Tales From The Bonny Blue House

Felt food and a baby picture

This is my newest obsession. Giddy with success over my quilt squares I started making felt food for the twins.

We bought them this beautiful little kitchen set for Christmas from Nova Naturals. I wanted something that would last and be pretty enough to live in the dining room or living room. I am totally over plastic toys.

 It lives in my dining room and blends nicely. Don't look at the garbage piled in the background. It was snowing and I was waiting until there was a lull until I sent Ryan out with it.

Reality blogging...

Back to the felt food.

I first saw this on Jess's blog Star Cottage. Jess has lots of nice craft ideas on her blog. I was enchanted and wanted to make some but it has taken me a while to get my act together.  The snow day gave me the opportunity. The kids did school but I played hookey from all responsibility and made felt food all afternoon.

 I made fried eggs, a banana, raviolis, orange slices, ice cream pops, and pancakes. I'm going to work on some veggies next.  It was such fun.

Now for a gratuitous baby picture to reward you for looking at my felt food.
Pretty darn cute, isn't he?

The Crafty Crow

is having a nice give-away. Go check it out.

Cottage Outing

Today was the first Cottage outing of the autumn season. Alice hosted our homeschool group for Fatima Club. Since it was the Feast of our beloved St. Therese she focused on that for her lesson and craft.

All in all it was a very "Haystack" kind of day.

Bonny Blue and Cottage tots play chalk.

Cottage kid and her buggy friend.

Not my idea of a pet but to each her own.

Nature Mom approves

Radiantly expecting Alice shines up St. Therese to preside over the festivities of her day.

Spoon Saints and snacks. What could be better?

These girls often attend Cottage days. They are quite ladylike.

Secrets shared under the shady trees.

A loving friendship.

Is that Holy Water in your shot glass?

We had a wonderful day with our Little Flowers group crafting with the lovely and talented Cottage Mom. The Queen of Cute in her post is Bonny Kelli.

Our Lady of Altagracia

Since we've put away our Christmas Mosaic it is time to pull out our Catholic Mosaic and start up with our Thursday tea time.

Today we read "A Gift of Gracias" and used Fenestrae Fidei: A Coloring Companion to Catholic Mosaic to accompany the story.

Here's how it looked.

When I walked into the grocer store these orange tulips were the first thing I saw. I thought they would make a pretty and festive addition to tea time. The cupcakes are just plain white, the only kind Ryan will eat, with buttercream frosting tinted orange and flavored with a bit of orange juice.

After listening nicely everyone dove into the coloring pages while we discussed gratitude and Marian apparitions.

Working intently.

Sean is a HUGE fan of cupcakes!

Bridgie loves them too but she was anxious to join the fun.

In the blink of an eye, she was in the middle of it all.

A nice addition to our liturgical notebooks.

Our Lady of Altagracia, Pray for us!

Sweet dreams everyone!

January in the Learning Room

Anxious to get in and get started...

January craft materials

I still need to fill in the feast days in our calendar. Raggedy Ann is just hanging there lately.

File crate is filled up and ready.

The bulletin board is ready for Ordinary Time. I love how the banner I made turned out.

The January book display. The basket contains the Catholic Mosaic book titles as well as many winter and snow themed books. I'll be adding more after a trip to the library this weekend.

The book baskets. From left to right, poetry, trains (for Kevin, there is always a train basket), board books for the twins, early readers for Kelli and Erin, and a variety of picture books that I switch out every few days.

It's only the 9th and I am all ready for January :). 

Good night friends!

January Plans

Today I have time to think.  Not that there is nothing around here that needs doing, there is. I'm just choosing, for one day, to ignore it and have a quiet day thinking.

The kids are tired due to all the illness followed up by a lot of fun partying. They are content to quietly play with their new toys use their new art supplies, read their new books and watch their new movies.  I am content to let them do this.

I am looking toward January. Tomorrow will be devoted to cleaning up, planning for the New Year's Eve gathering we are hosting, and some lesson planning and quarterly report writing. Today I am noodling about January.  I like January. It's hunker down time.  The weather gets cold, there is the promise of snow and there are no big holidays or even birthdays to distract us. We can just focus on school work and our activities and catch up on the house stuff.

So I thought it would be helpful to make a list a la Dawn of things I would like to get to in January.  Kind of a wish list.  With two very active 17 month olds in the house how ever much gets done, gets done.

• Faith
  - We will join the Holy Father in his prayer intentions for the Church in Africa
  - It is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus so we will explore the names of Jesus
  - We will learn this hymn
  - Confirmation prep for Ryan. He gets measured for his robe this month and he needs to submit his stewardship time chart to the diocese.
  - Solemnity of Mary Mother of God (1/1)
  - Holy Name of Jesus (1/3)
  - Ephiphany of the Lord (1/6)
  - Baptism of the Lord (1/13)
  - Saint Agnes (1/21)
  - Saint Thomas Aquinas (1/28)
  - Saint John Bosco (1/31)
  - Continue with our Magnifikids study and activities
  
• Nature
  - Make some cool homemade bird feeders to supplement the ones we have
  - Try to take some pictures of the birds visiting.
  - Peruse the seed catalogs to get ready for spring. Our garden may have to be merely containers this year due to the construction.
  - Pray for a snowstorm so we can build a snowman - it's been a while.
  
