Taking A Break

Around here life is getting pretty busy. I am going to take a couple week break and be back May 8th. Have a lovely next couple of weeks!

Yard Work, It Can Actually be Fun!

Miss V. and Miss G. preparing the front yard for their Fairy Forest

This week has definitely made me feel confident that spring has sprung. The weather was in the double digits for most of the week. I even got my first sunburn of the season. And, I think the snow has finally melted from all those shadowy places that snow usually holds out in.

With spring comes yard work and tons of it. Even though I thought I did a pretty thorough job in the fall, cleaning up the leaves and other debris, when the snow melts I am totally proven wrong. The leaves seem to have multiplied, little sticks litter the ground and holy pine cones Batman! In our front yard I have never seen so many cones as this year. There must be well over a hundred. As of writing this they fill about a fourth of the bin you see in the pictures, and we are not even close to being done picking them up.

Today the girls had the day off from school, and I needed the work in my front yard started. (I do not trust Miss P in the front yard at all. It is too close to the road, so it is hard for me to get out there and get it done.) I told the girls that the fairies came last night and told me that they love to dance in our yard and help their fairy flowers grow, but they couldn't get to their flowers because of all the leaves and pine cones. The fairies needed two girls to help them so they could come and dance. While Miss G. was skeptical of that story line, Miss V. loved it and soon both girls were out with their work gloves cleaning up. I know... I lied... but it worked and they are having fun. I hope not too much damage will be done to psyche.

After about 5 minutes they started planning more than picking up. They are planning to turn the front yard into a fairy town complete with university and "death school" (I don't even want to know). With a few gentle prods from me for them to keep going they kept up the work. While I still have lots to do out there, it is a start. I think the most important thing here is that the girls had a great time using their imaginations and are now so excited to make their fairy town a reality. I will make sure to post some pictures of their completed town, if they are actually serious about it that is.

What kind of yard work do you have planned? Do you use fairies as an excuse too?

Homemade Paint - for kids

This week has been a sick week here. Poor Miss G. She has had such a runny nose. It has now moved on to a cough. Poor girl. Hopefully this is the end to the sickness for this winter season and we will have nothing but health from now on.

Since Miss G. has been home from school she decided this would be the best time to do experiments. And why not? The schools science fair is coming up so this was the perfect opportunity to do her science fair project. She was looking at how well certain items absorb water.

I showed her how water absorption worked and what happens when things get over saturated. Here is a link to a great experiment to do with the kids. With the water left over from that experiment Miss G decided she was going to add a bunch of different things to see if she could make paint. I think she was on the right track but had the proportions out of wack. Well today we remedied that. Here is how to make homemade paint.

1 cup salt
1 cup flour
1 1/3 cup water
food colouring of your choice.

This makes four generous sized amounts of paint. For more colours either make more or have smaller amounts.

I found this recipe in the description of this youtube video. Thanks youtube! Have fun painting!

Don't Look for the Living Among the Dead

Sorry for the late post. Yesterday we were at a friends house with a bunch of other families having fun. We didn't get home until later than I was expecting.

It is Easter time. It is a time of rebirth for the earth and for the soul. For me it is also a time I reflect upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that means in my life. The following is a video that portrays that well.

In the New Testament account of Christ's resurrection, an angel says to Mary, "Why look for the living among the dead?" Now while in this account he is referring to the body of Jesus, this line can be applied to our lives and habits, whether Christian or not.

Ruts, we all get into them. For me, it is with tidying and getting rid of stuff. It seems I can never get the job completed or things accumulate again. Clearly what I am doing isn't working, yet I seem to use the same tactics. This is me looking for the living among the dead. I am doing the same things over and over, yet, I'm not gaining new results. I'm not gaining happiness. I am not living.

The same can be said for having too much stuff. If we accumulate too many things, we are not able to live. Instead we are surrounded by dead things. Objects that don't give off a living energy.

What we need to do when we are stuck looking for the living among the dead is looking at things a different way. Having a paradigm shift. Thinking of ways to inject a living energy. If you are feeling devoid of energy and feel listless it is time to examine what in your life is causing you to look among the dead instead of the living. So that could be examining your relationships, your jobs, the way you do things.

Now, I am not saying you should end relationships or quit jobs, but just reexamining them and seeing what can be done to be re-energized in them.

Often when the energy in something is "dead" it is often because it is stagnant or not moving. If you are not moving at all, there will be no energy, and without energy there is no life. So think of something creative to jazz things up. In relationships that can be date night, a list of ideas can be found here. An article by Richard Paul Evans says that we should ask "how can I make your life better today?" That is injecting life into things. That is looking for living among living.

In the world, things that seem dead actually bring forth life. Compost, rotting logs, burned forests, these seem dead. But when you look at them more closely there is actually a lot of life going on in them. And from that, new life and growth can flourish. So if there is something in your life that seems dead, look at it more closely, see the life that is in it and use that as a springboard to newer and greater things.

Have a Happy Easter!