More snow and another day at home for everyone.
I’ve decided that a picture together every year is a nice Valentine’s day tradition.
Galen was hilarious. He came down dressed in a complete suit and bow tie and started helping with dinner. As he worked he began to shed one thing after another until he was grating potatoes wearing nothing but shorts.
Should we even talk about these ones?
No, I don’t think we should.
Steve got me a swift and yarn winder for Christmas. It’s possible that I may not have been able to wait until breakfast was cleared away to play with my new toy. I was a good girl and shared, though maybe not quite happily. Everyone had a turn. It’s also possible that I went a bit overboard and balled just about every scrap of yarn in the house.
Waiting for the phone to ring for the annual reading of T’was the Night Before Christmas with Pop-pop. The waiting is so hard.
But then…
Little squishy wax people are a specialty of Màiri and Galen’s.
I found a hand-carved crochet hook and some knitting needles in my stocking. Only in this house!
Iain and Elijah made the little ones some cool bath toys. (instructions here)
I had five kids up at 3:30 in the morning on Christmas day (5!), though I’m pretty sure I was the only one being kept up by the littlest. Thankfully I was able to convince them to go back to sleep for another couple hours at least.
I’m still bored with the usual red and green Christmas pajamas. I went with robin’s egg blue instead. The boys were made from the same old (now out of print I believe) Kwik Sew long john pattern that I’ve made at least 20 times now. It required quite a bit of altering for Iain who outgrew that pattern long ago. Elijah’s in the largest size now. Finding sewing patterns for pre-teen/teenage boys is not easy. Màiri’s leggings were made by tracing another pair to use as the pattern. Her nightie is Kwik Sew 3105, view A, modified for length and without the bottom edge ruffle. The bonnet is the Angry Chicken one, only with no brim and a chin strap and button instead of ribbon tie. The stretch fabric made it lay a little funny in the front.
Back in November the Wee Girl asked if I has started making the Christmas pajamas yet. When I replied that I had picked out the fabric, but hadn’t started sewing yet, she told me that I better get to it because Christmas was actually really quite soon. Then she proceeded to inform me that she required a new nightgown, since she had grown out of her one from last year, and a new sleep cap and something for her legs “like the boys get”. Yup, that’s my low maintenance girl.
Iain and Elijah seem to have appointed themselves as heads of the holiday cheer committee. Despite the fact that they are well past the doll play stage, all of the dolls find their way back out and get dressed up for the occasion and special decorations show up for all of the toy people. All to make things festive for the little ones or maybe to pretend, just for a day or two that they are little ones again? It’s very sweet.
Over the years I’ve really grown to appreciate the concept of celebrating the season of a festival. A little bit here, a little bit there, over the course of maybe a week is so much more pleasant and easier to organize and orchestrate then trying to fit everything into a single, potentially stressful, day. For a school it makes sense to have a big festive day, but slow and easy makes more sense for a family. And so our Solstice celebration wasn’t just one big celebration, but several days of mini-celebrations.
First we spent an afternoon making edible ornaments for the birds and other woodland creatures. We started this tradition when Iain was a babe and everyone finds much pleasure in it. In addition to the usual garlands and such, this year we made our own suet feeder to see if we could attract some woodpeckers closer to the house. We drilled wide holes in a piece of firewood, filled them with out own mix of suet, peanut butter and seed, stringing it up with a bit of chain.
The following day we baked our sun bread. I take a regular bread recipe (grain less for us these days) and replace the water with strong chamomile tea. Then we knead in chamomile flowers and orange zest. The children shape it into a sun. Sometimes I’ll brush the top with a bit of orange juice. We sprinkle sunflower seeds on top, of course, and serve it with ghee and honey.
Last night we gathered with out neighbors to sing of the returning of the sun and walk the spiral. As we sing, each person slowly walks to the center of the spiral, where their candle is lit, then they wind their way back out, placing their candle somewhere along the path as the go.
