Category Archives: Our Little Home

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope that everyone had a lovely Solstice this year. Ours was on the quiet side, with lots of snow.

We have a day full of “finishing up” on tap here today; putting the last minute touches on gifts, helping the little ones with their wrapping, some baking and a good bit of tidying and arranging to get things all ready for the morrow.

There are the Christmas Eve pajamas to be presented tonight. And a special phone call with Pop-pop to look forward to. My father has a tradition of giving a reading of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, late Christmas Eve. It was always a part of my own childhood and now it is a part of my children’s as well, as I smuggle the phone up to bed with them and snuggle us all in around it to hear. Galen is not yet old enough to be involved in this one. Iain eagerly rouses himself for the occasion. Elijah always has the best of intentions to wake up fully enough to hear the whole story, but I don’t think that he’s quite succeeded in it to date! Perhaps this will be the year.

I woke up this morning with an inexplicable craving for Snickerdoodles. I may well have to devote a bit of time to coming up with a gluten and egg free version. I’ll have to see where the day takes us.

It’s looking like there won’t be a baby under the tree for us this year. I’ll admit to a bit of sadness and disappointment over that. But I’m sure that all is as it should be, and that this little one is worth the wait.

I hope you all have a wonderful couple of days, full of lovingly tended traditions, fabulous food, sweet simple times, laughter, love and good cheer!

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celebrations and festivals, Kids, Our Little Home
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A Little Green

Showing up in various places around the house…


Though the proper light to take pictures of those places is decidedly lacking.

Inspired by the papoose pom-pom, I decided to teach the kids how to make little pom-pom ornaments for the tree (which is now thawed and inside).


Galen’s got a little out of hand.


We decorated the tree last night and I love the little bit so home-made decorations that show up here and there.

I suspect there will be quite a few more little pom-poms gracing the tree before the season is through.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Homeschooling, Kids, Our Little Home, Yarn Crafts
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Winter Wonderland

One that I have no intentions of walking in.

Our little corner of the woods is incredibly beautiful right now and equally treacherous. Ours is currently a world of glass.


I generally consider myself a person who is fairly adept at looking on the bright side of things, but something about loosing phone and electricity (and consequently our only water source) during the 40th week of my pregnancy pushed me very near to the edge. Maybe it was the fact that the birth tub had finally managed to heat up just hours (hours!) before the power went kaput. Maybe it was the aggravatingly incessant hum of our neighbor’s generator. Perhaps it was being cooped up with three active young children who couldn’t be permitted outside for fear of being taken out by falling branches. Perhaps it was sadness over the fate of my favorite dear old lilac. It could have been the unpredictably nerve rattling clang of chunks of ice hitting the metal roof. Maybe it was the anxiety and fear for Steve every time he left the house or for myself, knowing that while he was gone I had no way of reaching him, or anyone else for that matter.

Surely I’ve been through more trying ordeals then this and handled them with far more grace! Whatever the reasons, I suspect I’ve been less then pleasant to be around these last few days.

How have we been passing the time?

**reading lots of board books**

**taking pictures from windows and doors and porches**

**helping the boys with their Christmas presents for each other**

**fretting about my lack of clean pants, until Steve found me a pair of his sweatpants to wear…and then another pair when I spilled an entire cup of tea on the first**

**singing songs: carols, lullabies, nursery rhymes and just about anything else that came to mind**


**reading the better part of a book (Expecting Adam by Martha Beck, not bad so far)**

**cutting tissue paper snowflakes for the windows**

**discussing (debating?) baby names**

**speculating on how many emails I would have, once power returned and what percentage of those would be asking if we had had the baby yet (the phone, by the way, has not. stopped. ringing. since we got reconnected)**

**making white hot chocolate on the wood stove**

**rearranging the house to make a place for our tree (the very same one that is currently frozen to the ground outside)**


**many games of rummy 500 by lantern light**

**going to bed early**

**remembering how much trying to cook on a wood stove sucks (not a cook stove mind you, which is a very different thing, but a regular wood stove, where you are apt to feel as though your skin has melted to your pants before you can achieve so much as a sizzle in a frying pan)**

**watching the glory of a huge full moon lighting up a crystal forest**

**finishing up several knitting projects**

**and starting a new one**

**looking at the photos that Steve took while out surveying the damage to the property**

**finally getting the Christmas cards out, by means of two devoted postal workers, sorting mail by lantern light**


**making contingency plans**

**and waiting, waiting, waiting…**

By
Life, Our Little Home
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Feeling Festive

