Water-coloring

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Like most children their age, the girls are prolific artists (esp. Little Hen, who loves her water colors).  Our living room was looking pretty bare, and despite amassing a  substantial collection of their artwork, it’s just not in the budget to get anything professionally framed right now.  Why should that prevent us from displaying their art?  So, we strung up a line, hunted down some scrapbook paper on clearance at the craft store, and a little glue and a few clothespins later…the walls aren’t quite so empty.

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Some of my favorites -  The Lady with Grey Hair by Little Hen , who loves to paint people, and Untitled by Firecracker, who takes a sweeping, abstract approach.

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This one – Moon and Sun in the Corner – is  Little Hen’s favorite.

I plan on scouring the thrift stores the next few weeks for some frames I can paint or decoupage to match, and then we’ll get the girls’ work framed and properly displayed.  But for now, we can fill an empty wall, enjoy their creations and stay in the budget.

The last two days, I find I’ve been setting up my spinning so I can look at their paintings while I work – it still amazes me what is working inside their heads and hearts that they can make such beautiful art at such a tender age.   I don’t get ever tired of looking at them, and look forward to what they’ll create next.

Perry, Sauce, and Butter

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Final count from the Barlett harvest:

20 – 1/2 pints of Caramel-Spice Pear Butter (sorry, secret recipe!)

18 quarts of pears in light syrup (some spiced, some with lavender, some vanilla)

12 quarts of pear sauce (which we all discovered we prefer to applesauce – it has a wonderful buttery quality)

oodles of pear crisp and pear upsidedown-gingerbread cake

about 40 lbs eaten fresh

and 4 1/2 gallons of pear cider, for our first ever attempt at perry.  (Although, there’s quite a bit of sediment, so I’m sure it will yield much less after racking once or twice…or three times, we’ll see how it goes.)

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After far too many hours on my feet, late at night and very early in the morning, processing all of the pears, it feels wonderful to be done.  We all look forward to enjoying the fruits of our labors throughout the fall and winter.

Thanks for being patient while I took a few days off – the whole family was down for about 5 days with a fever/chest cold and that plus putting up the pears (after all, they don’t care if we’re sick and the timing is inconvenient for us, they ripen when they are ready!) and some other obligations left me feeling spread pretty thin.

Today is rainy and gray and the girls are still feeling under the weather.  I’m hoping to get the house cleaned, since it’s been terribly neglected for a week.  After that, I promised Little Hen we’d work on spinning with a drop spindle, and maybe read a little together.

I hope you have a restful and recuperative weekend, too.

Healing Touch

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Little Hen found this book at the library two weeks ago.  The topic is one that has interested her for a long time, and she read the book , cover to cover, as soon as we got it home.

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The basic massage routine takes 5-10 minutes, but there are several techniques described in the book, and massage for different purposes.  The book runs the gamut from massage to relieve anxiety/stress all the way to reflexology for hay fever.

(Although we don’t ascribe to the philosophies of reflexology or acupressure, Little Hen has been fascinated with the topics, and studies the reflexology chart intently – she keeps asking Firecracker if she’d like a foot rub for her respiratory issues, to which Firecracker replies, “Don’t get near my feet!”)

Although I wouldn’t initially have thought of a “massage for children” book as parenting aid, this book has been helpful in helping me mother the children more effectively and compassionately.  Little Hen tends to be a high-anxiety child, and Firecracker full of energy with a fiery temper, and we’ve found this book to be a great tool to facilitate calming and connecting and having a more peaceful home.

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We have tried to make some time a few days a week, in the afternoon or evening, when everyone is tired and tempers tend to flare, to get out the book and get a massage from Mama.  Little Hen likes to give Firecracker a back rub, too, reading the directions as she goes.  I think it diffuses a lot of sibling rivalry and helps everyone mellow a little bit during what can be a grouchy time of day .

By caring for the children in such a small way, I am modeling and learning compassion and service.  Such small acts go a long way in creating peace and  we are all blessed by them.

What mothering tools do you utilize to comfort your children and foster harmony in the home?

Hot Cocoa Mix

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Today Firecracker and I are attending our church’s fall kickoff of our monthly Ladies’ Breakfast.  The pastor’s wife is hosting at her house, so we thought we’d take her (and her daughter – Firecracker’s friend) a little hostess gift when we go.

