.: Right Now :.

Inspired by Amanda Blake Soule (SouleMama), I love the idea of stopping periodically to take in the present moments and reflect on life as it is. So, I will follow her tradition.

Right now, I am

~lost in reflection on how it can be that my first-born completed Kindergarten on this day.

~revelling a little bit at having a clean(ish) kitchen for 2 days in a row.

~thinking about how soon I will be able to get to the umpteen sewing projects I have swimming in my head.

~reminding myself that they are only little once and not to worry about aforementioned sewing projects quite so much.

~wondering how many times I will say that this is the year I will can/ferment/pickle/otherwise preserve the bounty of my garden and the gardens of my local farms until it is true.

~planning a summer virtually free of camps and other busy programming.

~including lots of exploring and creative thinking in my plans for our wander-full summer yet to come.

~trying hard not to wish the summer away, as I always do, because Nature makes it just that uncomfortable to be outside.

~writing down all the local free summer concerts in my calendar to better “seize the summer.”

~smiling in my mind about how lucky I am to be a mama and partner in this priceless family, nurturing community and beautifully complex world.

What are you up to, right now?

.:. Necessity, Invention .:. Row of Hooks

I saw this idea somewhere between Back Home and Natural Home (& Garden), and I can’t figure who to credit this idea to, however, as we start to employ less toys, but more that are visible, it became obvious that we needed a row of hooks for silks and other play fabric and scarves.

Since we’re on a new “living within our means” commitment, I needed something functional, fast and free (my favorite f-words!).

So, the twig row of hooks was born.  It was fun to make and involve my nearly-3-year-old in, scavenging twigs and branches from around the house, using the loppers to get the right cuts, sanding the rough edges and banging the nails into a discarded piece of lumber hanging out in the garage, just waiting for a purpose in life.  Fun activity, no need to “fetch” supplies and just what I needed–quickly!

Promise…

Perhaps a photo can speak for itself. but, here, there’s a little explanation.

It’s not lost on me that I’m not one to stick around for long-term benefits. I can’t stand the promise of something to come. I’d much rather have the instant gratification. I know this. It doesn’t apply to family or other such major themes in life, but for the more trivial things. Which is why, when the chance arrives that I’m actually around for something to come to fruition, it’s a moment for pause.

I planted this clematis years ago. With a lick and a promise, I stuck it in the ground, unceremoniously, and thought I’d see towering beautiful flowers later that year. And the years went by. I thought the thing was dead, but every year, it would come back to life and push out the most beautiful, delicate foliage a girl could admire. But no blooms. 3 years later, it’s loaded with buds and the first one is about to burst.

I wouldn’t have been crushed not to witness the flowering of this slowpoke, but I’m stopping and thanking the Earth for her gift on this day: Promise.  Because, as I’m learning, the payoff of waiting for something so powerful to unfold, is priceless.

Tutorial: Doll Sling

(note: I wrote this post last summer; it’s the one I became frustrated with and abandoned–along with this whole blog.  I’m posting it with all it’s warts in an effort to move forward, both blog-wise and universe-wise.)

It happens that my wee’est was two last week!   It seems just yesterday I was revelling at my HBAC (homebirth after cesarean) success and a brand-new baby girl.  Since she’s the second, she endures many hand-me-downs.  (Luckily she’s not a complainer about this–yet.)  But, coming up with a birthday gift for the second child who has everything and more was hard.  In the end, we decided to invest in a custom-made waldorf doll.  It is just beautiful and I hope she gets years of play.  Since I’ve been a little bit crafty these past couple of weeks, I thought maybe a doll sling would be in order as a complimentary, made-by-me, gift.  Turns out it was the easiest and quickest thing I have made in a long time!  Her elder sister gawked and swooned about it, so as a surprise, I made her a larger one.  And, because the first one was so easy, I put together a tutorial!

Baby Doll Sling
adapted from an Elizabeth Lee Designs pattern

*It should be noted that these slings are toys and are in no way appropriate for a living baby. Only a properly-made baby sling should be used for babies.*

Supplies: 1/2 yard for smaller size, 1 1/2 yards for larger size (makes 2); pair of 2″ craft rings

Cut your fabric: You’ll need a rectangle of fabric.  Cut a 18 x 44 piece for a small (2-4 yrs) child or 18 x 50 for a larger child (5-8 yrs).

 Hem the sides:  Fold a 1/4-1/2 hem over twice for a finished edge on each of 2 long sides and 1 short side.  Leave the remaining short side raw.  Iron in place (I also pin the folded corners down to help me keep them aligned).

