Thanks to my friend Shauna for nabbing this week's moment for me! She's one incredibly talented chica :)
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Simplicity Parenting Ecourse sign ups coming around the corner! Be sure to sign up for the Mama Bliss Ezine newsletter to stay posted and nab yourself a complimentary ebook; Handmade Time: How to Squeeze In a Little Crafting Everyday.
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Like mama sheep all over the world these days I'm in the throes of the birthing process. Instead of lambkins though what I'm delivering is a project, straight from my heart that I can't wait to share with you;
My Simplicity Parenting Ecourse!
Sign ups willl be announced soon so stayed tuned! Best way to do so would probably be to ensure you're signed up for the olde newsletter.
Because of my full immersion into this project these days I'm noticing I'm getting a little time greedy. For example when Craig announced he was going to take our kids climbing with friends Warren and Margo after Easter brunch eating my first thought wasn't how wonderful it would be to commune together as a family with beloved friends in the activity that tricked Craig into proposing marraige to me on top of a Spanish mountain. Oh, no, no. My first thought was:
Ooooo... imagine how much work I can get done in a nice, quiet, empty house.
But there was my inner voice, and of course that outer voice called Craig's, both of them saying sarcastically;
Yeah, stay home on a gloriously warm and sunny Easter Sunday afternoon, hunched over the computer drinking excessive coffee. Greeaaat idea.
But still, for some reason I couldn't decided. So I did what I do when I'm grumpy and indecisive; I pouted.
Edie, the littlest genius with a keen eye for not so subtle body language, saw the pout and suggested a compromise. "Come for just a bit".
So I did.
And I ended up staying for longer than expected and just drank in the fun, the rays of Vitamin D and the sweetness epitomized in the face of a sun bathing puppy.
Thanks to Craig, and that flower-scented, crazy-making thin Spanish air that flung him into my arms, for bringing back into my radar the values we have hoped, all those many moons ago, would guide us to our idyllic family life.
Values like:
And this will be the juicy middle of the ecourse. Juicy stuff like tapping into our core family values that were so alive in us once, in less complicated times (ie before the lambkins were born) that perhaps need to be gently nudged back out into the sunshine. Even for just a little bit.
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Why not bring up the subject of values with your partner or co-parent? Try out writing separately the top three values you hope to pass on to your kids and then see how they match up. Maybe share yours or theirs or both down in the comment below if you feel so inspired!
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I used to worry I was controlling
I used to believe life was busy
I used to wish I was kinder
patient
focused.
Then one day
I looked out my window
and saw a tree
a frozen
perfect
perfect tree.
I nearly choked
on the epiphany
we arrive inside
an envelope
of bones
there is nothing to be done
about this
so fill it with strength
let it brim
with courage.
Not bad, hey? You too can be a poet laureate. I found this instapoem generator through a Danielle Laporte email this morning. Great way to start the day in a DIY kind of way. See? I can't stop! PS that tree is our old man. He resides in the cedar forest above our house. Quietly keeping watch.
Welcome to day three of our magical blog tour toot tooting the bliss horn of my new ebook, The Bliss Filled Mama. Head on over to today's stops, Joy of Mommying and Studio Mothers, and leave them a comment to enter the realm of possibility of winning a copy of the ebook and its accompanying audio recording. Thank you so much Ruth and Miranda for hosting today!
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Though it's already the week of beasts we have only just hung up our front door's wreath with care and still have yet to make our trek up Grouse Mountain to seek out the perfect Charlie Brownish Christmas tree to adorn. I was pretty keen on making another felted rainbow of balls wreath like we did last year but Edie broke it to me gently that she didn't care for that wreath much.
See the distaste in her face from last year? So I bestowed upon her the title of wreath maker this year and in the end I don't think I ever seen her little face beam so hard from pride as when she finished this project.
I only helped out with the getting started bit; setting the wire frame with three rings interlacing each other, showed her how to weave the boughs through the gaps and let her in on where Mama keeps her secret stash of special ribbons. And then she was on her way while I skedaddled back on the couch to eat bonbons and continue celebrating the week of stones by reading a few more chapters from the new Keith Richards autobiography.
