Are We There Yet?

new day's dawn awaits

opportunity refined

outline a fresh path

the new year is well underway for most, but i am still honing my path..
never too late to get on with it!

Peter Bregman at hbr blog network suggests that successful people should have 2 lists, a focus list and an ignore list, but not in that order..

"what am I willing not to achieve?
what doesn't make me happy?
what's not important to me? 

then can one can ask the complimentary set of questions

what am I trying to achieve?
what makes me happy?
what's important to me?"

 a new day, a new month, a new year it's a great time to visualize a plan, to start fresh, to add a few new colours to my palette..

 

In January for several years i have collaged my goals, a simple and elegant tool, So, it's February, no time like the present!

I pulled out some magazines, the scissors and glue, grabbed my teenagers, because this is a wonderful habit for young adults too, and thought about these questions as we collaged. Thought about our truths, what was important, and threw it all out there onto paper.

Go about this project with intention. It is very powerful. Warning, if you use a poster expect to want to fill it, this can be somewhat consuming, in a good way, and you can always use smaller paper!

busy, busy, busy
we've missed you!

linking to

haiku my heart at recuerda mi corazon

 Have a beautiful day!

Easter Bread Καλό πάσχ!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! No way I am blogging on Easter, so in my very organized fashion, this is all set to go, sitting in draft awaiting the photos. And here they are!

Greek Easter Bread - Καλό πάσχ! - Happy Easter!

Χριστός ανέστη! Αληθώς ανέστη!

So The question is, Greek or Swiss? We traded a loaf of our traditional home baked Easter bread; Greek Tsoureki, for a loaf of our friends home braided Swiss Easter Bread. We are not Greek though my mom can double as Nana Mouskouri, we were raised on her music, my brother looks just like many fo the boys on Crete and I met my husband in Malia. Anyway I segway, we used the traditional onion skin dying method to dye the eggs red. Would the breads be the same? Different? They look the same, they taste different. Greek is sweet, Swiss is savory.. both delicious!

Swiss Easter Braid - Schöni Oschtere! - Happy Easter!

April Goals and Rhythm

Easter! The children (and lucky parent volunteers) learned to paint Pysanka, Ukrainian Eggs. We had a fabulous workshop at school, run by Joan Brander of Baba's Beeswax, who managed to create success, step by step, for all ages gr K through 7!

If you have not followed this blog before these monthly planning pages lay out a general structure for the month, 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 goals the follow up varies from great to imperfect but having the plan helps it to happen and helps bring rhythm to our days!

April Festival / Theme
Easter, Spring is in the air.

Seasonal Table
In our handy dandy spring storage case (see post September 29th, 2009) we have all the little Easter trinkets we have made, collected and been gifted over the years. Flower fairies, eggs, chicks, bunnies. Felted, paper, wooden, stitched. We keep palm crosses made for Palm Sunday each year - they dry nicely. We even have blown Easter Eggs made for the past decade; some are whole some are pieces. This year we add our Eggs!

Waking Song
"Little rabbit foo foo, hopping through the forest, picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head" (may not be politically correct but it sure is fun)!
Little Rabbit Foo Foo - from summer camp - an old favorite around here.. we just sing the first few lines then everyone joins in as they wake and goes where it goes.. :-)
Feel free to use comments to request words to look them up on Google.

Breakfast Verse
"Snowdrop snowdrop dressed in green and white, what do you do when teh cold winds blow?
Hide my little heard and say, Cold winds, cold winds, go away."
Seems appropriate as it is colder now in teh Northwest than its been all winter :-) we'll save the 2nd verse for next month and spring weather.

Bedtime Verse
"Star for you to wish on, sun so warm and bright
Moon for you to think on, pleasant dreams, a kiss goodnight."
Author unknown, a friend gave this to us - we draw the pictures, star, moon on the child's tummy as we tuck them in. Our children are getting older but tehy still love these familiar traditions!


April Project 1 - Cascarones
Easter cascarones - a new twist on an old Latin tradition. Little pinata eggs that can be broken for luck over a friends head and contents (confetti) sprinkled for fun - have a dust pan handy :-) For Easter we photocopy and shrink some of our art to glue onto the egg. Instructions will follow in a future post this month - watch for them!

