a little crafty nest

pondering

After several years of on and off discussions, we took a leap and began a project.  A big project.  A project that we have spent much time wondering and pondering over, ahem.

Tucked behind our blackberry spiral, in a quiet, unused part of our property is a marshy area.  Josh is an avid fly-fisherman and he has always had a vision of a pond.  As we tossed the idea around over the years, it became obvious that my idyllic vision of a pond is definately not the same as my husband's.  At all.  However, like many things in marriage, compromise is needed and I let it all go...so we moved forward to create a small trout pond with lots of plant life and animals. 

So this is where we are at...a giant, gravelly hole in the ground.  I have to swallow hard and look away from the mountain of sod (and topsoil!) that sits behind me in this photo.  I do have faith in my ever-optimistic husband and that he will create something beautiful out of this crater.  He envisions trout and lily pads and ducks, while I see turtles and a dock...and winter skating ~ yes!

Perhaps the word got out that there is a new habitat to explore as the children found this enormous Woodhouse toad on the wrong side of the creek.

The children delighted in following the wee hops this fella did throughout our kitchen garden.  He was about 4 inches long and made the sweetest bleating sounds, just like a lamb ~ really!  I find I have to constantly remind the children to be gentle with the creatures, and they did a great job with Mr. Toad.  At lunch, we came inside and looked through this book, which is a wonderful beginner book for 3 and 6 year old biologists.

I hope to find more of these over the summer to make a science basket filled with magnifying glasses, field guides, binoculars, and more.  With a pond in our backyard, I feel we will have hours of studying, identifying and learning right out our door.

Having said that, I am very cautious and concerned regarding the danger of water, and I am relieved that the pond is still a bit of a walk from the house, especially for little ones. 

As far as filling it goes, we are looking into natural ways to keep the water from seeping out.  It is fed by our creek with a drainage back into it, and we will be catching the trout to eat from the pond, so it is important to us not to use plastic pond liners.   We've been told to use clay and let it settle, and we are looking into a local source for that.  Does anyone have experience with this?

For now, there remains a big hole.  And while it is not exactly how I envisioned it, just this picture alone tells me this is a good idea.  A very good idea, indeed.

to keep the home fires burning

Up until now, our woodshed was really a delapidated tarp shed, leaning towards the earth with a saucy attitude.  I finally convinced my husband to build a proper woodshed and take it off the "honey-do" list. 

To make a long ramble less rambling, my long and loquacious rantings paid off, and Josh finally built a proper shed...with a little help from a five year old.  Yes, the beauty of homeschooling is that life around the home is all learning!  With his own tool belt strapped on, crammed with various real tools, and a handful of those wonderfully fat construction pencils...my biggest little fella helped build one heck of a woodshed!  (This translates into hammering many nails into a wood stump and telling me how he wanted a workman's lunch outside with papa so they might discuss how the woodshed is coming along)!

 
 
 
 
A delivery of free slabs makes the walls of the shed.

 
Do you see the mountains profiled in the back wall?

 
And then we had many hands to help stack that first cord...including a few cousins.

 
 
With all that help, we managed to stack our first cord of wood to keep our home fires burning this winter.  Now, only five more cords to go!

 
And my five year old is so very proud to exclaim, "How do you like the woodshed we built, Mama?".  I love it, my son.  Thank you.

if you build it...

The past few weeks we've seen a little more of Papa as he is transitioning from his winter work into his summer work.  That means a few projects are crossed off the "Honey-Do List".  Like adding the swings to the children's playground.  Josh built the main structure with a slide, a lookout, and a sandbox three years ago, but the swings were put aside.  I think I may have been the only one really waiting for them to be added.  I just knew how great it would be for the children. 

We really are fortunate with this property as we have a lovely creek meandering through it, but it's still too dangerous for a 5 year old, let alone a 2 year old to play alongside without supervision.  We also have a small forest across a little meadow, but again, the children are a little young to be traipsing through it on their own.  However, a swingset right beside the Kitchen Garden in front of the house sounds just about right!  I can putter away in my garden and still be visible and present with the children.  I love that!

