Hello! It’s been too long!

November 20, 2015 by tam

Yes, I see the last time I posted over here was in July. My goodness!

Truth is that I hate editing photos and I would rather being doing other things. But, one of the main reason I have this blog is for family that lives in other places and for us, as a keepsake. So today I grabbed some photos from the past month to show what we have been up to.

I have a bunch of photos to edit from our summer vacation but they are on my big camera (my real camera as I call it!) and it’s just a matter of sitting down and editing. It’s always hard when you try to edit your own pics and decide what to show when you want to show it all! Maybe later this week–it’s only been four months after all!

We got back into the swing of lessons and some winter prep with herbal concoctions. Plus I got some time to do a bit of other things with the boys and for myself.

There are a lot of photos:

Busy with herbs. Tis the season!Love our sunsets! Happy!The season for knitting!We have spent many a day outside enjoying the fall weather.Pretzel making!The Lunar Eclipse was a big deal for us. The boys stayed up late to watch. Totally worth it!
The moon the morning after the eclipse.Lessons!More fun outside.Love all of the colours!Trying to catch the leaves as they fall.
Chipmunk!
Feeding the chickadees is a favourite pastime of ours. It never gets old!We love the hemlocks at our local park. So big and beautiful!We went to a friend’s house and picked cranberries in her back yard! How cool is that! Thanks, Dawn! xx Love Dawn’s yard. There is always many a treasure to be found.My bit of time to make some fun art. (more on my blog)Birthday Lego making together. 🙂New socks!More outdoor fun!Halloween fun!Splatoon Inklings! I had to take a quick pic as they rushed from house to house!Brains! Who doesn’t love Pop Rocks?!Weekday mornings. Someone always end up getting rolled up in the yoga mat – yoga sushi!Minecraft Lego table making!It’s always a lot of fun outside. The boys loved raking the leaves and even went out to do it of their own accord. This may be why…it’s fun to bag them…or fun to play with the bag!They also decided to whittle the hammers they made a while ago so that the handles were rounds and then filed smooth. Love this stuff.With all the leaves we collected I decided to frame them. I love how they look. Nighttimes consist of games of all kinds. 🙂Home made bread. Oh man, that’s good.
Eek! The Eyes of Cthulhu!One of our bridges is being completely redone without closing it down. Amazing, right? He loves tamari almonds and loves making them almost as much!
These are a couple of big camera pics – as in the real thing and not my phone. Love these guys.

Hope you’ve had just as wonderful a fall season as we have. Yesterday we got our first taste of snow. It was a quick one and nothing stayed on the ground but still exciting and beautiful.

Gathering Moss

June 19, 2015 by tam

I just finished this book and loved it so much I had to share. I originally mentioned it on my art blog so I did a review post over there too. Click on over if you’d like to read about it. I hope you will. 🙂

A little science and some bowling

April 29, 2015 by tam

I love it when we can fit in a science experiment using everyday items. We do need to get to the hobby shop to buy some supplies but for now it’s nice to be able to make do with what we have. So yesterday we sliced ice. It was fun to watch the wire cut through the ice and then the ice patch itself back up once the wire had passed through. Love this stuff. I always wonder why I didn’t when I went to school, though…I get to relive it now!Just recently a Home school Tween group was started on FB and so every week or other week this is something planned like bowling or going to an indoor play place to meet and get some good fun physical activity going. Hopefully once the weather here is a bit friendlier we can start something outside too! There is also going to be a regular meet-up to play Magic: The Gathering!

Today we went bowling and the boys had a great time!Spare!These fast moving kids are no match for my phone in a dark bowling alley! Why are they so dark, anyway. I felt blinded when we went outside! Good times!!

Mamma’s Hike – February

February 27, 2015 by tam

This past Saturday was our second Mamma’s Hike! The first hike I posted over on my art blog. I may just cross post every time but we shall see.

It was no warmer than the first but again the sky was clear and it was beautiful. This time we went along the green route that took us past Hobson’s Lake, Big Pine, Coyote Bog and back to the parking lot. It was about 3 ¼ hours total and I had been tracking it on my phone but yet again, my phone died from the cold. According to the map we went almost 4 kilometres doing the Hobson’s Lake Loop.I brought along my point and shoot camera and set it on a friend’s backpack, thus the shadow at the bottom. I decided not to bring my DSLR due to the weight I already had in my own backpack. At least my camera didn’t die like my phone! We took this pic on a lake.

