Ennui- otherwise known as months of rain

Hello! How is everyone? I am doing well, but excessively tired of all this rain. Some mornings I wake up wondering if our home is just an island in a mucky sea of puddles! Very dull indeed. Okay! So, I have been reading "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens. Something I have noticed about his writing, and the writing of other great British authors like C.S. Lewis, is how well they can describe characters in very few words. I have been continually amused throughout the book by the way Dickens described various peculiarities in people- like Mr. Wemmick, who is said to have "a mouth that looked like a post-box" and from then on when speaking of it, he would say, "by now I could have posted an entire package in Mr. Wemmick's box" or something like that. It just amuses me. I consider it a mark of a fine author when they can make you form an exact picture in your mind of someone's build, or mouth, or clothes, or anything else without ever using words commonly associated with the object. That is something that I am not particularly wonderful at in my own writing. Another thing I have observed, is how you can turn your reader's mind to either like or dislike a person, merely by the way you describe them. Take anyone from a picture for example. I am sure that you could write two descriptions of them that equally represented the person: one favorable, and the other not. Well, this is not a very interesting post, and I have to do school! -Rachel

My Favorite Illustrator

Hey guys! Before you read this, make sure you go on down to Sarah's post below and see all the pictures of our snowy-day fun! Okay, most of you know that I love Tasha Tudor's illustrations. They are so timeless and beautiful! One of my dreams-that-will-never-some-true-since-she-is-deceased is to write a book and have Tasha Tudor illustrate it. But anyway, Mama found a really neat website about their family, and about her home, and it sells a bunch of really neat things, so if you want to learn more about this intriguing lady, click here. Also, here is the recipe for snow-cream. It tastes so good! I just made it with Gracie, and it is so much cheaper to make than icecream!

Snow Cream:

One gallon (16 cups) fresh, clean snow

1 cup heavy cream or sweetened condensed milk

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients and return outside to stay frozen until you eat it! Yum!