Valentine's Day Baby Gym

Happy Valentine's Day (a day late) to you all.  Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday, but we've had a couple of crazy, busy days here Under The Old Oak Tree.  By the time we got home from school and then getting the stitches taken out of Toadstool's head, I was just too tired to take the last few pictures I needed or to write up this post.

I've been thinking for a while that Rosebud would probably really enjoy a baby gym.  Her favorite place in the world is at home on the floor on her sheepskin rug.  It's a warm cozy spot and big brother Toadstool likes to join her there (he got his own sheepskin for Valentine's Day so they can be near each other but not have him so in her space all the time).  

I looked into buying  her a wooden baby gym, but the price was way more than I could justify for a toy she'll probably only use for a few months.  I started looking online and came across these directions from Seedpod Craft.  I decided that I could do this!  I used heart plaques instead of ovals and Toadstool and I spent quite a while sanding all the rough edges off and rounding them to have a more Waldorf aesthetic.  We also rounded off the ends of the 4 support dowel rods.  We don't have a huge amount of space in our small apartment so I felt that it was important that we be able to take the whole thing apart and reassemble it easily.  I'm not sure how often we'll do this, but I'm sure there are times we'll need to, so instead of attaching the legs with wood screws, I drilled all the way through and used machine screws with wing nuts.  I decided it was safe enough if they were well tightened and we take it apart and put it away once she's pulling up on things.  To go on it I knit a pink and red heart and a pink and red ladybug  lovebug with heart spots which attach to the cross bar with i-cord.

 I did a bit of cooking for Valentine's Day this year too.  I made us heart shaped brownies.  My brownie recipe is an adaptation of Elana's Pantry's breakfast bread, but you'd never know it.  They really have  a good bit of protein and very little sugar in them and are so so rich and chocolatey!  I'll have to post my changes to her base recipe at some point.  

I made these heart shaped peanut butter cookies for Papa to take to work for the Sweets Day he was organizing for his co-workers.  They turned out really cute shaped as hearts.

For our breakfast I made my guys and I heart shaped eggs and bacon with a little chocolate cherry mouse.  These mice have been quite the hit with Toadstool.  He loves mice (so much that his teachers at school gave him a little needle-felted one for his birthday) and cherries so when I saw these over at The Magic Onions, I knew I had to make him some!  One on each plate was a perfect little sweet start to our Valentine's Day.

 Toadstool and Rosebud show off one of the Valentine hearts he made to give to family and friends this week.

Linking to Creative Friday at Natural Suburbia.

Celebrating Midsummer

Cling, ding ,ding

The summer bells now ring:

There’s laughter on the hills,

The daisies show their frills.

Cling, ding, ding

Be welcome Summer King!

Cling, ding, ding

The summer bells now ring:

The shepherds pipe all day,

The lambkins frisk and play.

Cling, ding, ding

Be Welcome Summer King!

~Wynstones' Summer

W and I have been joyously singing this song all day.  He especially loves the "Cling Ding Ding" lines.   In our family Midsummer/St. John's Day is one of our happiest and most loved celebrations of the year.  W and I have been preparing for this celebration for the past week.  It has been a lot of fun since he was really able to assist with many of the preparations this time.

W helps his mama with the Midsummer decorations.

He is especially proud of these suns, which I cut from some watercolor paintings that W did this week. I oiled the paper to make it translucent with the intent of taping them up to our balcony door.   unfortunately the oil caused them to slip right off of the tape so we decided to scatter them on our table instead.  W likes to point to them and tell me that he made them and that they are beautiful.  They were inspired by this post from Seeds from The Yew Tree.

I also worked on several Window Stars especially for Midsummer in the colors of the sun.  They turned out so beautifully and I love having them hanging on the balcony door, though we may need to edit out the collection a bit as it's getting rather crowded, but they do really brighten up the room when the sun shines through them.  We are very fond of our stars and they have gone a long way towards making this new apartment feel like home.

I love this dragonfly!  Actually I love dragonflies in general and one made from window star folds is just so much fun.  Directions can be found here for the dragonfly, butterflies and flowers.

Other paper decorations included making more suns for the china cabinet and the yellow paper spirals we hung from the dining room chandelier.  Both of these were inspired by All Year Round which remains my go-to book for most of our festivals.  I especially love the explanations and background information this book gives on the festivals and their origins.

My other crafting projects for the day included making floating beeswax candles (which I wrote about last year) and a sand candle.  W supervised me in making these projects but I wouldn't let him too close to the  hot beeswax.  I think both of these are destined to become part of our family midsummer traditions.  W did help make the little dish that holds the sand candle from sand clay that we made together.  We had a lot of fun with it, but he kept trying to eat the clay...silly boy.  He never tries to eat regular play dough, so I'm not sure why he thought the sand clay was edible.

