Pop Up House

This idea came from one at Sugar City Journal and was much enjoyed here. Making miniature is always so cool, I would have loved to do this as a girl - heck I had more than enough fun doing it today. We made the kitchen and then a sitting room and I could have expanded to do a whole house but the baby on my knee was fed up having her hand poked out of the way of snipping scissors. She wanted to fling herself on to the table. Did I mention this baby just wants to fling herself into everything? Well she does. Just yesterday she was watching me eat a nectarine and decided to attack it herself and reached forwards to give a lick. I was astonished and delighted, she is so bold. Her brothers left solids until they were so much older (Fe was 18 mo when he had his first nibble) it is cute to see her adventuring. I mean at 4 months she seems crazily young for solids and I am not even going there with her yet but she is so up for anything - she sits on the bed with me holding just her elbow for balance.... amazing little person...

Well, yeah, the House. Where was I? So the idea is just to get some stiff card (we used A3 sized) and make a fold lengthwise in half and then the pop out furniture is just sets of double snips, varying lengths. So many possibilities.



Very easy to get carried away with - truth be told I would have liked to do it ALL by myself :lol The boys were just as enthralled and then they went off on a tangent and made a whole stack of tiny little books (they want to make a library next) with writing on and everything, all of their favourites.

Elderflower Cordial

This week I made Elderflower cordial to celebrate the Solstice. I only just remembered it was the Solstice actually, my days all float together and often I am hesitant to say out loud which month (or even year) it might currently be. Only at school when we used to have to write the date out fully in the right hand corner of a fresh page each day in our exercises books was I certain of my date and time and place in the world. Long gone feels that notion!

So, yeah, sidetracked again, the cordial....

I blended recipes from The Guardian and Festivals Family and Food for this.

20 frothy plate-like heads of elder flowers
2 pts boiling water
1 lb sugar
juice of a lemon



Soak for 24 hours, muslin covered, stir a bit. Strain, decant. Ought to keep for a month. This recipe has half the amount of suggested sugar (it was supposed to be double what you read here) but it just did not need it I felt. I contemplated using honey or agave for the sweetener but changed my mind and used sugar - the flower scent and taste is so delicate I thought it might be lost with another heavy flavour in there. It is really lovely!

Sling of the Week

Erm, embarrassingly enough I have more slings than I will EVER have babies. In fact a recent tally found my sling count to be 9. Then I remembered the Sutemi in the cupboard and so I am in to double figures.

So I am going to go through them here - a sling a week, and comment on whether they currently please me. Or not. And why.

This week the Didymos. I bought this for Felix and only used it a handful of times, guilty over the cost and under use I even decided at one point to sell it but never got myself into gear to do that. Feeling lucky I was so half-arsed about it since I am liking it more now.

Not the best photos in the world but you get the idea. This one is Lana... Hmm or maybe Lena, and is a size 6. I like doing that crossover carry where you are supposed to pull up the horizontal bit right at the end for extra support. I have been forgetting to do that last bit and then liked the support it gives underneath. I did try hoisting Esmé on to my back last week and screamed when I dropped her. I sobbed in terror even though she only fell onto the bed and looked up at her hysterical, with heart-pounding mother, and gave me a half smile. Geesh it was kinda fun being dropped so chill out Mama - the look seemed to say.

Here, sleepy-droopy Esmé is wearing a freebie hemp/cotton hat (too big) that came with some booties as part of this other cool wrap sling comb from Finland that I also own (but rarely use). More on that one another time. So the Didy is good. But fiddly. Or can be. And if you have mega boobs like I do then whipping your baby out for a feed and pushing the sling to the side can be uncomfortable sometimes (as can be the knot digging into your back when you sit down). I do slide her back in afterwards and don't actually have to adjust it again which is nice (unlike the stretchy jersey type of wrap that was just either too tight or too slack for me). But am still working out how to get the shoulders to stay really comfy for longer. This is a good hands free sling and great for longer walks (in my dreams, like that is possible with two other straggly children not wanting to walk far, just for the sake of walking, yk, like adults want to :) ). I am hoping I get more use out of this sling and would like some more ideas for carrying positions since the instructions are long gone and the Didymos website is rubbish at explanations. Also, how come every time I go on there I want to order some more? In fact how come I have another three slings on my mind that I am seriously contemplating buying? I have this theory that out there is the perfect sling, just waiting for me to discover it. Until then a hodge-podge of the 10 I own will have to suffice. And also please try not to notice (so why do I need to point it out?) the scruffy sahm clothing that I wore to nap in and also which are pulled waaay to tightly across my still-there baby belly :) I kind of imagine only Mamas might read this blog anyway so you will know all about the belly. I am liking it more this time around and lucky thing too since it is feeling slower to go than before... ahhh... well, an extra pillow for us all to smooch into...