Earlier snowshoers made a decent trail ahead of us but there was a good part of the trek where the snow went up to my knees and it became more of a trudge, trudge (I think of the Backyardigan’s song!). Bunny tracks were the only sign of wildlife that day. Love the fungus! Huge icicles make for photo op time!I love the way the water ran along this branch and froze.
Moss! I was so super pooped after this trek but it was worth it. A beautiful day with a great group of women! 🙂

Hand made hand cream

February 26, 2015 by tam

Say that five times fast! 😉

I’ve been wanting to make hand cream for months and even had all of the ingredients. I just needed to do it. When I finally ran out of store-bought cream and the skin on my hands was like sandpaper, well, that was my motivation to get to it.

I used the recipe that’s been tagged for like forever it seems from Amanda Soule’s The Rhythm of Family Book. I do love her stuff and it calms me to read. I have to make some more felted bowls too. There will always be something to put into felted bowls!

The boys used the marble mortar and pestle that I’d bought eons ago. It looks so pretty sitting there on the shelf above the sink, hanging out with the wine and saké glasses. This is the lavender being bruised and wafting its scent so wonderfully throughout the kitchen.

I showed the boys how to zero out the scale and then measure the ingredients. Xman helped me grate the beeswax. I tried cutting it first but I don’t have a great history with knives and cutting only the things that need cutting, if you know what I mean. I find grating beeswax fairly laborious as far as ingredients go but Xman was determined to do it so I held my hands on the lower end, his on top of the block as we grated. No skin lost. Whew.Lavender buds steeping like tea.Melting, melting.
We ended up with a lot of hand cream. Gotta say the oil mixed rather easily with the water (lavender) even with my cheaply purchased hand mixer. The motor did get a wee bit hot at the end.I think I am going to have to buy more containers!
The cream is wonderful and my hands are happy again! Take that, Winter!

Snow day!

February 13, 2015 by tam

It was so good to get outside yesterday and with good friends! We tried a new-to-all-of-us trail. The day was ‘mild’, coming in around -6C – add on windchill but we didn’t really feel it being in the trees. It was fresh and clear. The sky was blue. The kids ran around on the trail and slid on the snow. Xman and I made animal prints and looked for the real ones. We saw an eagle that L spotted which is always so amazing to me. I feel so, so blessed when I see one. We also saw another bird of prey, perhaps an osprey but not sure, followed by a crow. We spotted a beautiful robin all tuffed out, seeming to show of his wonderful red belly. (he was too far away for me to take a pic with my phone. should have brought my actual camera but I wanted to pack light). And F heard the tap tap tap of a woodpecker, once spotted, to be a Downy.

Our hand-made tracks.Real tracks. I love them!

Slide!

Poor dude was so tired by this time, the bundling of clothing is not his favourite feeling. But making animal tracks, finding the real ones, and sliding certainly lifted his spirit. 🙂

Today, as the snow comes down in droves, it makes me want to relax my shoulders and grab a book, a blanket, and my knitting with my new Furls bowl (eek! love!) and my art. Yes, even on these snow days when I feel I can let things go a bit I still want to create create create! I will throw some yoga in there to balance it all out!

We may watch some videos today on the history of Canada to go along with our studies. But, I think for the most part it will be a Minecraft day and Erector set day (thanks for the goodies, Dawn and kids!) for the boys. I may just be persuaded to play a little MC too. Gotta say I do love it!

I may even get out my macro and take some snowflake pictures! Gee, this day must have more than 24 hours for what I want to fit in. Oh, I do have clothing to fix too… I’m so deluded! 😉

Kiwi Crate fun

February 3, 2015 by tam

This morning was full of excitement as the boys opened their first Tinker Crate by Kiwi Crate. I cannot even recall how I heard about these cool kits but shortly before I ordered this one a friend had just received their first box and their daughter loved it. So we took a chance.

I ordered the Tinker Crate for ages 9-12. One for both boys. They shared well as they took turns putting together the kit with the directions.

They got to make a Zoetrope and isn’t that the coolest first project!! We’ve been wanting to make one but just haven’t gotten around to it so this was certainly a treat.

The kit comes with everything you need to make it, except scissors. So it’s perfect.

There are marbles that go below the base of the zoetrope to help it glide along smoothly.

The kit even comes with pictures to place in the film holder and they are numbered on the back to make sure they go in in the right order. It also comes with three blank sheets for making your own!

