The Bread Spot

Finally, cooler temps are gracing our mornings in Southern California!  My kitchen window faces the rising sun and warms the kitchen up to uncomfortable baking conditions from June to October typically.  Most cooking these past months has been outside on the BBQ or in a crock pot with, sadly, very little quality baking lessons for Em and Ro.  And, very very little baking experimentation time for me.

Then, as if by magic, (which I equate my own earlier rising time with the ending of Daylight Savings Time really)  November comes around with her lovely morning chill and brings out my inner baker from hibernation.  With the boys still sleeping, I look through the pantry supplies, I pore over my baking books and find tasty inspiration on the pages of books by Peter Reinhart, Nancy Silverton, King Arthur Flour, and Alice Medrich to name a few!

The light streaming in in this photo was taken at 10:30 this morning, just as I had done my stretching and folding of a batch of San Francisco Sourdough from Peter Reinhart's artisan breads every day.  With the angle of the sun hitting it at right place and without the searing summer heat, this spot is perfect for warm, slow rising bread to sit and bloom.  Bread bakers will understand my happiness at this as bread dough, particularly mine, is uber temperamental!  After this comes the cool down rising time in the fridge and tomorrow I'll have lovely loaves for us to eat.

Trying to live, learn and adjust my baking based on the light and the seasons has been an ever evolving quest for me.  As my children grow older and want their own lessons in the kitchen, I work to make sure I have time for slow bread as well as quickie cookies and cakes.  Each baked good comes from our hearts, so this time of year is especially full of baked love!

Happy Thursday!!

A beautiful whirlwind - Under the Myrtle tree

Happy Wednesday readers, are you still with me?  We've been through a beautiful whirlwind here the many months I've been absent from CelticMommy.  Earlier this week, Em asked me if this blog still existed-- and I showed him that yes, it was still out there in cyberspace, but quiet.  I said "We've been busy sweetie and I haven't had time to write..." to which he replied:

"You should Momma... you need to write more."

That evening, I sat in one of my customary outdoor spots watching as Em and Ro skated and biked and skateboarded and walked and ran and laughed the evening away.  I sat and thought about reviving this space.  And *if* I revived it, is it still what I want it to be?  Is it still what I am and what I like?  I'm still thinking about it.

So here I am with wise ideas from my ten year old.  (ten!!)  I am pretty sure that I'll be back, but the when and the how and the what I'll be back with is, undecided.  Until then, my days are being spent often under the Myrtle tree in our front yard.

I hope you have a great day!

Heading into the weekend

A quick hello to start your Friday.  :-)  We are heading to the beach for some sand castle building and shell collecting.  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

A few photos from the week.

Ro reading

Making Great Grandma's potted meatballs

Wilson cooling on the kitchen floor

Kitchen potholder experimentation

Catapulting and collecting data

Out for an evening walk

Phone photos and pinning

Happy Summer!

I've been quite neglectful of this sacred space of mine.  This past year has really knocked me for more of a loop than I realized and many changes have taken place.  When I went to look for photos to prove that I'm still around and a crafting/teaching momma, I was hard pressed to find "photographic proof"!  My poor camera has been neglected too as the ease of my cell phone is more readily available.  A lot of time has been sucked into the addiction known as Pinterest as I search for supplemental schooling lessons for Em and Ro in between pinning nifty crafting ideas and ogling the dessert photos.  Are you on there?  What do you love about Pinterest?  Do you actually do any of the things you Pin or do you use it as more of an idea board?

In between cello practice, reading together, and making things together, I did manage to snap some shots on my phone of things we've made (via Pinterest tutorials or other places).  Links to tutorials are below if I have them.  (My apologies for photo quality!)

 Rosemary and Cacao Hair Rinse via Mountain Rose Herbs.  Em and Ro use the Chamomile Rose Rinse on the same page.  We've been rinsing rather than shampooing for about eight or nine months now so I've gone through many rinse recipes and find these are the ones I gravitate to over and over again.