• Food
  - Wassail for New Year's Day
  - Beef stew
  - Chicken and dumplings
  - Maple pancakes
  - Cocoa, lots of cocoa!
  - Shepherds pie
  - Molasses cookies
  - Apple pie (should be on every food list)
  - Chocolate cream pie (ditto)
  - Christ's diapers
  - Epiphany bread
  - Pork roast
  - Red wine
  - Popcorn
  
• Homekeeping
  - Begin to de-clutter in preparation of the construction.
  - Look into storage facilities
  - Put flannel sheets on all of the beds.
  - Buy new crib sheets
  - Take down all the curtains and wash and iron them :(
  - De-clutter the book shelves and school closet
  - Sew up the two dresses I have cut out for myself.
  - Sew up the t-shirts cut out for the girls
  - Sew up the tote bag project
  - Plan for Dave, Katie's and Kevin's birthdays in February
  
• Crafting
  - Make this cute craft for the Holy Name Feast
  - Beaded snow flakes
  - Mitten Bookmarks
  - Pipe Cleaner Penguins
  - Some kind of snowflake flower for St. Agnes' Day?
  - A lamb for St. Agnes' Day?
  - Teach Katie and Erin to knit.
  - Frames for saint pictures
  - Winter placemats
  - Make a few candles in preparation of Candlemas
  
• Special Events/Days
  - Homeschool Poetry Slam is in early February, the three big girls are memorizing poems to recite.
  - Twelfth Night - read the Lamb version.
  - A weekend trip later in the month. Perhaps Boston?
  - A trip to NYC to either The Met or the The Museum of Natural History which will necessitate watching the movie either right before or right after.
  - National Popcorn Day (1/19)
  - National Pie Day (1/23)
• Books
  - See my sidebar in the coming days for what will be in our winter book baskets! I just received my latest Amazon order of winter goodies :)

So that's all I can come up with at the moment.  I still have some tweaking to do and a lot more planning.  Now it's off to tackle some of those chores I was ignoring.

Have a blessed evening.

-

Some Thankful Projects For Sunday

Handmade from my heart

  Last year my handmade gifts were of the sweet variety. Lots of baskets of pumpkin bread and jams made by my father-in-law. This year I wanted to be a little different so I spent some time at the Mountain Rose Herbs website and found a recipe for calendula cream.  This looked like something I could handle.

First I melted shea butter in a double boiler.

Then I added the calendula flowers and simmered for about 40 minutes.

Then I removed it from the heat, added Vitamin E oil, rose otto oil and lavendar oil. After is cooled a bit I poured it into a glass jar.

After it cools completely it will become a white cream which is useful on dry chapped skin and also as a diaper cream. It would make a nice gift for a new mom or anyone who spends any time outside in the cold winter air.

I was on a roll, so I made some Herbal Body Soak courtesy of The Herb Companion.  This was super easy.  I ground majoram and bay leaf (dried from my garden believe it or not) in the food processor. I added fine sea salt and baking soda.

   

It smelled heavenly.

Then I started feeling crafty.  This often does not end well here at the bonny blue house. Usually something ends up glued to the wrong thing or person but I think I did ok this time.  I used my big funnel and put the bath soak in a mason jar. I am an obsessive jar saver and Dave often complains comments about the empty jars in the pantry.  It's topped with a scrap of linen left from some embroidery I'm working on which is held on by raffia and an antique tortoise shell button from my button box.  I made a pretty label with some collage paper and glued it on the jar.

This was really quick and easy and since there was a bit that did not fit into the jar I can assure you that it is a very soothing bath soak. :).

Since I was already in jar mode I mixed up a batch of Mocha Cappuccino Mix which I've used for a while in gift baskets. It comes from the book Homespun Gifts From The Heart which I have used for years.  It has great ideas for gift baskets and pretty handmade gifts.

The recipe is:
1/2 cup powdered creamer
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup instant coffee
1/4 cup cocoa powder

Add it all in a large bowl, mix with a whisk until thoroughly combined and pour into jars or bags.  Add a pretty tag with directions (add 3 tbsp to one mug of boiling water and stir) and you're done.

All in all I had a fun evening making some gifts and planning for gift baskets. I also went ahead and pre-ordered the Learning Herbs Medicine Kit which should help me make some more potions that will be useful as well as beautiful.

I hope you feel inspired to try making some gifts for the upcoming Advent and Christmas season as well as the new year's worth of occasions.  It really is a great way to be creative and tell people how very much you care for them.

Have a wonderful evening.

On Pins and Needles Forum

Michele, my multi-talented friend, has started a wonderful forum. It is dedicated to handcrafts and promises to be a wonderful source of inspiration.  Please come over and join the fun!