Somedays

You wake up early and the first hing your daughter says is “mama can we paint”

“of course we can baby”

she made this

she was very careful to be gently when she smooshed the pages together so she didn’t tear the pages. I think it turned out wonderful.

I love moments like this. I try to focus on moments like this. Sometimes I think that because I try to focus on the bright spots people assume I live some magical life where everything goes the way I want and nothing bad ever happens. Its true I do lead a magical life but that is be cause I make it that way.

I still come home to things like this  

This is our toilet, our ONE toilet chilling in my hall way. super conducive to family life with a small child.

and of course every day there are lots of this

 

piles and piles of laundry. I do at least one load of laundry a day.

And then there is rotten cold that just wont go away. But lucky my I have the best witchy girl friends and one stopped by last night to give me my Yule gift and I was asking her about herbs as she knows more than me and ta da she pulled this out of her purse.

 

I told her she was like Mary Poppins.

So that’s the thing life is life and it will keep coming and keep going and have you feel every day depends mostly on how you choose to look at things.

 

Morning tea

First stop on adventure day.

Honey for my Honeys

I am in an end of a summer/ beginning of fall, harvest flutter. I am putting up food as quick as I can and trying to get our winter health kit ready to go. Better to be prepared. So this is what I made for sore throats and coughs. yes yes I am not a doctor etc. I’m a mom this is what I do for me and my family and you need to be responsible for what you do with yours. ok enough of that!

I think I may add a small pinch of cayenne to this but right now it is just lemon (from our tree) and honey in a small jelly jar. I can give Little a teaspoon before bed or just have it with some hot water making a tea.

What are your favorite natural health items to have on hand for your family?

<note: my aunt said she put ginger in hers so I have since put in about a inch chunk cut up a little and smashed into the honey>

July

What a fun month June was and what a fun month July is looking to be just as fun. Our July theme is geography and world cultures. I picked (though crowd sourcing on Facebook)  Egypt, Brazil, Greece, England and India. I am not sure if we will get to all of them. We are starting with Egypt and will hit England when the Olympics start.  

So of course I have been searching the net for fun things like food and coloring pages. I found Activity Village and had to share it with you all. I am still in the process of figuring out all our lessons but I will share with you as I go along. 

Ate to much

There were veggies too but interestingly they all were eaten before I had time to take pictures. All recipes from Octoberfarm blog

Friday Five- Things I love for Father’s Day

In honor of Fathers day here are some gifts that I love for the hubs. The pictures are links so click, click, click away.

I think this is adorable. Is salt dough and rocks. I think it would be equally adorable in some type of concrete as a stepping stone for the garden.  That might happen next year but we will see. If you like this one the directions are on the original post.

Another adorable gift and the link also has several other gift ideas.  Personally I think my hubby would be so proud to wear this.

This is a gift you can buy from Etsy. Now if I had my self together I might have done this one. Maybe I will draw a trunk and let little hand paint some. This might be a really nice gift for grandpa.

A back to my hubby. He is an expert on the grill. He honestly makes the best steaks ever. When I have a steak at a steak house I say well this are half as good as yours, or almost as good of He loves ribs. One of his favorite meals and so I will be making these from Octoberfarm. Served with some kind of potato. Grown and made with love by our Little.

Another favorite of my hubby is apple pie. It is hands down his favorite and so he will get to enjoy this and I am sure it will be one of his favorite parts of his day.

 

What do you have planned for celebration?

My Book of Days

This is a very special post for me. This is a project I have been working on for quite some time.  For a long time I just turned it over in my mind, this way and that. Trying to examine all the angles and see how it might best be done. As you know for my post keeping tabs on life I need to be organized. It is not that I am a naturally organized person, it is that I am a naturally forgetful person. Or more to the point I have what I call grasshopper brain (mind jumps from thing to thing) which can overwhelm me and leave projects half done.

So I have my homemakers binder and my journal book that I wrote about and I have my Book of Days. The basic idea of this must have started with our Thanksgiving Book. This is a binder that make me look crazy, but lets me oh so prepared for Thanksgiving. It has in it the menu, the recipes, the shopping list and a ton of other information. I bring it when I shop and everyone stops me to look at it.

So this is what grew from that. It is my Book of Days. It contains all the special information I need for each moth, with extra chapters for Birthdays and other holidays. This book is mine and so it is made just for me. Because of that it has a very pagan feel to it, but I think people of all faiths or no faith of all could make a book like this and be really happy about it.    Even though it has been growing in my mind it is just recently that I have started to commit to it in written form and so this is under construction. Have a look, take what you like and ignore the rest.

The first page is a lovely print out of the dates for the New and Full moons of each month. I got this from here

I then have tabs 1-20 with the months in order from 1-12. I will be showing you #6, June, though it is pretty much the same for the other months. Before you ask the pages are pink because I had a ream of pink paper left over and wanted to make use of it.

