Birthdays

We have a couple of really important birthdays coming up here in our little family. I am looking forward to two very simple celebrations of the soon to be four and the soon to be three year olds here in this house. In Heaven on Earth, there are some excellent suggestions for birthday celebrations. I have also recently picked up The Birthday Book again--it has been sitting on my nightstand untouched since the summer. Some ideas are brewing but just not ready yet. I think the following elements are a must:
{free play time}
{yummy food}
{simple activity}
{birthday cake}
{presents}
{goody to take home}
Over the summer, I made birthday banners out of patterns from this book for all three of the babies. H also got his birthday crown a little early (for Halloween). N has one in the making and little C will get his right around summer time. Ahh, crafting in the New Year--what fun!

Home Sewn Baby Toys

I remember a year or so ago when I read Amanda Soule's The Creative Family thinking that homemade baby toys had to be about the silliest way that one could choose to spend very precious crafting time. I too remember feeling this way when first hearing of people hand knitting socks (and truthfully, I kind of still feel this way about socks).

Over the course though of the past twelve months (much influenced by our 10 months in Portland, Oregon, I am sure), I have come to love the rough around the edges homemadeness of nearly everything in our home, but especially on the bodies or in the hands of our small children. So simple. so sweet. so utterly innocent.

I made a couple of these cubes and filled them with 2 parts bamboo filler and one part rice. I love watching it in the hands of our littlest one.

Christmas Crafting

Christmas night was the first time in two weeks that I felt I could actually breathe. I put so much pressure on myself this year to make all of our Christmas gifts that the moments leading up to our big day felt a bit harried. I rarely got out of sweat pants, did much less cooking than normal and was more irritable than usual. This must be avoided next year. Must start crafting earlier than November.

I did get some nice time on the couch nursing or snuggling a sweet, sweet, smelly like milk baby who thinks knitting needles are pretty fun to play with.

So now that everything has been knitted, or sewed, or embroidered, I can move on to birthday presents (N's in January and H's in February). This year, I think I will save myself the pressure of hand-making their presents and instead support others that do. Thinking of this for N and this for H.

Winter Nature Table

Our Seasons Round Exchange package has been sent and received. My partner Nicole made us the loveliest gifts.

We got a beautiful felt angel. She is so etherial. In order to keep her on our nature table, I stripped branch of its dried leaves and hung her from it along with our window star (also from Nicole).

In addition, we got a perfect felt dove, a beeswax ornament and a postcard, all of which are residing on our new winter nature table which is, as always, a work in progress.

Quotable Sunday

At this time in my life

A feeling I can't control
is creeping up inside my soul and growing
What is it all about
Wouldn't knowing help me to work it out
I can't be afraid of thunder
At this time in my life

Carole King

Yes, Folks

I am now knitting sweaters and hats for... corks.


These are seriously addictive. I made three for my swap partner, Nicole, and then I kept going. I have even named a couple of them--Trumper and Bumper (names that could only be dreamed up by my toddler). The pattern is here.

Winter Woolens

Folks, I think I may have a problem. Well, that may be the understatement of the year and I would pluralize it--make that problems, but I am specifically speaking of my obsession with our winter wools. I LOVE them. I love everything about them--their dreamy color, their funky European fit, their wooly wooly smell. When I say I love everything about them, I mean REALLY everything.

I ordered them this year from Nova Naturals. I haven't put the long underwear on the older kids yet but the baby wears them every night. Having had two other babies that remained consistently chilly, I just love sleeping by a baby who is cozy and snugglely and warm.

The price was a hard pill for me to swallow initially, but they are really worth every penny for us. I have been careful with the care of them and hope that they will see their way through a few seasons. Warm warm warm. Wooly wooly wool.

Simplifying...

Over the past few years, we have been paring down in many ways. This is, in part, because we have moved so much in four years. Also, I have an inherent aversion to clutter and I always have. I struggle in fact with having a home that looks and feels lived in and one that looks clutter-free. Most people that know me well and know our home might find this funny--many times our house looks like a hurricane has blown through it. However, at night, everything finds its way back to a home.

We have so many generous family and friends that give thoughtful gifts to our children. In order to keep the amount of toys manageable, I have started putting toys away when they are not getting played with. When they reappear, it is as if they are new again. Other toys get donated and most of the time they are not missed.

Similarly, I have tried for some time to pare down my kitchen "stuff." Recently, I read about Alice Waters' kitchen in this book. Waters' favorite kitchen tool is her mortar and pestle and her kitchen is microwave-free. We haven't used a microwave for some time, but there are some appliances that I am going to hang onto. I love my hand-held blender, for example.

