Happy Labor Day Weekend! I hope you had a good last week of August. As I wrote the other day, Let Autumn Begin!
We don’t have any major plans for this holiday weekend. David has several projects for clients right now so he’ll probably be working at least part of the day on Friday, Saturday, and Monday. We also have a list of little jobs around the house that need to be tackled so we’re hoping he can take care of several of those. Most of them are 30-60 minutes jobs. One will take several hours. We’ll see how things go. I hope to spend my extra time on homeschool planning and maybe working in the kitchen. Maybe.
This Week’s Artwork
Today’s piece is A Summer Shower (1888, oil on canvas) by Charles Edward Perugini. Someone shared this online a few weeks ago and I immediately made a bookmark so I could use it here. The details are gorgeous.
Here is a bit about Perugini from Wikipedia (edited for brevity):
Charles Edward Perugini (1839 – 1918), originally Carlo Perugini, was an Italian-born English painter of the Romantic and Victorian era.
Perugini was born in Naples, but lived with his family in England from the ages of six to 17. He trained in Italy under Giuseppe Bonolis and Giuseppe Mancinelli, and in Paris under Ary Scheffer. He became a protégé of Lord Leighton, who brought him back to England in 1863. Perugini may at first have worked as Leighton’s studio assistant. Under Leighton’s influence, he began as a painter of classical scenes; then “he turned to the more profitable pastures of portrait painting, and genre pictures of pretty women and children.”
In 1874, he married the youngest daughter of novelist Charles Dickens, who as Kate Perugini pursued her own artistic career, sometimes collaborating with her husband. Perugini’s 1878 picture A Girl Reading, perhaps his best-known single work, is in the collection of the Manchester Art Gallery. It was bequeathed by James Thomas Blair in 1917.
You are probably familiar with at least a couple of Perugini’s other works as I’ve seen them floating all over the internet for years on women’s blogs.
Homeschooling
Caroline and I had a good week of homeschooling. We’ll take Monday off and then next week I hope to add two more subjects in. It was more important to me to get a good start to the year than it was to get everything started as soon as possible.
I remembered something last weekend that I’ve known about Caroline since she was tiny but hadn’t made the connection to how we do our homeschooling now. She does not like doing the same thing over and over again. See these posts from long ago:
I’m not sure why I forgot about this, but it hit me that even though she’s several years older, she’s still wired the same way. She does not like doing the same thing day after day. It isn’t even that she doesn’t like it. It’s that it doesn’t work for her in some profound way. I’m not sure how else to explain it and I haven’t thought it through enough to offer an explanation. But I realized (again) that I need to make sure we switch things up basically every day. Do things in a different order, vary the subjects from day to day, etc. It definitely makes a difference in her ability to focus and enjoy what she is doing.
Homemaking
David replanted our green beans and bush cucumbers a few weeks ago after the summer plants were done. We wanted to see if we could get a second round this summer and into the fall. The plants have taken off in the last week so we’re curious to see what becomes of them. We have no real expectations since we’ve never tried bucket gardening before.
If you read my post from last week, you know all about the bunnies in the backyard. Last evening Caroline went out with David for the first time and one of the smaller ones came right over. She was thrilled!
Work
I hope you downloaded a copy of the Autumn Bouquet Journal Papers I uploaded last night. I thought that design was just right for early September as it’s not quite summer now but isn’t quite autumn either.
I am hoping to add a few things to the New This Month In The Shop category in the next week. I have some partially finished products and need to prioritize them so we can get them done.
How was your week? Is your garden done? Is anyone fall gardening? What interesting plans do you have for the holiday weekend and autumn? I hope you’ll leave a comment. ♥
Free Autumn Bouquet Journal Papers