Rainy-day

Is this going to be a repeat of last summer in which we all thought it was Ark building time? Hmmm. So sitting room time where I chill out in my favourite chair, one breast exposed for suckling girl and my hand dangling over to dip in and out of my reading basket has become the norm this week where we can keep track of weather changes.

This basket is my special treat. I bought it in town pretending to myself I really would use it for picnics but already with that whisper of truth poking around the edge of the virtuous and wholesome thought - that actually it will end up being used in the manner of it's twin sisters - either storing plastic figure 'superheros' or kitchen junk like cloth shopping bags, super sized garden torch, leftover newspapers..... but actually it's future looked up when I decided to store it beside my hot pink armchair and stack it with books and magazines (or 'mazageens' as Felix still likes to call them). Bliss in a basket.

From here, and for as long as The Beauty allows me to rest (woefully not long enough I say) I can watch the boys doing their mad sort of play - plastic storm trooper man riding farm tractor and brandishing a playmobil axe at oncoming giant teddy bears and T-Rex. Or dressed up with capes and visors and fairy skirts (with realistic metal police handcuffs) they set sail on the sofa 'boat' to poison their enemies (true story plot).

Trying to ply them with tasty snacks I found a packet of chocolate chips (woe is me - I am inflicting chocolate denial upon self right now or else would surely have sniffed them out long before now). Had forgotten though the strange way Felix likes to eat chocolate. That is to lick it and then use it like a lipstick to paint his face (such a waste of chocolate I tell ya!). Isaac told him he was a crazy maniac. Felix did then laugh like a maniac but then stopped and said very seriously No. Maniacs carry axes



Yeah. Your'e probably right, nods Isaac.



Woah.... I am heading for the nearest exit out of here.

But wait! Check out this cute dress Mianh sent for Esmé! Even more delicious because you can see her dd over here wearing it too! Lovely.

Just like school - well sort of :)

For Isaac it's the alphabet:




For Felix, numbers:

The Chicken Tamer

I found Felix with one of the Speckeldy hens - he calls this one The Queen, it is his favourite. The hen was lying in the dirt eyes closed in blissed out slumber with Fe cooing and trickling/rubbing grains of dirt over it's back. It almost looked like it was panting and I am afraid to say I got kind of worried. This is the boy who touches every sort of feathery or fury thing he possibly can, who if unseen can be found in the garden with his head in the nesting box or crouched somewhere watching a chicken. I frequently have to ask him to step back for a minute because if he has his hand under the bird's butt while she lays she just might not.... He feeds them from his hand, he chats with them, they follow him around, today I saw him say to The Queen should they have a race and no joke the hen and he matched strides, side by side - not the hen trying to run away or being scared by his running, just side by side. It is so funny.



Anyway, today he was crouched over doing his getting the hen to sleep bit - and it works by the way, they really do fall asleep under his magic little hands - and for a minute I thought it was dead, that in his enthusiasm he had squeezed it a little too hard one too many times. He saw my anxious face and told me; Look! Look - she is breathing in and out! Don't worry! She is just asleep.



He then does a high pitched clucky noise and the hen leaps up in time for him to give it a few crumbs of oat cracker - from his hand of course. He stands and tells me (lectures more like) on the ways in which one can soothe and calm a hen, and then later have fun with it, like carry it around a bit, show it some things higher up, then maybe play some games and give it crumbs to follow you. Just about anywhere.





It's worked on me. I am eating out of his hand - and I'd follow him anywhere :)

Pathways

Outside in the garden may be a breezy heaven but indoors has been neglected - actually not so much neglected as normal. Lego is the norm (and naked boys playing with Lego is often the norm here too), I just try to keep it contained in the one room - which I then never venture into. Kindly a path was made for me though on one of my rare forays into... the sitting room.




