4 full circles

Today we celebrated my sweet and tender boy's 4th full circle around the sun. It was a spectacular day in every way, and I am so very grateful. We spent the day by the river, the same place where we celebrated Kaleena's 3rd birthday 4 years ago, I was with a big belly then and gave birth on our living room floor to Keenan a month later. Today we were blessed with a perfect day filled with sunshine and bliss. The children played in the water, with mud, in the trees, on the rocks. There was gathering of sea glass, a birthday cake, building of rock houses and making of mud muffins. The children were at one with nature and frolicked in the sunshine that shone warmly on this october day. 

In these moments, these precious moments at one with mother nature, I am always deeply aware of our connection with everything and of the peace that comes our souls when we take the time to BE in nature.

We ended the afternoon soaking in the warm minerals baths of Hotsprings.
A lovely day indeed!

~with love and gratitude~

The beauty that surrounds us

Today was a true autumn day, rainy, windy and temperatures in the 60ties, it was delicious.

These are a few images from our day

~a good evening to you~

An autumn wreath and roasted chestnuts

In celebration of the formal arrival of autumn

The past few days the chestnuts have been dropping from the big tree in the back yard, Keenan and Kaleena have been very excited about gathering these treasures, it is the first thing they do when they wake up and the last thing before going to bed. They have become master tool users in their efforts to free these treasures from their spiky shells

Today we roasted them in the oven, as they do not keep very long unless refrigerated or frozen.

We examined the difference between the chestnut and the buck eye, as the buck eyes are poisonous to eat. When they are in the shell it is easy to tell them apart as the edible chestnuts have very unfriendly shells. The one on the left is the buck eye, they are smooth all around and shinier, the edible chestnuts have a matte finish and comes to a point with a little "tail" on them.
As we are very familiar with these nuts, the children could tell them apart without problem.

To roast them I cut an X with a sharp knife on the flattest side, piercing the shell completely

then I put them all on a stainless steel pan, set them in the oven on 425 for about 30 minutes

then sprinkled with sea salt

the children both really enjoyed de-shelling them and loved the sweet potato taste of the chestnuts

While sitting outside eating our roasted chestnuts I got started with a wreath I have had in mind for a while now. We have been gathering treasures from nature for weeks now, and the piles are growing, so I decided to make a wreath that will serve as the center piece on our dining table. Inside the wreath I will place bees wax candles which I plan to make later this week.

To make the wreath I used a grapevine base and a glue gun, then I simply added any and all the things we had found. I even used the skin of the roasted chestnuts as we were pealing them. I realize that the buck eyes that I added will shrivel up some, but  think they will still look lovely.

I had a general idea of how I wanted the finished wreath to look, but really just allowed the natural flow of creativity to guide me more than anything, and so it actually turned out very different than I had initially imagined.

I  love how it turned out, and look forward to adding it to out table with a candle and a simple cloth under.

~Thanks for stopping over, and may you have a wonderful autumn season~

Early morning in the woods, and fairy looms

Tuesdays have for now become the day that we go to the country, this coincides with the day that Kaleena is now meeting with a homeschooling group to learn spanish, and at the same time Keenan has the opportunity to do a craft together with other little ones, today they made fairy looms. We head out early to make it to the farm first for our weekly milk and egg pick up, and today we had enough time to go for a walk in woods before meeting up for the class.

It was a beautiful morning and once again the peace and quiet of the country helped me to tune into the appreciation of the present moment. It is chilly in the mornings now and there was a thick fog as we arrived. Lovely lovely....

Kaleena found a little magical spot in the woods where she lingered in peaceful bliss

lots of magic all all around

Once on the island with the homeschoolers Kaleena went with the bigger children for her hour of spanish and Keenan joined the little children in making fairy looms. We started out with a fairy story after which we started with the looms. All the mammas had brought in different treasures to use for weaving and adding to our looms

we started by weaving yarn around the Y shaped sticks which one mamma 

had brought from her apple tree

and then we started weaving treasures into the yarn, there was bells, feathers, wooden beads, shell and rocks with holes in them which we tied on with twine, and other treasures to choose from

Keenan really enjoyed stringing beads onto a string and then weaving this through the yarn

he really stayed focused throughout the whole process

I also finger knitted a strand of rainbow wool and attached a holed rock to it to create a beautiful little necklace, I made one for both children. This was an inspiration from one of the other mamas, and I love how well it suited the little ones

Keenan proudly showed off his creations, even volunteering for me to take a picture ( he is a wee bit tired of mama always taking pictures:)

and here are a few more pictures of some of the different looms that the children made.

I brought home an extra apple stick for Kaleena to make her own loom tomorrow, and I think we will make a purely natural one, in the sense that we will use only material gathered on our morning walk, use hemp string and then add it to our nature table

~Thanks to the mamas today for all the inspiration, and may you all have a lovely evening~