Continuation?

I suppose this post is somewhat of a continuation of my last summer post. I am just loving this place where we live. Although the flooding we had last week wasn't exactly the most fun I have ever had. 😬 Our normally docile creek took over a lot of our land (I shared a video of it in my stories on Instagram), including flooding our basement waist deep, as well as completely flooding many of our neighbors' land and homes. It also knocked the power out and closed all the roads around us. At least we were warned before we even moved in to never store anything in the basement. I am so glad we listened to that warning. The rain has been gone for about three days now and things are drying up. However, as of right now our forecast says rain every day from Monday until August eleventh. 🙏

As I am sure you can imagine, 61 acres calls for something with a bit more power than a push mower. Granted some of the acreage is hay fields and some of it forest but there is still quite a bit leftover for us to mow on a regular basis. A riding lawnmower to the rescue. The boys watched in awe when it was delivered to our home (Baby F watched with some crazy, crazy bedhead going on). I don't know who was most excited about it's arrival - the boys,K, or Kevin. K got the honor of being the head lawnmower. A job she is thrilled to have. I think in her mind she is imagining she is driving a car as she mows. Hey, I wouldn't blame her. It is great practice for when she learns to drive - something that is not too far in the future!

I shared one of the above photos of Baby F's playspace on Instagram but forgot to share it here. You see those feathers on top of his teepee? Those were found on our land and thanks to our new favorite nature find book Bird Feathers* we discovered they are wild turkey feathers. Those photos are a bit old now. They were from when we first moved in and I hastily threw it all together (hence the wrinkled teepee). Things are a bit different now. I will have to get some photos this week to share with you. It feels so good to have space for play again.


p.s. - Our wooden trapeze bar/swing is from Wiwiurka  and Baby F's playhouse can be found here.*

*Affiliate link.

Continuation?

Wake (and my new essential oil shelf)

Wake. Wipe the sleep from my eyes. Kiss Baby F on his head and slowly try to creep out of bed without waking him. Start my coffee. Feed the water kefir and start a new batch. Check on the kombucha. Smile at it (the instructions that came with it told me to do so). Rinse the sprouts and place in the windowsill if need be. Coffee is ready. Pour a cup. Wander outside in the brisk morning air to walk the garden and sip my coffee. Enough cucumbers to make pickles yet? Make a mental note to harvest some more calendula today. Go back inside. Start some sort of breakfast for the kiddos. Wake them up and begin our day.

I am savoring every moment of the new morning rhythm I have fallen into these past couple of weeks. It feels odd typing that. I have always been a night owl and loathed the morning time. But now, as our homeschool year begins, I am starting to appreciate the beauty of time spent alone with my thoughts in the early morning light. What a difference that short amount of time makes in a day.

You can see by the first two photographs that Baby F is quite proud of his new abilities. Maybe even happy over his finished baa-ble hat, too? He has been pulling himself up on everything and anything sending me into a bit of a baby proofing frenzy. He is still so tiny which makes the sight of him standing all the more funny. We also had to put our mattress on the floor due to his daredevil antics. Somehow I forgot about the mattress on the floor stage of babyhood. Then again, we only had to previously do it with Little L.

Kevin turned my last vintage berry crate from a farm in Oregon into a shelf for my rather unreasonable essential oil collection (remember my last one?). Well, I thought it was an unreasonable collection until I saw it all on the shelf - I still have plenty of room for more oils! The girls alphabetized my oils for me before we moved them. I wish I had better photos of the finished product but we have harsh fluorescent lighting and no windows in our bathrooms in this house. But trust me - it is great!

p.s. - We are all over the stomach bug! Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers.

Wake (and my new essential oil shelf)

Happy Winter Solstice!

Lets welcome the sun's re-birth and longer days of sunlight!

Happy Winter Solstice!

wintertime decorating

I've been taking a million pictures as the girls and I decorate our house. So I don't kill you all with all those pictures at once..here's a few to start out!

Pic from another one of our favorite wintertime stories 'the Golden Key'



K's transitional (it has a little bit of autumn and a little bit of winter) nature table in her room



A beautiful transition print given to me by my dear friend and cyber twin ;) and mistletoe from Lizz at Zoloonaturals.



Since we are pretty broke,decorating is more focused on frugalness. You can't get any more frugal than free tree branches your neighbors cut off their Christmas tree and left out by the curb!




Another beautiful print given to me by my dear friend and cyber twin.



Our advent spiral..K has added some additions to it as you can see!


Sledding fun!


Eskimo scene:


a peak at our star money decorations. This is the canopy to our playstands. We hung up a starry night playcloth and I drilled holes into some wooden stars,threaded them with fishing line and hung them from the canopy. They are just like the stars falling from the heavens in 'Starmoney'

wintertime decorating

St. Nicholas Day Part 2

Finally part 2 of our St. Nicholas day adventures. Between the problems uploading pics on my computer and getting ready to go up north I haven't had much time to spend online lately. If I owe any of you an e-mail,I apologize. It will hopefully be coming soon!
Here are pictures from the 2nd part of our day,celebrating St.Nicholas Day with Tiffeni at Kinderhaus Toys.
It was a blast,even better than last year! (Way to go Tiffeni!!)
Here is the tree at Kinderhaus we helped to decorate:

All the kids shoes by the fireplace.


K digging through her goodies:


C crawling all over the place:



Lastly, a much overdue pic of the sweetest present St. Nicholas brought for K at our house. I meant to post this pic in St.Nicholas Day Part 1. This amazingly gorgeous Gnome, pictured here in K's barn guarding it from the fox like in her favorite book "the Tomten and the Fox" (We still need to buy that book! Someday!!), was handcrafted by zooloonaturals at Etsy.com. You can see Lizz's blog in my blog list Red Dirt Mother She is a wonderful wonderful,talented soul with an equally wonderful and amazing family. Her husband made this wooden gnome by hand!! Thank you so much Lizz for this beautiful creation. Our whole family is enjoying it and treasuring it.



I hope to be back with another post soon. Until then everyone stay warm!!

St. Nicholas Day Part 2

St. Nicholas Day is almost here!

St.Nicholas day is December 6th which is this Saturday! I am still making last minute preps for Saturday but I thought I'd share some pics of our home and activities so far.

Last Tuesday we attended circle time at kinderhaus,


and afterwards we helped Tiffeni make decorations for her store.

Here's K making candy garlands and clove decorated tangerines:





Back at home I set up our 'advent' spiral counting down the days until the 1st day of winter (December 21st). This is when we have our big celebration bake cookies,decorate for the season ect but this year we will be leaving that night to go up north so I am still trying to figure out how we will work it.


Our St.Nicholas pic on the nature table.

Ostheimer St.Nicholas


Lastly, for baking day today we decided to make doughnuts. Yeah they are un-healthy and deep fried but I figure junk like this is ok every once in a blue moon. we made glazed,powdered sugar and cinnamon/sugar ones. They were super yummy. I got the recipe from here:

http://www.chooseveg.com/display_recipe.asp?recipe=51



Enjoy!

St. Nicholas Day is almost here!