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Earlier this week, we went to to the thrift store and picked up a little basket, lined it with an embroidered linen hand towel (from my stash).  We also found two little silver spoons, and paired them with two vintage Japanese tea cups and saucers.  The tea cups had a glossy opalescence that Firecracker really liked  (“the inside of the cup looks like a soap bubble!”).  To round out the Mom and Daughter Afternoon Cocoa basket, we made a batch of Not-Too-Sweet Hot Cocoa Mix.

If you’d like to make some cocoa mix of your own (which I prefer to store-bought, because it isn’t overwhelmingly sugary), prepare to get messy!  You’ll need –

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Sift together 2 cups powdered sugar and 1 cup dutch-process cocoa and 2 tsp cornstarch (no lumps!).

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Then stir in 1 tsp salt and 2 1/2 cups powdered milk,

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and finally, add a large pinch Ancho Chili Powder.  (The original recipe is from Alton Brown’s website (love Good Eats!), although, the first time I made it, the girls didn’t like the cayenne, so now I use the Ancho chili powder, which is very mild, but provides a hint of smoky pepper flavor.)

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Stir all ingredients together, and store in a large jar, sealed tight.  To make up a cup, fill your cup 1/3-1/2 full with the mix.  Add hot water, milk or coffee to fill.  Enjoy!

Hope your weekend is filled with peace and good fellowship.

Retro Fall Doll Quilt

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Little Hen and I finished the  first scrap doll quilt in a while with more of a fall color scheme.  We made it for a friend who’s daughter has a birthday coming up.

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Actually, there wasn’t much to it -the four main blocks were in the middle of a big bag of  fabric scraps I had been given.  Little Hen picked out the orange fabric “because orange is a good fall color” (from the same bag of scraps).

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In the scrap bag was also some neutral-yellow cotton fabric in a large enough piece to fold triple thick to serve as batting and backing for the quilt.   We layered them up and quickly put the doll quilt together.  The finished quilt is about 18″ x 24″.  Can’t wait to see our little friend snuggling her dollies up in it soon!

Bartlett Harvest

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Saturday,  I was blessed with the opportunity to ride with another family of volunteers out to Mosier, OR (in the beautiful Columbia Gorge) to glean pears for Birch Community Services.   The weather was very rainy, windy, and chilly, so I was grateful that the children could all stay home, snuggled up reading their latest chapter book with Daddy.

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The five of us wore large canvas pear-picking bags, and picked 40-50 lbs of Bartletts off of the trees at a time and then unloaded them into large crates.  Due to the windy, rainy conditions, I didn’t get any pictures of the actual picking, but here you can see a fraction of what we picked.  The owner’s of the orchard estimated that we picked close to 2200 lbs of pears!!

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You may ask, why were thousands of pounds of beautiful pears sitting unpicked, unwanted on the trees?   Well, the owners explained to me that there isn’t any profit in Bartletts – they cost $120/crate to grow,  but can only get $180/crate on the market – so by the time they pay workers to pick them, and absorb the cost of transporting them, they actually lose money on the Barletts.

The farmer makes his living growing Bosc pears for market.  So, why grow Barletts at all, then??  Bosc pears command a much higher price than Barletts, but the trees are not self-fertile, and require another pear variety for pollination.  So, for every 4 rows of Bosc pear trees planted in the orchard, the farmer must plant a whole row of Barletts in order to reap a crop.  The Barletts are generously left available for the gleaners.

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After picking over 8000 pears to donate to BCS, we were allowed to harvest for ourselves as many pears as we could put up  – so I have over 150 lbs of pears sitting on my kitchen floor to ripen over the next week!  I’ll be dehydrating and canning pears and pear butter non-stop late in the week and over the next weekend.   Bring some jars and you’re welcome to join me and take home canned pears for your family, too!   I’d love to have your company!

For more on the culture and history of gleaning, check out my favorite (and oh-so-French!) documentary – Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I).

Drop Spindle #6

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This is my newest drop spindle!  It was thrown in as a sweetener on a purchase I made off of craiglsist (more on that in a few days).   So, far I really like it – it is quite small, fast rotating, and spins a nice even lace-weight.  (I’ve been working on this very soft top, which came with the spindle  (It’s hard to tell from the photo, but it’s a beautiful black wool with cotton multi-colored threads throughout).  It will eventually become a 2-ply, but I have no idea what to knit out of it yet – there may be enough for a pair of socks – fingers crossed.)