The first page of June has the information on June and how it got its name. I happen to be a big fan of History and Lore and the “whys” of things” The two sources I like best for this information are The Farmers Almanac and Wiki.

This is followed by information about the Moon of the month. Some of the information in here is from my knowledge, some is from the Farmers Almanac and I also like Witcherywordpress and  The Domestic Pagan for information.

The next section is the decorations/ altar/ nature table section. I have ideas here for the items that will be on display. I of course have an Altar for me and we have our family Altar over the fire place. Little also has a nature table on top of her shelf in her room. If you are not familiar with nature tables (as I was not until recently) they are quite adorable ways to teach children about the seasons (turning of the wheel) and the natural world. I suggest you google waldorf nature table images. So many adorable ones out there.

Next up is again History and Lore of the holidays of the month.

Then comes Family rituals for those particular holidays.  This next part I am going to change and I will talk more about it a minuet, but it is a section for meal ideas.

Next up the theme of the month. When Little was a few months old I came up with themes for each month that would grow with her and help develop her character. I no longer keep her information on themes in her own binder. I keep it here in my book of days and also in her craft box. As you can see June theme is Food. I feel strongly that children (and adults) should know where their food came from and the work that went into getting it to their table. We make different foods, we visit markets, we cook together and visit farms and fields. last year I did foods with the letter of the day ie. June 1st was A and 2nd was B.  On this page though I have ideas for books and toys to pull out for the month..

Next up are pages of  Activites. I actually have two pages but I am only showing the first one. these again are my own creation as well as ideas I got around the web. If you follow me on Pinterest you will see I have boards with each season so some of the summer pins are represented here.  I also got quite a few from witchery. I quite like this site for ideas. Even if you don’t agree with her path its worth a look.

This next page is the menus for the 3 celebrations of the Month. Besides Fathers day and Midsummers I try to have an end of the month celebration that has to do with our theme.  This page is followed by recipes that I need to make the items on the menu.

Here brings me to my change. I also like to have a sheet of meals (though mostly dinners) that we eat a frequently during this month. followed by recipes if needed. So the meal section you saw before has already been adapted to fit this. The lovely thing about this book it is that is always changing and growing to fit our family’s needs.

So now that I have all this information how do I use it?

I pull my binder out at the end of each month and use it to fill in my pages of my homemakers binder, for the following month. Activities and themes get written into Little’s lesson plan. Field trips get planned, and written on the calendar.  Meals get written into my menu planning section. Holidays and celebrations get marked on the calendar, and the coordinating of other people begins. Books and toys get changed out. I do sometimes pull it out on Sundays like today and fill in blanks if I have any in my week, and also write in new ideas.

If you like this idea and you want to start one

I recommend a binder. That way you can add things as they come across your path. I might also just think about what categories are important to you and your family or lifestyle.  You can even start by just taking some blank binder paper writing the month and category at the top of the sheet and listing things on it that pertain. As I said mine is till under construction and I am kind of going through it month by month and filling in more details as  that month unfolds. If you have something similar or if you make one I would really LOVE to see it. Please share.

Keeping tabs on life

Today’s Saturday morning found us in fog with the sun just starting to break through now late in the morning. This is one way I know that it is summer. The other is that I am revisiting the goals I set for my self on January 1st.  My goals were to get organized, simplify and to downsize. To rid myself of clutter in all forms and keep only the things or people in my life that I loved and made me happy and had a purpose.

I think I am doing fairly well. I have (with a lot of help) reorganized the kitchen/ dinning room area making it usable. Followed by the living room and my office. Both of the bedrooms are next and they need a lot of work. Not to mention the garage (scary!) We have taken several carfulls of stuff to the Goodwill and I have no idea how many more to go.

I have also worked hard and simplify my life via my wardrobe. I am trying very hard to get to the 10 piece wardrobe. At the moment I am still around 15, but it is getting easier to let go of things and I don’t have the desire to buy more. It also made packing for our recent trip to L.A. a breeze for me. Not only did it take about 5 minuets to pack me, I had room left in my suitcase, AND I knew I felt great in everything I brought with me.

The latest venture I have been embarking on is time management/ memory management. How to you keep all the balls in the air so to speak and everything moving forward. Picture a juggler with a ball named housework, one named garden, one named for each family member, one named bills, one named food on and on with all the different duties and obligations we have. That is how I feel sometimes and frankly I need help so I don’t forget things and to make space in our life for the important stuff like fun and family time.

One way to manage it all is my flylady.net calendar. You may remember it from the Friday Five when I talked about my favorite products. I would not, could not (to quote Dr Seuss) use another wall calendar. The spaces are huge so I can write in everyone’s schedules. I also use different colors for different members of the family. As much as I love this calendar, it stays on the wall and doesn’t come with me . So I needed some extra, complimentary  solutions.

