This was my Mother’s Day present from Iain and Elijah (they kind of look just like us, don’t they?). They came in a box that was reworked to be shaped like a house!
I got a good start on my sewing yesterday and I’m hoping to have the first full outfit finished up this morning!
Today was the second of Mr. Elijah Rain’s three 8th birthday celebrations. The first was a garden party with his grandparents and aunt, while we were in Pennsylvania (there was a dress code and everything. any excuse for a bit of bow tie wearing you know).
His actual birthday (next Saturday) will be a quiet family affair; favorite foods, gifts from us and if the weather cooperates, some family baseball at the park.
Today was his official birthday party. Shared birthday party actually. He turns 8 a mere 10 days after his good friend. Just our two families; eight kids playing, in and out of the house, two mamas cooking together, and no one really fussing or stressing about anything, made for one very low-key satisfying day. The simple shared “party” was a Good Idea. One that we might just have to repeat next year.
My boys made this set of gnomes for the other birthday boy (inspired by this post). I think the one below is my favorite.
And I made pie, at my own birthday boy’s request; one cherry and one strawberry-rhubarb. I came up with this off-the-cuff pie crust recipe. I’m considering it a work in progress, because I still might want to tweak it a bit. But all things considered, I think it was pretty darn good. Of all the gluten free pie crusts I’ve made in the past, I think this one was closest to a gluten crust in texture.
Gluten free pie crust
1 1/2 C white rice flour
1/2 C almond flour
1/2 C arrowroot
1/2 C potato flour
2 T sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl. With a fork or pastry cutter, blend in:
1 C palm oil “shortening”
until dough forms little crumbs. Add in:
1/2 C cold water mixed with 2 T. apple cider vinegar
Let dough chill in the refrigerated for around an hour.
When I took it back out, it was a little dry. I re-hydrated it a bit by kneading in some additional water.
Gluten free pie crust can be difficult to work with at times, as it has a tendency to crumble. I like to roll mine out on a floured Silpat Baking Sheet (parchment paper works too), with some flour sprinkled on top. You need to roll the dough slowly and carefully, flouring more if needed to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin. Always roll from the middle out, to keep it even (otherwise you end up with a thick middle and thin edges!). I like to keep a bowl of water nearby, and every time a creak starts to develop, I seal it up with a bit of water (sprinkle a little flour on top to keep the wet spot from sticking to the rolling pin).
This recipe makes enough for a top and bottom crust for one pie. After you assemble your pie, you can brush the top with oil, melted butter or lemon juice and sprinkle it with sugar if you like. Whenever I have extra pie crust leftover, I let the kids roll it out and cut it into pieces, then we either sprinkle it with a bit of sugar or add a dollop of jam for a little pre-pie treat.
Sorry to disappear like that. I’ve been working on a little Mother’s Day project that seems to have usurped my usual blogging time.
I’ve been making a photo book for my Mother-in-law. Mostly I’m using photos from our trip; shots of her with the children, her with Steve, pictures of the little ones playing around her yard, but also some favorites from this season, taken other places.
I’ve really been working on learning how to take better portraits lately. It’s good to have goals, right?
Steve recently bought me Photoshop Elements and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. A lot. of. fun.
Too much fun really.
At first I thought it kind of felt like cheating, to be able to change a photo so radically, but I’ve come to see post production as a sort of art in it’s own right.
The problem now is finding a balance and not using too heavy a hand. It’s so easy to go overboard. It’s exciting to be able to do so much, but just because I *can* do it, doesn’t mean I *should*.
Though the kids do very much enjoy it when I, say, turn their hair purple. I’m thinkin’ it’s best not to save those changes though….
It all kind of puts me in mind of this post, which I stumbled across recently (check out her new blog, it’s gorgeous!). So funny. I think that white background one is one of my favorite pictures ever, but probably not for the right reasons.
But I find it particularly funny because that’s exactly where I’m at right now.
I know there will come a time when I’m looking back at many of my pictures, with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, exclaiming, “what on earth was I thinking?!?”.