Can’t wait to snuggle up with the family tonight and watch a movie and get some more spinning done on this little beauty!

Blessings on your long holiday weekend!

Passing down

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A day of sorting clothes for the change of seasons found lots and lots of dresses that are too small and will be passed down to a friend’s little girl.   Some were handmade for my girls, and It was bittersweet to see how much they had outgrown and to realize how quickly they’re growing up.  Seemed a very short while ago that these dresses were Little Hen’s, and then Firecracker’s, and now they’ll be another little girl’s.

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The girls reminisced for a bit (“Remember when I wore this dress to so-and-so’s birthday party?”, “Remember when you wore this outfit to the beach and we caught that crab?”, “Remember when Auntie Jen got me this dress?”), which seriously made me misty-eyed, and then we packed them up.

Glad to be able to bless someone else with them, but I wish my girls would stop growing up so fast!!

Nature Table by Little Hen

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Yesterday afternoon, while Firecracker played with her magnet dolls, and Tum Tum slept, and I was mopping the floors yet again, Little Hen was a very busy girl – running upstairs, to her room, getting into the kitchen cupboards, and heading back upstairs again, gleaning items from around the house to remake the nature table.

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Even though it has been warm and sunny, the nights have been chilly, and the air has that autumn crispness in the morning.    It is September, afterall, so Little Hen remade the table with a “summer into fall” theme.  Looks like she has a bit of a “green with a touch or orange” color scheme going on – like fall is edging in on the greenness of summer.  🙂

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Mr. Emerson’s Cook is a book we’ve really been enjoying the past two weeks.  We made sunshine pie one morning, just like in the book! (Maybe there’ll be a post on it soon.  It was a really fun activity.)  If you haven’t read it yet, we really recommend checking it out.

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Please join in the nature table sharing at The Magic Onions.  We look forward to reading everyone’s posts on Fridays!

Totes

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Now, my sewing skills are pretty basic, (nothing like the beautiful sewing at Pleasantview Schoolhouse), but this week I tried my hand at making some farmer’s market totes. (A few more tote tutorials can also be found here, but I like how the pattern I used has the lining fabric peeking up above the edge of the bag).

The first tote is made out of some vintage (1950’s?) fabric from the thrift store, with plain muslin lining and blue contrast stitching.  For the pocket on the front, I used a little heart I had been holding on to since I hand-quilted it at Girl Scout craft camp two decades ago.

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The other two totes are made from old sheets (two thrifted, and one Little Prince toddler-bed sheet with worn out elastic. ).  They are very soft, and I like the blue-on-blue in both.  The girls have already claimed the Little Prince one as a sleep-over bag for visits to Grandma’s or Auntie’s.

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I also had enough fabric leftover from a quilt I made the other day to make a little (10″ x 12″) out of the scraps.

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The outside material is from a skirt I cut up, and the inside and pocket are made out of the same sheet material that lines the other two blue totes.

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I think making totes is pretty addictive, and several folks will be receiving some for Christmas (yay for the Handmade Pledge!!).  The girls picked out fabric for their own totes at the Knittn’ Kitten, and I also have fabric for two more large farmer’s market-sized cut up and waiting to be sewn together.   Hopefully, I’ll get to sew them up when the baby is napping later today.

Wishing you a thrifty, productive week!

Math this week

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Here’s a look at some of the mathematics we’ve been studying this week.  The girls LOVE the Sir Cumference series of books, and even though the math concepts are technically “above grade level” for them, the girls seem to have no problem understanding the material.  For example, Little Hen informed us that the slice of applesauce cake she had for dessert “makes an acute angle.”

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We’ve also pulled out a few board games from our enormous board game stash (mostly from thrift stores) that encourage children to think mathematically.  Despite the tedious sounding name, this Dino game is great for reinforcing the concept of place value for Little Hen, and simply counting and reading numbers for Firecracker.  A great game for kids of diverse ages.

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Hey, That’s My Fish! is a wonderful strategy game (don’t listen to the age suggestions – my girls can play it and they’re both well under 8 yrs old.  Firecracker and I play on one team, Little Hen on the other.)   Sudoku for Kids was a gift from my parents, and Little Hen loves to play it by herself when she needs some quiet time.  Monopoly: Don’t Go to Jail is a fast-paced game we picked up at the thrift store.  It reinforces place-value and three- and four-digit addition.  It’s one of Little Hen’s favorite games.

