Michaelmas

First grade Michaelmas verse in main lesson book.

The boys and I gathering goldenrod in one of our hayfields.

Goldenrod in a pot of water to make a dye bath for our Michaelmas silk capes.

The capes came out the most beautiful muted mustard yellow. This picture does not do them justice.

Making their dragon bread

Baby F's dragon on the left and L's on the right. Baby F said the whole almonds on the sides of his dragon were his wings.

We used the Dandelion Room's bread recipe this year.

K's snake dragon

C's dragon

The cutest dragon there ever was

Showing his scariest pose

My children after they completed their Michaelmas pageant

I know, I know. I am a week late but I still had to share our yearly Michaelmas celebration. Remember when L was the tiny dragon?!

Michaelmas

Crafting On

The act of creating, in one form or another, preserves my sanity amongst the chaos of life. This explains why I always have more than one project going at a time as well as why my housework tends to fall behind. I enjoy seeing what others are working on and keeping calm with, too. What are you creating? What is keeping you going? Snap a picture or two, post it on your blog, on Instagram #craftingon and/or Flickr and then share it with the rest of us by leaving your link below.

 Little L and I are doing some summer schooling. He is struggling in one area so we are finding fun, creative ways to help him through it. I decided a new knitting project was in order to keep my hands busy while we are schooling.


What are you working on? Happy creating!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Crafting On

Homeschooling journey

THIS. This is what makes it all worth it. If you've followed my blog since the beginning (or close to it) you know our long, rather complicated schooling journey. From a Waldorf school we loved to reluctant homeschoolers due to wanting a Waldorf education but moving a state away from said Waldorf school. I struggled immensely with schooling my oldest - her strong-will coupled with my self-doubt was a recipe for disaster. There were many days I felt like throwing in the towel and calling the nearest public school but something always held me back. We added two more children to our schooling lessons (and a crazy baby/toddler that wants all attention on him), moved two times more to two different states and somehow our homeschooling carried on. Dare I say we actually even started liking it? There are still days that make me want to throw in the towel and I will probably never be that homeschooling mother that gushes about how easy and perfect homeschooling is, but I am so very thankful that I get to spend every hour of every day with all my children. As we all know, time is fleeting and before I know it my children will be grown and off on their own. I don't want to miss a moment with them due to fears and self-doubt.

I came on here just to share this beautiful beeswax sculpture of the Ingalls family that C presented to me on the last day of school (we incorporated Playful Pioneers into our school year) along with a handmade card from K that made me cry. Instead I ended up typing a novel! Anyways, mamas if you struggle with schooling just know it gets better!! I can vouch for that! You got this!!

Homeschooling journey

Maple Sugar Season

This little homestead of ours made another dream of mine (and my family) come true - harvesting our own maple syrup. Last fall the children and I identified 3 large sugar maple trees on our property (and apparently we have a lot more! I'll share more on that later on). I told my mom about them and then for Christmas she got us this tree tapping kit. About mid-March we tapped our trees. We decided to do a trial run. We didn't have all the supplies (like buckets and boiling pans) so we thought it best to start small and only collect 10 gallons of sap. That took us about one week. Once we had the full ten gallons we made a make-shift set up to boil it outside. We spent the whole day outside watching the sap boil and adding more as it got low. You can see in the photos that one of the pans got too low (the dark one) and the sap started turning into syrup too soon - we are still learning. Once it was all down to about 1/4 of what we started with, we filtered it and in I brought it inside to finish the process. I watched numerous videos on how to tell when the sap has turned into syrup, each one saying it is pretty impossible and you need a special thermometer. Even so, our syrup boiled a bit too longer and was slightly on the sugar side. We weren't discouraged though. It was our first try and besides, it tasted better than any syrup we had ever had. We ended up with a pint of syrup after all was said and done and we enjoyed it that night over waffles and pancakes. I don't think we'll ever forget that experience and are already making plans for a real sugar season next winter - hopefully with gallons upon gallons of syrup to put away for the following year.

p.s. - When we were tapping our trees an older neighbor drove by our house and noticed our tapped sugar maple trees. He turned his truck around and knocked on our door. You should have seen the smile on his face when I answered. He was blown away that we were tapping our trees. It is rather unheard of out here for younger families to be homesteading or really doing anything besides watching tv and playing video games. He proceeded to show us all the other sugar maples we could tap on our property (and oh my do we have a lot!) followed by all the tips he could think of. He has lived in this area since the 1980s and used to tap his trees all the time. He shared stories about the sugar shack he found on his property and how all the boys on our street used to tap their maples and bring the sap to the sugar shack to be boiled into syrup to bring home to their mothers. I wish that little shack still stood. Can you imagine what a community they must have had here? How they loved thy neighbor? I would love to bring that back.
After he shared all of his wisdom and stories, he left he telling us he would go searching for any maple tapping supplies he had left in his barn and bring them down.He has since given them to us and we can't wait to use them next year. They are treasures to us, for sure!

Maple Sugar Season

Winter Book Basket

King Winter must have heard our pleas and finally came to visit us. We were told to expect a big storm but the snowflakes fell slow and small Saturday evening. The winds and cold temperatures followed on Sunday. In the end we only had a little over 5" of snow. We are happy either way. All we wanted was at least a little snow to build snowmen, ride our toboggan, make lemon ices (see the Lemon Sisters book below) and have snowball fights.

Our weekend inspired me to make our winter book basket and share it with all of you. I can't even tell you how happy we have been unboxes our beloved books. It was like Christmas all over again.
I feel like we have more winter favorites but more than likely they are still in one of our (many) unopened boxes. I will update when we find more. In the meantime this is what we currently have in our winter book basket. Each image is a direct link to the book. I just like the way it looks and thought it would be easier on all of you, too!

 

Winter Book Basket