That's there is the tilting baby, freshly scooped out of the sling and always interested in what her brothers are up to. So much so that at 16 weeks she is now rolling onto her side then with a few hefty grunts onto her belly. All for a better view....

The toothpaste baby gets loved

In the mornings, the boys come running to my bed for baby worshipping time and yeah, there comes a point where her eyes do plead for rescue. See it?







That's Felix walking a playmobil man down her arm. Ahem. She's a walking playground.

garden days

Just in case you are not quite sick of seeing my children, playing yet again in the garden this post is for you :)



This week has finally been true summer, with blue skies and a heat that drives my hot self to the house for ice-clinking drinks, bare dusty garden feet sighing with comfort as they slap on the cool tiles.

Chicken reinforcements have been required due to tame hens wandering the house and er, doing their business whereever they fancy. It is quite one thing to come across a lovely speckled egg but another to find a dollop of green-white. Goodness knows how the baby will cope with this addition to regular house dirt once she is off and crawling. I will be certainly sticking to not wearing my specs around the house in the hope that this too will escape my notice and jolly myself along with thoughts of a boosted immune system..... Kind dh helped me out by making this bamboo and wire frame.



Our dining experiences have been exciting this week with the delivery of the outdoor furniture I commissioned a local guy to make from local wood. Soooo much nicer than B&Q and we can squeeze lots of children on to the one bench. We are still in the middle of our visitors-every-weekend phase and outdoor dining might make my after food consumption cleaning easier if the chickens can eat the scraps around our feet rather than my sweeping them up to throw outside. Am vastly relieved to be giving up this nightly chore and now encourage all eating to take place outside - my only question is can we keep it up when the weather turns? ..... Mmmmmm..... already planning the purchase of large umbrella to cope with rainy days after a craftily made hole in the middle of the table was suggested.



The baby and I sit on the grassy bank under the bridge in the shade and watch the boys being water sprites. She seems to be able to watch the babbling, gushing white water tinkling over mossy stones and just stare, peaceful. So it is my new favourite spot. To my joy there are dragon flies and this maybe the only time in my life I have ever seen them at such close quarters. Couldn't capture their amazingness on film but they were attracted to these big rhubarb-leaf type plants that we call 'elephant ears'. They really do look like giant ears. What are they I wonder?









Another shady spot is on the platform (beginnings of the tree house) where I can view with happiness my family's cloth blowing dry, the swing to my right, the chickens and their home and trees, trees trees. Can you smell that warm sweet oxygen rich, slightly dank (the stream's influence) air? It is magic. I keep thinking I might take blankets out there to the platform and spread them out for an afternoon nap with The Beauty while the boys play nearby.

Sourdough

It's started: 2 cups of wholegrain Spelt flour and 2 of water with a handful of organic blueberries to kick start the invading yeasts.

I am taking advice from herbal wild woman Shawna and fermentation fetishist Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation on just how to make sourdough bread. My second reading of Katz's book is even more exciting than the first and I am planning a Kimchi making session later in the week (gawd that stuff is Good - my last Kimchi session was so long ago and seriously long gone). My kombucha 'mother' should be in the post winging it's way here and I am hot on the trail of some more kefir grains (the last few blobs were sorrowfully neglected and ended up as dried flakes of nothingness).

So the sourdough seems sooo easy.... mix the flour and water, stir each day and wait until it begins to bubble. Oh, with the bowl in a nice warm spot. What could go wrong? The last time I made it I ended up with this putrid sticking mess that smelled like a brewery, only not yeasty in the slightest, only nose-holding. It separated into layers of stinky liquid and solid no matter how often I stirred. Maybe not warm enough? Was my house simply too clean? Ha ha ha.

Time will tell if I am destined to be a sourdough looser, so while I am waiting for potential bubbles I will make the NT Herb Bread which insofar as I can find is the next best nutritionally sound type of bread (ie neutralise's phytates). Around here we eat far too much of the quick rise stuff, organic or not what does it matter if your body can't digest it?

Onward with the sourdough! I'll post the NT Herb Bread recipe (tastes like cake actually, even has maple syrup in I think) after I make it.

Watch this spot for the Fermenting Kitchen's outpourings and experiments! I am seriously excited, can you tell? :)

Peck!

He is laughing btw, just crazy too.