What tools are you and your children using to approach math in a natural, interest-sparking way?

Pink and Blue Quilt

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The other night I stayed up ridiculously late finishing a little scrap quilt, and I really paid for it the next day! Of course, the children decided to wake up almost two hours earlier than normal the next morning!  I needed two cups of coffee just to be able to make toast and eggs for breakfast!

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The quilt is based around a little stack of 15 pink, blue and raspberry colored blocks that came to us in a large bag of fabric scraps.  At first, I put the blocks in the bottom of my fabric drawer, because my initial reaction was that they were super ugly (circa 1992?).

I went through my fabric stash, and found a strip of equally ugly early 90’s fabric, a vintage sheet with a large rip in it, and an old summer skirt of mine, (back when I used to wear skirts above the knee!) that all sort-of coordinated.  Soon, a little quilt began to take shape.

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The sheet was cut into strips for the middle of the quilt (to join the blocks).

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The skirt became the sashing around the outside of the quilt, with that strip of extremely-floral fabric tucked in, too.

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The batting is two layers of a pale-blue flannel sheet that had become quite worn and was in my rag bag.  And more of the torn vintage sheet fabric was used for the back.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with it, even if it’s not my kind of color-scheme.  It was a frugal use of some blocks that might otherwise have sat in my fabric stash for years, and I was able to repurpose all sorts of fabric odds and ends.  Of course, my super girly-girls love the pink on baby-blue look, so even if it isn’t my cup of tea, it made some folks happy.  🙂

Have you been able to utilize or repurpose a craft supply that someone else has cast off?  I’d love to see what you and your kids have created!

Peaches, Preserved

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Peach-Brandy Jam = 18 -  1/2 pints

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Peaches in Light Syrup = 12 Quarts

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Peach Honey (a delicious, thrifty, vegan honey substitute) = 6 1/2 pints

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Peach Honey Butter on Applesauce cake (with peach jam between the layers.) – 1 stick unsalted butter, 6 tbsp peach honey (or regular honey) , beaten together in the Kitchenaid Mixer with a whisk attachment until combined and fluffy.

The best thing about home-preserved peaches, in my opinion, is opening a jar in the middle of winter and tasting a sunny summer day.

These ladies are taking preserving the harvest to a whole new level – Dana, Beth, Rural Mamma, and Amanda.

Marionberry Liqueur

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We like to make an assortment of flavored liqueurs to enjoy on cold winter evenings (and to give as gifts).  The list includes apricot or peach brandy, lemoncello, elderflower cordial, raspberry cordial (alcoholic, and non-), and cherry brandy (which makes a very special soaked-fruitcake at Christmas).

I started making apricot vodka about 15 years ago (back in high school!) for my grandfather, but my current method was inspired by an article I saw 4 or 5 years ago in Backwoods Home Magazine (our library used to carry it – it’s a very…interesting magazine full of back-to-the-land and survivalist- type articles).

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This year, I added Marionberry Liqueur to the list, since the farmer’s market had some really beautiful looking marionberries.  The process would work for most any fruit – I make cherry and peach brandy in a similar manner.

Here’s my recipe  – which takes 5 weeks, but involves little effort-

Larksong’s Marionberry Liqueur

5 quart mason jars, lids and rims, washed with very hot soapy water, and sterilized (in dishwasher or boiled for 15 min.)

2 cups well-crushed berries (3-4 cups whole, measurement doesn’t have to be exact – if using stone fruit, wash and pit, but do not skin)

1 bottle inexpensive brandy or vodka (I personally like brandy for cherries, peaches, marionberries, and vodka for raspberries, citrus, apricots, pears)

white or brown sugar (I prefer brown sugar for peach brandy)

Directions –

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Week 1 – To one mason jar, add crushed fruit and 3 cups of alcohol.  Put lid and screw band on and invert several times.  Then, leave in a dark place (like a kitchen cupboard).  After a week, the alcohol will take on the beautiful color and much of the flavor of the fruit.

Week 2- Decant the alcohol carefully into the 2nd jar, close it, label this jar #1 and  set aside.   Sprinkle the berries that remain in the first jar with about 1/2 cup sugar.  Put the lid and screw band on, and invert several times.  Put both containers back in the dark for 1 week.  (The sugar will draw excess alcohol out of the fruit, along with LOTS of fruit flavor.)