There are other changes that we have made lately where simplifying was an unintended but welcome result. The addition of a third child is one of them! We have become very home-centered in the past few months. Due to nap schedules, baby's intolerance of the car, and the sheer annoyance of getting three children in the van, we are enjoying more home-related activities--cooking, cleaning, and playing. Our days are far less rushed and the quietness of them is comforting for us all.

Breadmaking and Home

After two happy weeks spent with family in Texas, we returned home this weekend. Most of it was spent unpacking and rediscovering the wonders of our house. Today we dug in and enjoyed. We played, we knitted, we slept, and, perhaps most homey of all, we made bread. Generally we bake bread on Fridays--a day when everyone is home from school and we have nothing planned. We made the bread today instead so that we could enjoy the fruits of our labor our first week back.

We mixed, we kneaded, we rolled, and we shaped. There is something so therapeutic about kneading bread, so truly relaxing. There are many times throughout my days that I struggle to be in the moment. I have to remind myself to stay present, to stay awake to my environment. Not when I am kneading bread. In fact, it is almost impossible for me to think about anything other than the feeling of the dough between my fingers, the warmly yeasty smell that it is releasing all around. I would make bread for this experience alone.

I use the basic bread recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book. The sweeteners that I add vary--today we added blueberry honey, the last time brown sugar. Tomorrow morning we will enjoy...

Quotable Sunday

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.

--Bob Dylan--

Home

{open Texas skies}
{Warm blankets on big couch cushions}
{the hum of football on tv}
{wordlessness and wordfulness}
{shiny things in shiny places}
{restfulness and wakefulness}
{crunchy, yummy}
{tired.tired.tired}

Christmas Sewing

For our Christmas in Texas, I made my mom, my aunt, and my mom's best friend a cosmetic case for their travels out of some cotton canvas. I knew I wanted the kids to be somehow involved in the presents so I had them paint (with acrylics) onto the canvas. I used a pattern from Weekend Sewing. The project involved a couple of sewing skills that were new to me: sewing a lining and attaching a zipper. I found the lining to be quite tedious--too many parts to cut out and match up perfectly.

I really want to LOVE sewing--I mean I really want to, but I am not a perfectionist at all and I haven't figured out how to fudge it successfully yet. Really, I should just invest in another class--I need to practice and build my confidence as a sewer.

Sewing is just so much more practical than knitting. For me, knitting is about the process and sewing is about the product. I have endless patience for my knitting creations. In fact, if I have to rip them out, I occasionally get a sense of relief that I don't yet have to say goodbye to the project. With sewing... not so much. I just want it done. Maybe that is the problem.

Making Me Happy Right Now

{Footed pajamas on chilly nights}
{No Direction Home}


{Old friends and new babies}
{Chick-Fil-A--oh if only the Northeast had these!}


{family.family.family}

Bedtime

Kyrie's post on her family's nightly rhythm has inspired me to write about our own. Because we are visiting our family right now and have been for a couple of weeks, we are taking a bit of a departure from our usual nighttime rituals. Times like this are good for me--they allow me to zoom out on our lives, they offer a perspective that I don't have when I am at home and this then enables me to zoom in on what needs to be changed and to notice what is lovely just they way it is.

We have nearly always had an early bedtime. As a child myself, my mother fed, bathed, and put me and my brother to bed close to 7:30 in the evening so the concept of a structured bedtime ritual and early bedtime was not something new to me. Additionally, my sister-in-law who had her first child a year before me had her newborn in his crib by 6:30. Our first child was prone to fits in the later evening hours and, as very new parents, we were confused. In passing, someone said to me that she put her children to bed earlier to get some alone time with her husband. I tried a 6:30 bedtime that very same night and have never turned back since!
Like Kyrie, we eat our dinner around five o'clock. Much of the time, our two older children help me with dinner while the baby is either on his final nap of the day (usually just before 4 pm) or sitting close by in a bouncy seat. Unlike Kyrie, however, I am terrible about remembering to put everything on the table so I am constantly popping up and down during the first few minutes of dinner tending to everyone's needs. *Must remember to breathe here, think slowly, and anticipate* For a few months, we started off dinner with each one of us stating what we are grateful for. It was a really beautiful way to start a meal and one that I think we should reinstate.
After dinner and at around 5:30, the two older kids head upstairs for a bath (we have recently switched back to a bath every night rather than every other night) with their Daddy (if he is home) while I nurse the baby and put him to bed. Then I bring out their pajamas and lay out their clothes for the following day (if I remember). After the bath, each child picks one book (or one is chosen by me). Following reading, we darken the room and light the bedtime candle. Each of us then recounts the events of our days. H always begins his part by saying, "I like to see dinosaurs." We haven't figured this out yet but it is always a part of the evening that makes me smile. We blow out the candle and say good night (and then of course we honor requests for new water, a dropped passy, a dollie, etc... for another fifteen minutes but then... that is the unrhythmic part of our rhythm!).