Gratitude Friday

I have borrowed this wonderful term "Gratitude Friday" from a wonderful, inspirational blog "Waldorf Mama".

This Friday we had Elias over, like every Friday, except this particular Friday was exceptionally wonderful and gratifying.

The weather was an amazing example of Winter Wonderland, the children were happy and content.
Jasmin and I did "big girl" stuff while they slept. Still trying to sow with her a couple times a week. The stiches are all hers!

One Small Change

Where to start, though we do feel we are doing a little, our situation could be better:

1. We lost all our lovely, and expensive cloth diapers in the fire. And I have not had the energy or economy to buy or make new ones, or used for that matter. But enough is enough! The amount of garbage these two twins make is outrageous, AND expensive. So some "new" old ones please.

2. Composting is going great, we have a warm compost system that is consumating our quite large amounts of left-overs everyday. Which, even though we have a compost system is too much. SO, for the new year buy less, make less and throw LESS away.

3. Amount of chemicals we surround ourselves with. We use Eco-Ver dishwasher soap and all the good Weleda stuff in the bath, but for house cleaning, apart from th tradional Norewgian, "Grønnsåpe"-brown soap, we still use JIFF in the bathroom. The smell says it all. We are 6 people in a bathroom, but that is no excuse. Anders is great fan of a local made series, made right here where we live, based on natural organic products you could basically eat. And they are all PH neutral.

So three areas for improvment and all in line with living up to our living standards.

I came across a blog inciting us all to choose one area for improvement per month until earth day, whivh I intend to try to live up to. I urge you to do the same.

King Winter Revisited.

Winter is here to stay this year, dry and cold.
Wonderful.
Our nature table has been white and sparse, until I finally let go of my inability to find the time this year to felt a King, and found this wonderful woman on Etsy, who felted me the most wonderful King Winter. As to order, as Jasmin pointed out King Winter looks like the King in Else Beskows book, and incredibly fast. King Winter's throne and place was waiting and now he is here. The same day it started to snow again and all was well in the home of rythm and meaning in the day.

WIP Wednesday

Work in Progress. Ahem, does accounting count? No? Well, in a desperate attempt to create for the children I have begun on COSTUMES. After reading "THe Creative Family" by Soule.

First off, blue silk cape. Hand-sewn because sewing machine, which I have just borrowed since mine toasted, is so much noisier then sitting in the sofa with them walking around.
Second, learning to knit, for real, it takes time, and I will show something on a post as soon as it is worthy.

Happy Working.

Yellow Wednesday.

Waldorf in the home, back to basics.

In a full fledged dive into IT, we broke our Waldorf fast by going IN TO tuseday with a PLAN: Oh my goodness!!!


Tuesday snacktime. Look at these wonderful two vests my friends mother knitted for the twins. That does it, I have to start to. HAve got the needles and the wool in the mail...


A few shots of story time.





Jasmin and I do sewing and water-color painting when the twins sleep. She has started sewing a flannel-doll, inspired from the Live-Education resources. "Winter work", which lasts until summer, seeing it through with her, I am excited, her attention span is anywhere from 5 minutes to 15.

Stacking wood under Buddha

The intense cold weather lately called for more wood, from a local farmer. We spent an hour in the evening stacking outside with the children. The joy of seeing them actually work and participate till the very end was worth the cost of the wood itself.
Real work for real kids. And headlamps, we use them all the time outside now. Never leave home without them.

Winter Wonderland

4 hours of daylight. Rest time is at 12, so the time allotted to out is minimal, but lovely.

Etsy.com

It seems life never ceases to suprise. Like finding the website: Etsy.
Imagine all this wonderful homemade goodness and art, all right there.
Check it out. I had no idea people were so crafty...
It is global too, everywhere. Buddha prints, felted dolls, hats, jewelry and beautiful handmade treasures.

Christmas flashes from 2009

Tableaus from our first Christmas in our own house. Anders father and wife came up, and it was simply wonderful. I thought I would miss the Mom's-home-Christmas (which I did mom!) but, it was wonderful to be at home. So calm and simple, we got to decide ourselves what and when and how. Something we plan to repeat.

Christmas tree cut down on our new property. Decorated with handmade glitter-pine-cones, felted apples, and gold balls. And hand rolled beeswax candles, in holders from Anders' childhood. This house's living room was great for the tree right in the middle.AND as you can see, I did finish the first time ever felted donkey, and all the other characters involved.

Musings and new starts

Life is busy, busy busy.
We are planning the start of a new house. Despite my unaffectedness it was quite sad to see the house being slowly torn down.
Normality has sort of ceased to return, since we are always staying up late writing inventory lists, or planning good activities for the kids, or watching Desperate Housewives on Vuze, or felting King Winter.

But the Now Year, yes NOW, has begun, we have books and dolls to play with.
We are baking, sowing, singing more, being more.

My MORE year, not all the way, can't be too unrealistic.

The sunlight is streaming in through the dirty windows, and life is good.
We are receiving two good friends today, who are architects, to help us with the house.
Back to the bread, the sweeping, and the French cook book.