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Week 3 – Decant the alcohol from the berries again (you will have between 1/2 and 3/4 cup – see middle jar above), this time, label the jar #2, and set aside.  Once again, sprinkle the berries that remain with sugar (just enough to coat the fruit this time).  Put the jars up for another week.

Week 4 – Repeat the process of week 3.

Week 5 – Carefully decant the last bit of liquid (don’t pitch the fruit! – the remaining fruit is wonderful over ice cream, or can be used in a loaf of quick bread.  If you used peach slices or apricot halves, they can be packed in jars with half a vanilla bean or a cinnamon stick, covered with simple syrup, and kept in the fridge until later – serve with a slice of poundcake).

Now, take a little spoonful of each container and taste them.  Notice that Jar #1 is all alcohol, not very sweet, and as you progress through the jars, they will be more sugary, less alcoholic.  How sweet do you want the liqueur to be?  This is purely up to you – I always add all of jars 1 and 2 together, I add some of jar 3 and 4 little by little until I get the desired sweetness.  Any leftover alcoholic-fruit-syrup is enjoyed over ice cream (sometimes there’s as much as 1/2 cup left, and it’s very sugary).

Strain the liqueur through several layers of cheesecloth or a very clean flour-sack towel, put into small bottles, cork, label, and store in a dark place (so as not to fade the rich color).  Enjoy as a digestif or a bit drizzled into hot tea.  Use within 6 months.

Have you blogged about a favorite traditional homemade preserved food?  If so, please share the link with me, and I’ll add it to this post – I’d love to learn what other folks enjoy making.  Thanks!

Books to buy, books to borrow

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We made another trip to our favorite local bookstore, Powell’s.   It’s on the way home from church, and so very hard to pass it by without stopping in.  Every visit I am tempted to spend a ridiculous amount of money on crafting, cooking, and kids’ books.  And I could hide out in the Orange Room for hours and hours if my children didn’t keep dragging me back to the kid corner…

In the end, I exercised some self-control, and left with only this hilarious kid’s book, which will be a gift for Firecracker’s birthday in October.  (But, I also left with a long mental list of things to order from the library – you know, those books you’d like to read once, but are not ready to commit to purchasing.)

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Here are some of the books we’ve been reading this week for homeschool, as well.  Little Hen, who loves to finger knit, is learning how to knit on two needles and spin on a drop spindle, so we’ve ordered a big stack of knitting and spinning books (although the librarian was skeptical when I tried to check out knitting books on my home-educator library card.  I guess they didn’t look like “homeschooling books” to her).   The book on Turkish sock knitting led to an internet search of Turkish culture, and we ordered several children’s books and cultural books on Turkey that will hopefully come soon.  (Isn’t that one of the wonderful things about homeschooling?  How you’re free to chase your interests wherever the trail leads?)

We must have had fiber-art on the brain, because many of our other choices had to do with socks, knitting, sheep, fiber.  Only our new book CD – Island of the Blue Dolphins – seems out of place, although we’ve been listening to it during our quiet-time in the afternoons, while the girls finger-knit or sew with me during the baby’s nap. (Speaking of great kid’s fiber art, Quince and Quire has a neat kid’s wet-felting post)

Some other mamas with stacks of books  – 5 Orange Potatoes, Charming the Birds from the Trees, Red Dirt Mother, and Starry Sky Ranch.  There are always great reads on the bookshelves of Mom in Madison, and  SouleMama,  .  And don’t forget to check out the very talented Mamaroots, and her lovingly hand-crafted wooden playsets with literary themes.

Yardwork is hardwork

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This weekend was the first weekend in months that the weather hasn’t been horrendously hot or rainy, and we haven’t had other obligations (weddings, visitors, birthday parties, etc), so despite the fact that the two younger children were sick, we spent the entire weekend at home, working on our major yard renovation.

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Along with a lot of other yardwork, were able to mostly complete a sheet mulching project in the backyard – we put in an 18 x 22 ft veggie bed, using lots of boxes and packing paper (10 sheets thick) from our move.

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Here you can see the mulching clearly – a layer of weedy soil, simply covered up with a 3-inch layer of chopped, dried bamboo mulch (Permaculture principles state that it’s best to use what you have on-site, and we have TONS of bamboo we are slowly ripping out.).  On top of that we sheeted mulch with cardboard or stacks of packing paper, carefully overlapped to smother the weeds.  Then, composted cow manure is added on top of that.

