mamaroots

bliss

You probably remember that this is the time of year where birthdays are quite abundant.  First my mama, then me, and then Silas this upcoming week.  We celebrate for my mama last weekend and then today we celebrated mine and Silas' together with our family.  I am all blissed out tonight from the love and incredible weekend I had.  So many wonderful great birthday wishes, yummy food, and most lovely gifts from my family.  New gnomes, gardening supplies, and knitting supplies- so excited!  Silas is getting all geared up for Star Wars action and also such a lover of balls that he was in heaven!  Pictures say it best my friends, being officially forty"somethin' is really not so bad!

no to CAFO

The other evening I helped do the book support for a symposium about CAFO (concentrated agricultural farm operation)  It is more and more enlightening and frankly frightening to hear about CAFO operations. Especially in the midwest heartland of farming.  I come from many generations of heartland farming on my mothers side and it does make me sad to know that I am the second generation out of our family to not be farming.  My grandmother sold the 100 year farm after my grandfather passed.  It was shocking to go by the old farm last summer on our trip and see the barns gone and hog operations building up.  I think it would have broke my grandparents hearts.

But not just in a nostalgic sense, this is really going to become a huge public health issue.  The good news?  You get to vote everytime you spend your dollar.  Some of our steps for our family have included buying milk from a local dairy in reusable glass, doing our CSA, shopping at the farmers market, and the big one; our urban chickens.  

The next step we are in the early stages of talking about- meat rabbits.  Mind you we are in the talking stages since this animal is spiritual for me.  I do feel that if one chooses to eat meat it can be done mindfully.  But really can anyone say that about meat that is purchased from standard grocery stores? We can start the revolution.  

One of the most amazing points I heard from the symposium was that one of the speakers made mention of the "mommy bloggers" and the power we have- we need to start thinking about our children and their future.  If we train our selves to be so inhumane to animals that we raise for food, won't we inherently start an evolutionary process of killing our hardwired system of empathy?  Does that scare the shit out of anyone else?

I am looking into more of what we can do in our own urban yard.  This book is wonderful- Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman.  Not is it just a visual dream, but good concise bits on info to get started with; like breeds of rabbits!

I end you with another story of my eldest.  We were at a antique shop this past weekend.  I stepped into the bathroom and when I came out Si told me Jasper had broke a piece- yikes.  I look on the floor and see a broken rabbit and then look to up to see Jasper already up at the counter talking with the manager telling them what happened.  I saw the panic in his eyes and had a crappy initial reaction of "why did you pick it up?" We left our name and number for them to contact the booth owner to see if they would give us a discount and then left.  

Tears and sorry was streaming from him once we hit the car.  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks of what an amazing job he had done handling himself.  Without waiting he took responsibility and talked to them. Kuddos my boy, accidents happen but how you react to it says tons!  It also hit me that he was looking at it as a present to me- yep I probably could have had a better parenting moment.

Bad news- it was an antique rabbit tureen from Normandy France.  Good news, the vendor gave us 50% discount from the $90 price tag.  A little research showed me this particular tureen is valued much more so I guess it could have been worse.  Jasper offered to do some extra chores to help pay for it, looks like daddy will have an extra hand cleaning the chicken coop this weekend!  Little super glue and we have a little reminder of learning from our mistakes, including myself.  Watching him handle himself this way- priceless and the best gift ever.  

dinner parties sans camera

Being a blogger and wanting to capture memories does not always coincide with just sometimes wanting to roll with the flow and enjoy a lovely dinner party with my family yesterday.  So the camera did not come out till this morning when I was sitting back and reflecting on the day in the early morning sunshine while the boys were still asleep and all the early chicken chores were done.  

I really really love my mama.  I am so thankful every day that I have her in my life in such a close way. She lives within 30 minutes of me.  Having so many of our immediate family close to us is what really keeps us here in the midwest.  Having a dinner party to celebrate her birthday is super nice perk to having her so close.

Yesterday my boys planted a little spring color for us to enjoy, I got to finish some knitting for mama, and then got to cook with my sister for the evening.  Yep- I cooked.  It can happen!  BBQ shrimp New Orleans style is one of the few things on my repetoire of cooking!

Time to take the bunting down, water the new flowers, empty the dishwasher, and pick up the stray slingshots and balls from the yard.

Sometimes it really still can come down to sharing food with the people you love!  Eat, hug, and enjoy the rest of the weekend my friends.

they say it is spring

They say it is spring, I think it may have lost its way though!  One sure sign of spring though is that the girls have increased their egg production just a tad.  We half way joked about taking on some more girls but we are having trouble keeping up with all the egg.  Time to research more recipes this week.

We have had to switch to collecting eggs in a basket.  Gathering in the hands hasn't been working so we got out the basket.  Yet we are still getting the hang of that and Silas accidentally dropped the basket leaving us with 7 eggs cracked that needed to be opened right away. The is certainly a sign of the first day of spring!