 
Josh smirks a wee bit when I suggest we should build this or that, as I am more of a director when it comes to some of the building projects.  He is the grunt labourer, and while he rarely complains, I am well aware of the unbalanced nature of this part of our relationship.  Thank goodness he enjoys working with wood so much!

 
And he did have some enthusiastic helpers...

 
 
 
A volunteer was needed to test it out...

 
Ten days later, this swingset has become the place to be.  If I wonder where either of these two have wandered to, I just look out my kitchen window and see them here.

 
From the lookout, they have a pretty great view of the Kitchen Garden, excellent for spotting whales or pirate's treasure or knights approaching.

 
 
Miss Sunshine loves her swing.  She is often seated there, contentedly and quietly moving rhythmically back and forth.  On the weekend, I was in the garden with little Huckley and I heard Sunshine loudly singing, "Happiness...Happiness...Happiness!"  Later I asked her why she was saying that and she replied, "Oh, because I love you, Mama!"  After everything she's been through in the last four months, this is indeed music to my ears.

 
Like I told my husband, if he builds the swingset, the children will come.  They will come to a place to dream, to play, to watch the birds swoop and glide, to see the clouds drift by.  They will come for a moment, or for an afternoon. 

 

This little piece of our property is sure to experience a lot of happiness.  Thanks be to the strong and capable hands that built it!

handmade home ~ a special secret place

I remember those places as a child that evoked magic and mystery...places only pint-sized folk could access.  When we built our home, I was imagining such a space in the empty zone beneath our stairwell.  With a little of the leftover flooring, and a kitchen crafted by St. Nicholas himself, a special secret place appeared, like magic!

 
And if the door is open, feel free to enter the enchanted kitchen (or bear's den, or dungeon, or pirate's galley, or...)

 
This door was handcarved by my husband's stepfather, Grandpa.  It actually still needs to be hung after we properly size it to fit, and sand it in a few rough spots.  Grandpa put the little door in for trucks to pass through...clever fella with creativity oozing from his fingertips!

 
 
And on the other side of the sink at just the right height, is a wee window overlooking the creek. 
 
The playhouse has been here since we renovated our home four years ago, but before Christmas I wanted to put some more effort into it.  Sometimes, a little rearranging or refreshing is all that is needed for a new perspective on the familiar.  Other times, a few tasty felted treats for afternoon tea does the trick, too!

 
Cookies, ladyfingers, and fruit tarts...our favourite!  And my wee little daughter with diabetes can eat all she wants of these sweet treats:)

 
It has been a lot of fun for me,too, saving tea tins and collecting various nuts, branches and stones to make the "food" for the kitchen. 

 
For several days running, we have had gallons of hot drinks and pounds of sugary confections.  Tea, anyone?

 
One day, the children will be too tall to walk through this door, but I envision changing the space to suit their needs.  Perhaps I'll replace the kitchen with big, fluffy pillows for a cozy reading nook or a creative writing haven. 

It's so wonderful to have such a special secret place...what are your children's?

handmade home ~ creative stairwell

Josh and I moved into our newly renovated home four years ago last month.  I would love to say it's finished, but the trimless windows, plywood kitchen cupboards, and cement floor in the entryway would prove me untruthful.  All these details are waiting for attention...and they frequently call to me more often than my husband, probably because I am home with the children most of the day and I see the details All Day Long.

What both of us do agree on, if not the importance of window trim to the peacefulness of the home's atmosphere, is the attention to craftsmanship in the details.  We both find a lot of inspiration and creativity from outside and we have brought some of that into the details of our home.  We have stood in mountain streams collecting rounded, flattened stones for tiles in our as-yet-unfinished entryway floor; we have gathered river rock for our as-yet-unfinished hearth; we have made use of many tree branches, trunks, and twigs for various other parts of our home.  It is all a work-in-progress, but there is so much satisfaction in the collecting and processing.  (Josh might give a generous eye roll here as he is, in fact, the one who does most of the processing and I love him for it)!