Sew a basic stitch down both long sides and then on the short side, securing the corners in place.

Attach the rings: On the raw edge, fold the fabric in to the center twice so that the folded width is 1/4 the unfolded width.

Fold unfinished edge over once, and thread through both rings.  (I find it easiest to pin this edge in place while threading the rings.)

Attach to body of sling with a reinforced stitch straight across.

 Create sling: To make the sling operable, thread the body of the sling through both rings and the end through a single ring, as pictured.

Voila!

.:. Necessity, Invention .:. Daily Glass Mat

We’ve been struggling with random glasses all over the kitchen (and house as well), so, out of necessity comes invention:

A quick little whipped up place mat with a place for every person’s cup.

This way, we are limited to one cup each, and there’s no confusion about which cup belongs to each of us.  Sweet!

Food for the Soul

I’ve been preoccupied with food as of late.  More specifically, food quality.

All of the horror stories about melamine-enhanced, petroleum-based and exploding food combined with my increasing discomfort with manipulating food into foodstuffs, makes me glad we switched, albeit gradually, to mostly organic and local foods in the past several years. It has been one-by-one: first fruits and veggies (like the dirty dozen), then, as our research unearthed more tangible health problems caused by horrendous industrial farming practices, CAFOs, additives, synthetic dyes, and other such manipulations, we switched to organic dairy and local and organic meat.

There are hundreds of reasons to switch to local and organic food.

The hard part: affording it.

I’ve said it before, and it hasn’t changed: we are a one (woman’s) income family of 4. Our grocery bill has expanded with everyone elses, and our income hasn’t caught up. There are a few ways we cope:

Buying in bulk doesn’t necessarily mean buying large quantities. So, I bring my jars to the local food coop and only get what I need, which is much cheaper and dramatically reduces the packaging required.

We cook more. Cooking at home brings meaning to mealtimes, consciousness and thoughtfulness to our food and provides a much healthier diet to our mouths. It’s also tremendously cheaper to cook than eating out.

We pack lunches for work and travel. We avoid the toxic fare at convenience stores and money-sucking habits of eating lunch out during the day. We’ve even committed to brewing our fair-trade, organic coffee at home for a fraction of the cost of conventional coffee out.

We grow food.  After the upheaval of last year’s attempt to sell our home, we’ve dug in full-force and committed to being here, now.  That means more investment in growing food.  We only use organic seeds and starts and compost.  We are looking forward to the season’s harvest of raspberries, strawberries, black raspberries, sugar snap and shelling peas, lettuce, tomatoes, basil, Brussels sprouts, cucumbers, broccoli, dill, chives, chamomile, kale, spinach and more.  Now, that’s food security on a budget.

Menu plan.  I plan the week’s menu before the grocery trip so that I am only buying what I need and a couple of additional things.  The combination of menu planning and a reuseable grocery list (cardstock in a plastic sleeve and a dry-erase marker) makes meal planning and grocery list making easy, helping me avoid repeats, too much food rotting in the fridge–in other words, waste, waste, waste.

Stick to the perishables.  The farther down the shelf-stable isles you get, the less healthy the food is, anyway. 

Reduce meat consumption.  Being vegetarian is a worthy goal, but our family can’t do it for many reasons.  And  eating healthy meat is a priority.  So, we reduced our meat intake and increased our veggie and fruit intake.  Better health + lower bills=happy wallet.

Get over it.  We’ve finally come around to the belief that you pay one way or the other.  We choose to invest in quality, healthy food to avoid the illness and poor long-term health issues that can arise from an unhealthy diet.  Similar cash outlay, but we don’t have to go through feeling poorly and can support fair wages, local farmers and environmentally responsible food production in the meantime.

What do you do to increase the quality of your food without breaking your budget?

A Little Explanation

Almost a year ago, I gave up. 

I gave up on this blog, because it was too frustrating to format the something I wanted to share and see in others’ blogs.  I was desperately trying to post a tutorial on how to make a doll sling, since I was making one for each of my two girls last summer.  The pictures were okay, but their placement was not.  I tried.  And, I tried.  After fiddling with it for about 3 weeks, I decided it wasn’t worth my time.  I had wasted so much time on that one post, I became frustrated and dropped it.

I didn’t ask for help.  I didn’t research it.  I figured either I could figure it out or it wasn’t  worth it.

Whoa.

Asking for help is perhaps the one thing I cannot very much hate to do.  It gives me great satisfaction to provide help to friends, family, neighbors, my community and even strangers.  But asking for help is, for me, the ultimate in admitting defeat. I realize that this is not fair participation if in fact something I strive for is to participate in community.  Therefore, I’m working on it.  And, I’m back on here.  I missed you.

