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

Fall Tree Art Fun

The weather has been absolutely miserable here for the last week so we've been bringing the outdoors in and we tried making some of the fall trees I saw over at the artist woman using watercolors, acrylic paint, straws and pointillism :)

Remember a couple of days ago I had mentioned I was going to let the kids blow paint through straws and cross my fingers that it didn't end up splattered all over the walls? Well it all turned out good and boy was it fun!! If you take some regular acrylic paint and thin it out with tap water to a runny ink like consistency you can actually drop it onto your paper in a blob and blow it all across your page to create tree trunk forms :)It's really cool to watch it streak along and branch off in different directions. The key we found to nice smooth branches was to make sure that we didn't drag our straw along through the paint as we blew. This made the shapes thicker and more blobby. And of course try not to drool through the straw as you blow LOL.

After we let our tree trunks dry we randomly dotted fall colors using q-tips to our branches creating fun fall colors :)

They're going to look great hanging on the wall when they're all dry :)

What fall art projects have you been doing?
Hugs,
Rosina

Our Fall Garden...

is growing strong :)

It is such a treat to pull open my creaking and quite visibly crooked garden gate with my kitchen bowl in one hand and a the warm fingers of my little one in the other as we tromp together through the weeds and grass that have now taken over the paths between the rows and search for the delicious treats that are waiting beneath their coverings.

We have been enjoying the extra beets I planted this summer immensely! Oh my goodness are they yummy. All of the children love them so I've been boiling them up by the pot full for our dinners and eating the leftovers cold in salads and the turnips are a special treat for me :)

The cold weather has begun here and the temperatures have been dropping to just above freezing or slightly below at night. The perfect temperatures to sweeten them up just right. Who new one could get so giddy over vegetables *grin*.

Along with the vegetables there are a few flowers and herbs still thriving. One of my favorite herbs is my Mullein (verbasacum) with it's giant fuzzy leaves and towering spears of little yellow flowers reaching for the sky. The kids love to pick the leaves and rub them on their cheeks as they are just as soft as a bunnies ear :)

They are a wonderful herb for coughs and asthma to. The leaves and flowers contain mucilage which can be very helpful in soothing coughs and acting as an anti-inflammatory for the lungs. I myself make a tea from the dried leaves and flowers and drink it to help with my own asthma :) Another wonderful thing to make with it is to make an oil with the flowers to treat earaches. So many wonderful uses and it self sews rapidly providing fuzzy leaves the first year and flower spears the second year :)

Do you have a fall garden planted? What sort of vegetables are you growing?

Hugs,
Rosina

Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies

We are spending a lot of our days embracing the beauty of fall around here lately as we watch the leaves on the trees transition to their vibrant autumn colors and we happily jump on their crunchy counterparts that litter the lanes :) The children keep bringing in handfuls of stray leaves to that they just couldn't resist because they were 'to pretty' and I keep picking up crumbled bits off of the tile floor beneath our nature table as they fall apart from all of the handling *grin*.

So when I saw a photo of some great fall leaf cookies on the Country Living website I just had to bake some with the kids. The only problem was there was no recipe so I made a batch of my favorite sugar cookie dough that I use all the time and thought I'd share it with you to. It makes a nice sized batch of dough for tons of fun :)

4 eggs
2 cup sugar
2 cup unsalted butter

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add one egg at a time and beat really well until the butter mixture is super light and fluffy.

1 tsp. baking powder
5 cups all purpose flour

Add the flour and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix just until combined. Once you've got it all combined divide your dough into four chunks. Don't worry about being completely accurate, just eyeball it up.

Now color each of your dough balls a different fall color :) I really like to use Wilton Gel colors. They create gorgeous vibrant colors and they are cleaner to work with than the old drip style liquid food coloring. You can find them at most grocery stores and walmart.

After you have finished adding your food coloring, wrap each piece in a bit of saran wrap and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes so that dough firms up and makes it easy for rolling later :) Roll out your dough on a floured counter top and bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 - 12 minutes or until just starting to brown and firm up around the edges and the centers are slightly puffed up.

I set the kitchen up with three work stations so that each of the children had their own rolling pin, cookie cutters and assortment of colors and they had fun ripping off chunks of color and creating their own fall color palette :)

It actually turned into a color blending lesson on top of the baking fun as we watched the colors meld together creating new tones of oranges and greens and the surprise arrival of brown each time we balled up our dough scraps and rolled them out again. Things got quite psychedelic LOL.

So much yummy fall fun. I can see we're going to have a lot of tea parties in the coming days *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Inspired Ideas

Oh my goodness Amy from Inspireco has done it again and created something amazing :)

Her new zine 'Inspired Ideas' is sure to bring a little joy to your day today.
Check it out... I know you'll love it!

Hugs,
~ Rosina