God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Whenever You Dismay...

...remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day!

Merry Christmas from us to you!

My herd and I :)

Decorating Christmas cookies with nuts, goji berries, kale juice, etc

Christmas Cookies, they didn't last long!

Our family gifts this year. We made peppermint bath salts for the ladies and garlic and rosemary olive oil for the men

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

 

 

A Celtic version on St. Nicholas I drew for this special evening :)

Meanwhile around the house...

 

Our advent lights on the first Sunday of Advent 

 

Our 6 month old Christmas elf 

A Christmas/Winter display in our home school area

 

Homemade Halloween

Two Curious Georges, Hunca Munca (from the Tale of Two Bad Mice) and a Pirate!

Nykki made his own costume this year from some of my old clothes. I made the mouse and monkey hoods from a few old shirts and a wash cloth.

 

All set for carving

 

Papa helps cut the perfect face

 

Our Day of the Dead altar

 

Apple bobbing

 

Papa gives it a try

 

Success! 

 

 The view outside our house on Halloween

Hope you and your family had a wonderfully spooky Halloween!

 

 

 

 

Along Our Autumn Path...

 Our wood burning stove working hard. Cooking up soup, custard, baked apples and rising bread.

 

 

 

 

 

Michaelmas dragon hunt

Anya playing with the pillow her brother sewed her, lying on a blanket my Granny sewed for me

 

Avi shows off Papa's 20lb zucchini

 

 

Ronan bakes dragon bread and soup for lunch

 

I reached over 1,000 blessings in my journal. I've been writing my blessings down since March.

Ayla Stewart's Paleo Bread Recipe

Whether you're gluten-free, grain free or just counting carbs, Paleo bread is a SUPER easy way to keep your kitchen rolling. During the week while we're doing our home school we either have leftovers or I make sandwiches for lunch. The kids get homemade sourdough, and I use my Paleo bread. Now, I'll say upfront that using ground almonds for flour is tastier but coconut flour is cheaper, hence I do the coconut loaf ;)

Here's my recipe...

 Ingredients 

1 1/2 cups coconut flour
  1cup oil or butter, melted
  12 eggs
  1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  2 teaspoons baking powder

Blend together eggs, butter, and salt. Combine coconut flour with baking powder and whisk thoroughly into batter until there are no lumps. Pour into greased bread loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Store in the fridge.

Optional

Add a tablespoon of ground flax for a "grainer" taste and look

Add two heping tablespoons of tomato paste and a teaspoon of Italian herbs for a rich flavor (bake for 10 minutes longer)

Add a tablespoon of honey for a sweeter bread

Fry slices of this bread in butter or bacon grease for a tastier sandwich. 

Add 3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese for a cheesy version

Enjoy!

Our 3rd Annual Fall Equinox and Michaelmas Family Festival!

 Dressed up to tell the kids a tale.

It's time for our annual Fall Equinox and Michaelmas celebration! Please Join us!

A chilly wind makes my toes curl, my heart skips a beat at an amber colored leaf - in short, I’m an Autumn addict. Every year I try and find new and improved ways to celebrate this time of year. This year I have a great plan!

Fall Equinox falls one week prior to the Waldorf celebration of Michaelmas. These two holidays are often celebrated in similar fashions, with harvest feasts and various fall merriment.

Michaelmas adds the exciting adventures of Sir George slaying the dragon through the spirit/guidance/help of the angel Michael. Michaelmas is a fun way to look toward our inner selves for bravery and guidance as the days grow shorter and winter descends.

Every year hold a week long Fall Equinox and Michaelmas bash! The first ingredient in the fun is the story. Told in eight parts the story brings to life the changing of the seasons and weaves these changes into an empowering narrative of one boy’s defeat of a mighty dragon.

To join our celebration simply read the eight parts of the story guide and then expand the story line as long or short as you like. Add places, names, descriptions and details. Be sure to tell the story to your children without reading it from a page, look at them, really engage them.

I dress up as Sir George with a knitted knight hat and red silk cape when I tell the tale. Be sure and tell the story early on in the day so you have time for the craft or activity I have suggested to accompany the narrative.

If you’re artistic use paper and crayons, paint, chalk or whatever to create a picture to go along with each day’s story. Encourage your children to create impromptu artwork about the story as well.

I’ve also created a list of things you will need for your week long celebration, don’t worry, it’s all very simple!

Supplies for the Week:

Local vegetables (to bake or steam)
Local, grass fed meat
Candles and candle holders
Leaves (don’t worry if they haven’t turned yet, that’s OK)
Paper and crayon for leaf rubbings
Clay Ingredients - Baking soda, corn starch
Silks, scarves or blankets for a cape
Cardboard, scissors, tape
Cookie ingredients - 2 cups spelt flour, 2 tsp baking powder,.5 cup turbinado sugar, 2 eggs, 1 TB vanilla extract, 1 tsp lemon extract, .25 cup oil, .5 cup applesauce

 

 

Saturday, September 22nd, Fall Equinox

Story guide: All the people in the land (Mother Nature’s Realm, Avalon, Zion, or ?) are harvesting their crops and hold a big feast.

Activity: Simple Harvest Dinner using your local veggies and grass fed meats. Talk about where the food came from, who grew it and who harvested it.


Sunday

Story Guide: Father Sun says he’s tired of shinning all day when the people no longer need him to grow their food. He asks the Angels to make the days shorter.