The second plant related story I wanted to share from the week stems (ha, ha) from a mishap earlier in the week. Edie was picking up her cross country ski shoes warming by the fire and in her haste burned her cute, still baby chubby little fingers on the wood stove. Ai, yi, yi – it looked nasty and I panicked because that’s the way I roll in moments of crisis. Mind you I was in a delicate condition at the time; minor life stuff that piles up until one of those full on ugly cries are called for and then all is well again. All I have to say is thank Sweet Baby Jesus for girlfriends (and Craig too of course).
A new friend I have recently connected with came over with an aloe plant because we still don’t have any plants in our home due to my subconcious fear of slowly killing them off. And here it sits on the window sill, feeding Edie’s wounds with its miracle goop. Don’t you love the beauty of the healing power of nature and generous mamas? So, lesson learned: keep an aloe plant in the house! And tell your girlfriends you love them today. Better yet, celebrate this week of beasts, and be a saucy one yourself ,and sneak out for a glass of wine or dessert or a knit session, or all three, with a handful of your lovely lady friends. That's what I'm up to tonight anyway- rawr!
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Look at me. I was on the verge of tears last week. Precious mommy time has been frettered away up here in the Loft Nest as I run in circles looking for papers, getting tangled up in the internets or (and I don't know what's up with this) diving into a miniature daschund research mission like I was the newly appointed Angelina Jolie of the wiener dog world.
Being a borderline obssesive schedule haver, seven to nine I have me penciled down to write a blog post; prepare for homeschool, plunk away at my Right Brain Business plan or study for my Simplicity Parenting course. Instead, I found myself swimming in a sea of distraction. As I finally was able to poke my head up between waves of mental shiny things I took a good look around and saw this.
And this. And some other visuals that I don't want to traumatize you with because I love you like that. Granted, it's been a deliciously creative, brainstorming, productive frenzy up here mostly due with putting the final touches to the Indian Summer Sew Camp, but this disaster zone was starting to get to the point of ridiculous and was threatening to paralize my attempts to move forward with other endevours.
What I love about the Waldorf classroom philosophy? Everything has a place and everything in its place. This is an imporatant time in my life for me to embrace this simple but potent life enhancing principle. But I knew I couldn't do it alone with everything else on my plate. So I called...
Kate - the professional organizer! She swooped in, pulled out a tissue from her sleeve cuff, wiped that tear from my cheek, blew my nose and told me to buck up because together we will reclaim this space as a non-crazy lady territory before Craig gets back from his business trip.
We quickly became the best of friends and then thrashed the place, high five-ing each other every few garbage bag full of donate-ables. She has this gorgeous method to her madness and it involves saying the word "swoop!" alot. I love that word. Everything was thrown to the floor, systems were put into place and everything eventually found its place or was given a whole new home altogether.
And can we say bliss?!! Furniture was moved around, out and in from all corners of the house. I'm so happy to be housing our former dining room table right smack dab in the middle of my nest. While I stood there, slack jawed, daydreaming about all the serious potential this new space was opening up to me (Mommy-time panties only yoga! Karoke dance parties!), Kate colour coded my fabric while folding them way; which is awesome because I lack in that folding gene.
And now when I walk in here in the morning I'm just raring to hunker down, focus at the task at hand and get to work. Where I use to cram my sewing patterns is now the home for my piles corresponding to my various current endevours, shipping material, office supplies, and, of course, the salted chocolate bar stash.
And on top of all that I made a friend. This has been the best investment I've made all year. I'm back to being the happy Loft Nest Monster!
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As a gesture of my Deep Love for Craig I strapped on the 'ol climbing harness this weekend. I hope to lube Craig up with enough mocha mud pie to get him retell, via vlog entry, the story of our meeting and how he kinda proposed to me a year later on top of a Spanish mountain after a day of climbing. This is back in the day when we had rock star lifestyles; aka Pre-Edie days.
Speaking of rockstars, here's my hot climbing partner Margo. I gushed about her recent book release here a while back. And yes, I'm wearing my Beach Blanket Bingo swimsuit - we were on our way to the beach for some bingo action. I was trying to figure out a way to somehow attach my fascinator to my helmet just to glam up the local climbing scene some.
