I think I need a 12-step program....

... or maybe I'm just egg-citedly egg-centric?

I love coloring eggs. And can get a little out of control especially when there are wee ones about to egg-courage me.


Having a couple of friends over was the perfect egg-cuse to get the dye out of the closet and get the mixin' going'!




Later that day while visiting the Eisley's and dipping even more eggs, Ben got a chance to play easter bunny for the younger boys. See Holly White-Wolfe's article: Egg dying - fun family tradition for Spring.




Even little Cleo has to get in a dip or two while working on her afternoon snack.











But seriously folks...............

Here we have the hollow blown eggs (the Easter Bunny will fill these with confetti or maybe some chocolate covered rasins before sneaking them out to the yard.)

Next are the raw eggs. (Yes, I even dye the raw ones.... why not? The dye is already made.) And finally the hard boiled ones. (Two dozen of these babies. Oh, my kids *love* hard boiled eggs. It is thier favorite breakfast.)
A total of approximately 3 dozen eggs.

I bought the color last year after Easter at 50% off ($.49 a package!) and it has been the best entertainment for the last two days. And besides, the eggs become artwork in their own right..... I mean, really, look at the color and texture.... and then you can eat it!
Oh, one last egg.

Food

Phelan and I made some whole wheat biscuits and used cookie cutters to make them in bunny and duckie shapes. I've never made whole wheat biscuits before and these didn't rise so well. They were still tasty... Cleo was even calling them 'cookies'.
I wish I had gotten a pic of the whole dinner..... venison steaks with gravy and green beans with mushrooms. *yum!*


And a very proud mommy moment for me.... two little kids thrilled to death and dancing over a cucumber snack. Either that or they were too hungry to care.

I read an article somewhere that said the vegetable that kids eat the most and are most familiar with is a french fry.

Really?!

Not my kids... not the other kids that I know. Just today for snack we had hummus with carrots, snow peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese. Most the kids I know eat pretty similarly. I have to wonder who these kids are that the article was talking about, or if, living in Sonoma county, we are spoiled, granola munching hippies? (I'm totally ok with that. Just concerned about these other veggie-free kids.)

Baby Gorilla Love

A couple of months ago I started asking Phelan what he wanted to do for his birthday. Last year, his 3rd birthday, he really 'got it' for the first time and he decided he wanted a Monkey Party, so we rented a jumpy and made a banana bread cake. And everyone had a bouncing grand time!

This year both kids (well, the whole household really) had been sick for the couple of months prior to his birthday and as it got closer, Phelan said he wanted to go to the zoo. He had never been to the zoo, I'm not sure he really knew what it was. But it was enough that we decided that a family trip to the SF Zoo would be a great way to celebrate his 4th birthday.

So Daddy and Sissy took the day off work and we headed out. It ended up being the best trip ever! The kids were great. The homemade picnic (can you call it a tailgate in a minivan?) was delightful and we had the most amazing experience with the baby gorilla, Hasani.

The kids were looking through the plexi glass window and Hasani came up and streeetched his little fingers up to barely grip onto the teeny windowsill.

He pulled his head up to peep through the window at the kids. He fell a couple of times but kept coming back to the kids ignoring all the adults gathered around.

The final time he dropped down to the ground, he looked over his shoulder and and waved a 'follow me' gesture to Phelan and Cleo.

Truely a magical moment in my life.

Show me your Messy House

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have these friends who seem capable of swinging work, kids, home cooked meals, personal interests, and keep immaculate homes.

I am not one of them!!

In fact one of the reasons I started blogging more was to see if I can take snippets of my daily life and make them look like more than what they are. It's my personal cheer leading section proving that I do not endlessly spin my wheels. So here I post about all the cool stuff I'm doing and in the background (or off camera) there is this maelstrom of distruction going on that looks like this.........

I want it to look like this all the time....

But, often things get in the way.

Sometimes woundrously fun things, sometimes it's just sick kid after sick kid.

Here is little miss Cleo doing the bowdrill thing out in a rare moment of sunshine after being sick for over two months.

She even looks like she knows what she is doing!

As much as I want a tidy house, I much rather have happy, healthy kids who I get to spend time with doing cool things with. As the sun has been peeking out this spring, there have been a few days of "screw the laundry, dishes, dinnner vacuuming we are going OUTSIDE!"

And I'm finding now, as the kids are staying healthy *knock on wood* the tidyness is slowly returning to Gormley Keep and the kids and I are still getting to do our cool stuff.

And they are amazing as ever.

Happy Birthday Phelan

Happy fourth Birthday to my beautiful crazy little boy!!

You have grown so strong and so tall..... it seems like yesterday when.....

........you were the tiny bundle in my arms.

I love you.

2nd try......

... Still no coal.

But Phelan enjoyed giving the bowdrill a spin.

I need to aquire some new materials and work on my set. New fireboard for sure and maybe a couple spindles.... and I think Phelan needs a set of his own sized for him. Mine was a bit much to handle for him.

I was successfull at working on those bowdrill muscles! I haven't used those in quite a while and boy! am I out of shape!! I was shaking afterwards! I'll just keep practicing with my current set, uilding those muscles till I get a sweet set built.

Avatar thingy.....

.... couldn't resist.
Besides.... I think I look pretty good in blue. ;)

AVATARIZE YOURSELF

Valentines and Bow Drill

My husband has mentioned before that I don't make things for him...... and he's right. So for this Valentines I made him this sweet little heart out of an old thrift store wool sweater and filled with wool and a little lavender.

The kids love it.
The softness, the scent, the sparkle.... Hubby seems to like it too.





So.... do you know what a bowdrill is?