W and I also put together our summer nature table and W has been thoroughly enjoying exploring the various elements of it over and over.  I love how things on our nature table spark his curiosity and  imagination and are the jumping off point for many of the discussions during any given day.

Of course food is always an important part of our family festival, so W and I have been cooking too.  We made homemade honey butter and mixed in some basil from our garden.  It is so incredibly delicious.  We ate it on homemade bread and on corn on the cob and all just loved it!

For our bread, again, inspired by Seeds From The Yew Tree, I attempted to make a  beehive out of bread.  It ended up looking more like a coiled blob, but it is some of the best tasting bread I've made in a while, so I'm not going to complain.  Daddy was as always in charge of the grill which also served as our big fire element since we can't really have a bonfire in our apartment complex.  He grilled delicious burgers and some healthy-ish nitrate-free hotdogs.

While he was grilling W played with some neighborhood kids and I was able to visit with one of the moms who happens to be from one of the places I used to live a while back.

I didn't manage to get the giant bubbles together for this year so W and his new friend played with some bubble wands though most of the bubble solution ended up on the ground...but that's to be expected with toddlers.  W also really enjoyed trying to catch the bubbles I made with mine.

Then we came inside to eat, rounding out our feast with fresh green beans, watermelon and basil lemonade.

For dessert we had the same Summer Berries Bread Pudding I made last year (link to post with recipe).  It was as delicious as I remembered from last year.

W was especially fond of it and really wanted seconds.  Then again, this boy has never met a berry he didn't like and this has fresh raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries in it.

W also celebrated Midsummer by leaving some dried wild blueberries in these little tea cups for the fairies, who should leave him something in return tomorrow morning.  He is really looking forward to seeing what they bring.

I also wanted to mention one other source of information that I have drawn heavily from this year for our Midsummer/St. John's Day celebration.  This post from Christine Natale has so much wonderful information about the day.  She even convinced me to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream on Netflix yesterday while W napped.  I ended up with this 1968 version instead of the ones she recommends since it was the only one available to stream.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it is quite obviously a very late 1960's production....oh the strange juxtaposition of the story, scenery and costumes! All the women except for Judi Dench are wearing these little mini dresses and knee high boots and the men's costumes are almost out of a period piece! Ha Ha!

Anyways, back to  Christine Natale's post.  I also really liked her explanation of the significance of St. John's Day coming six months before Christmas and preparing the way for Christ as well as her discussion of balance.  I definitely find that I am needing a bit more balance in my days right now and it is something I will be working on in the coming days as we look towards fall, winter and Christmas.  This has all greatly enriched my appreciation of Midsummer and made it more meaningful on a very profound and personal level.  It is not an aspect of the festival that I bring directly to W, but I know he benefits from my working on it myself.

Wishing you all the happiest of Midsummers!

Celebrating May

Having May Day fall on a Sunday during the week between Easter and Mother's Day really through me for a loop this year I have to admit!  I found myself scrambling to get something together to mark the day/season when all we really wanted to do was spend a week recovering from Easter and having company.  Also, having moved recently, I had a difficult time finding public celebrations near our new home. We like to have a family picnic as well at a local park for May Day too though. As a family, we decided not to celebrate on May Day itself but on the following Tuesday instead.  This allowed Daddy to celebrate with us, and allowed me to delay starting our preparations till May Day.  That day I started making the May wine that Daddy and I like to enjoy as a part of our celebration.  I start with a bottle of German mosel wine and pour it in a half gallon jar along with sprigs of sweet woodruff, sliced strawberries and sugar.

 I let this set in the fridge overnight, then strain it out the next morning.  At that point I also add fresh sprigs of sweet woodruff, rose petals, and a bottle of sparkling mineral water and return it to the refrigerator.  It is so, so good and I look forward to it all year!

Daddy toasts May with some May wine

I also made W this Strawberry pomegranate sun tea and added sliced strawberries to it prior to serving.  It was so pretty, I had to take a picture of it with the sun shining through (please note I did not leave it sitting out in the sun once I added the strawberries). 

W thought this was so special.  Our little May King was so careful not to spill a drop of it!

 Before we ate our picnic, W and I made May crowns with leaves and flowers we found at the park.  Last year we made these braided raffia crowns and we simply slip the stems through the braids.  They work really well and we are able to save the crown base from year to year.

Here we are in our May finery!

For our picnic food we had homemade stromboli stuffed with ricotta and mozzarella cheese, pesto, spinach and Italian sausage.  This doesn't have much to do with May Day per say, except that in our family, this is standard picnic food.