 Copy Cat Lip Balm from The Art of Homemaking.  My tubes, tins and most supplies are from Mountain Rose.  This batch should last until about Christmas maybe with the uncolored ones for Em and Ro (Rob does not use lip balm) and the pinky ones for me.

Are you sensing a pattern yet?  I'm going to be talking about it soon-- our changes to a more natural pantry and such.  But for now, I hope the links will suffice.  My latest batch of healing salve that is, (in my second batch opinion) better than Neosporin.  The recipe is from Katie of WellnessMama.  I keep a small one in my purse with my aid kit, a big one in the fridge for big scrapes (the coolness is unbelievably calming as well as healing) and the rest are in a cool storage spot.  With active boys, this batch ought to last 'til January I think.  We use the salve for massaging dry skin as well.

The last Home Spa thing I promise.  Ro and I made these yesterday.  Bath Fizzies that I do not have a finished photo of.  There are oodles of recipes out there and I seem to have misplaced mine but I will find it if anyone asks.

Lastly, a photo of where I spend most of my time... resting with the boys and researching this and that.  If you look closely, you'll see my camera parked on the blanket (another thing I forgot to blog about) and the shadow shows me using my phone to snap this pic!  Too funny...

I'm trying to have a bit of me time to keep CelticMommy up and running and I know it's been sporadic.  So many things continue to happen and come up that writing sits on the proverbial back burner.  I miss it and I truly hope to get back to it more often.  Until next time, pop on over to my Pinterest and see what I'm probably prepping for you to read about on here.  :-)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend and a great summer so far!
Hettie

Sumptuously Slow Saturday

I love Saturdays!  The piles of laundry from the week are slowly disappearing in between rows of crochet and banjo melodies.  Our puppy is napping as usual in between interruptions from Em and Ro who run back and forth excitedly from the garden to the house to the tree-house with pencils and paper and grand schemes for planting fruits and flowers in just a few weeks time.  I sit, mostly unmoving and enjoying the life this house and family leads... with no appointments or places to be, it is turning out to be a sumptuously slow Saturday and that's just super with me!

Happy Weekend!

Summering

Eeking out the last days of summer! 

I'm not quite ready to trade the suntan lotion for school supplies, but I am trying making the most of this short summer.  We hope you are enjoying your Summering as much as we are!

Back to life, thankfully!

Hi readers!!  Are you still there??  I deeply apologize for my absence if you've missed me and wondered what happened.

Without going into much detail, I will say, the week after Thanksgiving (my last blog post below) up until now (actually still going on, but close enough to the end of all of it) has been a roller coaster of absolute insanity.  ER visits, planned surgeries, emergency surgeries, freak accidents and emergencies, a family birth... lots.  Mostly yicky other than the baby's arrival.

I am holding the optimistic belief that it is over... this five month stretch of lunacy.  I've missed writing more than I can say.  I'm coming back slowly.  This space is coming back to life and I hope you will join me.
-Heather

  

 

In the speedy season

Where have the weeks gone?!  It literally seems like just yesterday that I was planning for Halloween and we are now less than a week until Thanksgiving, goodness me!

The shorter daylight hours seem to be speeding by with scheduled and unscheduled activities.  Homemade batches of muffins and cookies fill air with their butter and spices... handmade drawings and kiddo-invention schematics fill the refrigerator doors...  piles of books on every subject congregate on every desk, table, chair, bed and floor... music, from bluegrass to classical to trip hop wafts around the house at almost all hours of the day.  It is a calm insanity if such a thing is possible!

Below is a quick photo of the breaking in of our new craft tablecloth-- the old one having finally ripped under the pressure of the weight of pounds of pumpkin innards.  Cardstock leaves globbed with paint and smooshed together... perfect for the season!  These will mostly be used by Em and Ro to write the names of our Thanksgiving guests on as seating cards.  But, I think I will have to dangle a few in the kitchen window as well. If you remember from last year, we are big into trees so this adds to our autumnal nature theme.

I hope you are all having a lovely weekend!