It's a primitive method of creating fire by friction.... and in my humble opinion, a very difficult skill to learn. I had actually gotten to the point I could more or less fairly consistently get a coal.

That was four years ago.

My set has been lost in the shuffle of three moves, three cities and two babies over the course of three years.

Inspired by the recent sunny weather and a baby that can now be out side without eating everything in sight (and the recent resurfacing of my bowdrill set from the depths of some random box that I haven't seen for many, many moons) the kids and I went outside for a dose of Vitamin D and a little primitive behavior.


(It wasn't nearly as cold as this pic of Phelan makes it look. I bundled them up as I thought it was cold outside, but we were happily peeling layers in just a few short minutes.)



I would love to report that this lovely little tinder bundle was put to use cradling the little baby coal and then burst into flame as we breathed life into it.

But it wasn't.

I did not get a coal this time. Its time for a new socket and notch on my board and I didn't have a knife out with me.

But there are many more sunny days coming...... :)

In da Woods with da Kids

I have been feeling the NEED for some serious forest time.

I want to lay down in the loamy earth, cover myself with leaves and pine needles and watch the trees dance in the breeze. I want the smell of green moss covered branches to wash over me and rinse the concrete from my soul. I want my bare toes in the muddy and cold, have branches tangled in my hair and have the butt of my pants brown from resting upon the earth.

And Breathe.........

Pine sap upon my fingers... charcoal smidged upon my nose... bits of forest tucked everywhere within my clothes.

and breathe.......

Soon.

But for now, finding a few little forested areas near my home and taking the kids out for a little afternoon picnic here and there can be a band aide on a severed limb.

And they can start to learn about an love the forest and its animals and creeks.

.... and even some of the less known creatures that lurk there.......Like Dragons.......
... and other such spirits. (I think this one had a little help from a more human hand with some mushroom top eyes. He gave Phelan a bit of a scare till I explained to him that this beautiful creature is one of the spirits of the forest who stand watch over it and protect it from those who might wish to do harm.)

The Trees are Watching!! Even though they may seem asleep...................

I need to lie here.

I need to immerse myself.

I need nothing but green

for a little while.

I need to nourish my soul

to stoke it gently to life.

I need to lie on this ancient log

to soak up sky latticed leaves.

I need to wander my eye up

up up a trunk till I can't see.

I need to be here by the creek

to give my boy to the ferns.

I need to breathe rich air

to receive my taste of soil.

Wilderness is no longer a luxury:

Just as my child needs milk from my breast,

this I need from my Mother.

(No I Can't Go Back Yet, by Nirav Sumati 2001)

The Perfect Coloring Book

Phelan and Cleo love to color, but when I'm trying to make dinner, clean or accomplish some other household task, it can be a bit disruptive to have to cut butcher paper, find tape, tape paper down, get Cleo seated..... So I came up with the idea to get the kids artists sketch books.



I found these great spirial bound ones rather cheap (about $4). The pages are heavy and they don't rumple up while coloring and I can just put them on the floor or a table and they are good to go!




I covered the books with construction paper and let the kids decorate them as they choose. Now they both can tell who's book is who's, but they are very kind about sharing with each other.
I love that I'll be able to save their art in these books forever (without a lot of the jumble-ly mess that odd sized butcher paper art makes!)

Star Colors

Got old broken crayons??
Turn them into something new and exciting!!!




I found these foil star shaped muffin cups hiding in my cupboard... and I love stars!!

I kept it simple and melted them in the toaster oven.

I don't know if it was harder for me or the kids to wait for them to cool, so we took advantage of the cold day and put them in the windowsill with the window open.

Little hands love to unwrap!

Are they not pretty?!

........And the test drive.

I LOVE how these turned out! I separated the warm colors and the cool colors so the colors would not get too muddy. The cool one has a lot of black in it... well, it didn't seem like a lot of black at the time, but now when we color with it, there is a lot of black. Next time I'm going to exclude the black.

The kids love them, and as we have a few trip coming up this summer, I thought they would be great for traveling. No little crayons to roll under the car seats and get lost! :)

THE Blanket

I learned to knit at Summerfield Waldorf School in their early education program, Roots and Shoots. Our first project was a simple ball made from a knitted rectangle.
After I completed mu approx 6 inch ball, I decided that I was proficient enough to knit a whole blanket! I picked out some lovely wool yarn and got new knitting needles. The yarn said to use a size 7.... now I didn't know anything about knitting, a size 7 needle is very small and creates a lovely tight knit. It would have been a lovely sweater..... a little frustrating for a blanket... especially as it was my second project EVER!

But, typical of my stubborn self, I persevered.... each square is 45 stitches (where there isn't an unfixed error in it) by 45 (or is it 90? I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to count these things) rows. Then I crocheted around the edges of each squares then crocheted them together. Don't ask me what kind of stitch, because I haven't crochet since I was probably 10 and just put it together without any real rhyme or reason.

I would love to say after 2 1/2 years, many stops and starts and frantic searches for more yarn, that this project is complete. But its not, so I can't. I still need to add eight more squares to finish it off then... I haven't decided yet, but I'm thinking of adding a larger crocheted border so it can actually be a functional blanket for Phelan.
Over the years Phelan has loved watching me work on his blanket and would occasionally 'steal' a square to sleep with. When I finished putting these squares together, he was so thrilled! He has been sleeping with it ever since. I'm on yet another break from it as I work on some other projects, but he is happy to have it as it is for now.

Divinity

"We've got to humble ourselves in the eyes of the Goddess

We've got to get down low and

Humble ourselves in the eyes of the Goddess

We've got to know what She Knows so we

can lift eachother up

higher and higher"

OSG Blue Moon 2009