The older kids in our house have a bedtime, but they are allowed to stay up for a while after that, reading or knitting or doing some other quiet, relaxing thing.  A couple of weeks ago, during this time, Iain came back downstairs, giggling, with something hidden behind his back.  Turns out he had taken my Mini-Gnomey pattern and converted it to make a hat for the Wee Girl’s dolly (that hat is not pictured, but her doll is the first one).  What can I say?  He is my child.  All the same, I had absolutely no idea he could do that type of thing.  A friend likened it to a child growing up in a bilingual home, saying that he’s learned the knitting “language” so early that it’s just a part of him in likely a much different way then when one learns as an adult.  Many of the homeschooling families we know are, in fact, bilingual and I’ve always been a bit sad about not being able to share that gift with my children, so naturally and easily.  And all of this time, without even realizing it I’ve been teaching them a language that we can share together.

Three of these Mini-Mini-Gnomies have been add to their shop.

As part of their school work this year, Iain and Elijah have been charged with the task of starting their own business.  What better way to learn business math and a multitude of other things as well?  I guess it shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone that children from this house would decide that the best way to go about this would be by making things.

  The two of them have teamed up and their new Etsy shop, The Enchanted Toy Shop, is now open!

They have many (many) more things to go out there, but I am slow at getting the listings together.

Currently available are: wooden swords- some painted and some finished with beeswax polish, a selection of beans for kitchen play, mini-gnomes and some very cute Santa/St. Nicolas ornaments.

They have decided that 20% of their profits will go to charity (proud, proud mama here).  The charity of choice for the month of December is our local food pantry which boasts the amazing statistic of having 97% of every dollar donated going directly towards food for people in need.

Check back often as more listings will be added soon.  And feel free to contact me here or them there with custom requests.

With all of the squash eating going on around here, we’ve had a surplus of seeds.  Some we roast for eating.  Did you know that all squash seeds are edible, not just pumpkin?  With slight but interesting differences in flavor and texture?  Some have been carefully set aside for the garden for next year.  And some we’ve just been playing with.  A squash seed when squeezed between your forefinger and thumb can really go rocketing across the room!

During our nature study week we took things a bit further and started wearing our seeds.  We decided to make them a bit more interesting with a little dye.  First we washed the seeds and patted them dry.  Using some disposable cups that we had left over from an experiment, we added in a couple drops of food coloring and swirled the seeds around to cover them.  Then we let them sit and soak up the color overnight.

In the morning we laid them out to dry.  I tried to speed the process along by putting them in a warm oven, but they started sticking to the pans so we ended up just letting them air dry on the counter.

Using long needles, we then strung them on hemp string.

We did find that with a whole lot of handling, some of the dye came off.  The younger the crafter, the more likely they were to pop the thin skin of dye off the seed.  All the same, it was still a project enjoyed by everyone.

Some scenes from our Nature Study week.  The theme was, “What’s Happening in Autumn”.  This was the main work of the week for the little ones and a side project for the big ones.

During the week we put areas of the garden that are done for the season to bed.  We planted garlic and bulbs.  Galen gathered a bunch of calendula to dry after we read that a bunch of dried calendula in the house was once believed to give strength and comfort to the heart.  We ate a lot of squash, carved pumpkins and made apple sauce nearly everyday, putting up 20-some quarts over the course of the week.  We ate squash with applesauce.  We made a start to our little indoor window sill garden, with the end of a bunch of celery set in a cup of water.  Already there are new stalks shooting up in the middle.  Steve helped Galen to build a little bird feeder, which is now set outside the window of our homeschooling room, attracting all sorts of visitors.  Two field trips were the bookends of the week.  We started off visiting the birds at the rehabilitation center and ended the week at a corn maize.

The big kids are working on family trees, a completely fascinating subject for me.  We’ve been telling a lot of stories.  Getting out old photo albums.  We’ve even got a small stack of copies of “official” documents to work from; birth certificates, baptism certificates, census reports.  I am particularly intrigued by the blank spaces; the lines that have yet to be filled in.

This morning is very winter like.  I’m steeping tea, eating a clementine, roasting chestnuts and reading about when our first real snowstorm of the season with be drifting in, all while flames dance merrily in the wood stove.

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, one of our field trips while we were away.  I bought an owl pellet for the older kids to dissect, which they found extremely odd.  “So why exactly are you buying owl poop?!?!?”

