Happy Saint Nicholas Day

It was still dark and I'm pretty sure I was in a deep sleep when the first footsteps came padding into my bedroom this morning to alert me that Saint Nicholas had come in the night and had filled their shoes with goodies. I think after that I may have even been covered in a few wet kisses and squeals of delight before I tried to sneak in a few more minutes of sleep instead of getting out of bed *grin*. That didn't last long as more footsteps followed and there was a special treat from mama to be prepared as well :)

Saint Nicholas had been most generous and had stuffed their shoes to the brim with oranges and nuts, a couple of golden coins, a chocolate St. Nick figure...

and a little brown paper package for each of them.

As the aroma of cinnamon and fresh bread filled the air we sat at the dining room table with hot cocoa to unwrap the little packages :) Last year the children received christmas themed books but this year I found some lovely classics for the older children....

and a copy of a Magic School Bus book for M. He was thrilled to have a copy that he could call his very own :)

After that things got mighty quiet as book pages were turned and mouths were filled with warm bites of the marzipan, almond and cinnamon kringel that I had made for the occasion :)

The children must have all been very good this year because there was no visit from the Krampus thank goodness and Opa had a good time retelling tales of when he was a child in Austria and Sankt Nikolaus would visit his house.

We had made some special cookies using our favorite speculaas recipe and shaped them as Saint Nicholas but unfortunately my red gel icing didn't make them red but instead a deep shade of pink :( Oh well they still tasted delicious...

And were cute packed inside our little tins that were going to be dropped off as secret gifts to unsuspecting friends and family. You should hear the children giggle as they try to sneak up quietly to a house to ring the doorbell and then run away as fast as the can *grin*. I don't think they got caught once this year :)

 Do you celebrate St. Nicholas? I would love if you would leave a comment or a link to your blog letting me know what your family did today :)

Hugs,

Rosina

First Week of Advent

 We light one candle shining bright
Upon this Holy Advent night
Fill our hearts with loving might
Lead us to Christmas Day's brilliant light!

 - M. T. Schunemann

I love this time of year as our excitement for the Christmas season grows with each candle that we light :) 

This morning the children and I pulled out the box deep in the back of my closet with our advent candle holder and beeswax candles and brought it to the coffee table. We cleared off the miscellaneous school books that were scattered all over it so that we would have lots of space to set it up in its special spot for the holiday season where it will be joined in the coming weeks by our nativity scene and St. Nicholas.

 Rudolph Steiner incorporates the four kingdoms into the four weeks of advent as well and for the first week he shares:

 The first light of Advent is the light of stones,
Light that lives in seashells, in crystals and in bones.

So the kids picked through their stash of favorite stones and shells and I brought out the special hour glass crystals that were gifted to us from a fellow waldorf family earlier this spring and for the bones we thought maybe our dried starfish might qualify since it's just the skeleton of it left *grin*.

Our tradition is that the youngest child gets to light the first candle and then the middle and so on so little M had the honor of holding the match all on his own to light his candle tonight and then we turned out all of the lights and sat under the glow of our star lanterns from Martinmas and watched the light of the candle grow as the wick burned down and the flame grew larger. This went on for a little while until Hubby and I were the last ones left enjoying one anothers quiet company :)

 Over the next couple of days we'll start to pull out all of our favorite Christmas books including  Celebrate with Joy by Sondra Burnett  which is full of inspiration on scriptures to read, craft ideas and ways to make Christmas even more special and our library wish list is overflowing with seasonal favorites. Each trip into town finds us with a few more that are waiting for us to be picked up and brought home. I think I might even grab a few paper whites to plant for next week's light of plants. I can't wait :)

What are your plans for advent and the coming weeks?

Hugs,

Rosina

Autumn Afternoon

 After what seemed like days of never ending gray the clouds finally parted yesterday afternoon to let the sun shine its warming rays down upon us.

I'm pretty sure we literally dropped everything as we made a mad dash for the outdoors before the rain started again :)

 We explored the fields looking for interesting fungi that have started to sprout with the onset of the autumn chill...

giggled as we stood under the giant maple trees while the wind blew oodles of stray leaves in brilliant colors down upon our heads...

 and gathered the prettiest ones to take inside to stash away for more rainy day crafting.

 The rain started again today so I'm thankful for those few short hours that we did get to explore outdoors. 