Alright, well today I’m actually feeling rather cranky. After two days of contractions that really seem to go no where, I’m both uncomfortable and quite tired. I’m feeling like I could still have a while left to go. Steve says I’m just holding out for the birth tub to be ready :) . Who knows? We’re hoping to get it filled tonight (not a small task considering it holds 220 gallons of water and we have no plumbing!), so I guess we’ll see. But, when I took these pictures and worked on these projects, I *was* feeling festive and I hope to recapture that feeling again soon!

True to my word, I have actually gotten a big head start on the holidays this year. Well, it’s a huge head start for me anyway! It’s very funny, but as an adult, I often think of my poor Aunt Sue, who suffered my teenage scorn for certain practices that seemed strange to me then, but appear perfectly natural or down-right brilliant now. Getting Christmas shopping done early (though unlike her, I don’t think I can ever hope to have it together enough to be mostly done in July!) currently ranks right up there with “everyone remove your muddy shoes before entering the house”, for sound and reasonable advice!

The tree has been procured…


We opted to harvest from our own land this year, in an area that needs to be thinned a bit anyway to allow for more sunlight and air circulation. It’s still outside for now, but will be coming in to be decorated soon.

Our Christmas cards have all been addressed and ready to go for a while now, though they do still appear to be sitting on the shelf above my desk…hmmm…

I started to take a picture of the stack of them, but was met with a look of contempt by Iain who said, “Really Mommy, do you have to take pictures of everything?!?” Ahem.

The Christmas Eve pajamas have all been sewn (all four sets!)…that’s right, no late night December 23rd sewing for me this year!

I don’t want to ruin the surprise for any little ones who might get a glimpse over my shoulder, but I thought that a small sneak peek couldn’t hurt!

And for the wee-one…


This one is so soft and squishy in cotton velour…I can’t wait to dress the little one in it. The whole time I was making it, I couldn’t get “Silent Night” out of my head and I sang it right along with the whir of my machine. Now we wait to see if he or she decides to come in time!

Depending on how the night goes, there may well be a few more holiday sneak peeks tomorrow!

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celebrations and festivals, Our Little Home, sewing
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Advent on a Shoestring

Or perhaps some leftover ribbon in this case…

In recent years I had started a tradition of buying a Waldorf-y advent calendar. You know the kind I mean…beautiful watercolor illustrations, gnomes peaking out from behind trees, windows that glow most wonderfully when placed in an actual window….magical and lovely, and oh, so expensive! Money being what it is these days, I couldn’t even begin to justify the expense on something that would last us but a month. I looked a bit at some of the less expensive options, but all I could find was a hideous collection of tacky junk, most of which was full of chocolate…not what I had in mind.

Time passed…


Late in the afternoon of November 30th, it donned on me that the very next day was the first day of advent. This year, of all years, felt like one where this season of waiting and expectation needed to be recognized. And so, I came up with a quick little advent calendar of my own, using bits of things that I had around. Twenty-four little red and white felt stockings mark the days. A small felt star, placed in the opening of the current day to mark our progress.


The stockings are very, very simply made, with just a bit of contrast stitching or pinked edges as decoration. If I had had more time, I would have hand embroidered the days, but since that wasn’t an option, I used a combination of gold and silver scrap-booking pens to mark them. It’s not as nice looking as it could be, but it does the job for now and perhaps I’ll get a chance to go back and embroider them before next year.

::some of the most festive exposed studs around!::


I decided that I couldn’t possibly commit myself to 24 days of little gifts and sometimes large activities like I did last year, but that I could do a few very simple things here and there. So some days the stocking holds a small slip of paper with a note on it. To date, every day has had a note, but I’m sure there will come a day when that is not possible. I’m keeping things very, very simple and it’s working out beautifully!

