a little bit of lovely

A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend about hard times and negative thinking. The discussion mostly revolved around how focus and thoughts can improve or worsen a difficult time and how focusing on something positive or finding a few bright spots during the day can improve the situation. I've thought of the conversation several times since then.

As I was thinking of it yesterday, a verse popped into my head: whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely...think on these things. True, noble, right, pure, those I get. Those are virtues that lead to a better life. But lovely? Maybe it's not just a cliche that thinking more positive or lovely thoughts can improve your outlook. Maybe there is more value to finding what is lovely in your life than just a prosaic notion of "positive thinking".

And so I decided this morning to find 10 things that share a little bit of loveliness in my life, 10 things that make me smile or brighten my day.

~ the view from my bedroom window (and a large part of the reason why we settled on this house)

~ a recently discovered piece of pottery that I made years ago, stashed in the garage until I found a use for it


~ seeing little feet cozy and warm in a pair of socks that I knit


~ a random, single bud which bloomed quite late on my Christmas cactus


~ the maker of rainbows which hangs in my breakfast nook window and shines rainbows over half of the downstairs at different points during the day


~ these lovely glass orbs, which don't photograph well, but have hung from our ceiling bringing loveliness for over 7 years now. I never tire of this bit of lovely.


~ a nearly completed knitting project


~ a recent revamp of the art wall in our library and especially the sweet watercolor leaves Elizabeth made at school


~ a cup of tea in one of my handmade mugs (most of the mugs were made by me, this one is an exception)


~ a Christmas present for Paul, with a matching one for me, of course, because every couple needs matching iron pipes flanking their bed

I hope that noticing and appreciating the little bits of loveliness in my life can become a daily practice. What little bits of lovely are in your life right now?

Yarn Along

This week's Yarn Along looks remarkable similar to last week's. Same knitting, same reading. I'm on the homeward stretch with Elizabeth's birthday sweater, the decreases of the second sleeve. I hope to finish it today and have the finished sweater to show you next week. Then maybe I'll get back to her birthday knee socks.

I'm also still thoroughly enjoying Joel Salatin's Folks, this ain't normal. He's such a great writer and has ideas I connect with for getting society back to a more "normal" place.

What are you working on right now?

carrot pennies

Finn and I have incorporated cooking into our homeschooling quite a bit this year. Through most of the fall, we cooked soup each Monday. Now that we are getting back into the swing of things and the older kids have returned to school, I thought we might change our cooking just a bit.

I found a book at our local used bookstore a few months ago that I decided to add to Finn's gift of books at Christmas. Pretend Soup first caught my eye because the author is one of my favorite cookbook authors, Mollie Katzen. Her Moosewood Cookbook and Vegetable Heaven are two of my go-to books for simple vegetarian recipes so I immediately thought Pretend Soup might be a good fit for us as well.


My favorite aspect of this book is the directions given through pictures and simple words for young children to follow. The book also contains a more traditional recipe and directions on the preceding page for older children and to obtain a more precise measurement of ingredients.



Finn was thrilled to be making a recipe that he could add every ingredient and follow the directions all by himself.


And so we had carrot pennies, accompanied by cheese, rice crackers, apples and orange, for lunch, although the carrot pennies were mostly wavy because that wavy vegetable chopper is just irresistible. Could you imagine trying to fit pennies shaped like that in your change purse?


"I cooked these myself, right mama? I mean, you just helped a little bit, right?"


Delicious!

weekending

{this moment} - colorful kitchen assistant

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

winter book basket

Earlier this week, I traded out the Christmas books in our seasonal book basket for our winter-themed books. I don't know if it's the beautiful artwork of winter books, but winter is probably my favorite collection of seasonal books. Between Jan Brett's lovely work in The Mitten and The Hat, among others, and many other classic winter books that have been with us for years, like The Tomten, Any Room for Me? and Snowflake Bentley, the winter collection of books holds so many of our favorites. Not to mention, winter tends to be the season we spend more time indoors gathered together reading.

We did acquire a few newbies for our basket this year, all found at our local used bookstore. When Winter Comes is a sweet story of the animals and where they go during winter. I particularly like the gentle illustration of this story. Sugaring contains a wonderful explanation and exploration of the process of sugaring maple trees. And Snow has the fun rhyming and seasonal play that you'd expect from a P D Eastman and Roy McKie book.

Finn's favorites, Owl Moon, a few of the My First Little House books and a couple of winter-themed Snipp Snapp Snurr books keep wandering away from the basket, and we have to continually corral them. I won't complain about that though!

What winter books are your favorites right now? We're always looking for some new favorites!

more kitchen brews

It's been a while since I've posted about my adventures in the kitchen with cultured, fermented, and otherwise homemade brews. I just thought I would give a little update on my current goings on and successes in that department.

I recently discovered that I could much extend the life of my veggie broth by storing the mason jars in the freezer, which seems to make sense; I just don't think I realized how quickly broth could go rancid without proper storage (or preservatives.)