I have so many things to be thankful for these last few days. Many of you probably heard about the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that shook many parts of BC. We felt it here and in the aftermath it put all of the northern BC coast along with the northern part of our island where we live on a tsunami advisory. My husband who was at the time even further north was tied up at one of the marinas and emergency service crews got them to higher ground in the event that there was a tsunami but thankfully there wasn't one. So many communities up and down the coast from Alaska to Hawaii were on pins and needles as no one was sure of what to expect so I am so thankful that amazingly there seems to be very little damage for those families that were closest to the epicenter of the earthquake and that everyone that was evacuated is safe. 

It was if anything a wake up call to be more prepared. Our family has practiced earthquake drills, where to meet if we have to escape from our home and we have supplies on hand but I think we can do more. They tell you to be prepared for at least 72 hours in the event of an emergency but we're remote, rural and just a tiny blip on the radar when things happen. Winter storms take out our power regularly and we are always far down the list for repairs which at times have been longer than 3 days so when I think of what sort of destruction that earthquakes have caused in Haiti, Christchurch and the tsunami in Japan I'm not sure that 72 hours will cut it. How about you? Do you have your emergency kit ready just in case?

My thoughts and prayers are with those of you on the east coast tonight as you hunker down while hurricane sandy passes through your towns.

Hugs,

Rosina

Celebrating Michaelmas

 So many wonderful things have been happening this month!

Yesterday was the celebration of Michaelmas and we have all been looking forward to it for weeks. We've been reading all sorts of dragon stories, our favorite being The Knight and The Dragon by Tomie dePaola, and the children have been re-enacting the stories with the felt dragon and knight that make up part of our nature table this month :)

 I found this cute dragon craft on pinterest that we just had to make to *grin*. When you blow through the paper tube the streamers blow up like the dragon is breathing fire. It was a hit with my 6 year old and the added touch of googly eyes made it even more fun for him as he attempted to make the dragon make silly faces as he blew fire :)

 With all of the apples we had we saved a special basket of them for making a pie to go along with dinner and the kids made light work of all the peeling for me with this great little peeling gadget that peels, cores...

  and slices all of the apples into uniform pieces.

 

Not one part of the apples from our trees went to waste except for maybe the core but even then the chickens got those. L has a serious addiction to peelings LOL. 

 With the apples peeled and sliced it was time to make pie and legend has it that after Michaelmas you shouldn't eat fresh blackberries so of course we had to add blackberries to our apple pie which made it all the sweeter :)

 I had to time it right to get all of our baking done before the roast chicken had to go into the oven for dinner but we managed to bake the pie, sculpt and bake a ferocious looking dragon and even make a set of bread shaped swords to go along with dinner.

 This year I wanted to make our dinner extra special so we had my parents over and just before we ate I had everyone raise their bread swords and we recited the following poem.

 "Brave and true will I be,

Each good deed sets me free,

Each kind word makes me strong,

I will fight for the right,

I will conquer the wrong."

Since St. Michael is the saint of courage I thought this was perfect. I found it on one of the waldorf yahoo groups I'm on and don't know who to credit the poem to so if you happen to know where this is originally from I would love to know.

So after a little mock sword fighting with our bread swords we ate heartily and enjoyed the company of family :) 

Did you celebrate Michaelmas? I would love to know what you and your family did :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Happy Belated Canada Day

Our Canada Day weekend was spent camping :)

Hubby packed up our trailer along with the two boys and headed out to the lake to meet his parents while L and I stayed home so that we could attend my sister's baby shower on Saturday and then join them the following day. When we arrived at the lake on Sunday they had everything set up.

The boat had been carried down to the waters edge and they had been enjoying rowing it around when the water was calm enough. It got quite windy at times creating to many waves so in between the rain showers and windy bouts they would jump into their life jackets and dash in and out :)

The kids had fun hunting for old train rails and spikes that they played with while we were there. In the past the logging companies used to bring their logs right down to the lake where they were dumped into the water. In fact quite often when we travel this way we will see the loaded trains full of logs being shuttled in and out of the forest as they still move them by train today.

Of course we couldn't have a Canada Day without any sort of fireworks! To our delight the neighbors let off a few...

and the kids had fun waving gigantic sparklers around in the dark :)

I hope you all had a great Canada Day and to all my lovely American friends I wish you a wonderful Independence Day tomorrow!

Hugs,

Rosina

Heart of our Home

My kitchen, the heart of our home.... and if I'm completely real with you it's also a mess :)

Yup, it isn't always perfect around here. The sink is full of dirty dishes, I've covered most of the counters with stuff as I grind wheat and make bread, the little guy is raiding the utensil drawer for flippers and other tools to make playdough cookies with, there's playdough crumbles all over the carpet, and if you missed it there's a gingerbread cookie jar up in the top peaking out that just never made it away after christmas. And believe it or not this isn't even as messy as it got today! LOL.