Some ideas that I’ve used so far, or plan to use in the future include:
*Reading Christmas stories- I suspect this one will appear a lot! Laying and cuddling and reading, I can do!
*cut paper snowflakes
*bake cookies
*make spiced cider
*go caroling
*make paper chains
*get a tree
*decorate the tree
*make decorations and decorate the small living tree in the boys’ room
*hang special ornaments (each child has their own “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament that gets hung on the wall, instead of the tree, for safety’s sake.)
*visit a light display
*bake shortbread
*Watch ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ (for the older boys only)
*Watching the sunrise on the Solstice
*Decorating a tree outside with edible ornaments for the animals
*making white hot-chocolate

Very, very simple and easy things that I would plan on doing anyway, all inexpensive or free. I’m actually finding that there are a lot of benefits to *me*, doing it this way! One small thing a day, instead of a whole over-whelming holiday to-do list and every day our house is just a bit more festive, at a very pleasant and easy to handle pace. Most lovely indeed.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Our Little Home, sewing
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Thankful

I’m feeling quiet lately and I’ve chosen to honor that feeling over the last week or so, hence my lack of posting here. I’m finding that the need to draw apart and go within is not easy to balance with living with and caring for 3 energetic young boys.
Our Thanksgiving was nice; the same sort of quiet and simple at home celebration that we usually do.


Some things that I am thankful for these days:

~Sleep. A rare and precious commodity around here over the years and one that I suspect will be rarer still before long. It’s all that I really want to do these days. Certainly not all that I am doing, but all that I want to do.

~Having the whole family finally up here, including Constance that cat, a.k.a. spissers.

~Breath. Being able to bring it in with relative ease. Let me never forget the blessing and miracle of that simple act alone.

~A toddler who asks to be cuddled

~A great big boy, now less then a head shorter then his Mama

~A middle-ish boy, all full of song

~The return of winter birds to our feeders

~Warm fires to sit by

~Creativity and will enough to get us through tough times

~My Grandmother’s Scottish Shortbread, with my own fingers doing the kneading and fluting the edges, just as her’s did for so many years.

~Watching a snow shower. After all the years of my life, I am still mesmerized, every single time. I hope there will be snow the day our baby is born. This will be my third winter baby, but it was never actively snowing when any of them were born. It did, however, snow three days after the birth of my spring baby!

~The bitter-sweetness of these last few weeks…the aches and pains, kicks and squirms, hope and fear, and over-whelming sense of anticipation. I’m glad that I’ve managed to keep my discomfort to a minimum and that it’s only now that it’s really starting to slow me down. I’m grateful to know that this may well be my last chance at this. That I have this chance at all and that I know to take my time and savor it, not wish it away for convenience sake. I wish I could find a way to bottle it, to hold on to it in someway, so that I can come back in years to come and visit for a while. At the same time, I’m thankful to be able to welcome this baby in peace and joy.

By
Life, Our Little Home
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Birthday Tables

I’m sorry about the quality of the pictures in this post. I was going back over several years to gather examples and not all of the pictures are the greatest.

The Birthday Table has been an evolving tradition in our house, one that we’ve all grown to love. It is, quite simply, a little tableau that I set up especially for the birthday child. It isn’t always a “table” per se, sometimes it’s a shelf or a bench or whatever else makes sense at the time.

Ideally, I set it up the evening before, after all of the little ones are tucked into bed. That way the birthday child gets the joy of discovering and exploring it upon waking. But there have been years where that wasn’t a possibility. When we were in the Little House, there simply wasn’t enough space to devote to an all day display. During those times, I would send everyone outside so that I could be alone to set it up, just before the cake and whatever other festivities we had planned.

Some aspects remain the same from year to year and from child to child. Others change. Each table, for each birthday is a unique creation. It’s such a simple thing, that takes very little effort on my part, but it really lends a magical air to the day.


I frequently use a rainbow cotton play-scarf as the base. Then from there I add things that are appropriate for the season and the child, postcards and pictures, the candles that are to go on the cake, other candles for atmosphere, little wooden animals, and so on. All of the presents get worked into the display somehow. The birthday crown is placed somewhere where they can easily grab it without disturbing anything else. Then here and there I will layer in little bits of greenery, pretty rocks or marbles and anything else that might strike my fancy.

With Iain’s birthday being right after Christmas, I’ll often add in some little ornaments. A couple of years when we had a particularly beautiful advent calendar, I used it at the background for the display. Elijah’s birthday falls right after Mother’s Day and my Mother’s Day flowers are often incorporated into his. Galen’s being a week removed from Valentine’s Day is likely to feature hearts and lots of red.