Check out the kid’s section of their site for all kinds of neat resources on birds of prey.  We highly recommend the Raptors of Hawk Mountain downloadable coloring book.

The cake we baked for a first week of school celebration last week…

Life is very, very busy just now, but going well.  Weekly posting seems to suit me at the moment.  I should be back again around this time next week.  A joyous and peaceful week to you all!

1) I finally got enough plants out of the way that we can use the backdoor that leads straight out to the kitchen garden.

2) Mushrooms grown by our neighbor on their way to mingling with herbs from our own garden in a pot of soup.

3) Wool gathered by Galen while visiting the sheep.

4) Page from Iain’s Nature Journal.

5 & 6) In spring we swing…and jump!

7) Red Eft in the garden.

8 & 9) Getting wood in the rain.  Stacking it in all sorts of weather.  Winter preparations start early here.

10-16) I waited and waited and waited, not the least bit patiently, for the peonies to bloom and now they finally have and oh!  Be still my beating heart!  I love them so!

17-24) The rest of the garden is growing as well.  We’re still eating mini-salads of baby greens and thinned plants.

25) Page from Elijah’s Nature Journal.

26) Joy is a baseball field with an adjoining playground.

27) Green lemonade and yam chips made in a borrowed dehydrator.

These last several weeks have been a blur, with playoff games, company dance auditions, putting together the end of year reports for the school district, trying to get the garden settled before we take our leave.

And than there is just life and well more life.  I mean if the stove has to have a gas leak, I guess it it better to know about it and have to deal with it than to not and say blow up or something.  Ditto the exhaust leak in the car.

Now baseball season has come to an end and Thursday morning we leave for our annual camping excursion.  One that I am in no way prepared for.

But matching Salt Water Sandals came in the mail for the Wee Girl and I, so obviously we are all set.  Just so long as we don’t need anything to eat, or anything to wear while we are there.  Oh, and also provided my male children are cool with wearing say snow boots on the beach.  Or possibly baseball cleats?  As it stands, Elijah’s sandals from last year, which should still fit, can not be found.  We’ve been searching everywhere.  I have no idea where he could have packed them.  And the lovely new sandals that I bought next-size-up for Galen when they were on sale at the end of the season last year?  We’ve been searching everywhere.  I have no idea where I could have packed them.  And Iain just came to me to say that one of his sandals just broke.  I think we’ll just hope that the sand’s not too hot and everyone can just go barefoot!

When we get back I should be able to post here regularly again.  Provided of course that I don’t come back with Lyme Disease like I did last year! (fingers and toes crossed and double crossed again!)  And when I do, I have so much to share!  Off the top of my head I have at least 4 knitting projects that I’ve yet to post about, a bit of embroidery, some wardrobe refashioning, some sewing, a lot of gardening, possibly a recipe or two, and at least one finished room!  Of course there will be little bits about our trip as well.  I should be back here again early the week of the 24th.

Happy almost summer to you all!

~Melody

~Turns out the auto-focus on my camera is not broken is was just, uhm, turned off.  Really wish I had figured that out at the beginning of the week instead of the end!  Also a friendly reminder that I need to continue learning more about my camera.

~Our nuts.com order came today.  I think that for my kids it’s like what going to the candy store, with money saved up, used to be for generations past.  I was ordering flour in bulk (arrowroot and coconut), along with some dates and chocolate making supplies, but they each added in their own little orders.  Galen bought himself banana chips.  Iain and Elijah pooled their resources for dried mulberries, pineapple and crystallized ginger.  They all traded and shared their prizes, even with the Wee Girl who had nothing to share in exchange.

~I can’t believe it’s been a week since we visited the sheep.  The lambs grew a lot!

~It was windy today.  The sun came and went, but it snowed lightly the whole time we were out.

~Finally made it to the woods to identify wildflowers, among other things.

Iain, Irish dancing on a drainage pipe!

~On the way home we came across deer tracks, with tiny, tiny fawn tracks along side them.

~Steve’s car broke down between work and the grocery store, leaving him with a long tow truck ride home.

~We baked date bread and ate it for dinner with red raspberry leaf tea, just because we felt like it.

~We let Iain and Elijah watch the beginning of the Phillies game, instead of reading tonight.  I love that they bring their books in to read during the commercial breaks.