The last several days the weather has been so strange! Spring-like with mud and wind and mist everywhere. There is nothing but a carrot floating in a slushy puddle where an eight foot snowman stood last week. Crazy. The kids were so confident in their white Christmas, but there is nothing but dreary grey. Luckily we have lots of lights and candles about to brighten and cheer us.
Scenes from the first day of Advent. They couldn’t stop at just one wreath.
Our advent stocking activities for the year, in no particular order (more about this tradition can be found here):
make hot cocoa
make an advent wreath
get a tree
decorate tree
read holiday books
listen to holiday music
holiday party at the dance studio
cut paper snowflakes
bake cookies
The Nutcracker
get out Christmas dishes
watch ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas’
celebrate the Solstice
make candy
Christmas craft- still to be decided
decorate outside with edible ornaments for the birds
watch ‘White Christmas’
watch ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’
caroling
visit the light display
play dreidel
“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” read by Pop-pop
There are 3 movies planned this year, more then usual and with more people included in the watching. And more media in general. I think I’m ok with that. I feel like I need to take things slow and go very easy this year, where I can, because there is a great deal that is beyond my control. I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Sparkle Stories. When I saw that they were offering an advent story series with a new story each day, I thought it would be a lovely treat. Would it be better and more “Waldorf” if I researched stories for each day to tell myself or better yet made them up? Definitely more Waldorf and possibly better in some ways, depending on how you define better. But I’m quite content to have this sweet family time together to listen to wholesome, heartwarming stories while we all knit or sew or just cuddle together. At the moment I think it’s all the better that I don’t have to struggle and stress to make this time happen. That feels like a true gift to us all.
There are a great many more decorating and craft ideas on my Winter pintrest board.
Let me start by saying that this post was completely unplanned. If I had planned on writing it, I would have done it a couple of weeks ago to help people prepare. Instead what happened was that I was deep in my own preparations, when I thought back to previous years and the fact that I occasionally get this question from readers, and I thought huh, maybe I should just write a post. So if this is coming too late to be of much help to you this year, maybe it will be of help next year.*
All photos from years gone by.
Cooking such a large meal from scratch is a major undertaking, but it needn’t be stressful. The key to success, as with so many other things in life, is careful planning.
Plan on doing your shopping the week before Thanksgiving.
You’ll save yourself the stress of crowded stores and have everything you need on hand well in advance making it easier to do a little bit at a time.
Make a detailed menu
Before you shop you need to know what to buy. Before you can know what to buy, you need to know what you are making! Write out a full menu. Don’t forget sauces and drinks.
Determine amounts
There are calculators all over the internet to help you determine how big a turkey you need and so forth.
Plan for leftovers
You don’t want to spend all of this time making a single meal that’s going to be gone in one sitting. After all that time in the kitchen, I know that I’m all for taking a day or two off. In our family, the day after Thanksgiving, after the guests have left, is traditionally devoted to laying low; playing board games, sledding with leftover pie for breakfast!
Once you have your menu and amounts determined, it’s time to make your list. Look at the recipe for each thing on your menu, one at a time, and make sure you have every ingredient you will need.
Consider bake ware and other supplies
Do you have a large enough pan to roast the size turkey you are trying to cook? Do you own two pie pans, but plan on making four pies? Do certain recipes require twine or cheesecloth? Make plans to buy or borrow whatever you need.
Clean out your refrigerator
I can’t stress this one enough. Probably best done before your big shopping trip. Eat up all of the leftovers. If you have multiples of the same item, try to condense containers. Organize everything to make the most of your space. Fair warning: you will be re-organizing many times over the next several days to make everything fit. Save some time and energy by starting off with a fair bit of open space.
Make a schedule
There are a lot of considerations here. Some things can be made in advance, some can’t. Only so much can fit in a single oven or refrigerator at once and different dishes need to cook at different temperatures. It’s something of a balancing act to be sure. Come up with a basic plan that seems to work. Write it down. Don’t even think about trying to keep it all in your head. More on this below.
