And now for me......

.......a break. Yes, friends, it is time. I'm falling away from blogging for a while. There has been so much on the horizon these past few weeks that I've had to really dig deep and come to terms with the fact that somethings have got to be pushed off to the side for a bit. Writing is so cathartic for me so I will have to discover a new way to put my words out of my head, perhaps journaling will fill the void.

My hope is that during this time of rest, I will be be able to wrap my head around where exactly I want my blog to go, I've been feeling a bit lost, muddled even, about what is most important for me to be writing about. It's been kind of a free for all, and I'm quite fine with that, but something is missing. Not sure what it is. I'm really pushing to disengage from the big world that exists through the computer and use that time to richly engage with the living world that is living around me. How I would love to have each of you present in my everyday life to share  a cup of tea, a chat, or a nice long walk. And because you don't, I'll miss each of you. Thank you to those who comment and to all who come by to spend a moment with me in my world. Rest assured, our little homestead will continue to grow and thrive (we've currently hatched out 12 baby chicks!!!), homeschooling will go on and shift as necessary, our lives will chase the sun and we will continue seek out all the gloriousness of each God given day.

My hope is to be back in the swing of things in time for Michaelmas. But if not, know that I will resurface at some place and time. Until then, dear friends, I wish you a most glorious summer/winter and look forward to meeting you again.

Mother's Day Giveaway

In honor of the beauty, the delicate, and the divine in every Mother, I am beyond ecstatic to introduce you to the amazing Maude White of Brave Bird Jewelry & Paperwork based in Buffalo, NY. Maude's work is stunning, breathtaking, mind blowing. Her work is one of a kind, unlike no other, much like ourselves and those who gave us life. Maude gives life to paper (among other things) and has created a magic all her own. Maude has graciously given us an unbelievably beautiful piece of her art for our Mother's Day giveaway.

 

Maude moved from Smalltown, USA to a bigger, harder city in pursue of dreams and the ability to be more and see more than what might have been possible in her little hometown. After much effort, failures and many successes, Maude seems to have found her spirit in the intricate work of handcrafting fine paper arts and felted jewelry. She is currently a student, in life and at school, and has a power to make the unimaginable happen, like this paper cut below...

 

Maude's work has recently been published in the most current issue of Carrier Pigeon Magazine, a magazine of illustrated fiction and fine art that believes that by 

"giving full creative control to the writers, fine artists, illustrators, and designers, the magazine deconstructs the singularity of each artistic discipline while setting an uncharted standard for their successful merging."

 

 

Each and every cut is made with such precision and with determination. Every line, pregnant with emotion and meaning. By cutting away the blank canvas, Maude is bringing honor to the possibility of what lives within, she sheds light on what otherwise might not be seen.

 

Amazing, right!! So, here is what you can do to enter ( with multiple ways to enter) to win this amazing piece below. For one entry, simply comment below! For a second entry, please like our Facebook pages:: A Simple Life and Brave Bird Jewelry & Paperwork and don't forget to come back here and tell us you did so. For your third entry, share this giveaway anywhere and everywhere, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram! Where ever you might go please help spread the word so we can shine some love on this amazing artist and her work (and again, come back here to tell us you did just that!)!!

 

This giveaway will close at 12am EST on May 5, 2013 has closed! Thank you to those who participated!

This is our giveaway piece. It will arrive to you framed and nicely wrapped in time for Mother's Day! (hopefully, depending on our winner's location)


 

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw

 

Like in motherhood and in art, we create each day and the experiences we have and the love that is shared. It isn't found, it already lives inside of us. When we can allow those gifts to shine, either by will or grace, it is a divine creation that we could have never comprehended. I am utterly grateful for all you Mama's out there AND for all you artists. We are really one in the same and could not exist without the other. xo

 

 

 

A Treat for Mother's Day

Mother's Day is fast approaching. In years past I haven't given much thought in to how Mother's Day would go, but this year, as I'm surrounded by my ever expanding brood, I'm realizing that in celebrating this day given to being a Mother, it's important that I, too, experience the day as I wish.

This year, in honor of Motherhood, I will be doing a three part series on how to celebrate the Mothers in your life, including  yourself. Yes, I am suggesting you celebrate just being you, the radical, amazing, beautiful Mother that you are! This series will include many wonderful things including a mind blowing giveaway from an amazing artisan who creates absolutely breathtaking pieces of work! I can't wait for you to see it!