 
Our home is his first true building project that has launched a respectable construction business.  He has made furniture, kid's toys, kitchen utensils, carvings, hair sticks, and so much more.  Most of his work is begun with a chainsaw and a chainsaw mill. 

 
Details like these fir stair treads require a lot of forthought as they were milled and cured for well over a year before they were installed, just to ensure minimal warping once in place.  They are beefier treads than required but I really love the deep, solid feel they give our home.

 
The posts are made of maple, the spindles are birch, and the railing is larch.  I asked Josh if he would have done anything differently, and he mentioned that he might have peeled the spindles as the children occasionally try and do this themselves! 

 
Our stairwell is not perfect.  There is a slight crookedness to them all that is visible when you peer down from this view.   
 
But this imperfect crookedness is also the charm of handmade things, isn't it?  And no more so than in a handmade home.

hanging around

Harvest time is upon us and in our neck of the woods, we are gearing up for Thanksgiving.  This has to be my favourite time of year!  Autumn is really making herself comfortable around here with misty mornings, chilly nights, and brilliant colours on the mountainsides.  The gardens overflow and we are busy bringing in all their bounty as well as wildcrafting herbs and flowers, and picking sweet treasures from all the fruit trees before the bears pillage them.

On my wishlist for our home is a proper root cellar, you know the kind where you enter into a hillside through a wooden door and the smell of damp, earthy coolness surrounds you?  Well, until that day (Josh is still trying to make time to put trim up around the house, tile the entryway, fix up Forrest's bedroom, etc etc), we make do with any space we can find, including the ceiling.

Cleaning up for this weekend's Thanksgiving feast with my side of the family, I realized how many things hang around our home.  Literally, hang around.  I suppose we must like the aesthetic, or perhaps it's because we lack storage, but we sure do have a lot of garden goodies hanging from the ceiling, beams, and windows.

 
I love this birch hanging log.  Josh had extra logs after building our railing for the stairwell.  It is adorned with rosehips, rosebuds, straw flowers, thai dragon peppers, onions and lavender.  I love that we keep adding to it throughout the seasons, replacing items that gather too much dust or that get eaten.

 
This better shows the forged iron hooks holding the birch log up...it is so heavy! 

 
I am looking into our kitchen at one of our dangling drying baskets.  We dry all our herbs and greens this way (the cookstove is behind me so the heat circulates nearby) or in the cookstove's warming oven.  Sometimes we use the electric dehydrator, and Josh built one himself that is so enormous it lives out in our shed.

 There is always a big garlic braid in the kitchen, and we also hang lovelies like lavender.

 
But one of the staple things hanging around at this time of year is for apple rings.  Oh, we do love our apple rings!  After picking them, we use the hand crank apple peelers.  The children love to help.

 
This tool is genius!  It suctions to the countertop and then you stab the apple on the prongs and start turning the crank. 

 
The children literally crank out apple rings in seconds.  Oh, and it's fun to see how long you can make your peel or ring!

 
An apple accordion!

 
They take just a few days of hanging by the cookstove to dry enough to put in jars.

So, back I go to cleaning for Thanksgiving!  It's funny what I notice as I tidy up and put all my clutter away.

our heartland

This past weekend we leaped into Autumn with some misty, moisty, cool weather.  It seems Mother Nature is already getting ready for the end of October.

 
All around, the trees were wearing sparkling shawls.

 
Josh is also anticipating cooler weather as he did a firewood forage this past weekend.  One of six trips up the mountain to get enough wood to see that our nest is cozy through the winter.  These past several years, I have always had a babe in my arms or on my hip, so I'm not able to be of much use out there.  Instead, I chose to clean up our wood cookstove, that in our household, is the one true task that rings in the Autumn season.