We had to show a couple of videos just for fun. The kit also notes some tips such as shining a light on the zoetrope as you spin it so that you can see the moving image better. It helped with the videos too.

Xman read through the whole Tinkerzine, a magazine that comes with the kit which explains the history of animation from the Lumber brothers to Edison. He was completely enthralled.

L loved putting together the kit but once he’d played with it a few times he was itching to go outside and dig a tunnel through the big pile of ice and snow that came down yesterday. I can’t blame him. Super fun childhood memories for me!

Eventually we got to our lessons and the boys were the first to use my new yarn bowl. It arrived yesterday with the Kiwi Crate and they were excited to try it out. Is it awesome and on sale and the shipping is very reasonable. It is an early birthday gift from my husband. 🙂

You should get one. 😉

L making his hat. X making a scarf.

L really wanted to go back outside and dig and Xman joined him with a ladle and a pie cutter to help cut through the ice which worked quite well. The ladle got bent a bit but all in fun, I say. The boys stayed outside in -11C plus windchill for over an hour and came in tired and sweaty. Time for a snack and warm chocolate mylk!

There was just a bit of ice on the windows this morning…

Luckily, not all of the windows got the freezing rain on them. I was able to take a picture of the boys having a great time clearing away the frozen snow from the back door. Thank you, boys! 🙂

Brigid

February 2, 2015 by tam

Today we celebrate Brigid, the goddess of water and fire. It is now about halfway between winter and spring and as the sun is in our skies longer we start to notice the days are longer.

As part of our lessons today, we talked about Brigid (Saint Brigid is her Christian name) and read a story from Circle Round and then made Brigit soup and goldfish crackers. L decided to call the soup Fire Soup as the ingredients are like the colours of the sun and Brigid is the goddess of fire. The crackers, since I didn’t have fish cookie cutters and simply scored them into squares – someone should really make tessellated cookie cutters by the way – are now called Fire Crackers. Cool, right?

…and it was all sooo good!

Looking back…a week of images.

January 24, 2015 by tam

I find lately that I just don’t have the time or organization skills (but I am working on it!) to post more times through the week. I hate editing photos so I procrastinate. I mostly just use my iPhone now because after years and years of editing thousands of wedding photos I find it so much easier. So for today I decided to do one post for what we did this past week. This is the Xman burrito. It happens often during our morning yoga circle time. The boys get hot and take off their pj tops and end up rolling themselves up in their mat. I think this is more along the lines of Xman sushi but that’s probably because I would choose sushi over a burrito. 😉 L’s list of what set Lego should manufacture. I think Lego How to Train Your Dragon would be pretty cool. And the astronomy. Totally. And the Wings of Fire is a series of novels on dragons so that’s just cool anyway. Oh, and Norse Mythology would be super neat – not just the mini figures but entire worlds with Yggdrasil and the nine worlds. We attended a program at the local history museum on water. This globe is the coolest thing and there are only two in Canada. It projects different images onto the world from four separate projects to create one full image showing water currents, global temperatures, major natural disasters over the years and so much more. The kids visited different animal stations such as garter snakes, bullfrog and bees and find out how the animals use water. You just cannot have a natural history museum without the bees! The bees nest inside in this structure all year round and have a tube attached to the outside of the building. Look at all those bee bums busy busy busy! Bee-Life-Cycle The bees don’t live as long in the cooler weather, usually about a month on average and as they die the other bees deposit them in the tube leading outside. Once there is a pile-up the dead bees are taken out of the tube and dropped onto the ground. Kind of like taking out the garbage in winter. No one really wants to do it! Once at home the boys chilled with some of their favourite books. Xman is a big fan of the Hilda series. Well, he is the biggest fan of them as we all like them. And then there is the Calvin and Hobbes anthologies Book 1 & 2. I couldn’t believe how big they were when they came in for us at the library! L is already finished the first book. So happy that the boys love Calvin. 🙂

I hope you all had a good week! Feel free to share and/or attach a link!

Happy weekending!

Snail Mail All Year 2015

January 16, 2015 by tam

This month’s Mud Puddles to Meteors newsletter has a link to the Snail Mail 2015 Challenge. I love sending and receiving personal mail but it happens so rarely as we are more apt to hop on our computers or phones to send a message. There is something so warming and delightful about finding a hand-written note or a little piece of art in the mail!

If you’d like to spread some warmth this winter season, hop on over to the Snail Mail Challenge!

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