After we add the final layers of straw/hay and compost, and topsoil, it will have 4 4×18 ft mounded rows with 18-inch mulched paths between the rows.  One or two more weekends, and we’ll be done – just in time to plant garlic, leeks, shallots and a few brassicas for the fall!

After a long time spent playing at busily gathering leaves and things for the compost, Little Hen went to an un-touched part of the yard, made a little nest in the middle of the “prairie”, and took a nap in the sunshine.  She was pretty tuckered out from all her hard work!

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For more on permaculture, I highly recommend the DVD, Establishing a Food Forest,  anything on Powell’s new permaculture bookshelf, and connecting with your local permaculture group.

And since our garden isn’t actually growing anything yet, you might like to visit  Mom in Madison, Garden Mama , Green Thumb Mama, A Little House by the Big Woods,  and Little Red Caboose to see the bounty of foods and flowers other mama’s gardens are yielding this summer.

Onion Biscuit Recipe

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Here’s my mother’s super simple recipe for onion biscuits.  They go perfectly with roast chicken, or a bean soup, and the girls love to help make (and eat) them -  a great way to occupy the children with something purposeful while I’m trying to get dinner ready.

You’ll need:

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2 tubes of biscuits, 1 stick of butter, and 2 packets onion soup mix.

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Cut the biscuits into quarters (yes, an almost 5 year-old can use a knife safely – we practice “fingers BACK”  and I supervise closely.)

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Add the onion soup mix to a large bowl.

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Melt the butter and add it to the soup mix.  Stir to combine into salty, buttery goodness.

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Add the bicuits, a handful at a time, and roll them around until thoroughly coated.

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Place on a Silpat or parchment paper, and bake at 450 F for about 5-7 min.  Watch carefully to avoid burning.

What do your kids enjoy creating in the kitchen?

Roast Chicken Dinner

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Cooler weather this weekend means  a chance to make a family favorite – roast chicken.  Here’s my recipe –

Larksong’s Roast Chicken with Shallots

1 chicken, washed and patted dry with paper towels left to stand at room temp for 20 min.

2 – 3 Tbsp (approx) Penzeys Bicentennial Rub (or spice rub of your choice that contains salt)

2 Tbsp Tillamook Butter, cut into small pieces.

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 pinch dried rosemary (from my friend, Jerilee.  Thanks!)

about 6 large shallots

4 large potatoes, washed and quartered

2 handfuls chopped carrots (I used baby carrots for convenience)

Olive oil

Directions –

1) Preheat oven to 425 F.  Slice the shallots thickly and place them in the bottom center of a lightly oiled roasting dish.

2)Rub chicken (instead and outside and under the skin) with the butter.  Then rub entire chicken with the spice rub (especially under the skin for maximum flavor).  Place garlic, rosemary and a few carrot slices inside the cavity.  Truss the chicken.

3)Place chicken breast side down on top of the shallots in the roasting pan.  Arrange the carrots and potato slices around the bird and drizzle them with olive oil.  Bake at 425 F for approximately 1 1/2 hrs, or until juices run clear.  Let rest on the counter 15 min before carving.

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Day hike

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Some pictures from our nature hike at Mt. Tabor Park (which is fast becoming our favorite day hike – right in the middle of the city, great hills, great hiking, lots of nature to examine and exlpore!).   Check out those helicopters!

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Firecracker stood for a long time and watched the water pouring in at the reservoir.

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Little Hen picked me a bouquet of wild pea blossoms.  Sweet girl.

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Firecracker got pretty tuckered out in the middle, so it was Daddy to the rescue!

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Stop in at The Magic Onions for more Friday Nature Table sharing.  Follow some other families on their nature hikes at It’s a Wild Life, Living and Learning, Garden Mama, and Ordinary Life Magic.

Have a blessed weekend.

Kelty

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We were recently, unexpectedly, blessed to be able to trade a family friend some homemade jam and brownies for a Kelty his son had outgrown.  Best barter we’ve ever made, if you ask me!

I love my Ergo and use it daily, but the Kelty is a much better fit for my husband.  We’ve been on two good hikes in the past week or so, and both he and Tum Tum have been quite comfortable.

More on our hikes tomorrow with Friday Nature Table sharing.

Winner!