 
We love love love our cookstove.  When we were married, we searched high and low for a used Heartland Cookstove just like the one Josh grew up with, and that his mother still uses.  Not only is it a charming and attractive focal point in our home, it works well...for many purposes.

 
After five years, I am still learning how to use it, and my mother-in-law assures me it took her over a decade to master baking in this oven.  The trick is to heat it up really hot (this can take a while, so having my knitting handy is a necessity...oh darn!), then add small pieces of wood consistently while baking.  Over the years I have practiced baking sporadically, but lately I've been inspired to bake more with our wood heat.  (I also have a gas oven for summer cooking).  I can make pies, casseroles, turkeys (!), quiches, and crisps fairly confidently, however baking cookies has been a bit of a disaster...a few times now.  Another trick is to rotate the food being baked several times as the left side of the oven, which is closer to the heat source, cooks hotter.

 
Josh uses the cooktop almost every winter morning to fry up eggs or hashbrowns.  I like making pancakes on it as the heat is so even and hot.  We also do lots of soups, chilis, stews, and chicken stocks on our cookstove.  For sledding parties or dinners with friends, there is always a big pot of apple cider or chai tea simmering and filling our home with its heavenly scents.  The warming oven also is used a lot, and not just for serving hot meals.  Craft projects dry nicely in there, as do wet mitts and toques, yogurt cultures well, and bread rises beautifully.

 
It seems someone is always cozying up alongside the warmth radiating from the cookstove.

 
Even in summertime, there is always a big bouquet of garden fresh flowers on display on the cooktop.

This truly is the centre of our home.  In the winter, when the snow is blanketing the ground outside and the winds are chilly and crisp, we gather round the stove like in old days past.  So it is with great fondness that I scrub down the stove, and polish up the chrome, anticipating many more memories to make round this here hearth.

Special Quiet Time

This whole new napping thing for my daughter is freeing up some much-needed Special Time with my oldest boy.  I am embarassed to admit it, but I got stuck in the oh-so-easy napping device of Driving Miss Summer.  For many, many moons, I found myself loading the children up in the car, piling some crafting activities beside me on the front seat, and driving until the children fell asleep (about 10 to 15 minutes).  Then I would pull over, usually at my favourite spot beside the river and, well, craft.  It would buy me some much needed Quiet Time...and I really didn't burn that much gas.  Honest.

However, now my biggest boy has outgrown the nap, and I can't justify driving anymore.  So began the dreaded (by me) task of putting Summer to sleep in her bed.  While holding the baby.  While the big boy had his own Quiet Time in his room, playing and reading and drawing.  In the end, it wasn't such a big task...today it only took 20 minutes of reading until she fell asleep.  And then, the Special Time with Leif begins.

Lately, we have had a lot of fun with Leif's barn.  It was a 3rd Birthday gift made by Papa.  Josh recycled some real barnwood from our friend's 80 year old barn that he helped dismantle.  With a few scrap pieces of wood, Josh built this simple, solid structure.

With a few of Sarah's silk playcloths, some rocks, a few chunks of wood and some Schleich figures, an instant barnyard is created.

 

A little wool roving helps the animals feel at home.

I love that Leif's barn scapes have evolved over the years to include more intricate and detailed play.

After awhile, we migrated to the table to play one of our favourite games, Harvest Time.

 
Harvest Time is a cooperative game (Canadian) made by Family Pastimes.  All their boardgames involve working together with the other players to overcome obstacles.  Leif loves playing this game, and Memory, too!

I really cherish these moments when he wants to spend time with me, all to himself.  Quiet Time has become very special to my boy and me.   

Right Now

 
There is nothing like a child (or two or three) to bring you right into the present moment, forcing you to let go of anything you are clinging to from the past or worrying about in the future.  My past, present and future are all rolled up into the daily existence, one moment to the next.  It's good for me, as I am a compulsive worrier.  And these little darlings are reminding me to be present, right now.