Today, I would like to direct your attention toward a lovely discovery called Treat, a part of the Shutterfly family! Here is their description from their website::

 

www.treat.com

"Welcome to Treat, your online home for making, sending and putting some real love and personality back into greeting cards. Treat is all about customizing, personalizing and making your cards one-of-a-kind creations that could only come from you. We're talking about adding your own words and pictures so your cards stand out from the crowd and the person who receives them will be totally psyched—blown away actually. These aren't your typical boring greeting cards from the drugstore—these ones actually have thought behind them.  Our reminder service will make sure you never miss a birthday, anniversary or important milestone. At a loss for exactly the right words? Our Message Library will help inspire you. Need a gift on the fly? We got you covered with integrated gift cards printed right inside the card you create. Treat is fun and easy to use, but more importantly, helps connect you and all the people in your life in a more personal and caring way."

I was immediately intrigued because I am a sucker for a unique card and because of that, we always make our own cards or seek out those ultra unique ones at our local specialty stores. Our children really enjoy the process of creating a card; thinking of just the right words, what pictures to draw, and so on. Using Treat, you create your own card with the help of various templates available to you that you can make your own by adding your own photos and creating your own personal message. Your littlest ones would need assistance with the process but it would be a cinch for the older ones. Our eldest daughter, who is 11, created one all on her own. She uploaded a photo to the card she liked the best and changed the words in the template to create her own unique message. I also joined in on the fun and created one for my own Mother. We received our cards in the mail just the other day and they are beautiful. The cards are a heavy card stock paper, the photos are matte, and the colors are vibrant. I was most impressed with the quality of the photos. They are clear, no pixels are visible, and the colors are just as I would have hoped them to be. This is quite an improvement as our printer tends to give us photos of an interesting color palette, not like I would have hoped most times. 

If you'd like to check out some of the other templates available at Treat specifically for Mother's Day, click the photo below!

These are our cards! Aren't they beautiful?!

More Mother's Day Cards
 

There is a card for every season at Treat; birthday cards, holiday cards, and your everyday greeting cards. I can't help but think of the next birthday around the corner with a family of our size! What I absolutely can get behind is the scheduler that is available for your cards. You can create and schedule delivery of your unique card up to a year in advance! For me, that is revolutionary because typically speaking, I'm the one that ends up calling a day to two after the birthday has passed. That's not the most fun place to be and I look forward to growing out of that particular experience :)

 

 

I hope you come back tomorrow to see how we've been inspired through our Pinterest board and for a lovely craft idea that we're making for the Mama's we know and love xo 

 

 

A New Way to Follow A Simple Life

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

 

Google Reader is set to shut down this coming July. This is how blogger creates our following, for all blogs. I've discovered Bloglovin from other bloggers who have used it and find it a successful replacement for Google Reader. It is yet another application to download, another place to look at among the myriad other sites one might check in a day. For me, I find it's one stop shopping! All of the blogs I love and follow I have in one place. Bloglovin organizes all of your posts and keeps it simple. If you have your own blog, once you sign up you can "claim" your blog and update your information accordingly.

 

I adore each of you who come to visit me here and I hope you continue to come by often. Your comments are so uplifting and I've enjoyed creating many nurturing and supportive relationships with many of you outside of this blogger world.

 

On this Saturday, the sun is shining here (for the moment). I hope you find peace and joy where ever you might go. Thank you for joining me on our journeys around the sun xo

 

For Little Hands ~ Frogs

Welcome to For Little Hands, a weekly series that hopes to inspire creative whimsy for the little hands in your life.

 

We had a fun spring craft project planned for today but we were joyfully distracted by this unplanned frog date. I'm choosing to post this instead of the craft project because I'm finding it all too necessary to be focusing on the whimsy of life, the unplanned joyous moments with my children. There is so much to be sad and scared about in the big world outside our window.....pulling in and really seeing the beauty, the peace, and hearing the belly laughs is way more important (today) than sitting down to a structured something or other. Today, we needed to just be in our moments. No directions. No plans. We needed to just be lead by the wind and our childhood daydreams.

 

 

Today we met some frog friends. We visited Daddy at work today and there is a great little frog pond that was bustling with activity. One peek lead to immediate giggles and wet feet. Can you make out our little friend in the center of the picture above?

 

We were all on our hands and knees being eluded by these slippery little frogs. Some, actually, weren't so little!

 

Sometimes we actually caught one!

 

When we did it was shear joy! To feel their slippery, wet, smooth skin. How quickly they jumped and slithered through our hands. Oh, how happy they made us all!

 

It's hard to explain the excitement about catching frogs. It's a simple activity, perfect for any size hands, young and old. It's all about timing and being gentle.

 

Kiki would have carried one around in her pocket all day if she could!

 

This photo made me so happy. My adoring husband, my three littles, and our dear Victor (my husband's work partner) all down and seeking a frog in hopes of holding one for just a moment.

I even caught one!