If the Papa has to work on the child’s birthday he will leave a special note on the table to be read in the morning. Last year, when Iain was really mastering his basic math skills, and having a lot of fun in the process, I made him up a special “math sheet” where all of the answers came out to his age!

Ever since the dragons came to live with us, each child’s own dragon, graces his table and guards over the entire day.


Some years I’ve included a special poem and picture for the child. Iain’s Wonder Book (you can read more about his Wonder Book here), usually appears somewhere on his table. Elijah will have his own Wonder Book this year and the same will be true for him. A scrapbook or a photo album of the child’s first year, or really any year, makes a lovely addition and a trip for everyone down memory lane is a delightful way to celebrate another year! I have plans to make a book out of our Rainbow Bridge story for each child, telling the story with a picture for each addition and adding to it every year (similar to what I did with this post). Once these are done, I’ll include them on the table as well.

Birthday Table Ideas for a Child with a Winter Birthday:

  • crystals, especially ones that resemble icicles
  • pretty rocks or stones
  • evergreens
  • hibernating animals (perhaps tucked into half a coconut shell or curled up in a play silk)
  • sun symbols
  • pine cones
  • candles
  • images or wooden figures of snow birds
  • blue, silver and white play silks
  • paper or crocheted snowflakes
  • small ornaments
  • drawings of winter scenes
  • bits of wool “snow”
  • anything with silver or gold glitter
  • snowflake fairies

Birthday Table Ideas for a Child with a Spring Birthday:

  • blown eggs
  • pictures of spring scenes
  • images of robins and other spring birds
  • pastel colored marbles
  • blown and painted eggs
  • fresh ferns
  • bouquets of whatever bulbs might be in bloom
  • bunnies, ducks, chicks
  • play silks in greens and pastels
  • anything with butterflies, dragonflies and ladybugs
  • rainbows
  • spring bulb flower fairies

I personally only have experience with winter and spring babies. It doesn’t seem as though that is likely to change any time soon, but I’ll happily share some of my ideas for the other seasons as well, whether I ever have a chance to use them or not!

Birthday Table Ideas for a Child with a Summer Birthday:

  • sea shells
  • sea glass
  • pretty colorful pebbles and marbles
  • brightly colored silk scarves
  • flowers fresh from the garden
  • a bird’s nest
  • feathers
  • drawings of summer scenes
  • flower fairies
  • anything with butterflies or dragonflies
  • rainbows
  • sun symbols
  • a pot or tray of grass
  • potted plants that are in bloom and can come in from the garden for the day


Birthday Table Ideas for a Child with an Autumn Birthday:

  • leaves! Lots of beautifully colored leaves
  • wooden squirrels, foxes, bears
  • squashes and gourds in interesting shapes and sizes
  • jack ‘o lanterns
  • god’s eyes
  • acorns and pine cones
  • vines with dried berries
  • dried grasses
  • strings of dried peppers- if appropriate for your area
  • rocks or pebbles
  • bouquet of autumn flowers (mums, asters)
  • root children figures
  • silks in all shades of red, yellow, orange and brown
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celebrations and festivals, Homeschooling, Kids, Our Little Home
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Color

The playroom color progression:

::All primed and ready to go, with a couple of sample splotches painted!::


::The following two pictures are both of the first color, it appeared very different in different light. On the right hand side of the first picture, you can also see the one small wall of the dining area that we finished. For that wall we used an AFM Safecoat paint in the color Ivory Yellow. Eventually the rest of the first floor will be the same color.::

These two pictures show the walls with two coats of AFM Safecoat paint. We have some good friends who recently finished up building their home and my parents have been working on remodeling theirs. Both of them had extra paint that they didn’t need and they passed it along to us. So, I’ve been mixing our own color combination, based on what we were given. This was a combination of a dark, deep orange and and untinted paint. I was actually looking to achieve a lighter color, but I was more then happy to take what we could get.


::The next layer of color::

After Steve did the main paint color, I came in to do a decorative finish over top. I used a combination of Bio-Shield‘s Wall Glaze and Earth Pigments. I had bought these many years ago to finish the dining room in our old house, but got sick shortly thereafter and never used them. Having access to all of these “free” supplies is what allowed us to continue with this project.

I was trying for a lazure effect similar to what is found in a Waldorf school. I applied the pigment with a sea sponge in large circles and then rubbed and smeared and blended it with a rag.