(honestly, I feel that way about some of them already, but not enough to change them or I just don’t know how to make them the way I want yet or I’m somehow ok with their awfulness or something)
And that’s ok. It’s part of the learning process. I can only hope to get better.
Learning and living and keeping on going.
Hidden among the eggs this year, were some mama-made necklaces for my boys. When my friends visited, we went shopping, as I mentioned. First stop was the bead store. The other mama wanted to make necklaces for her three kids, and I was inspired to do the same, while another decided to design a set for a friend going through a rough patch. One of these lovely ladies has a lot of knowledge about stones and their various associations and the three of us together helped to choose just the right materials for each piece.
Elijah’s started with a golden feather. He still states gold as his favorite color above all. He loves things that glitter and shine. I felt very drawn to the sunstone beads for him as well. And the shape of the feather, well, he’s always been my bird boy; gathering feathers and watching the sky. It put me in mind of this picture and sent me back looking for this one.
It’s more then just his love of birds though, it’s something else as well, something about the nature of who he is, something airy and light and not entirely of this earth. It’s something that I used to find somewhat alarming when he was little; something of a vague idea that he wasn’t entirely suited to life on earth, and just maybe that meant that I wouldn’t be able to keep him here with me. I constantly had people asking me if I was sure that he wasn’t one of the fairy folk or a little elfin babe that I stumbled across in the woods!
The rest of the stones were chosen for wellness and balance.
Galen’s is the one that I least happy about, though it turned out perfectly adorable, it’s somehow not as much “him” as I thought it would be. And while he likes it, he doesn’t love it the way the other boys love theirs.
These are the colors I always associate with him. The colors of nature, of earth; browns, reds and greens. For the first 2 years of his life, he lived almost exclusively in the color grown cottons and wools that I shaped into clothing for him, and nothing could have been better suited to him.
I really wanted to use tiger’s eye for him. I think the little tiger’s eye stars are sweet and the red tiger’s eye (the larger round beads) sets them off nicely. And of course the turtle is very cute. When I picked them all out I was very pleased and when I put it together, I liked how it turned out. By the time I gave it to him I was feeling kind of ambivalent about it, and since he wasn’t overly enthusiastic… But he’s been wanting to wear it now and it’s growing on me again.
Of all the people we were shopping for, we all agreed that Iain was the hardest to find just the match for. We were combing the store looking for just the right beads, for ever so long.
Oh, but what we finally found is perfect. Molli, who has a certain unexplainable, yet undeniably strong connection to Iain, insisted that he needed something dark, heavy, earthy, grounding. I felt equally strongly that he needed something airy, something to inspire a lightness of heart. She found the brown beads and while I liked them, something didn’t feel right. Then I finally came across that stone in the middle, I knew it was exactly the right one and just what we needed. Later when we were talking over lunch, Heather stopped in the middle of a conversation, looked at me and said, “Your eyes are exactly the color of that stone.”
And later, as I was stringing it, I held it up to see if it was long enough and Molli said, “it’s perfect, it will rest right over his heart.” And it does.
A new basket treat this year, I discovered these Oskri Organics bars at a local co-op a couple of months back and made a mental note of them. They are dried coconut, brown rice syrup and a bit of cherry juice, in a pretty vibrant pink that looks so festive. Màiri’s wee basket, lined with raffia, contained one of these, an orange (her favorite!) and her book and it felt just right. I went kind of over board with the bigger kids, but hers was perfect simplicity.
Also new this year, I made up these little nests! I sliced up a bunch of almonds and mixed them with shredded coconut and sesame seeds in about equal amounts. Then I poured some of my melt-y home-made chocolate over top and mixed it together, adding more until it felt like I could mold it. I pressed some into this round bottomed muffin tin I have and some into muffin cups. I picked out a bunch of whites from the sack of organic jelly beans and pressed in my “eggs” into the nests before chilling them. They were really good!