April Project 2 - Ukrainian Eggs
The children did a Pysanka workshop at school and it was fabulous. Instructions will also follow on a future post!

April Project 3 - Easter Bread
We are ambitious this month (and all at the beginning as Easter is pretty quick); but Easter bread is a family tradition! Watch for it!

Living Artfully

Its the little things in life, you brush up close to them and they are so beautiful! The details.


Living artfully. Here are my secret valentines. So simple, a paper napkin stuffed with a handful of warm fleece and lavender, briefly stitched on your sewing machine.


A wee note of endearment and you have a lovely Valentine! xoxo

Heartfelt Valentines

So here are my daughter's Valentines this year! I still love letting the kids make cards them selves, however we have seen some lovely children's valentines this year (finally! the last few years stores been inundated with valentines that market movies etc, but where is the romance, the art, the beauty? Call me old fashioned. Call me traditional! Sometimes I think we seriously underestimate our children!)


At any rate we have seen some lovely glittery, sparkle artsy Valentines for children with fairies, cupcakes (rockets for the boys) and some lovely reprints of retro-tines by Golden (these at Shopper drug mart actually! There is hope for us yet!

January Goals and Rhythm

If you have not followed this blog before these monthly planning pages lay out a general structure for the month, 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 goals the follow up varies from great to imperfect but having the plan helps it to happen and helps bring rhythm to our days!

January Theme / Festival - New Year
It is always fun to make New Years resolutions, a feeling of starting fresh, the human gift of eternal hope and renewal!

Seasonal Table - Stars
Our seasonal table seems to center around stars for New Years or Chinese New Years Festival colours. This year stars, candles, lanterns, blue, gold, yellow and red!

Breakfast Verse
"January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow. Blessings on our meal today."
From Around the Year by Elsa Beskow.

Waking Song
"Good morning dear earth, good morning dear sun, good morning dear stones and flowers everyone. Good morning dear and birds in the trees, good morning to you and good morning to me!" (at least that is how my children remember it!)

Actually not a song, but children still love and requested "Good Morning Dear Earth" from preschool and playgroup!

Bedtime Verse
The children want to continue with "Oh Holy Night" from December and though I love Christmas I need to move on! So from A Child's Seasonal Treasury by Betty M Jones we have Colourful Journey which is probably for art but my children like to think of it as for dreaming too.

"With my crayons I will go, Journeying o'er the bright rainbow, Red and yellow, green and blue, Orange and purple, that will do, Now let's see where they take me to."

January project 1 New Years Resolution Collage
Taking New Years Resolutions a step further this is a Wonderful tool I learned from a friend last year. I found doing this had a huge impact on my year in a very subtle manner and my children are all over doing this!

Simply take a large piece of poster paper (dollar store / staples / wallmart) and a bunch of magazines and some magazines and collage what the you (or the new you!) looks like for this year. Ideas that strike you, images you like, images that represent what you want from, or for yourself (not stuff you want rather the image of who you want to be).

For example last year I had all kinds of sexy and more outlandish model pictures as I want to loosen up my style a bit, be more artsy, more attractive - hey don't we all? For me not for anybody else! Then I have fresh veggies for healthy food, social eating activities! I want to eat better and with friends more - and from my own garden - all those thoughts are in my food images, then I had romance and flowers. I want to be more romantic, be treated more romantically; have more flowers in my life, my garden, my home.


Then you add words, quotes, again vocabulary, poetry, prose that inspire you! That evoke your goals. Use different colours, different pens. You can go a step further add ephemera or anything you wish, you can put more on the back if you run our of space or have super secret goals :-) but my project is just two step. Step 1 Images Step 2 Words. The whole family can do this together or just you or just the children, but I do suggest you give it a try it is surprisingly powerful. When December rolls 'round and the New Year is on the horizon you will know what i mean! You'll want to so this every year!

January Project 2 Trip to China Town to see it Decked Out for Chinese New Year
Meant to do that last 2 years and haven't so we'll try again!

Happy New Years!