(Yawn)

…stretch, scratch head, rub eyes…

Hello, there! It’s been too too long. I’m looking forward to getting back to this little project here, and hope you’ll come back to see what’s new!

Ch- Ch- Ch- Changes

Sorry about my little impromptu break!  Things around here have been a bit more hectic around here with the advent of summer, the end of school and nicer weather!  But, I’ve been busy!  I’ve been doing a lot of sewing, but more about that later; there have been many changes around here that I think are worth mentioning.

I started writing this blog in January.  It was then that we started ramping up on getting our house in the city ready for selling and waiting to close on 7 acres of woods, just 10 miles out of town.  We made lists of projects for the house and did research about green and sustainable building.  We looked up techniques to collect maple sap for syrup, what would be the best wood stove for our uses, and how to manage a small bit of land responsibly, while keeping ourselves stocked with wood for the stove.  Oh!  The lists were plentiful! (Perhaps, if there were such a thing, making lists would be the best career for me…)

We closed on the land in February (after waiting a painstaking 4 months) and put the house up for sale at the end of March.  We were inundated with prospective buyers for the house, and we continued to do more research, knowing we would be in temporary housing in the city for at least 6-12 months while we developed the site and built our eco-dream.

Well, we didn’t get any offers for the house, we didn’t aggressively market it after the initial market-watchers passed us by, we stopped cleaning the house every night in case another would show up, BP’s oil started spewing all over (this is important later), estimates to prep the land started climbing with the mercury, the sun came out, neighborhood kids started coming out of their homes after a hard winter, and our kids (and their other mommy) got out the scooters, bikes, balls, water toys…and started falling in love with our current home all over again.  I started to make different lists and examine the old lists.  My whole family seemed to be happy, connected and peaceful right where we were, despite all the reasons we wanted to move out to the country.  But, after examining the list (and taking into consideration all the law-breakers who have chickens in the wide open in the city), it turns out that

most of what I want to accomplish in life are
skills and a way of life
that can be achieved right here in the heart of the city.

We aren’t going anywhere.  I conceded that we would give it another shot for a year at least.  I looked around this 140-year-old house.  There are a lot of things I can’t change about it, but it suits us, it’s in a great location and, as it turns out, the kids couldn’t be happier anywhere else. 

The problem?  We’ve outgrown our britches here in this money-sucking house.  We’ve lived larger than we could, and part of selling and moving was to achieve financial sustainability as well as ecological sustainability.  Just as we started to look realistically at staying and the possibility of still having to leave to save our financial selves, a few things started to come into the mix.  I was offered a part-time job that would feed my soul, require no scheduling changes for the household, and provide a little bit of reliable breathing room in the checkbook.  Our local doulas  available started dwindling and I was asked to step up and start taking births to help meet the need for doulas in our area–so I did.  My partner came home one day after listening to the radio about the BP oil spill and suggested we get rid of our perfectly comfortable and convenient minivan and get a hybrid (which would cost a lot less)–so we did. 

Now I’m making new lists. 

And reorienting my attitude about life in this city to achieve the eco-dream. 

And, I’m getting a little closer everyday.

Seasonal Tree: Summer Solstice

I mentioned briefly before that I dragged a recently hacked tree limb inside and mounted it to my ceiling for our newly christened “Seasonal Tree” to help us celebrate and honor the rhythm and the cycle of the year.  Well, for what feels like the first time, I was able to follow through with it–and on time!

Tonight we celebrated the summer solstice after the day was mostly over, sprinkling in a dash of recognition after dinner and before an evening walk.

I’m sorry I didn’t catch in a photograph of both of my daughters sitting at the table amongst cardboard and crayons, fleece and felting needles, felt and scissors, both creating (along with me) beautiful representations of summer, while we chatted about what summer looks like, smells like, sounds like and feels like. 

G colored a cardboard bird red, Em felted an acorn and finished up some bunnies, berries, a butterfly and a carrot and I fashioned felt flowers and a bright yellow sun.  We scavenged around the house for other items that spoke summer to us and came up with a beautiful rainbow-colored felted caterpillar, a mischievous fairy who was begging to swing on the branches and added the final touch after our neighborhood walk: some clippings of flowering lavender from our front yard.

All in all, though not perfect, it was a perfect evening. 

Welcome back to the world, our gentle Moon Goddess,
may your graceful journey each year be mirrored in our hearts.