Joyful Teenagers!

morning brings fresh eggs,

scattered in many colours

about the neighbourhood

my daughter and her bunny have been bringing smiles throughout the neighbourhood, teenagers bring such joy! My yard is full of a bazillion kids and none of them are mine! I am enjoying my
fill of shrieks and laughter.

Today my word is Joy!

Happy Easter!

linking to Haiku my Heart at recuerda mi corazon

 

What's the Word Bird?

what are my words? 

warm

accepting

peaceful

supportive

joyous

rambunctious

community

art

children

education

romance

divine

sacred

fearless

I read this idea of having a 'word' in Elizabeth Gilbert's fabulous memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" still one of my favorite books of all time

I loved the idea and at some point it planted itself in me, and grew

  Fearless ~ by C Moore age 15 water colour in progress

A single word can inspire. A single word can invoke,

awaken,

revitalize

reaching out to life

together we are one,fear-

less, sacred, divine

my word today is fearless!

What is your word

today?

linking to Haiku my Heart at recuerda mi corazon

Blessings on your day today dear reader !

Handmade Bears / Once in a Blue Moon

We have entered the Once in a Blue Moon blog give away at A Stuffed Life for Kelly's sweet blue mohair teddy bear! Mid summer is fast approaching and we are also joining her Midsummer Night's Dream tomorrow, visit all our dreams using the button on the sidebar!



Handmade teddy bears are a wonderful thing, making them and receiving them; they are warm and provide comfort. My son has made 2 bears, his first, tangerine, when he was 3 was a gift for his dad, his second was for himself!


I have made 3 over the years and much love has gone into each one; in fact each has a love note tucked inside the stuffing! My daughter's, Lady Sarah, is her comrade and


has been for years. My son's bear Joom, still lives upon his pillow


and after making bears for the both the children my husband surprised us all, sulking that one had not been made for him - thus I laboured to bring forth Al Bear also known as Forty when my husband turned that magical age. My daughter who was 6 at the time also made a simple hand stitched bear for dad!


I hope these bears will stay in my children's families for many years to come and bring much joy!


We have a fifth handmade bear that was a gift, she is mine, but I share her often :-) Once in a Blue Moon will find a wonderful home here should we be lucky - we have never had a collectible bear! Happy Friday!

July Rhythm and Routine

July's Family Rhythm

If you have not followed this blog before these monthly planning pages lay out a general structure for each month in our home; including a theme and seasonal table, a way to wake, a table candle blessing, a couple of projects and a verse for going to sleep. These are our goals, the follow up varies from great to imperfect but having the plan helps it to happen and helps bring rhythm to our days! We just keep on trying :-)

July Festival / Theme / Seasonal Table
It has to be summer, summer, summery! This month ours is all shells and mermaids!


Wake Up Song
Wake Up Little Suzie (I change the names to my kids names - as always i mostly repeat the same lines a few times) The Everly Brother's 1950's

Breakfast Verse / Song
"With joy we greet the morning sun, who shines with love on everyone
who shines in the sky, on the land and the sea,
And fills me with light when he shines on me, Blessings on our meal today."
~ author unknown to me


Bedtime Song
Taps as in "Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the skies.." US Military Vespers I believe, anyway reminds us of camp, summer etc!

July Projects
We don't really have specific projects for summer - the goal being to relax the schedule.. that said, our children usually come up with several summer projects anyway as they go.. at the moment they are both making little stop motion scenarios on their own.. and the neighbourhood children are all building Foofles (cardboard houses see photo below), next week they'll be into something else. Oh yes and I lie, this week we wanted to make pasta from scratch and we did! Oh and we are continuing Sunday Sketches at Blue Chair Diary.. besides that.. no projects :-)

Happy Summer - get outside!

Ritual and Rhythm - Burying Our Pet Fish

Ode to Splash - Life as Art - Burying our pet fish

Friends have asked about rituals marking various times of change in our lives and in our children's lives. I have promised a note on our ritual to mark the death of a family pet - we have fish and they all have personalities :-) the children do get quite attached. Under the title of better late than never here is the gist of our last passing, a fish named Splash.