~the Wee Girl was up most of the night complaining that he “tummy hurt” and asking me to rub it.  We’re both very tired this morning.  I had all sorts of plans for the day, especially if the weather was nice, which it seems to be!  But I think that perhaps we had better stay close to home.

~Thursday is bathroom cleaning day.  I was completely convinced it would also be bathroom painting day, but it didn’t work out that way.

~Iain and Elijah are each working on a map of our town now.  I’ll take pictures for us, but I think I’ll opt not to share them here.

~Màiri Rose makes up little songs and sings them to herself and others.  Sometimes she just goes right from one song to the next.  Today I tried to keep track of some of the little snippets of song I heard from her.  None of it’s complete, but this is what I have.

~~~The Songs of Màiri Rose Irene, Age 3~~~

The birds were flying up in the sky, the stars were flying up in the sky. The birds were flying then they came on down and the birds were singing to me.

The people all swam at the ocean and they lived together.  They all lived together in their little house.  And they ate pancakes.

Over the ocean, in my little boat.  The boat was singing to me.

Then they all lived together in their little crooked house.  Then they all swimmed and swimmed and swimmed.

~~~~~~~~~~

~Did some touch up painting and trim installing in Iain and Elijah’s room.

~They are off to practice again tonight.  In the rain.

~”It was Pop-pop and then it turned into Me-Mom!” ~the Wee Girl, after getting off the phone with my parents.

~While dinner cooked and the dishwasher ran, and the fourth load of laundry for the day was in the wash; after Galen had had his fill of loom building for the day, I managed to sew 4 or 5 seams.  I have two little dresses starting to take shape.

~Iain and Elijah spotted a pileated woodpecker from bed this morning

~breakfast plans were altered in an attempt to allow Goosey to sleep later.  I ended up serving leftover chicken dippers and acorn squash with maple syrup (the later having been cooked in the crockpot overnight).

He says, “look with my tape measure, I can hang from the ceiling!”

~the neighbor’s cat, a frequent visitor here and much beloved, especially by the small fry, had an unfortunate run in with a porcupine this morning.  We suspect it was the rather portly fellow that sometimes comes out to nibble things, around the edges of our yard at dusk.  Iain and Elijah discovered her in her rather prickly state and I sent them at once to fetch the neighbor.  They helped get her home and stayed for the de-quilling.  And then a bit longer still to visit with the frogs in the pond.  All is well with her now.  She came back to play just after.  And that was our excitement for the day.

~I got a roast and golden beets into the crockpot early on in the day so that I could easily feed dinner to different people at different times again tonight.

~We’re trying to identify this skull we found in the woods, but I keep forgetting to pick up some more books at the library to help us out.

~The weather was very fickle today, one minute being bright and sunny and the next threatening rain.  We hit a clear patch and decided to high-tail it to the woods to try to identify wildflowers, but before I could quite get everything ready to go, the sky opened up and it started raining, snowing and sleeting all at the same time.  All three boys were playing baseball in the yard at the time, waiting for me to finish up a few things.  Galen looked up and said, “I think it might be time to roll out the tarp!” (a reference to how they would go about protecting the field for a major league game)

~We settled for guide books by our own fireside instead.~mid-morning snack: apple and collard smoothie

~Elijah is growing cacti from seed, he has 8 of them so far.  Iain is attempting to grow pitcher plants.  They have been planted in a pot in the refrigerator for the last 5 weeks.  In another week he can take them out, then they might germinate in 1-3 months.

~lunch: catfish with leftover asparagus soup and kale salad

fetching wood

~The older ones are off even earlier today.  It’s choir day and they and rehearsing for their last concert of the year.  My parents a making a special trip up to see this one and everyone is excited.

~Another night of just me and the littles.  There are a lot of nights like this at this time of year, but it’s a short period.  Starting next week there will be baseball games and we’ll all be going out several nights a week!

~We three home bodies headed out to the garden to try to prepare some space for more cold weather veggies.  Until we were forced back in by a heavy hail shower.  Funny how the forecast was for little to no precipitation today!

~Galen has been looking for more challenging “work” lately.  A bit of woodworking together tonight.  We’ve started building a peg loom.

~After dinner II, which took place at a reasonable time for once, the older ones went to their bed’s to read and Steve and I curled up to watch an episode of Mad Men on Netflix.

~I’m really not sure how much longer I’ll be able to resist making myself a circle skirt.

~I’m almost done the second sleeve on Elijah’s birthday sweater!