mamaroots

a little caffeine

If you want to know one of my secrets, I do love my tea and have caffeine at night as I do most of my crafting after the boys go to bed.  I can remember as a little girl watching all my relatives sit around the table at the farm drinking lots and lots coffee and I did lots of pretend drinking of coffee to be like my great uncle Robert, papa, or my mama!

 

 

Flash forward to today and I am really not much of a coffee drinker, but I do adore teas!  I could not resist making a couple buzzing monsters to go in so ultra cute enamel ware cups from Montessori Services.  Thus was born "cup of Joe"  just a couple available before the holidays!

Speaking of coffee- the bookstore where I work recently got an Espresso Book Machine- what is that?  Well it basically is a print on demand machine.  Now you can imagine what that means for a bookaholic like me! Right now it can only do color on the cover till the technology updates next year but so far I have done one project on the machine taking a public domain poem and illustrations in a sweet little vintage Christmas poem.  It is a sweet little size!  I came upon the poem Goblin's Christmas and fell in love- the language is a bit different and had to read it a couple times, but the gist is that some spirited little goblins were going to try and play a trick on Santa and he ended up turning them into toys!  Funny huh!  

 

 

I have had fun making a couple goblins and wanted to offer one up here and a copy of The Goblin's Christmas and one of Jasper's Goblin ornaments.  Just leave me a comment here and let me know what your drink of pleasure is- coffee or tea!  The deadline is Sunday at midnight- I will draw a winner Monday and send it right out!

We decided that all of our family needs a Goblin ornament this year- now I will need some caffeine to make all of them!

winter nights

You have to love these winter nights before the holidays!  We have been pondering pine with many thanks to Kristine and practicing learning to count coins!

Here is to hoping you are enjoying your cold nights!  We are looking forward to tasting pine needle tea and curling up with more winter reads.  If you are enjoying Herbal Roots like us this month, you might want to check out The Little Christmas Tree by Loek Koopmans- one of our favorites and also The Raven which has a fun integration of Raven's transformation into some pine needles

 

     

 

playing elf

I have to love a weekend in December that was spent making toys, getting boys to and fro from play dates, playing elf and watching The Sound of Music!  Our weather decided oh ya- silly me it is December and blew us some cold winds, but no snow this weekend.  I was enjoying making some goodies, not being in a stores and then could not stop myself from falling asleep with the boys at bed time last night.  At 11 I bolted out of bed realizing that I still needed to go to the grocery to get oranges, nuts, candy canes, and in hopes a couple gold dollars to fill the wood shoes that the boys faithfully had set out on the cobbler's bench, then we lit the lantern and read The Remarkable Christmas of the Cobbler's Sons.  

Back to the bolting out of bed- ugh I did not want to head out to the store but I could not let down my boys!  So I bundled up and headed out to the store getting there almost at midnight.  I can only imagine how funny it must have appeared for this mom with a basket of oranges, nuts and peppermints- oh and a bag of cherrios to be asking if by chance the cashier had some gold dollars- have they not heard of St. Nicholas Day?  Are they not prepared for moms who have fallen asleep that desperately need said supplies?? 

Well all said and done they had everything except the gold dollars and the boys sleep through me getting the shoes lovingly filled- now what about those gold dollars- here was the kink in my plan.  Something about five dollar bills just is not as magical coming from a Goblin Dwarf King so they only thing I could think of at now 12:30- I switched out a gold dollar from their savings jar with each of the $5 bills- definitely a good trade in their favor but definitely have to try and do all of that much earlier next year! 

The joy of hearing Jasper get up at 6:30 a.m. to wake up his brother this morning to see if King Laurin came was all that mattered!  And the nuts make a wonderful thing for them to do while mama needed just a bit more sleep!  Thank heavens for nut crackers!  Silas and I had so much fun heading out to play elf to one of our Crafty Mama friends and leave a secret present- even if we did get caught!  So cute!  We came home to cutting more greenery left from the tree and adding berries from the woods when our sweet elf visited us leaving a lovely orange burlap bundle full of yummies that we enjoyed as we finished watching The Sound of Music with a cup of tea I drank with toast and jam!

Hope all of your weekends were lovely!  Here are a few more pictures from ours!  What a fun weekend playing elf- I have one more elf package to prepare for some lovely friends out of state to send with love- I think my ear got a little more pointy this weekend!

giving

I just got another e-mail sharing about tons if giveaways happening on the Sew Mama Sew Blog- she links up to all of the marvelous blog that are having lovely giveaways right now- be sure to check them out!

I love the giving spirit of bloggers!  I will be having some giveaways this month, but for today I wanted to give you an idea of something to do for St. Nicholas Day this weekend.  

You may remember last year we incorporated the King Laurin story into our St. Nicholas day traditions because of the story being based on cobbler's sons, which is my son's heritage in their name from their father's side.  So we set out these lovely old dutch style wood shoes for King Laurin to visit and leave some treats with his tricks!  

Sure you can leave out the kids sneakers they wore that day, but I am such a sucker for wood!  You might try and hit up your local flea market or antique shopping spot and I bet you will find some old wood shoes pretty inexpensive.  Last weekend I found 2 pairs, one big set that had some varnish on that I stripped off with Citristrip orange stripper to reveal some lovely wood, that I put in the shop- my first venture in adding vintage to the shop.  The other was a small set that I am saving for the weekend.  The crafty mamas and I are doing a secret Nicholas elf exchange leaving goodies at each other's house like we did for May Day and these little wood shoes will be perfect!  

 

 

  

If you find that perfect old wood shoes, you can get them involved and put in some elbow grease for the sanding!  You can add your kiddos initials or name and then seal it all up with beeswax polish and then leave them out for St. Nicholas or for us King Laurin and hope for some oranges, nuts, or maybe even a gold coin or two.

Hope you have some wonderful fun times on St. Nicholas day- heck I never need an excuse going to the fleas and for me making the traditions ours and part of our family, it is so important to me.  There are many ways to incorporate your own spirituality for so many parts of the holidays- it is about sharing story and family and craft for me!  Remember my favorite word for how we raise our boys- hybrid!  Jasper is really drawn towards the baby Jesus story, even though it is not a part of my own spirituality I think I need to bring that into our home for him- a wood nativity set sounds right up his alley!  I love Lizz's work for Red Dirt Mother! 

viva la handmade holidays!

Welcome December

Welcome welcome Mr. December, we have been expecting you!  I wanted to first congratulate Nicole for winning the December issue of Herbal Roots Zine!I am looking forward to exploring Pine!  Thanks to Kristine for her giveaway here at mamaroots.  Nicole has a lovely post today about her families Advent Traditions for December.  Being December 1 we set up our wood spiral that helps us countdown to Winter Solstice and Christmas.  We use a wee little squirrel to mark Solstice and and angel to mark Christmas.  I think I am going to add a King Laurin as we celebrate him on St. Nicholas Day.  

 

 

One of the ideas for advent countdown from the book I posted yesterday was to make handmade fabric scrap stockings and add a number and hang from yarn garland and add a little something in each one. Though I think they are a super cute handmade item, I like using a wood advent spiral and using a candle to countdown the days.  It helps us keep the flame going during the winter nights.   

I look forward to sharing and hearing about your December family traditions!