I think we're ready for school

Throughout the day, the last day of summer, these are the things Em and Ro talked about:

"Mom, I'll wear this tomorrow, okay?  I LOVE this shirt so I'mna wear it.  EM!  Whadder you wearing?!"

"Where's my backpack?  I want to put it by the door.  Are my pencils in there Mom?  Can we sharpen them so I'm ready?"

"Mommy, are you making me tuna for tomorrow?  And grape juices please okay?  Thanks Mommy!"

"OOoh yea, good choice, I want tuna too Mom!!"

"Do we hafta read the book again Mommy?  I am ready I promise!"

Kindergarten prep books read and discussed and pondered.  Friend-making scenarios discussed and nervous giggly questions answered with love and honesty.  Excitement has replaced the nervousness for now.

Supplies sorted and packed.  Backpacks at the ready.  Outfits ironed and laid out with care.  By Em and Ro, not me... they're ready for school.

Ro reading and stickering his "The Night Before Kindergarten" book.

Am I ready?

Looking back, looking forward

Em and Ro will be starting 2nd and Kindergarten on Wednesday and it has made me reflect, as I am sure many parents do, on the past few years.

I remember Em's first day of Kinder.  I remember what he wore and even what I packed him for lunch.  Having never been in preschool, this would be his first experience out there in the world.  I worried of course, but I was excited for him, for the new things he would learn and the new friends he would make.

Now it is Ro's turn for Kinder and I am still worried and nervous.  Ro has been in preschool, but none of his friends will be at his new school.  I am excited more now I think than I was with Em.  With both munchkins at the same school, my volunteer hours will increase greatly and I will be able to share in their public education more than I ever have.

I also will to continue to enrich our lives via the supplemental homeschooling we already do.  Back in 2009, I had planned to stop CelticMommy altogether-- I was worried about all the time commitments of public school volunteering, supplemental homeschool teaching, bringing up a toddler and maintaining a bevvy of crafting/blogging/baking/home keeping projects.  This year, looking ahead, I do not have any such notions of quitting blogging.  It means too much to me!

So, I'm ready to walk through this new door and ready to experience whatever comes on my path.  I hope you will share it with me.

-Hettie

Still Summering

I've been a quiet blogger this summer, I know.  With both Em and Ro out of school for three months, we've been field tripping and crafting our way through the days.  Recently, while cleaning in the craft room (code for frantically searching for something), I came across this list.

Em started the list with Ro chiming in every once in a while while running back and forth from Lego creating.  It's such a sweet list (with more on the back) that he wrote out the weekend that their summer vacation began.  We've ticked off quite a bit of the list but not everything... and not everything I  had hoped to do.  So, sweet readers, I hope you understand when I say "back soon, we are still summering".  As soon as Em and Ro are done in the bathtub, we will be off on another adventure.  I have just two weeks of summer left to savor with my sweeties!  So, back soon!
Love,
Hettie

An inch at a time

My summer days are often spent in a whirlwind of kid things.  Prepping meals for bottomless stomach boys, board games, reading in the tree house, field trips to museums and parks, crafting and cleaning up from crafting, photo-taking amidst giggly silly faces, more food prep and a load of laundry here and there.

My summer nights are much the same.  Bike riding and walks in the cool evening, ice cream drips and impromptu obstacle course making... more photos, more giggly silly faces, more of life.  So, with that in mind, my mind cannot keep complex crochet patterns memorized.  Enter the granny stripe project!

I found this pattern from Lucy of Attic24 last year and thought "one day I'll have patience for that".  It's not hard, just time consuming and sometimes boring if you sit and sit and sit at it.  My lack of time makes it perfect!  It is easy to set up and easy to pick up/put down whenever I want to.  I took every color of Cotton-Ease in my stash and made a pattern of not having a pattern and off my hook went.  I'm trying to do one stripe a day-- two rows at about an inch or so.  By the time school starts, I should be mostly done with it.

Inch by inch it keeps me crafting during hectic days and nights with Em and Ro and Rob.  It's what I have time for right now and that's enough for me.