::The second layer of earth pigments::

The first picture here is the most accurate for color. The second two are lit with artificial light and not accurate representations of the final color. But they do give you a better idea of the painting technique.


It is darker then I would otherwise have done (had I been buying paints instead of using what we had on hand), but it’s also very warm. It took a little while to get used to, at least for Steve and I. I likened it to being inside a pumpkin! The kids loved it right from the start. Now we are all quite content with the space.

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building, crafts, Our Little Home, The Healing Home
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A Disappointing Project

I’m thinking that all of the Healing Home posts must be terribly boring to the people who are only here to see craft type things or homeschooling related posts. I want to apologize for that. But I do feel that it is so important that this information get out there. I’m afraid you are going to have to bear with me for a while! But I promise to continue to try to pep things up with regular posts in-between. And today we have a crafty post! Not exactly a happy crafting post, but a crafting post none-the-less!


This is an old project, perhaps from sometime in February? As some of you may remember, my darling husband brought home a beautiful, mission style, cherry wood futon as a Christmas surprise last year. Lovely, lovely thing that! Sometime early in the new year, I decided it was time to make some pillows for it.

I found the fabric came from the old house. I had originally intended to recover part of our old sofa with it, but the mold kind of made that pointless, so it had just been sitting around for years. I opted to try out some bamboo stuffed pillow forms.

Note to self: take pictures of projects, just as soon as they are finished!

The project itself went swimmingly. Everything turned out as I had planned and I had no complaints. Then Galen got the stomach flu…

Let me just say, that I now understand why they’ve started using bamboo for diapers and towels. The amount of liquid that stuff can hold is nothing short of astounding. After several washings and what felt like weeks of drying, I found that my formerly fluffy, now quite clumpy, pillows had shrunk (one substantially more then the other, for reasons I still can’t comprehend). And my pleasantly plump pillows were now saggy and baggy and blah.


Incident number 2: involved some kind of accident of another sort, that I can’t quite remember now. Whatever it was, it necessitated the cases being washed again. You would think that after being washed several times in hot water, this would not be an issue, but you would be wrong. Because for whatever reason, this is the time that the fabric decided to bleed.


And so it came to be that my saggy, baggy, lumpy, and stained pillows came to grace our futon.

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Our Little Home, sewing
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Reclaimed Slate Floor: Part III

The final installment of our slate floor series.

Just as a quick review, the layers to the floor are as follows:

And now the details!

The Homasote was both glued and screwed down. In looking for an appropriate adhesive, I spoke at length with the gentleman from the natural building supply company we were working with. He highly recommended a product called Solvent Free Titebond Multi-Purpose Flooring Adhesive. He explained that it works very much like a traditional adhesive, is comparable to AFM’s adhesive, as far as chemical exposure goes, but at half the price. We went with it and have no complaints. I was out of the area when it was being applied and stayed away for a while afterward, but any fumes that it did create seemed to clear quickly and it did not cause any on-going health problems for us. We have a can leftover and do plan on using it again in the future.

For both the mortar bed and the grout, we went with the standard options available at our local hardware store. We did check and try to get the cement with the least additives, etc. We felt like the traditional products would be fairly safe, once cured, especially it would be mostly covered by tile and then well sealed.

::The floor with the “haze” on it from applying the grout.::

After some of the comments I received on previous posts, I want to clarify that we did not install this floor on our own. Neither Steve nor I had any experience with tiling and we felt it best to have some professional help. B the Builder was kind enough to oblige, despite his general aversion to tiling! For my part, I tracked down the slates, researched the materials and designed all of the boarders. There is a pattern around the edge of the room and a slightly more intricate pattern around the hearth. For the center of the room I just asked that he lay the tiles in a random manner. Steve stepped in towards the end, working to scrub the haze and then taking over and doing all of the sealing.

Now that we’ve seen the process first-hand, we both agree that we’d feel comfortable attempting future tiling projects ourselves.

::the corner around the hearth::

These pictures were taken shortly after it was sealed. The finish did become less glossy over time and more like the matte finish that you would tend to expect of a slate floor. Of course, it’s never again been as clean as it was in these pictures either!

::general view of the pattern::

One note about the grout sealer; when Steve first applied it, it left a film all around the edges of the tiles that drove me crazy. I’m happy to say that with time that did clear and we are both quite pleased with the results.

::far corner of the room::
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building, Our Little Home, The Healing Home
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