I've been getting back into my breadmaking groove after taking a bit of a break and the wheat berries have been running through my nutrimill double time. Six cups of berries creates about seven cups of flour ready for baking bread, muffins, pita pockets, tortillas, cookies and more. Any extra flour left over is stored in a glass one gallon jar for later use.



Hard red spring wheat berries milled into soft fine flour with every part of the wheat's goodness still there.

My favorite bread recipe rising in the warmth of the preheating oven.

Lunch was a little late as we waited for my oldest son to come in from stacking wood in the woodshed but the aroma of fresh bread and the sight of giant sandwiches waiting for his arrival washed away any tiredness. Plus I made sure his was extra big :) This mama knows what makes her growing boy happy *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Oh the joy that filled our house this morning as sleepy children raced to the front door to see what Saint Nicholas had left in their shoes!

Waiting for each of them was a little burlap sack and a brown paper bundle tied with string.

There was a special Christmas book enclosed for each of them and all sorts of nuts and oranges to eat along with a delicious chocolate St. Nicholas for later :)

We made Nicholas shaped cookies using this speculaas recipe which is so yummy with its ground almonds in the dough and lots of spice and the children had fun decorating him with raisins, chocolate chips and sunflower seeds :)

One of the things that we really wanted to do was pack a little tin full and surprise someone with it in secret but since our closest neighbor is my mother we thought it would be fun to see if we could get away with dropping it off at her door and not getting caught!

So with the cookie tin in hand all three of the children raced up to her house as fast as they could and then snuck as quietly as they could to the door, banged on it hard and then ran for their lives LOL.

A few minutes later the phone rang of course asking if it had been us and we denied it *grin*. She had no idea where they had come from so it was a very successful ding dong ditch LOL.

Did you celebrate Saint Nicholas' Day? I would love to pop over and see what you did to make it special :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Advent and Love

Tonight we lit two candles for advent starting with the one we lit last week and then the lighting of a second one to symbolize love and family. We spent the entire day reading Christmas books, baking and just enjoying one anothers company. I couldn't help but think how blessed I am to have three beautiful children and how homeschooling allows us to spend so much time together :)

Rudolph Steiner incorporates the four kingdoms into the four weeks of advent and for the second week he shares:

“The second light of Advent is the light of plants–
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.”

So this week we will plant our paper whites which I have been sprouting in the dark pantry and we will gather and bring in pinecones along with some fresh cedar boughs from the cedar tree in the back yard. I can't wait. They are going to smell so good!

Our nativity set has made its way to our table as well and the children have been happily arranging and rearranging all of the figures. This week we will have an empty barn and manger and the angels singing but for now I'm letting everyone have a little play time *grin*.

One of the lovely ideas in our Celebrate the Joy holiday book is the filling of an empty manger all month long with bits of straw, string and what not so the kids built a little manger out of popsicle sticks and I found a bunch of natural colored raffia that looks like hay for them to cut and place inside of it. Each morning they pull a little bit out of the top of the mason jar, snip it off and then put it in our manger. By the 24th it should be overflowing and ready for our little baby Jesus to be placed within :)

May you all enjoy joy and love this week.

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Halloween

Today was party day around here as we celebrated Hubby's birthday and had our Halloween party full of ghoulish foods :) There was monster mouths, rotten cheese logs and pumpkin vomit (homemade guacamole flowing out of my mini pumpkins mouth).

The Zombie intestines which were a huge hit! I love how these turned out and they are just puff pastry filled with sausage meat, a little pizza sauce and then some fake blood to really make them fun :) I found the recipe here.

And my grand finale of brains *grin*.
These were so easy to make with icing, cake and raspberry jam. I found the recipe here and the great labels for the top to with little sayings like 'Brains... they do a body good' and 'Brains... never hurts to have extra'. So fun!

Every year I treat the kids to special Halloween candy apples and we go to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory in the city where they have a giant display case full of candy apples with funny faces :)

They have giant granny smith apples in the centers and are so good. All that apple must counteract the sugar, right? LOL

After dinner we headed outside to let off some fireworks...

and then have cake to celebrate Hubby's birthday.
I hope you all had a great Halloween to and celebrated it your special way :)

Hugs,
Rosina