Living room dance-a-thon

Pink Floyd     Morcheeba     Beastie Boys     Dan Zanes     Cake

The Black Crowes     Jack Johnson     Tom Petty & the Hearbreakers    

Living room furniture move, making way
for dancing
for running in circles
for giggling
for chasing after his brother!!

Songs spinning, kids spinning, camera spinning

Still in jammies, beating the heat in our own living room dance-a-thon!

A hands-on weekend

We are spending time together as a family and enjoying some hands-on activities.

Cooking with Em and Ro

Crocheting a new hat (pattern available for free from Rheatheylia)

Coconutting up my original marshmallow recipe that I hope to have up next week

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

Seeing what you eat

I remember many date nights with my now-hubby, being at restaurants where french fries were served.

One particular night, I noticed Rob watching me look at each french fry I picked up-- I like choosing my fries.  He laughed and thought it was a funny quirk.  Years later, I still do this with fries, salads and anything where you pick one bite over another.

This morning, my wee one was eating a bowl of blueberries.  He was very mindful of which berry he picked out of his bowl.  I saw him pick up certain berries, look at them, and then put them back in the bowl.  When he was finished, he came to me:

"Mom!  You need to put this blueberry back in the refrigerator... I want to show it to Dad, okay?"
He held out his little hand to reveal a very big blueberry.  "This Mommy, this blueberry is perfeckt!  (yes, that's how he says it)  I wanna show Daddy before I eat it."

Funny quirk passed on!

A Sunny Spring Day

SPF slathered on Em and Ro to protect pale winter skin while riding bikes, tumbling, skipping, ... in shorts for the first time in a while.

Barefooted crocheting - quickly abandoned for giggling and photographing wee ones silly antics!

Sleepy arms raised from the grass to call out the shapes of the clouds and following the flight of bees on newly blooming trees and shrubs.

A great Spring Tuesday!

A rainy Sunday

It's raining! 

The rain arrived sometime last night and has been steadily coming down all morning.  Right after breakfast, Em and Ro bundled up and went outside.  There are puddles to splash in, the tree house to play in (to observe the rain and watch the birds and... and...) and they are having a blast.  When the get cold, they'll come in for hot chocolate and a towel.  Soon I think.  Maybe in a bit we can head out for an observation walk as well.

I hope you enjoy your Sunday!

Chalk improvisation

Em and Ro's fish Oscar died and we needed to have some cheerful moments after the fishie funeral this afternoon.  By some weird chance, I ran out of sidewalk and forgot to pick some up.  The boys reeeeallllyyy wanted to make a car obstacle course on the concrete outside, so we improvised. 

I grabbed the large roll of painting paper and taped it down on the concrete and took out the other chalk (that stains sidewalks) and let them have at it.  Each embellished their course with rainbows and lava and zombie chickens crossing the road ( ? ) and grassy hills and the races were on!  Two hours later they are still at it.

A nice ending to a sad afternoon I must say.

Spring is on the way

I hope everyone is adjusting to the "Spring Forward" that most Americans are experiencing today.  We've been prepping for Spring both inside and outside this weekend.  A bit of cleaning... well, a lot of cleaning, a bunch of garden planting, breathing in the wonderful air, freshly perfumed from blooming trees.

I have much coming up soon so I hope these fun pics will suffice for now.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

A donut kind of morning

Most weekend mornings, I am the first one up and a warm coffee cake is already baking before Rob and the boys are out of bed.  Some mornings, my brain hits the snooze button and I sleep in 'til 7:30!  This morning was one of those mornings... perfect for a run to our local donut shoppe!

 

Fresh apples and blueberries all around with gobs of cakey, sugary donuts.  Coffee for Rob, tea for me.

 

 

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

Blogs in the works:

• The new grilled chicken recipe I continue to tweak should be up this week
• Remember my marshmallow recipe?  Well, coconut loving Em and Ro have modified it!
• A new crochet pattern
• A new sewing pattern or two
• A blog about soap... Soap is this months project topic on Unplug Your Kids.  You should check it out!