 

Whatever it is you'll do today with the little hands in your life, I hope you'll take the time to breathe in and soak up those precious, undirected moments. Turn away from the darkness in the world for just a while and embrace the light that brightens your life. Our children are the carriers of the brightest light. Give them the space to shine and allow yourself the space to let them remind  you how to shine.

 

Loving wishes to you all for a peaceful weekend xo

{ pretty, happy, funny, real }

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life.

 

Every Thursday, at Like Mother, Like Daughter.

 

 

{ pretty }

 

 

Kiki has one of the prettiest noses I've ever seen xo

 

 

{ happy }

 

Our six little chicks finally got to spend some time out of doors; pecking, scratching, and soaking up some of that gorgeous sunshine that we had yesterday. It has been a long time coming, that elusive sun. I'm looking forward to many more sunshiny days ahead.....and I bet they are, too!

 

Our little Sprout. She's become such a happy little bugger. Now that her teeth are starting to poke through her days are quite a bit more manageable. The poor lass, she's on the cusp of 11 months and has only 3 teeth. Her siblings each had a full mouth of teeth by now. She's very proud of the ones she's got, that's for sure!

 

Although she isn't beaming with smiles, I know for sure this little heart is as happy as happy could be. This soft, little bundle of love makes my Charlotte so happy. Little Lionheart brings much happiness to our hearts, he doesn't even need to try.

 

This is how Kiki spends her days. Barely awake and she has a chick in her arms and sings to them, rocks them, pets them. I'm not sure Kiki can imagine her life without a baby chick in it! Her days revolve around theirs. Our little chicken whisperer.

 

 

{ funny }

 

Kiki's hair this morning upon waking. I don't think I've ever seen hair so unruly! We were in stitches and she couldn't believe what had happened to her hair overnight.

 

 

{ real }

 

We've begun incubating some of our chickens eggs in an attempt to hatch out a few of our own. We've never experienced this and I'm so eager to have our children experience the miracle of a chick hatching from it's egg. It's such a beautiful process (I've only ever seen through pictures).

 

Our little homestead is growing. Our next introduction will hopefully be some Lincoln sheep. I'm eager to have some sheep that have great wool for fiber processing. The sheep we have currently are not breed for their wool so it tends to be short, wispy, and it breaks when you try to spin it. I'll begin cleaning, skirting, and carding some to see if I can make it work, but.....it would just feel so nice to have wool that is meant to be worked. Dreams!

 

 

Homesteading

“Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: "Love. They must do it for love." Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss.” 

~Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food

Our little homestead is growing by leaps and bounds. Living in community we have the great gift of living among many farm animals; we care for them and in turn they provide for us. It has been our greatest dream to contribute to the provisions by having our own little team on our plot of land and this weekend, we began to see our dream to reality.

We welcomed six chicks into our family this weekend (along with the newcomers you'll meet below). Kiki adores them and has spent every waking moment tending to them, singing to them, holding them. For just three years old she has given us a glimpse into what amazing care she is capable of. Her tenderness, quiet, gentle devotion. It's almost like she goes to a meditative place while she is with these chicks.

We were also gifted this beautiful Lionhead bunny. While he won't necessarily produce anything akin to food or materials he has already produced a softening of heart, a smile within us all, a gentleness that we all needed after this long, long winter. His name is Little Lionheart.

This beautiful Black Sexlink is Beatrice. She is a wise old gal and happily and immediately made herself at home. She is gentle, sweet, and so far, has enjoyed begin carried about by various little hands. She also have us our first egg!

We have a Red Sexlink as well (her name is Ruby). It has been of utmost importance to her to figure out her new digs as she's feeling pretty broody. I found her nestled into the coop working on laying her first egg so I didn't want to disturb her with a photo op.

This is Max, our Rooster, and his lady love, Gwendolyn. She follows him everywhere. They are both still a bit nervous but have warmed up to us and have let us help them into the coop at night. Our coop is our old outdoor rabbit hutch, modified with nesting boxes and roosts to accommodate our brood. It will require a bit of assistance on our part to get them in and out of the coop, just until they're comfortable with the process on their own.

Our landscape is a beautiful one. The sheep add an element of olden days and when living off the land was how you survived. We're getting closer and closer to that place of self reliance. Our dream is not to live as if it were the 1800's but to embrace and accept our gifts and primal calling to be connected to  the land, to keep our children connected and focused on the sanctity of caring for and working the land, working with our hands, and allowing the realness of providing for ourselves to be at the forefront of how we build our home.

"The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” 
~ Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

  

Being a Waldorf inspired home we are fortunate to live where we do. The daily tasks of tending to the animals, preparing the garden for the season, integrating the childrens daily play and rhythms into the ebb and flow of the natural world around them is so beautiful and unique. 

"As child, one has the magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees." ~ Valerie Andrews, A Passion for this Earth