As I was perusing the blogs I follow I found just the post with just what I was looking for. Honestly she had me at “workhorse” which is how Emily describes her “Homemakers Binder” which is what her, and my primary profession is. She talked about how she came to the one she uses now and how she decided to make up her own system, complete with photos of her pages. I have for many years tried to combine the best of all the different systems I have used to make one for me and have fallen sadly short. I had a light bulb moment reading this post when she said she uses a binder for 8×10 papers because that is the papers that come her way. Some times it is the small details that make the big difference. All these years I had tried to shrink down all this information to fit into something I could carry around something more like 5×7.

Now I really wanted a nice leather holder like the one she has alas I don’t have one. I procrastinated a while until I remembered my Adult rule of “do it now”. I decided to make use of what I had. I had a binder in a bag that was just the right size. So down it came from the shelf and in went the new items. A calendar, some daily sheets, menu plan, and some lesson plan sheets for Little. All in one lovely package! I have that ginormous purse so I can bring this around with me if I wanted to but Emily had yet another solution for that. A journal that is sized to carry and has categories!

I immediately picked up the first notebook I could find and started using it as this Journal. It’s the one on top here and as you can probably guess it not really my style. I think of this picture as one of these things doesn’t belong.

I

So I found an old Oprah magazine and took out the breathing space picture and glued in on the cover.

ahhh much better. You can also see my tags sticking out. They are my perpetual to do list, where I write anything and everything I need to do and then cross it off when its done.  Lesson plans for little (I made this journal before I got my printer working so it was before the large binder was made. I am going to change the tab to my Other Work which is care giving for my mom and dad.)  Ideas which is for any idea that comes to me for my garden or parties or my witchy stuff.  Remember which is where I write down quotes I like or dreams I had and gratitude. This was based on her tabs and to be honest having lived with the journal for a while I can say that I really love it AND I will be using almost her same 12 categories when I use this notebook up and make my new one. For now though these things are all working for me.

There is one final piece to all of this and it is my Book of Days.

How to have a fun road trip with a 2 year old (Part 2)

Happy first day of June! can you believe it? How did we get to June already? Today is my final part of our series on how to have fun with a toddler on a road trip. I have a couple of lists and a couple of photos of our packed car and a couple of things I have learned. Hope you enjoy.

First up, here is our food bag for the trip. I should say that we do make it a ritual at stopping at In N Out and since it is only 2 or 3 times a year I feel fine about it.  Even with that stop we need a snack bag. Pretty much everything is from Trader Joes, maybe next time I will make more of my own snacks. I have a verity of trial mix in there, veggie sticks, turkey jerky, buffalo jerky, scoops (tj’s organic version of fritos) dried mangoes and dried mangoes with chili powder on them. You can also see one of our Starbucks tumblers sticking out. My cousin works at a Starbucks and has gifted us two of these. We bring them for cold drinks like coffee or water. I also have a water bottle for each family member packed.

I tend to be copilot for our trips. So here is our car garbage bag stuck to my door. Easy access for me and easy to empty at each gas station we stop at.

Here is Little in her little nest. You can see her toy box is next to here so she can access her books or toys or whatever else she wants. You might also notice a cardboard box on the ground.I keep this in my car all the time. (some day I will cover it with fabric and it will be pretty) I keep several blankets in there and a changing pad and wipes (really can you have to many wipes?) The car bag is on top of this box, You can also see Little’s feet on a pillow. You can’t see it but I also have a sippy cup leash that I found on pinterest.

here is another picture of her feet and of course the snack bag. I put the snack bag so I have easy access to it. right between and behind the front seats. If you’re going to be in the car for several hours (or at all) you should be comfortable. As I am short myself I know how uncomfortable it can be to have your feet dangling. Yep I’m that short that my feet often don’t touch the ground when I am sitting in chairs. So I figured it might not be comfortable for Little either. We didn’t want her to be  kicking our seats so giving her a feet rest seemed like a good idea.

The one thing I forgot to pack and I HIGHLY recommend bringing is a family dirty laundry bag. I usually bring one so we can just put the dirty clothes all in once place and that bag can go right to the laundry when we get home.

I also recommend doing a 5-10 minuet clean up of your house right before you leave. Coming home to a clean house is oh so nice.

Remember your goal is not just to get to your destination but enjoy the ride. So if that means you play silly faces or sing If You’re Happy and You Know it 15 times it is OK. You baby will feel so special and who doesn’t love kids peels of laughter. We also look for animals and maybe next year she will be old enough for an animal bingo.  The point here is distraction and laughter.

Happy travels everyone? What are your favorite tips on how to travel?

oh and if you missed it don’t for get to check out part1 and  part .5