Easter in our home 2018

Good Evening again, after a bit of a break 😊
I was planning on writing a lot about our lead up to Easter and especially Holy Week but frankly I think I have done this before and so it is a little like repeating it over and over.
We tend to have the same traditions each year and love to redo these again and again.
So here is a pictorial  of some of our Holy Week and Easter activities 💗 I hope you enjoy them.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Surprise- It's almost Holy Week

A very Good Evening to you,
Well we are almost in Holy Week and tonight I have written up with the older girls our traditional  'Holy Week Booklet.'
I like to have a booklet as we have so many activities we are completing and liturgical requirements that if I don't have it all written in one place day by day I know I will forget something important 😊

One thing that can be guaranteed in this busy life we have is the regular activities but also those little moments when you have a 'sweetness' moment.
This is Felix the Bunny. He is Arwen's special bunny gifted to her by her siblings on her birth. Felix was named after a book we are very fond of -Letters from Felix  and Arwen's bunny has certainly traveled around.
Since he has journeyed  far and wide he was in need of a little surgery. As I was getting things prepared i left the room and came back to discover that Felix was now all ready to face this gruesome deed. Arwen had placed some eye protection on him so he could see what was happening to him. Sweet little girl, how I love this gentleness in her.

 One of the activities that Trahaearn does everyday is to draw. He has a few particular types of drawings he does.
Viking ships were his very first drawings from his imagination  and he spends ages on them getting them perfect. Did I say perfect? Yes I did, because we have often had a little pile of paper on the floor as they did not meet his standard.
I particularly like this latest Viking ship as it has the ship behind as well as the one coming up at the rear. I think he did an excellent job on making the ship looking realistic with the flags and sails.

 I had a special day in town with Arwen last week. Well not really special but she came with me to run some errands, you know essentials like groceries. The really fun and exciting type of shopping.
Well we did pop into K-mart to check on Winter clothing and walked past the toy section- cause I'm a really nice Mama 😏 and because Arwen has a fascination with all things panda she could not resist this life size panda head.
Now me, I think she is kinda cute but that huge head still 'weirds' me out.

 Isn't he just adorable???
Our grandbaby dumpling came for the day and he has just really learnt to walk most of the time. That sweet - I'm just waddling look- that I love.
He also loves to be outside and runs to the door when it is open and squeals to go outside. He also loves the dogs and seeing all the animals. A very gentle and sweet  little guy he is so happy.

 We have been busy preserving all the stone fruit and this is our no sugar jam we made.
It really is a lovely jam, but I would probably call it a very thick stewed fruit.
I think it is certainly more versatile this way as it can still be used as a stewed fruit in pies or with cream but can also be use as jam on toast.
I'm pretty sure we will continue to do it this way. However it does take a much longer time to cook as you are reducing the liquid as you cook.

You probably also might have guessed by now that I love long hair and all our girls have long hair as well as myself.
Well, mine isn't as long as it used to be but we won't go there.
As I was giving Vellvin's a brush last week I saw this beautiful ringlet at the back and just had to take a photo. Is that strange? Maybe but I love ringlets.
The other interesting fact is that when Rogan saw this photo that he thought it was my hair 😍

Have I mentioned that the children are always offering to make me some sort of drink, mainly a coffee as that is my beverage of choice. Myffy had been offering me her special recipe drink for a few days and I had not really had the time to have it as she usually offered when I wasn't able to enjoy it.
As I was doing my own study she brought me her 'famous Myffy Chocolate drink' her special and secret recipe. Of course then I was able to enjoy the gift of love. Thank you Myff!

And it is here that I say goodnight to you all again. Thank you for catching up with us and I hope you all have a blessed Holy Week.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Popping in again and Autumn Preparations

A very late Good Evening to you 😊

Time passes quickly again and I struggle to share all we are doing.
Suffice to say we are working through our Lenten journey this year with a little more success than our Advent one.
With the last two weeks of Lent to go we are about to enter our very crafty stage of this time and finish up our Lenten readings as well.

As we are now into the Autumn season we are anticipating a relief to this hot summer weather that seems to still lingering. However we are starting to prepare for colder weather ahead.

One of the preparations is for our more frost susceptible plants to be placed in our greenhouse or in a home made poly tunnel we have yet to construct.
We lost a few of our more rain forest Australian bush-foods last year in our frosts, it being the worst year for frost in many years. I had locals telling me that they also had lost plants that they had never had a problem with before. My scented geraniums even suffered and they are very hardy plants.

Reading a beautiful Bunny themed Golden Book

We still have not put our autumn crop of vegetables in and so I am thinking we will have to get seedlings rather than starting from seeds this season.

As this is a very changeable time of year here with weather I had anticipated that I would need to stock up on my cold and flu preparations and start our Immunity Tea so we could have more protection when the 'seasonal illness' start.
True to form though I was only part way organised when a couple of the kids got a sore throat. So I responded a little slowly with some of the preparations we had on hand we had pretty good success rate but poor Moran has been much slower responding with getting her voice back. Yes, that's right she is virtually mute much to her annoyance.