We'll wait for mud pie to get into the painful details of the Craig and my hook up story but long story short he was dressed up as a climber at the Halloween party we met at. I, ironically, was totally turned off of climbers after embarassingly trying to impress a gaggle of them in the mid nineties (not all at the same time of course ~ that would not have been lady like). But, because he was so darn cute, and I envisioned my future Craiglettes dancing around his head, I decided to give the sport another chance.
It took me a year to have a climbing day without having a good solid cry halfway up but I perservered and ended up even loving climbing some. But not enough to continue once said Craiglettes arrived. My morning breve provides me with enough palps to keep my heart on its toes thank you very much.
It has been four years since I been up on the wall and it did feel good and empowering. That is until half way up and then I heard Kale squawk. "LOWER!" I yelled down to Margo. I wanted to come back to Earth. I missed my little ones, was questioning the mechanics of rope knots in my abstract random noggin, and imagining stepmoms.
But it sure felt good to be moving upward again and trusting in the stickiness of my climbing shoes and the bionic-like strength of my fingers. This, of course, thanks to milking and knitting. I think Mama's going to stick to those pastimes for now. Have fun Craig! Deep Love you :)
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One of my best friends is having her blessingway this week. I wanted to make her something special so I sat and meditated on what was my favourite part of babies. Then it came to me: the butt! So I made her a whack of reusable baby butt wipes and wash. My second favourite baby part might be the head because once that makes an appearance the rest is easy squeezy so I knit her a hat too; the Pointy Elf hat from More Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I dyed and then spun some merino I had on hand into a super soft soft spun. It has greens, blues and just a splash of pink for good measure.
And this butt wash is the cat's baby butt. I received the recipe from a naturapath that was taking the same Birthing From Within course Craig and I took when I was pregnant with Edie. The recipe makes a big whack of wash that lasts for almost six months. The recipe is super clean and the smell reminds me of newborn. And toddler. And almost school-age kids (yes, boys seem to take longer to potty train; in this household anyway).
I had a few meters of terry cloth on hand to make Edie and Kale matchy match beach cover ups so I used a yard of that, cut it up into eight inch squares, sergered around all four corners, et voila, a basketful of reusable wipes. To use, we warm up a towel in hot, hot water and then cool it off with a spray of the butt wash, then throw soiled wipe into a bucket and just dump those in the wash when the bucket's full. The recipe is above (hope you can read it okay!) but sometimes I like to add a drop of German Chamomile in there because it leaves cool little blue drops in the wash and apparently is the best essential oil to chill out fussy babes. Now I'm all nostalgic. Think I'm going to wipe Kale's butt now!
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I'm reading again! I'm reading again! For almost seven years I've had to set aside my bedtime reading ritual for having a little one beside me didn`t render this favourite ritual of mine possible. But thanks to Project Night Weaning, which calls for me sleeping in the spare room, I'm revisiting one of my favourite pastimes of yore; reading until I get too sleepy to read no more. Bliss!
There's a yarn along over at Small Things. Every Wednesday readers share a photo of the book they're reading alongside their current knitting project. Woohoo! I can finally play.
Since my epiphany (see previous post) to downsize my business ventures I`ve found myself embracing crafting endevours purely for sheer joy. This has translated to lots of baby item knitting for my new mama and soon to be mama friends of mine. What I have in my lap above is the Easy Baby Cardigan from More Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Love the yarn; an alpaca merino blend that I can`t stop licking.
Even with my new set up, I read like I knit; s-l-o-w. But this book, All That Glitters, only took me about five nights to read which is pretty speedy for me. This was a can't put down for many reasons. Primarly, it's so intimate it just sucked me in. Like a girlfriend was telling me her lifestory over a glass of wine. Wait a minute. It is a girlfriend telling me her life story!