Make your base ingredients in advance.
What I mean by “base ingredient” is any ingredient that you need to make something else. So if you make your own ghee, cheese, pumpkin puree, bread, broth, etc, make a nice big batch in advance so that when you go to make say, stuffing, it’s not actually making 4 or 5 things, it’s just making stuffing.
Consider your assets
Does your oven have a warming tray? Do you have a double oven? (if so, lucky you!) Does your mother-in-law live right next store, making her kitchen possibly available to you as well? Are there certain dishes you can prepare in the crockpot, freeing up oven space?
Start cooking well in advance
No one wants to spend all day Thanksgiving in the kitchen while everyone else visits and enjoys themselves. Plan on having as much ready as possible so that you can do the bare minimum on the actual day of.
Think of easy ways to pad out the meal
If you have a lot of guests coming and you put up a lot of apple sauce this year, put a few jars out on the table. There is no extra work for you and everyone has another dish to sample.
Enlist help
Can you do it all yourself? Yeah, actually, you can. There have been years that I’ve done it out of necessity. But it’s always nicer to have an extra set of hands around and someone to chat with while you work.
Wear an apron
Just trust me on this one.
To put it all together in an example, this is the menu and schedule for our family this year.
Menu
Bacon Wrapped Turkey
Stuffing
Gravy
Steak
Twice Baked Potatoes
Cranberry Sauce
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Squash
Sparkling Cider
Sparkling Grape Juice
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie
And our schedule:
Friday
clean out the refrigerator
shopping
Monday
cook pumpkin (the last one from our garden)
make pumpkin puree- there are some nice instructions here.
make cranberry sauce
Tuesday
start chicken stock- to have on hand for gravy and stuffing later in the week
thaw bread
harvest (out of the snow!) and prepare brussel sprouts- I don’t cook them at this point, just chop and season them and store them in a baking pan in the fridge, all ready to slide into the oven Thursday morning.
make ghee
Wednesday
thaw steak- for the non-turkey lovers- I usually do a roast in the crockpot, but steak was requested this year making day of oven timing extra tricky, we’ll see how it goes!
brine turkey- I use this brine- I have a large stockpot that fits the size turkey we usually get. I tie and tape the lid on tightly and store it on the porch overnight, as it’s always cold enough here at this time of year.
make stuffing- again just preparing, not cooking
first bake the twice bakeds- this is Steve’s specialty, he’s even mastered a dairy free version for us. On this day the potatoes get baked, the filling gets made and they are stuffed, all ready to be heated through on Thanksgiving.
And Iain, who acted as secretary when we sat down to make a schedule as a family wrote:
“pie, pie, pie, pie, pie and more pie”
The kids and I usually make and decorate all of our pies on Wednesday night.
Thursday
Set out cider to chill first thing- our cider also tends to get chilled on the porch, unless there happens to be room in the fridge.
Prepare the turkey for roasting. I use this recipe.
Cook turkey and steak, heat up everything else.
Put in the squash to cook. If there is room in the refrigerator I’ll cut it and de-seed it the night before. If not it’s not a big deal to do it the day of.
Make gravy right before dinner is served.
And that’s it. As you can see there is no one day that contains an over-whelming amount of work, instead a little bit gets done and put away each day.
A very happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
*We had a surprise snowstorm, causing Steve to work from home and me to not have computer access, so now it’s really, really late!
A portrait of my children, once a week, every week.
Iain and Elijah: At work putting up wood for next year
Galen and Màiri Rose: At work on lanterns for Martinmas
the little one: a tiny little something to cover the tiny little feet that were sticking out my side for the first half of the week and have now switched to nudging me in the ribs. Galen and Màiri keep trying to tickle the Little One’s feet. This does not tend to work out too well for terribly ticklish me!
Halloween was wet, very wet. But we managed to have a good time anyway. Not the best conditions for pictures, as you will soon see!
Most of the costumes this year came from the dress ups box, with bits and pieces borrowed from siblings or me or Steve.