And right now...

• I'm learning the art of putting a 2 year old down for a nap while nursing a newborn and occupying a 4 year old.
• I'm wondering if I'll ever get more than two hours of sleep in succession.
• I'm realizing how easy it was to have just one child.
• I feel accomplished if I manage to do a load of laundry and/or a few dishes from the mountain in the sink (while our new dishwasher sits in its box in the shed).
• I'm in awe of my 4 year old's optimism and cheerfulness, despite the crying of his sibling(s).
• I'm amazed that my 2 year old went from not wanting to repeat any words we prompted to speaking in 4 word sentences...within six weeks!
• I'm thankful for the man in my life to bring such humour, support, and grace to nearly all my stormy moments.
• I'm grateful that a bouquet of fresh garden flowers can bring peace to my heart.
• I'm happy to be doing this right now.

What is happening in your life right now?

Counting My Blessings

Our littlest boy has a name!  After too many days of deliberating, we decided to name him after each of our favourites...River Huckley.  It was a wee bit discouraging for me not to have something to call our baby as I gazed at him and murmured sweet nothings into his ear.  However, Josh and I compromised and it seems quite right.

We are all making our adjustments in our own ways right now...I anticipated that River's older siblings might encounter some challenges alongside their excitement and happiness.  That said, my time is a little stretched just now and so I don't have as much time to devote to this blog as I would like...I will try to post frequently but until we are well into our new family rhythm, it may seem a little chaotic.  And, I've decided, that is ok.

 
In the meantime, I am counting one more set of fingers and toes.  And yes, they are all there!

Time Stands Still

There are those wondrous moments in life where one can almost feel the breeze stop stirring, where the clouds stop drifting, where all the clocks stop ticking.  A beautiful hush descends from a  place for which I have no name, and I am struck with the Holiness of it all. I can count those moments in my life on one hand and they all involve the most special people in my life : when Josh and I were married, and when each of our three children were born.

Time stood still, once again, on July 5, 2010 at 4:07pm as my littlest son made his journey into this world.  A beautiful, wondrous journey that only took a mere two hours.  And ohhh, it was so intense!  I felt humbled by the powerful surges that coursed through me from Elsewhere.  They seemed unrelenting and larger than myself.  I was not in control of anything happening to my body...or through my body.

   

This little person is the essence of pure Love, just one hour old, holding onto his big 4 year old brother's hand.

We are still searching for a name, preferably nature-inspired.  If anyone has any suggestions, we'd love to hear from you.

May you cherish those moments of your own, where time stands still.

one sweet strawberry

In just over a week, my daughter will turn 2 years old.  As any mama can attest, the years roll on by faster and faster, and it seems in a flash, my little one has grown through babyhood and well into toddler life.  With our third baby readying to be born any moment now, Sunshine seems all the more older and bigger.

Two years ago, to prepare my 2 1/2 year old son for her arrival, I told him that she would be born when we were eating plump, juicy, red strawberries.

Little did I know how appropriate this was to describe our sweet girl.  If ever there was a spirit totem for  a child, rather than an animal, my daughter would have the strawberry!

On that hot, sunny morning two years ago, when I first welcomed Sunshine into my arms, I was struck by her beauty.  She was a lovely, rosy-peach skinned creature, covered in soft, downy white hair.  Within the first few hours of her birth, I spotted a small, pink coloured smudge on the very crown of her head...like she had been kissed by a strawberry fairy on her way to greeting us!  Her strawberry birthmark is still there, hidden amongst her mop of white hair.

Now, all mamas can identify their own child's special scent, and we all know this is the best smell on earth.  Heavenly!  And it is with no exaggeration when I tell you that she truly smells like, yup, you guessed it...strawberry jam!  Even today, I sometimes inhale her sleep-clenched little fist and the aroma of strawberries is intoxicating.

