Waiting for the storm, house progress and going off line

As hurricane Rina is nearing our coast we are hoping to avoid a straight on landfall here in Tulum, either way the beaches will not look like they did Sunday when the children and I stole away for a few hours of tranquil enjoyment. As it turns out I will not be here for this storm, I leave tomorrow to spend a few days with a dear friend and perhaps pick up a few of my jars in the storage:)

This also means that I will be off line for the week as I have decided to travel light, neither computer nor camera will I bring, can I manage I wonder? Hard to imagine not to have a camera in hand, but I am determined to simply take mental images this time, and unplug completely.

The house is all of a sudden moving along quickly and who knows maybe it will have walls when I return. Today they started laying the stones for these walls so now it wont be long, 

good thing as we need to be out of the rental no later than dec 7th.

So until next week...

~Blessings~

Words to ponder

An old Cherokee told his grandson, 

"My son, there's a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. 

It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, & ego. 

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, 

humility, kindness, empathy, & truth." 

The boy thought about it & asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?" 

The old Cherokee quietly replied, 

"The one you feed."

~Blessings~

Around the Land

~Blessings~

A children's garden in the making

With all the rain we have been having many projects have been halted, so we decided to get started with
one of the children's areas that we hope to create. As you can see below,  the area already had a basic tee pee structure but had otherwise been abandoned. I needed a place to plant my cucumber seedlings and the tee pee seemed a perfect place. This together with a wild climbing spinach that we had growing in a different, less ideal, location will create a lovely shaded hideout for the children. We cleared the front of the area, moved a few banana palms over that needed new location and will
eventually offer lovely fruit for the children to pick and an orange tree.
It became clear that we need to add a structure for climbing as both children enjoyed climbing the tee pee so much for the couple of days when it was under construction. We plan to clear the weeds and grasses back to the fence line and add a simple climbing structure, perhaps some tree stumps to jump between and ideally a little tree house or a simple deck. We shall see....

Look at this amazing spider that Kaleena found right in the middle of hunting time.

As we were watching, a grasshopper got stuck in her web, as you can see on the second picture, and in a few seconds it was already wrapped in the silken wrap of the spider, really amazing to watch.

~Blessings~

Halloween lanterns and simple trick or treat baskets

Since we arrived in Mexico the children have been asking for craft projects, if you have been reading along here since last year you know I used to do a lot.

However it seems my creativity was completely dried up and I have really done none since arriving.

As Halloween approached and the neighbors were hanging up ghosts and skeletons Kaleena was almost in tears that we had none, and I was having a hard time getting into the spirit of things.

In our home Halloween have never been about scary, it has always been about the coming of the darker season, adding candles and bringing in light, the time to go to the fields to
pick the pumpkins, carve them, roast the seeds and make a pie.
Last year we also made these cute paper bag Halloween lanterns.

Our decorations were autumnal never scary, but staying with my sister last year the children 

got a taste for adding ghosts, skeletons, and sculls around the

 yard and apparently especially Kaleena loved it.

I kept telling Kaleena to get creative use what we had in the house but found no energy to get involved. Then yesterday morning before going to the land, Keenan came in with a dead butterfly he had found, and he wanted to add it to a jar. I pulled myself together and got out the Mod Podge and together we

added his little butterflies with some orange tissue paper to a small jar (found on the land).

Kaleena came in and at the sight of the Mod Podge her face lit up and she too wanted to do decorations.

I had to offer up my one and only Mason jar, empty it's contents and we also used an old mayonnaise 

jar and made a couple more little simple lanterns.

(we just added the orange tissue paper to the jars and cut out a jack o lantern 

faces and added that on top with the Mod Podge)

 When I returned from the land Kaleena met me proudly with a homemade trick or treat basket.

She had been crying for one, and I had told her that we would have to use something already here, 

the children's little wicker baskets being in the storage in Miami:(

I love what she came up with, so creative and so pretty really.

She had taken and old yoghurt container Mod Podged it with black and orange tissue paper, 

and cut out shapes for decorations.

Today when we returned from the land Keenan painted the inside of the containers orange and Kaleena finger knitted orange and black embroidery thread for the handles. I added little holes with the leather punch, and added little beads to the strings to fasten.

Very simple, very inexpensive and very lovely.

I was so proud of her initiative, and really love the outcome.

Best of all she herself is proud of her creation and looking forward to use it.
Also, how wonderful it felt to get creative again (other than at the land), to see how excited they both were that we were all finally doing a project together again, surely we will be at it again soon.

~Blessings~