With a little bit of the stomach flu that found Jasper also on the same day, those eggs have come in handy making my mama's remedy for getting over the flu; chicken soup with gleise.  This is a dumpling that is a variation of German Spaetzle- always made me feel better along with Ginger Ale, black tea, and lots of crackers!

So needless to say it has been much more wintery than spring, Tangle still managed to pay a visit.  She herself if waking up from a long winter snooze!  Happy Spring to all of you- if you meet her along the way tell her to get on this way okay!

One of my favorite books for the season "How Robin Saved Spring" with illustrations by the incredible Nicoletta Ceccoli try and see if you can track that one down.  

love what you have , use what you have

I was on a bit of a mission to try and have a simple valentines and try to stay as close to possible with using up the craft stash supplies.  For our school mate Valentines we took a que from Pinterest and used some watercolor paper from the art cabinet and created some handpainted individual cards that we then upcycled some sheet music given to us for the hearts.  It took a couple evenings but we ended up with 46 valentines for teachers and classmates.

Daddy even got in on making and reused some of the scraps into creative cards for us.  For a simple high tea yesterday afternoon I used some frappaccino jars, wood hearts for the stash and bakers twine for a cranberry sprite fizz.  The tablecloth and bunting were made from recycled dishtowel and and vintage sheet stash which is quite out of control.  I have a feeling I will be having a vintage de-stash event soon!

One thing I did buy was the cotton yarn to make the boys monogram washcloths.  Washcloths are my world right now!  I love their perfect size for learning off of these yarn patterns.  Hmm- what pattern to start today?  Hope you all had a wonderful Valentines with your sweethearts!

Burning

Just wanted to share a few pictures from last Friday night and our first celebration of Burns Night- I made a Highland Beef Stew- eeh it was okay.  I thought the beef absorbed some bitterness, possible from the port. The biscuits and kale were yummy of course, but the highlight was the "cranachan"  super simple Scottish dessert of layers of raspberries, toasted oats, and whiskey whipped cream (sans whiskey for the little chaps).

The Burns poetry was actually quite hard to read aloud when you don't have a drop of Scottish blood in you! I think one of thing we enjoyed was the reading and learning about Scotland and Burns Night.  The highlights were of course learning about haggis, thistles, and the tartan.  We thought it was super cool that the tartan or cloth represented your family or clan.

Since we are not Scottish and not really a clan, I got the fellas a movie blanket to curl under that is from the closest clan we have in numbers.  My hubby's and mine Alma Matta has an offical plaid that we thought fit the bill!

We ended the night under the blanket watching Brave and catching the little things like the boys eating their wee little sheep stomach haggis, the thistle placed on the plate with the cake with a spell, and of course the clan tartans.  Who knows maybe next year we will try some real haggis! ugh!

traditions old and new

For those of you who have joined me in this space for a while, you may know me well enought to remember how I love traditions.  Sometimes inspired by things of old, and often in bringing in something new.  I like how it gives us a chance to learn about something outside of our normal cultural sense and have fun with it too.  

So if you are like me, you will find this book a great stimulus for tradition.  I have just started perusing it and am making all kinds of notes in my journal!  It is called The Book of New Family Traditions by Meg Cox.  

And as you may well have guessed I happen to come across a something while reading Pippa Middleton's (good grief- it is like British Martha Stewart- swoon)  book Celebrate called Burns Night.  And it just so happens to be Jan 25th.  Perfect, we needed a little something to do here at the end of January!  

I am researching Burns Night, gathering some crafty inspiration, and some recipes.  Though I draw the line at Haggis.  Seriously, any food that needs to be served in a sheep stomach is just not for me- traditon or not!  

By incorporating this tradition into our week we are able to do some home learning on Scotland, kilts, poetry of course, and I will Americanize it with a showing of Brave!

sweeping up

Just a little glance at our visit from Old Befana yesterday.  The boys recently got the opportunity to pet sit a couple of rats for some friends.  They are quite sweet, and Befana took up the que and left a couple rats along with a pied piper and whistle for the boys in their stockings.  So exploring some German folktales (Pied Piper) and Russian folktales (Befana) to do some more family heritage exploring.

simply goodbye

Goodbye 2012!  A simple day of snow play to celebrate the ending of a year that saw my boys growing more and more, my 40th turning of the sun, welcoming our Scamp, and of course the chickens.

 The funfetti dip is made, daddy is making rice balls, paper banners are made and bubbly is chilling outside as we get ready to settle in for a simple evening together.  Goodbye 2012 and thank you for joining me this year.  I look forward to sharing more with you next year!

Nutmeg

This has been one of my favorite Herbal Roots Zine months.  We have not ground fresh nutmeg before this month and it was really enjoyed.  We just kept a bowl, grinder, and fresh nutmeg out and a little here and a little there we had enough for all of our gingerbread houses, deer, and homemade chai.  Thanks Kristine for another wonderful year of the zine.

We decided to work in a learning unit here at home to learn more about Hansel and Gretel in the next couple weeks along with another Grimm tale.  Gingerbread was a nice start to learning more about this tale.  

Our houses also took on quite a Russian feel this year!  How about you- did you make something yummy with nutmeg this year?