Yes, indeed, this little girl I am blessed to call my daughter is the sweetest little strawberry in these here parts!  And, oh my, she does love freshly picked berries, all sun-warmed with pink juice trickling down her chin!

Come to think of it, she's not that picky when it comes to her favourite fruit.  She also loves them picked fresh, jammed, frozen, or stewed for pancakes; in pies, muffins, cakes, chutneys, or salads.

So, of course, her birthday cake (we celebrated a few weeks ago, anticipating that our new arrival will nearly overlap her big day) was strawberry shortcake. 

Our family will celebrate her true birthday in just over a week, and so I made a special gift just for her.

I am so pleased at how easily and quickly this came together.  I hope to make a woollen picture each year to celebrate that year of her life and hang them like a quilt on her bedroom wall.

Yes, Sunshine is my sweet strawberry girl in many wonderful ways.  A special little bundle of love straight from the garden patch!

Nurtured

Around here...as a pregnant mama nears her birthing time, she is treated to a day of nurtured bliss by her girlfriends.  The Blessingway is a rite of passage I have anticipated since my early pregnancy.  This is my third time on the receiving end of it all, and each one has been a day to cherish.

Around here...friends, mostly mamas themselves, brought a feast of delicious dishes and several hand-picked bouquets.  Oooh, my sister's lemon meringue with fresh fruit was divine!

Around here...each friend took a little time to massage my tired feet in a fragrant, soothing, herbal footbath.  I was indulged in a luxurious shoulder, neck, and arm rub, too!

Around here...a choice is made between a belly mould or a henna mandala.  This is my second henna belly and I love the energy each woman put into their design.

Around here...all voices were joined in song to celebrate the upcoming arrival.  Also, yarn was wrapped around our wrists to remind everyone of the labouring mama and babe, to send good wishes,  support and blessings as my baby makes his journey into this world.

Around here...friends gifted me with special, beautiful objects for a birthing altar that I set up on our cookstove.  Each woman also brought a bead to make a necklace for the baby - I placed it around the Buddha.

 
The love and connection these women brought into my home for my family is overwhelming.  I feel so blessed to receive such good energy.  I really feel it is so important to be nurtured and mothered by others as I begin, once again, my journey as a mother to this third little one.  All their love and support helps boost my self-confidence as I labour, and reminds me that I can birth naturally, and at home.  Despite doing it twice before in the same room of our home, I still need these reminders. 

Grateful thanks to my friends for blessing my way.

A Little This and That

It's been a  little while since I last posted.  It seems I've gotten caught up in a few projects before The Big Day, and also caught up in a whole lotta nesting.  It amazes me how strong the nesting urge is. Like many other mamas, I feel an inherent drive to have a very clean house, with everything in its place.  Perhaps its because I will be in bed for a week or more (if I'm lucky), just getting to know the baby and letting him arrive gently into our world.  Thus, I want the rest of the family to have everything they need in accessible, easy to find places.  Have I mentioned I'm a Virgo? 

The children and I have finished putting our gardens in.  Both Summer and Leif seem to enjoy helping me dig in the earth, planting and weeding, and well, just looking for worms and bugs.

Meanwhile, the bedroom reno for Summer is nearing completion.  A local woman painted her room in soft rosy peach tones using a technique called lazure.  The result is beautiful!  The colours truly breathe on the wall, and upon entering Summer's room, there is a peaceful feeling of comfort and love.  I look forward to much playtime and restime with all the children in her room.

Finally, we also celebrated Summer's birthday a month early with her two friends and their families.  Three little girlies who are two months from being all the same age.  I can just imagine the trouble they will get into all too soon!

Oh, and there has also been a whole lotta knitting and quilting, too...stay tuned.

It's been a busy week and now I feel the need to stay home, ground down, rest, and lavish affection on my two little darlings.