We also had goat cheese salad with grapes and walnuts, and fresh cut strawberries mixed with some xylitol.

For dessert, we were supposed to have Rosemary and  Strawberry scones, but I accidentally left them at home.  We ate them for breakfast for a few days instead and they were so delicious!  I think they taste like May with the fresh rosemary W and I picked from our little balcony garden.  

After we ate we flew kites until W decided that the kites were scary.  Then W and Daddy played catch for a while.

To be honest these pictures were taken a few days before  our celebration (I forgot to get the camera back out after we ate).  I wanted to include them though because I love how my two year old plays catch.  There's always a couple of minutes between each throw while he wonders around looking at something else that has caught his interest...lol, but he loves this as special time spent with Daddy who is a very patient ball player!

The following Saturday W and I made the trip down to the Richmond Waldorf School for their May Faire.  We loved watching the May Pole dancing and catching up with dear friends there.

We have continued our celebration of May with W spending lots of time out on our balcony playing in his new sand pot...

...and visiting the sheep at a local farm.  W loves all sheep with a passion that is truly fitting for the son of an avid knitter and felter.  It warms my heart to see him walk right up to the sheep and pet them. I also love that he knows at this early age that the wool Mama works with comes from the sheep.

 He is especially fond of the black lambs here and spent a very long time with this little guy, petting him and talking to him.  I am amazed by the gentleness he shows to his sheep friends.

W and I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival on Mother's Day  It was quite a drive, but was the perfect way to end up our week of celebrating the best of May.  I was able to stock up on some fleece, locks, roving and yarn and W was able to spend lots of time with the sheep.  He spent half the day giggling in delight each time a sheep would baa.  He also loves watching the sheep dogs.  Another year we will have to take Daddy as well so that I can participate in some of the workshops and W can spend more time with his sheep while I shop for wool!

Our favorite sheep at the festival.  He was so friendly and demanded attention.  

W was happy to oblige!

Wishing you all the very best of the happy month of May!

Easter Magic

Happy Easter everyone!  We are finally back online on the other side of our move and settling in (more about that in a later post).  The only word I know to use to describe our Easter morning this year is magical.  I don't know if it is just having a two year old, or the new traditions we incorporated into our celebration this year or a combination of the two, but it was amazing!

In the weeks leading up to Easter, W and I worked hard on blowing out and decorating eggs and making preparations.  We were also working really hard to get all of those boxes unpacked and get the house ready for my IL's to come visit for the holiday. We put up a few spring decorations.

 W was very excited about Easter for about two weeks before the actual day.  We enjoyed a neighborhood egg hunt and we went back to our previous town and our old church for a visit which happened to be on the day of the egg hunt there.  I think this helped to build up the excitement for the actual day for W.

Also, during Holy Week we set up a Lenten garden as suggested in the book All Year Round.

We also followed the authors' suggestion to make chervil soup and had a simple but lovely Maundy Thursday meal.

The night before Easter W and I put a "nest" out in our balcony garden for the Easter Bunny.  It was just a small basket lined with some lovely unprocessed wool that a friend had brought to me from New Zealand (beautiful wool).  We placed some carrots in the nest as well (sorry I forgot to take pictures of this).

I got up about a half hour before W did on Easter morning and had just enough time to put breakfast in the oven and hide our dyed Easter eggs before he woke up. It was perfect timing!

W woke up to find his Lenten garden transformed into a beautiful Easter garden and he was just mesmerized by it.

For several moments he just stood at the edge of the sofa and gazed at the transformation.

Then he decided to get a closer look...

 ...and the excitement on his face was just beautiful...

I actually had to remind him about the nest we had left for the Easter Bunny.  I also handed him a basket and told him to check to see if the Easter Bunny had hid any eggs on the balcony.

Then the egg hunt moved into the playroom...

Admiring his collection.

  ...and then ended in the living room with some more hidden eggs and finally his Easter basket (which he had walked by at least a dozen times before noticing...lol).

And how he enjoyed the surprises inside!

He looked at his new Gerda Muller Spring book...

...snacked on some bunny crackers...

....played with his lamb marionette...

 ....and played with his new wood and (mama-made) knit chickens on his new (again mama-made) farm play mat.  He deiced the animals were all tired and needed to go to sleep!

We then had a nice breakfast of scotch eggs and hot cross buns with Nana and Granddad and got ready to go to church, which was truly lovely.  It was a blessed and magical morning.

W and I cooked for much of the rest of the day and we enjoyed an Easter feast with family and one of Daddy's co-worker friends. Unfortunately my camera battery died and I have yet to find the charger since the move so I wasn't able to photograph the rest of the day.

All in all though, it was one of the best Easters I can remember.