And (surprise!) there were some baskets for Steve and I, complements of two tricky little boys (who aren’t so very tricky as they give themselves credit for, but don’t tell them that I said so!)…
This basket was mine. It was harvested from the playroom and lined with a doll blanket that my Great Grandmother crocheted for my mother when she was little. And festooned with some finger knitting by Elijah (I was told that it was going to be an Easter garland). Inside where homemade chocolates, just a bit on the squishy side (I was told they were making them for Steve, which was true, as he got some too) and this little pouch…
knitted by Iain (I was told it was part of a “spring banner” he was making). Thankfully I know better then to ask too many questions and spoil the surprise!
We love to experiment with making our own dyes each year.
And playing with some of our long time favorites; curry, beets, blueberries, and onion peels.
Last week…
And this week…
Our all too brief visit is over. I’m sad that they couldn’t stay longer, but I have to say, it was good. It was real good. Lots of late night talking, a girls only (Little Rosebud too!) all day shopping excursion, several pots of tea, lots of laughing, a little crying, stops in at both the yarn store and the bead store, a coupalla trays of brownies, a collaborative craft project, and I got a new shirt (they made me). And in just three weeks, I get to head on out their way.
Old friends are the best.
Lately Mondays have been our day for watercolor painting, for really no particular reason other then that’s the way it worked out.
This set of paintings are some of my favorites from the last couple of months. They are currently hanging on a wall in my kitchen.
First we painted in blue, then used clean brushes to remove the paint to make the trees and ground, then we sprinkled them with salt while they were still wet.
This week while Galen was painting I told him the story of the yellow sun fairies and the blue rain fairies and how when they come together the bring life to all of the green and growing things.
Once his painting was dry, we cut it into leaves, which he hung on the wall with loops of masking tape, first in the shape of a tree and then in many other shapes, as he seems to like to rearrange them into a different pattern every time he walks past.
Cover of one of Elijah’s Main Lesson Books
One of the classic Waldorf, second grade, main lessons for language arts.
From our work with “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse”. He knitted some sweet mice finger puppets for a puppet show that we put on, but I forgot to get pictures!
Jan Brett has a fun version of this one.
Main Lesson page from the Jataka Tale “Foolish Words”
Mural created for the story “Foolish Words”; in full above and some details below. This story is included in the Donna Simmons book that I mention below, but we also enjoyed “Twenty Jataka Tales” retold by Noor Inayat Khan.
I culled from different sources two years ago when I did this block with Iain, mostly just working directly with Aesop’s Fables. Since then we’ve been gifted a copy of “Animal Legends” by Donna Simmons of Christopherus, which I like a lot because it pulls stories from different cultures and lays them all out with ideas on how to work with them. Also, as with all of Donna’s books that I’ve used, it makes planning e-a-s-y. Seriously, easy as pie. It’s all laid out right there. And I can choose to diverge from that at any point I please (and there are times when I certainly do), but if I’m having a low energy, low motivation, sleep deprivation fueled kind of day, I can still pull off a pretty good lesson with minimal effort.
Illustration from “The Mouse and the Lion”. I recently found this beautiful, wordless adaptation by Jerry Pinkney. While I generally try to share stories for our Main Lesson work from my own memory, I will occasionally have a child read the story them self (more so with an older child, less so with a younger). But later in the year, I do think that it’s fun to revisit a story in the form of a beautiful and/or well written picture book.
Elijah’s one of those kids who when presented with Waldorf style drawings with vague features and just the “gesture” of the subject, will go back in his own picture and add in all the details. It kind of makes me laugh.
“The Wolf and the Lamb” I do so love that little lamb!
Elijah’s beautiful diorama to go with the story “The Old Man and the Bear”. That one is a fun story! It made him laugh.
I think you probably all know what this one is from!
“The Hungry Fox” (a Middle Eastern Tale)
This week we are finishing up a math block, with one “Saints and Heroes” lesson slipped in-between…
And next week we’ll be starting on the “Saints and Heroes” block in earnest.