This is my friend Margo's autobiography. But even if I didn't know the author I found the story at once so inspiring, heartbreaking and triumphant I was wanting to shove toothpicks in my eyes to keep them open longer each night (nightweaning is calling for early morning wake ups unfortunately). My youth wasn't nearly as challenging as hers but on some level I was able to relate to some of her rebel rebel experiences. It just made me want to reach into the pages and hug her right there and then and cry healing tears together. And her courage and sense of adventure (she is a world class ice climber) is a force to be reckoned with. She's such an amazing woman.
And she has great taste in puns to boot. She even slipped in a punny moment of mine at the end of her book tour video. Thank you for Glittering, Margo :)
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We had a fabulous Easter weekend in these parts - hope you did too! Ours started on Friday with the annual Easter egg painting party over at our neighbours across the street where we brought our annual batch of hot cross buns and Edie and I whipped up the above creation.
Of course we sported our matching Heid braids because we're still very much obssessed with Heidi here.
Easter Sunday we awoke to yarn criss crossing the house again which that wiley wabbit seems to be into doing each year. He left a trail of blue yarn for Kale to follow around the house and pink, of course, for Edie. Along the trail he left treats to fill their baskets; needle felted bunnies, egg candles and wooden mushrooms to name a few of the treasures.
Last year we turned Edie's angora bunny yarn score into the spring beret you may have noticed she's been wearing everyday since I cast it off the needles. We'll see what this one manifests into. She wants to finger knit, something she learned this year, into something herself. Cute!
And then we dove in to a special Easter breakfast treat. In the spring issue of Living Crafts there is a recipe for Italian Easter Bread. I dyed these eggs using a German natural egg dye kit.
And then, ironically, sprinkled the buns with super not natural and not even close to organic sprinkles. The kids survived. And I think Edie almost self-combusted with happiness when her eyes laid on the techni-colour goodness!
And after breakfast, while were still riding our food colouring high, we went over to a neighbour's to pick up some goat milk (more on that later, let's just say the kids overdosed on Daisy juice and now seem to be cow milk sensitive ~ great!) and get some goat loving in. We hugged them, and squeezed them and called them all George...
And took them for a jaunt through the forest. Yes, Edie and Kale, who have been playing Heidi and Peter the goatherd now for about two months now non-stop, were pretty much jaunting with two feet off the forest floor from sheer bliss...
And the heavily laiden with red food dye number 5 cherry on top, they got to bottle feed a couple of kids. Don't mind my insane laughter in the video - I just can't stand the cuteness I'm exposed to sometimes! Happy Easter Monday, everyone. Stay tuned for tomorrow I'm going to be offer an unsual sort of giveaway. Hee, hee (insane sounding hee, hee).
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I thought this might be a fun new category in the blog; People in my Neighborhood. I have so many friends here in this little town that have the best energy and live in the most idyllic, simple, beautiful homes. Meet Kate. She was kind enough to grant me permission to feature her and her husband Sam's pretty little cabin. No, her face did not get attacked by a cat, she was face painting with my kids. Kate watches them Thursday mornings so I can get some work done and they, in turn, be exposed to the outside world. Kate picked up one of my skeins at an annual fundraiser I donate to for the local watershed, May Day, and she was kind enough to model the shawl she knit up with it.
Here's the skein that was auctioned off. Love the big slab of sequins tucked in there. Love how Katie integrated that nicely into her shawl. Can I just mention how fast Thursday mornings fly? The kids get so excited to go it's really sweet. And Kate's place is just as cute as can be and so comfy it take me half and hour to get the gumption to leave again when I go pick up the kids.
And check it out! I just about peed myself when I first saw her book shelf. She colour codes her bookshelves too! And those sheep skins. Is it grim to say I want to raise sheep so we can swim in sheep skins inside?
And I know that Craig has some serious wood stove/oven envy. How amazing would it be to cook a meal with this beauty? And the sliding doors above are for keeping meals warm. Craig thinks we can make it happen here but it would be a tight, hot squeeze. Oi, that sounds kind of naughty.
And how I pine for a claw foot tub in a wall-less bathroom. See their toboggan hanging with care? I guess they've added plenty of mileage to it this snowy winter.
Such a sweet little cabin. So glad my little ones get to hang out in this love-drenched digs while Mama gets productive. Or at least gets paralyzed with indeciciveness with that four hour freedom window!
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