The yogurt operations around here have expanded, and I'm now making 2 varieties of cultured yogurt. Choices, choices! I loosely followed this method for making crock pot yogurt after receiving a crock pot for Christmas. My crockpot's "warm" setting isn't overly hot so I tend to switch it off and on every other hour or so until the yogurt is thick. I was able to use Stonyfield Farm plain yogurt as the starter for this variety so no expensive starter purchase required. This yogurt is thicker in general too so I don't really have to strain the whey to make it thick enough for the kids' liking.


In other news, I've decided to give up wheat for a while to see what kind of impact that might have on my digestion. I'm still consuming spelt that has been soaked or soured which I have prepared myself. That foray has been enhanced by the addition of this lovely lidded stoneware pan that Paul gifted me for Christmas. I love the longer narrow loaves it yields!


And it seems there is always some kind of jar fermenting or culturing on the counter. I discovered that the kids are much more receptive of the fermented ketchup when I omit the raw garlic, which was apparently making the ketchup "too spicy". I'm happy to let that go in favor of them liking the ketchup. Wild Fermentation made it's way into my hands on Christmas so I'm sure I'll have more fermentation experiments to share in the future!


My last kitchen-related Christmas gift was a kit for making mozzarella and ricotta.


This morning, I finally found a few minutes to make an attempt at cheese-making.


At the "slow stirring of the curds" stage, I was a little suspicious of how this was going to turn into an edible product, since I'm no Little Miss Muffet and would not eat curds and whey (or at least ones that looked like this. Although I do admit being a little curious as to whether they would squeak in my teeth the way Laura Ingalls Wilder described.


Then, I was flabbergasted at the sheer volume of whey left over from the cheese curdling.


Nearly 4 quarts total! I guess I'll be relying on this list to find some uses for all of this whey!


A pound of curds that mostly formed into a ball was left after straining off all of that whey.


After a bit more heating and stretching, a beautiful ball of mozzarella appeared, and I couldn't believe that I made my own cheese!

I have to admit that I'm regularly amazed at the things I'm learning to make that I never would have thought of attempting in the past. What fun! I'll continue to keep you posted on my kitchen experiments, but for now, I smell some soaked spelt soda bread that needs to be removed from the oven!

Yarn Along

This week's Yarn Along finds me with less pressure to complete but still working on socks. ;) Elizabeth picked out yarn for a pair of knee socks and a sweater for her birthday at the end of the month. (Actually, she doesn't know what I'm making, I just asked her which colorway she preferred.)

She chose the Roller Skate rainbow pattern in Knit Picks' Chroma Worsted which I'm making a simple roll neck raglan sweater for her. She also picked the Moonlit colorway in Felici sock yarn, also by Knit Picks, for her knee socks.


The stripes don't exactly match, but the colors are close enough that I think she'll be happy with them.

As for my reading, I received Folks, this ain't normal by Joel Salatin for Christmas and I've been thoroughly enjoying his thoughts on everything from farming to raising children to corporate agriculture. In fact, I've found myself reading a few pages at a time and mulling his words for a few hours before continuing to another section. I'm anxiously awaiting learning more from this book!

A new year.

Where to begin...where to begin.

I wish there were a more interesting tale to explain my absence from this space over the last week, but the answer is far more full of life and being in the moment with my family. We had friends visiting over the New Year's weekend and so many moments were just full of the routine care that 7 children require. (Cooking, cleaning the kitchen...break for 30 minutes, repeat.)

But the menfolk, well, they were far more ambitious.


They took advantage of the milder weather we've had this winter and decided to work on our sorely neglected garden space. We had all the best intentions when we first built a garden space in our backyard, but one thing we could figure out how to handle was the Bermuda grass that has overrun our backyard.


We would till, prepare the soil, plant and within weeks, even with constant care, the Bermuda grass would be overtaking the place and choking out the plants. By summers end, I would be frustrated with fighting it every day and then our growing season would be cut short by the Bermuda grass...he won again.


So for the last 2 years, we've just let the garden space grow up into a pile of debris and random plants. (And shelter for a family of rabbits.)


But this year we have a better plan! We're going to make raised bed gardens in that space this year so that we can hopefully beat the Bermuda grass and keep our plants intact throughout the whole growing season. We won't start too large, but maybe we can expand next year if the raised beds go well.


For now they're tilling and adding compost to the gardening area.


And when spring is almost here, we plan to till again then add landscape paper before making our raised beds in the area.


We shall see how it goes, but I'm hopeful again that we'll have better luck gardening in this space rather than trying to do everything in pots on the deck. Now I have to decide what to put in the pots!

Side note to the story: In the above photo, Paul is actually discovering that a mama mouse and her little mouse babies had taken up residence in our compost barrel. Shortly after they dumped the barrel, she scurried away with her babies attached. We only hope they made it safely to a new home and not into the bellies of one of the many hawks that constantly circle the field behind our house.