Any guess as to who he’s supposed to be? Think about movies from the 80′s. Anyone?
answer: Micheal J. Fox a.k.a. Marty McFly from Back to the Future. My main contribution to this costume was doing his hair, which you can’t really see much of in these pictures. You need 80′s girl hair? I’m there. 80′s boy hair? Well, that was a new one for me.
Elijah as Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen from Back to the Future III (you know, the one with the horses), but I’m sure you all got that one right away….uh-huh.
My kids have very little knowledge of current popular culture, but they are surprisingly (alarmingly?) conversant in ’70s and ’80s pop culture.
Really I think the beard is the only thing out of the ordinary for him. Everything else is pretty much every day wear.
Oh, and the snarl, that was part of the costume too.
I really don’t like the toy gun. I don’t like it being in the house, I don’t like seeing him with it, everything about it just bothers me. I realize this is all somewhat irrational, but it’s true all the same.
Our little fox. He’s so stinkin’ cute! I made him a set of long-johns, with lots of room to grow. I really like useful Halloween costumes. Then all of the accessories were just kind of improvised.
All of the fiercest pirates cuddle their hooks. It’s a fact. You’ll just have to trust me on this one. We told her to look fierce for a picture and she smiled benignly. No, no, like Galen ate all of your caramel…
Yup, there it is. But it didn’t last long 
Our first Halloween with no bonfire! But when the rain let up a bit at the end of the night, there was some excitement involving torches made from mullein stalks dipped in tallow.
The little one…
Completely unrelated to Halloween. Maybe I should have let the kids paint a Jack ‘O Lantern face on my tummy?
Your big brothers painted the changing table so that it would be all fresh and new for you. I had just enough organic cotton yarn left to make you your own tiny Blackberry Beret, so now you can match Mommy and Me-Mom and Brother and Sister. Which may be getting just a bit ridiculous.
First a Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream recipe for you…
1 C pumpkin puree
5 C frozen bananas
1 tsp powdered ginger
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pinch of salt
1/8 cup of honey (optional)
Blend all ingredients in a food processor or Vita-mix and serve immediately.
Some seeds for snacking on. We’ve been loving this Pumpkin Spice Muffin recipe lately. They taste like spice cookies! Such a treat. I’ve actually saved a lot of the pumpkin from our garden by baking up multiple batches of these muffins at a time and freezing them. One of the things that I love about them is that they use roasted pumpkin, instead of pumpkin puree which saves me the tedious and messy step of straining all the juices from our fresh pumpkins.
Poor Steve in the background here! In case you are wondering, he’s anxiously supervising Galen carving his pumpkin. Not always a task for the faint of heart! ~I’ve been informed that he was not, in fact, watching Galen in concern in this picture, but trying to make him laugh using “eye control”. I stand corrected!
My precocious little girl insisted on writing everyone’s name on her pumpkin, with a bit of help; Daddy, Mommy, Iain, Elijah, Galen, Mairi and Baby.
Some among us take pumpkin carving very seriously. Like several days worth of work on one pumpkin seriously…
I’m not sure if it’s done yet even now!
And lastly a little pumpkin for baby. Adaptation again, in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, color: Pumpkin. This one is a size large, I’m thinking for next autumn.
A day late to accommodate a complicated schedule. A hearty, harvest soup full of veggies from the garden, dragon bread and “fire jam”. To make fire jam: fill one side of a bowel with red jam (raspberry, strawberry, cherry, etc) and the other side with an yellow or orange jam (apricot, peach, marmalade), use a spoon to swirl them together. Voila! Fire Jam.
Does anyone have any resources for really inspiring homeschool spaces? I’m looking for anything from a well laid out shelf to entire rooms. I’m not happy with our set up at the moment and a large scale make-over is in order. I need ideas and I’m not really finding all that much. Actually I’ve found a good bit for little, little ones, but not so much for big kids. So if you can think of anything, please share!