friends are becoming a lot more important to her.

If you look really closely, you can see Lillia’s face behind that Creeper mouth.

And, here’s a little interview with Zane.

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Kelli Ann Wilson October 18, 2013

pumpkin carving

Last night we had a pumpkin carving/birthday party (for my mom and my brother). My hometown’s annual Pumpkin Festival is one of my mom’s favorite events of the year, and she always carves a ton of pumpkins in the hopes that this will be the record-breaking year (Note: the last time Keene took the record was the year that we couldn’t go because I was in the hospital giving birth to Lillia!). This year my mom enlisted a little help from the family because she was behind schedule. We have some very creative types in the family who went above and beyond the traditional jack-o-lantern. Some of the highlights were a husky silhouette (JD), a mother bird & her babies in a nest (Mom), and Cthulhu or Zoidberg…we’re not sure (Damian). It’s always nice to get together, whatever the reason.

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Kelli Ann Wilson October 9, 2013

my new “office”

I don’t consider my blog a decorating/home improvement type website by any means, but we just finished up a project that I thought would be interesting to share, especially for those of you with small houses that can’t sacrifice an entire room for a home office. I posted a long time ago about my plans to convert our closet into an office (or “cloffice”). Well, it took a long time, but my husband really pulled through for me. This was a lot of work for him, and I appreciate it so, so much. In fact, I feel a little undeserving.

It is beautiful.

The photos don’t do it justice. It looks so small, but when you are working at the desktop it actually feels quite spacious (the closet is about 2 ft. deep x 4 ft. wide x 8 ft. tall). Damian used 2×2 pine ledgers which we topped with poplar board shelves (they are very solid and will probably take longer to bend than pine under all those books). The desktop is a piece of 3/4 inch thick plywood custom cut for me by Damian and is supported by 1×4 ledges on three sides (back, right side, and the front on either side of the doorway). We had to do this crazy setup because our bathroom shower access is on the left side of the closet, and we wanted to be able to reach it easily and quickly. It works out really nicely, though, because the gap on the left side allows me to run cords up between the wall and the desktop. Underneath the desk I have my printer on the left side, and a cart with all of my writing supplies and stationery on the right side. It is so wonderful to have a place for all of my things.

I added our college diplomas on the wall behind the bedroom door just for fun (you can only see them from inside the room with the door closed, so I don’t feel like I’m showing off). I also have a few more things I’d like to add, like a corkboard and some wall-mounted file storage, but I’m enjoying it just the way it is for now. I plan to do a lot of research from this space, as I seem to have become obsessed with genealogy again! I’d also like to try writing some poetry…it will all be terrible, I’m sure, but at least I have a nice space in which to write it!

Lastly, I owe a big thank you to my wonderful husband, Damian, who made this dream (and many others) come true. I feel so loved.