We have a place in the garden where we bury lost pets or found dead birds etc. It has had a couple of names, Magic Mountain and more recently the Grave Garden. Because our animals are small we simply wrap them in tissue and place them in one of those 4" wooden match box boxes.


One of the children adds a seed to the box with the body and we close it up. Sometimes we decorate the box, sometimes not.


Then we go off the the Grave Garden and each of us take a spade and a heart shaped stone or a pretty rock or perhaps the children have made a Popsicle stick cross.


We each dig a scoop of dirt, the box is placed at the bottom, and the dirt is thrown back. We light a tea light and leave it burning in a glass candle holder on a flat rock. We send a wish or prayer and toss our stone on the grave, or place the cross, and that is that.


We love the seed idea, my son came up with it, life from death, I don't know - the children like it. We also celebrate los dios de los muertos with Halloween and our shrine to the dead has notes for departed friends both human and animal :-) Splash was also honoured with a fairy tale by A Pink Dreamer written by a blog friend from far away in the Greek Islands - how cool is that?!

Many thanks to those who leave comments - we always enjoy them!

Musings of a Faerie Matriarch

Renewal L Moore (c) 2010
- yes she has a story, but that is for another day..

Faeries, Sunday sketches and Mother's Day! Time to question my choices. Was it such a good idea to give up my regular 9-5 so I could be home to raise my heirs? So i could (maybe - i mean really, admit it, is this stuff actually in our control at all? - who do i think i am? overachiever that's for sure) creatively raise my children myself - the way i wanted; with calm (LOL) and reverence, respect, creativity and hard work.

A Gift to the World detail by C Moore age 10 (c) 2010
C says "yes, she is pregnant!"

So i could really guide them in cultivating their academic, artistic, physical and spiritual gifts? So i could take the time and do it right, be part of the process, nurture, support; actually hear my children, listen, be at the breakfast table with them, surround them with a beautiful environment. So when the time comes, my husband and i have successors deserving of our amassed fortune! So the world will be a better place.

A Gift to the World by C Moore age 10 (c) 2010

Ok, it hasn't been that simple, or that calm but our children are happy, hard working, amazingly bright, creative, talented (probably yours are too) and actually, the credit is all theirs - i have learned more from them than they from me - and the fun is all mine!

Acorn Fairy by T Moore age 12 (c) 2010

Yup, the right choice - absolutely!

Oooooh and look what i found in the art room from 5 years ago today, painted by our then 5 year old - its titled Happy Mother's Day but if should be called Joy!

Happy Mother's Day by C Moore age 5 (c)2005!


Friends, mothers, artists of the world unite!

Happy Mother's Day my lovely friends!

May Family Goals and Rhythm

If you have not followed this blog before these monthly planning pages lay out a general structure for each month in our home; including a theme and seasonal table, a way to wake, a table candle blessing, a couple of projects and a verse for going to sleep. These are our goals, the follow up varies from great to imperfect but having the plan helps it to happen and helps bring rhythm to our days! We just keep on trying :-)

May Festival / Theme: Mayfair, Mary, Mothers, Spring!
May is the festival of Mary, celebration of mothering, the May pole, hopefully some warming of the weather! May was my Grandmother's name and is playful and joyous!


Seasonal Table - Spring
Treasures from the children, vases of flowers, colourful rocks, shells, whatever is joyous to you and brings the spring indoors! May is mayfair, maypole; we have a maypole dancer mobile to hang. May is Mary, flowers, blue. May is spring, it can be simple flowers, seeds, rocks..


Breakfast Verse
Let us keep our minds sharp and our bodies strong and give us the wisdom to know right from wrong, blessings on our meal today.
from Breakfast Blessing by D.L Sundheim

Waking Song
Snowdrops, snowdrops, little drops of snow,
what do you do when the cold wind blows?
Hide our little heads and say,
cold winds, cold winds, go away.
Snowdrops, snowdrops, dressed in green and white,
what do you do when the sun shines bright?
Shake our little bells and sing,
ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, here's the spring.


