things you can do with oatmeal, yogurt and honey

Well, the obvious place to start would be with eating it. Yes, but we live on the edge and decided to do something else...we smeared it on our faces. Mmmmhmmm. It's that time of year (you know, the 4 months before Christmas?) when our mailbox is jammed with catalogs aimed at kids.  Well, Eliza was reading one and found a description of a  "Beauty Spa" that she clipped out and has been hanging on to. I was thinking of a science experiment that we could do together earlier this week, and she said, Mama, I wanna do this! and showed me the photo. Hm. Concocting. All right. We can do that...So she looked up "natural face masks" online and off we went...

First you grind the oats...

 ...add some live yogurt (raw goat in this case!)...

 ...and the honey...

 Ask  your little sister to cut some cucumber for the eyes, and ask your Mama to be your guinea pig first customer...

 Our cucumbers were a little large...and cold...and wouldn't stay on 'cause we were laughing so hard.

Ani took the photos of me - didn't she do a nice job?? Can't say much for her subject matter! On to her turn...

 It's cold! And slimy! And oooh, it's on my lip!

 Pretty, ain't I?

 This photo could be titled, "Little Sister's Revenge"...mwah-ha-ha...

 Did I mention we were laughing a lot??

 Relaaaaaaaaax, Eliza...

 Ta-da!

We had a dance party while waiting for it to dry, and sported the smoothest skin for the rest of the day...

oh the dollies...

Ani and I had a whole day to ourselves last Friday; Eliza decided last week that she'd like to go to this fall's session of "farm school", which I had decided not to continue to facilitate. I am really happy for her to have a day that is "hers", with some friends she doesn't often get to hang out with.  She came home thrilled - that works for me! Anyway, Anika has had no interest in going again, so it means that she and I have the next 6 fridays to ourselves!  We will sometimes share with a friend who comes to us for the day, but otherwise, it is that rare time of one-on-one with my kid. 

This past friday, what she wanted to do was to make a doll that she spied in a book I brought home from the library about making Waldorf-style cloth dolls (Kinder Dolls - now called Making Waldorf Dolls.) We spent the morning on this little sweetie, made out of scraps from our fabric pile.  Ani did some of the cutting, all of the stuffing, the shaping of the head, and the sewing of the body!

I'm not sure what the face below (on Ani!) is saying, but she was very happy with the face she drew on the doll...

When Eliza got home, she picked up some of the cornhusks from the compost bin and, with some embroidery thread, started fashioning some cornhusk dolls .

Very well. This house can never have too many characters to tell the many stories that are filling our brains...

 

Click here to see what creating is going on this week!

art!

photo by Dan

 What do you think this is?

Any guesses?

The eyeball of a marine animal?

Something embedded in a piece of coral?

An emerging alien, perhaps?

photo by Dan

photo by Dan

 These photos were a happy surprise from Dan on my camera, after he took a walk with the girls. Aren't they cool (and does he know me, or what?)?  They were on their way home from an event at the local art museum, which is across the river in one of the buildings that housed a mental hospital for years.  The current exhibit  features works by Ohio artist, Jim Dine.  He has worked in a wide variety of mediums, and there were bronze sculptures, wooden sculptures, paintings, and prints.  Dine has had an obsession with Pinnochio, and there were dozens of representations of the puppet throughout the exhibit.  The museum teamed up with the library and local artists to provide an afternoon of activities for families: a reading of Pinnochio, art stations where you could try making block prints (with thin pieces of foam),  a puppet show of Chicken Little, and a corner of a gallery where participants could make a community piece of word art, encouraged by local poet, Wendy McVicker.

word art

favorite words and phrases, in pencil or rubbed white with gum eraser

My family made me some beautiful artwork that afternoon, and presented it to me for my birthday.

my birthday card, from my sweetie

So, back to the walk! While I headed to grocery shopping, Dan and the girls walked home, mostly so they could check on the progress of this public art work, decorating the tunnel under the road along the river. (the rest of these photos are by Dan)

Wonder! Sparkle! Out! YES!

We almost stayed home...We hadn't done enough "school" for the week (I'll write more about that change in our "schedule" soon...), there was definitely laundry to be done, and I'd no idea what I was making for dinner. Plus, we only had 2 hours before we had to get to a piano lesson.  But we'd already made the mistake of missing Out for the sake of Inside Have-to's once this week and the results had been disastrous (dramatically speaking...), and I wasn't going that route again.  How many jeweled autumn days could there be left? (she writes, huddled on her bed, refusing to turn on the heat in spite of the stone-cold drizzle outside the window) I'm greedy when it comes to fall. I want all of it. So...Out.

leaf "tarantulas" skittering across the roads

milkweed

goldenrod in its last days, deep scarlet sumac

singular sparkle

no better place for some yoga

sun and water for inspiration

the woods were creaky with the wind...spoooooky

jack-in-the-pulpit berries ready for the taking...squirrels? anyone?

Ani and toadstool, size comparison

sisters

oh, sisters....

I had a hunch this would be spectacular. Boy, was I right.

Lactarius Indigo, you rock my world.*

So Much in one and a half hours. Connection, sparkle, yoga, laughter, space, breath, dreaminess, expansion (can we come here every time we want to do yoga?), silence, wind, story, kindness, wonder, awe, friendship, stride...even a trip to Meltdown and Back (a stray apple, unfinished, rolling and...plop!ing into the lake water...so funny and so not funny...).  Deep pleasure in a decision well-made.

*come on - CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS COLOR???? you don't even have to like mushrooms to find this unbelievably wonderful, unbelievably unlikely, incredibly Unbelievable. And yet, there it is. I'm an inarticulate, panting mess in the presence of this crazy unlikelihood.