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Thank you SO much for all the comments and links to my first giveaway!  The winner (as drawn by Tum Tum) is Suzanne at Down in the Meadow!!

Suzanne, I’ll be contacting you this week to get your package out in the mail!  Thanks!

I hope to have another giveaway in September, so please visit again.

Lorikeets

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We took the children for a quick visit to the Oregon  Zoo (the best part of having a pass, in my opinion, is that you can pop in for an hour or two and just see a few things, so the children don’t get maxed-out).  This visit, we decided to go with a bird theme (surprise, surprise).

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Tum Tum signed “bird”  and said “cheep cheep” pretty much non-stop the entire morning.  🙂

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We saw the penguins and the African bird aviary, but by far, the kids’ favorite stop was the Lorikeet exhibit.

I hope these last days of summer provide you with some fun family outings as well.

County Fair

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Last week we traveled north to Ridgefield, WA for the Clark County Fair.   The kids’ aunt and uncle, niece, grandparents, and great-grandparents met us there for an afternoon full of livestock viewing, carnival rides, and ridiculously unhealthy food.

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All of the kids enjoyed the hula-hooping contest, and my niece (with the white ribbon in her hair) took first place!

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And of course, we had to have a little fair food – this is a deep-fried Snickers.  So deadly.

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We spent a long time in the poultry barn – I kept having to bend down so Tum Tum could get a good look at the birds.   He especially liked the runner ducks in the pens outside, and had a nice little conversation with them.

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I’m sure like most spinners, my favorite place is the sheep barn (well, maybe tied with the produce competition…or maybe the preserves table…so hard to choose.)  They had a nice spinning demo and information on Kool-Aid dying fiber, and lots of 4Hers had entered their fleeces for judging.

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It was hard not to be envious of the gorgeous wheel the volunteer was using.   She asked Little Hen if she knew how yarn was made, and Little Hen answered, “Of course, my mama uses a ‘drop spindler’ and makes her own yarn.  Someday we’re going to get a fancy wheel like yours and then I’ll get to learn how to use it. ” I don’t think that was quite the response the woman expected.  (That girl is never short on answers.  6 year-olds can be so…confident in themselves, can’t they?)

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Have you been to your local county fair?  Or state fair?  We’re hoping to make it to the Oregon State Fair one of these years.  I hear it’s a must-see.

Thanks so much for all of the comments on my giveaway.  I never expected so many!  I hope to have another giveaway soon.  Winner will be announced later this evening.  Thank you!

Wooden Bowls

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Yesterday’s thrifting yielded these three child-sized wooden dishes (Other finds – two prairie bonnets for the girls for 75 cents each, and an April Cornell baby dress for a friend’s little girl for $1.50!  I also picked up a like-new Maya Wrap for $2, but it’s a size M and a bit short for my tall frame – if anyone in the Portland area would like it, send me an e-mail at angela dot baker dot knits at gmail dot com, and it’s yours!).  The larger bowl and the plate were 25 cents each and the smaller bowl (with a teensy chip in the rim) was 12 cents!!  I LOVE my local thrift store!!

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These dishes were all handmade right here in Oregon out of myrtle wood with a wax finish.  Little Hen remarked right away on the beautiful grain in the larger bowl.

On the topic of beautiful wooden things – two mamas who always are so inspiring with their pictures and thoughts that capture the beauty of childhood moments – Grace at Uncommon Grace, and Shelley at Waldorf Mama.   Grace posted a while back about her children polishing wooden objects with beeswax polish.   The reason this post stuck in my mind is because of the purpose behind it – Grace says, “And, best of all, polishing is such a relaxing activity for my children, especially in the ‘witching hour’ right before dinner.” We are always searching for purposeful things to occupy the children that often-frustrating time of day, and this activity seems like something my girls would enjoy doing very much!

Shelley has shared some pictures of her daughter Maya’s  wooden child’s dishes by Heartwood Arts.      Her posts have inspired us to slowly transitioning from plastic play dishes to wooden ones (Little Hen especially oohs and ahhs over Maya’s lovingly handcrafted toys and playthings).   She has such a way of emphasizing the benefit of natural materials in children’s lives.  It’s been fun to hunt the thrift stores for pieces to add to our growing collection.  Now to find some little wooden spoons…

What natural treasures have you been discovering lately?

(Please visit my giveaway post – comments will close at 11pm Pacific this evening.  Thanks!)