Bedtime Song or Verse
This month a favorite from my son. Puff the Magic Dragon! Its been ages since I sang this, we sang it a lot when my son was wee, love it!


May Project 1 Year End Teacher Cards
The children choose a drawing they made this year - both of mine want to use their St Michael and the Dragon drawings from the fall. I take them down to Staples and use the colour photocopy to make several copies in a card type size (shrink or enlarge as needed). Children and I cut out the pictures and glue them to a background decorative paper or use on their own, then to card stock; we use Strathmore Ivory Deckle prefolded art cards. Some years each child also writes a verse, poem or prayer and types it up to be printed several times and glued inside the cards. The children use their own picture and verse for their homeroom teachers and sign those just from themselves, then use one or the others drawing and poem for other teachers and staff in the school - we may use C's picture for Art and PE and T's cards for Theater and Music for example, they both sign them - don't forget the janitors! Now we are set for June and Year End!

March Project 2 Year End Teacher Gifts
Children and I are still working out what? The children have considered paperweights (rocks) with their drawings transferred onto them, more involved, a book of their poetry illustrated with their pictures from the year (here we'd use blurb or other self publisher - but do we have time for this - is this perhaps more suitable to the final year of elementary school - Grade seven? I like the rocks :-) Will add this once we know what we are doing - children coming up with the idea is part of the project.

Great joy and happy Spring!

Cascarones

Cascarones - As promised here are the simple instructions.

Next time you make scrambled eggs, use a tack to poke a hole in on end of your egg. Chip out a dime size hole. Rinse the egg shell.

Dry.

Decorate as you please. Dye, paint, glitter, stickers, drawings you've drawn etc.


Fill egg with a large pinch of confetti.

Cut about a foot of paper streamer and roll it into a flower. Twist the role together but leave large flower at the top.

Put white glue around the outside of the hole in the egg and secure the paper flower to cover the hole.


Ta da! Cascarone! Use for birthdays, Easter, any fiesta! Eggs are to broken above, not on (eggshells can be sharp, organic shells are quite hard) someones head and the contents sprinkled on them for good fortune!

April Project 1 complete and delivered to friends!

What's a Pysanka?

Ukrainian egg decorating. We are not Ukrainian as such, however our ancestors lived in the Ukraine after they left Germany, or was it Russia? They never considered themselves Ukrainian I know that - have to check the details!

Here is how we made Pysanka at home, however, as mentioned a fabulous source is www.babasbeeswax.com

Blow eggs and wash, leave to dry and plug holes with a wee bit of beeswax (either use a tiny whole at each end and carefully blow the egg out - i find it hurts my jaw these days so i bought an egg pump from the fore mentioned web site).

Outline your egg with a pencil on the egg itself (or not).


Use your kistka (egg writing tool - a tool that is used to apply the beeswax, again check out the website mentioned or others) to draw traditional or other designs on the egg.


Submerse egg in dye no 1. Colours should be used in order yellow, green (with a Q-tip or toothpick) orange, red, purple, blue, black. You don't need to use all colours, just in that order the ones you do use. We only use 1 dark colour, purple, blue or black to simplify. Not sure why the green is applied differently rather than egg submersion but it is so :-)

After dyeing, dry egg with paper towel.


Decorate another layer with beeswax using your kistka. The wax locks in the last colour you dies wherever you apply it. This is a resist. The wax, resists the dye.

Continue until you have used all the colours you want - this can be 1 or several. Dry egg with paper towel after each colour.

Use the heat of a blow dryer and a paper towel to remove wax. Be careful not to burn yourself with hot wax!

Ta da! Your first Pysanka!

April Project no 2!

Who's Following Who? And How?

OK where are all my followers? Where are all my comments? Is there anybody out there? If these statistics indicate how well my blog is progressing - I am sadly lacking!! :-) Perhaps I am missing something (no surprise there). Any suggestions?

Have a great day!