Activity: Set out candles in your home in anticipation of Father Sun’s long naps or carve gourd lanterns.


Monday

Story Guide: Sister Wind grows chilly without the sun around all day. She blows and blows and makes the leaves cold. The cold leaves try to warm up by turning the color of fire.

Activity: Leaf rubbings


Tuesday

Story Guide: But it does no good, they are still cold so slowly they drop one by one to the ground. Some fall upon a huge mound of earth and they become the scales on the back of a mighty dragon.

Activity: Rake up some leaves into a pile, pretend it’s a dragon. Give him a scary name. If you don’t have leaves work with what you have; straw, a mound of dirt, a tree stump or a pile of laundry. To get even more creative make a head or tail.


Wednesday

Story Guide: The dragon frightens Mother Night and she is too scared to let the moon come out. The people know that without the fall moon there will be no winter and without a long winter nap the animals and seeds will not have energy to grow next spring. So the people ask their angels to help them.

Activity: Make clay angels using this recipe. Bake them with ribbon inside and a loop at the top. Hang your angels on the trees outside to protect you from the dragon (or inside if your dragon is a pile of laundry).


Thursday

Story Guide: The Angels agree that something must be done. They send a magic cape and sword to a young boy named George and knight him, Sir George, the brave knight of Mother Nature. He is afraid but he accepts the challenge to fight the dragon.

Activity: Make a cardboard sword


Friday

Story Guide: George chases the dragon all around the earth, up into heaven and back. George prays and asks for strength.

Activity: Make a cape. You can get fancy and use silks that you dye naturally or simply use a cut up sheet, blanket or scarf.


Saturday, Michaelmas!

Story Guide: God sends Michael and Michael tells George about the war in heaven and how he cast out Lucifer. George gains new strength to slay the mighty dragon. All the people are happy and bake good things to eat and give them to the brave George.

*Don’t be tempted to think this tale as too violent for young ones. Children view the world and death differently than we do as adults. The simple triumph of slaying the dragon will not translate into violent animal murdering adults, I promise. Fairy tales speak to the soul and part of that magic is the death of the evil in the story. This empowers children to believe they can conquer their own woes, putting them to “death.”

Activity: Dress the family up and act out the whole story, Bake sugar cookies cut them out to look like dragons, swords, angels, etc.

Hint: If you’re Christian you may want to read Revelations Chapter 12 at some point in the week.

Happy Michaelmas!

This Year's Home Schooling!

This picture depicts the calm serenity that our home schooling experience is...in my day dreams! LOL

It's that time of year again! Take down the kiddie pool, hang up the swim pants,dust off your lesson planner and get ready to dive into home school!

Yesterday I took the kids to our local super market. I bought them beach balls, soft balls, bouncy balls, ring toss, etc. All "outside" toys which were slashed down on super, end-of-summer sale. Some as cheap as 25 cents! 

I told the boys they could open up and play with their new new outside-inside toys as soon as they helped me straighten and organize the play/home school room.

Yes, yes, in the words of Ralphy from A Christmas Story.....A little bribe never hurts :)

Plus we are well stocked on fun toys to play with when the impending rainy days if Autumn have us stuck in the house!

So we washed down chalk boards, dusted off books, put puzzles back together, organized our beeswax collection, and threw away broken crayons.

 

 

 

An "home school" basket for Little Sprite Boy, cuurently 2 1/2 years old. It has building blocks, put-together pieces, board books and a knitted bunny family. This helps keep him busy while I instruct the older children.

On to our schedule......

Mondays- Circle Time, Main Lesson, and Art

Tuesdays - Circle Time, Science and Work Sheets

Fridays - Circle Time, Main Lesson and Rotating Speciality

This year some of the subjects we'll be covering.....

Kinder

Main Lesson - Bible Stories, Folk Tales, Nature Tales, Piano

Art - Coloring, water color painting, braiding, beeswax molding

Science - Cooking and Housekeeping Skills

Rotating Specialty - Puzzles and Mazes

4th Grade

Main Lesson - Math (concentration on fractions), Norse Mythology using the Kalevala, Grammar, Composition Writing

Art - Cross Stitching, Celtic Knot Drawing, Piano, Learning the Lap Harp

Science - Local Geography, Comparative Study of Man and Animal, Cooking, and Hands on Experiments

Rotating Specialty - Local History (including our Ward history and some family history) and Creating a Hero Binder*

* A Hero Binder is a simple notebook with clear insert sheets. Every month Nykki will choose a man (starting with Jesus and then Papa for the first two months, then Nykki can choose the rest). He will create a page or two profile for each man including pictures, a biography, quotes and information on what makes the man a hero. (Girls can do this too by creating a Titus 2 Mentor Binder of the women they emulate)

Circle Time

Morning Verse:

The sun with loving light

makes bright for me each day

my sole with spirit-power

gives strength unto my limbs 

in sunlight shining clear

I revere 

Oh Heavenly Parents

the strength of human kind

which thou so graciously hath planted in my soul

that I with all my might 

may love to work and learn

from Thee stream strength and light

to Thee rise love and thanks

After our verse we will act out a nature poem based on the season. We will then work on Bible study and scripture memorization using this program and finally end by singing a hymn and working on memorizing it.

We're looking forward to another amazing home school year!