On Friday night, just in time for the weekend, Stephen came home after a strenuous afternoon of strenuous activity with a cough, sore throat and feeling generally blah!! This time I was on it right away and although he isn't 100% recovered on Sunday afternoon he was quite significantly improved. The coughing which he tells me was about to settle on his chest on Saturday night has gone and I am very confident in saying it was the result of our home Herbal remedies.

Home made Elder flower Wine

We have also been quite busy with making more probiotic and  fermented drinks to keep our immune system healthy. Sadly I have not done as much as I would like but Autumn has started to take this on as a new passion.
As we reach the end of season for stone fruit we have also been cooking up apples butter, making plum jam without added sugar and dehydrating any fruit we don't want to cook. My favourites are apples and plums which I am certain the children love just as much as I do.

Warm clothing is also an item to check as we  have a fairly hard to heat house and the bedrooms are extra hard. In an effort to not use as much electricity, and money this year we are not planning on heating any of the bedrooms with electric heating so we are investigating thermals  for everyday use and hot water bottles to take to bed. This is a first for us as we have taken 'hot packs' in the past but I am told by a reliable source that hot water bottles last better, so we will see how we go😏

Naturally we will be engaging in some firewood gathering and cutting activities in the next few weeks and it would be nice to have our firewood all prepared before the wet and cold winter arrives.

I can't wait to sit around the fire with our family snuggled up reading together with some knitting and craft projects on hand and just enjoying the season I feel brings us together.

Having Tea Time as part of our Learning Week

So much more has happened in our lives the last couple of weeks and this is but a tip of what we have done and our planning but it is late and I need some sleep before the new week of learning so I will have to tell more tales of whats happening here as soon as I can.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

The Lights are out!!

So it's been over two weeks since we started Lent and we are now well and truly into our Lenten sacrifices.
Apart from our usual extra prayers and sacrifices this year we have undertaken to not use electric lighting at all.
Let me say that not everyone was on board with this plan and it took a couple of days for everyone to get the hang of what this actually meant on an ongoing basis and that yes we were doing this all night every night, even when you need to use the bathroom.

We have been using our old fashioned oil lamps that we have a few of mainly because I love them and have collected them over the years.
It took a while for us to adjust not to flicking on the light as we walked from room to room and bedtime took a little bit to work out but now it is almost second nature (well to most of us we occasionally have a dissenter in the ranks)

Next we have used the little lamps. Originally we used those little battery operated tea lights inside but for most of the time we substituted the top off a garden solar light and use that in it instead.
The solar light means we can then just charge this up the next day and it is completely free of cost.
These are quite effective little lights. The Solar lights give a more white glow as compared to the tea lights.

We also have a couple of camping lanterns that are charged up in the power points and these although technically are electric powered are still used by us.

I also bought two new solar lights form Bunnings and removed the top from them and they actually sit just like little lamps on top of a flat surface. They have been keeping their charge over night and I am pretty happy with the results so far.

Naturally we have been using candles and it is quite amalgamating how much light they throw when you have adjusted to not having the abundance of electric lighting we all seem to be used to.

In fact one night for some reason I don't remember we turned the over head lights on and were practically blinded by the intensity of light 😊

Seriously it is interesting to see how fast we have adjusted to using different lighting but also it is less over all light all round.
We have all also adjusted to carrying our lights with us as we go about our evening duties.

It certainly is a different atmosphere in the home and although we have always used candles and lamps etc going completely electric light free has been quite an experience.

Hopefully we can keep it all the way through Lent.

Keep a look out for my next e-book for St Patrick's Day. It is even more packed with information and activities than my St Valentine one was 💓

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

St Patrick Celebration 2016

 Favourite Feast Days are important don't you think?
St Patrick is a special day in our home and we love to celebrate with food, books and activities.
I love to set up  with our various bits and pieces for our Feast Days

Everyone loves pancakes right?
So what could be better on St Patrick's Day than green tinted  pancakes in a shamrock shape?

 After breakfast we set up the table for our learning for the day.

 I usually set out the books we are going to read for the day along with any printed out work, craft activities and painting.
When we set up for Feast Day I usually sit up one end and the children work around the table and work while I read them the books.

 As usual  I had the various colouring pages ready to go and we love to keep them as records of what we covered.

 My little workers !

Our collection of St Patrick books for the day.

 The Leprechaun  cake has been a bit of a tradition for a while now and the little kids are especially keen each year to be the first ones to taste it. 

The fruit rainbow for lunch was gone in a flash along with the Leprechaun cake. So a little healthy along with a little sweety was a good mix. We totally forgot the shamrock cheesy muffins for lunch too so we had them the next day.

 So how does that look for a lunch?

 After lunch the younger ones wanted to do a 'play' and Trahaearn was the first to get dressed up and start work on his 'shoe business'

 So here are our little  play actors before the play.

 Our Soaked Irish Soda Bread is always a huge hit -sadly only one piece each

After Dinner which naturally is Irish Stew (recipe in this post) we had the Chocolate THM Muffins with Mint Frosting for sweets before starting to  watch Darby O'Gill before bed.

May the Strength of God pilot us. 

May the Power of God preserve us.

May the Wisdom of God instruct us.

May the Hand of God protect us.

May the Way of God direct us.

May the Shield of God defend us.

May the Host of God guard us.

Against the snares of the evil ones.

Against temptations of the world 

May Christ be with us!

May Christ be before us!

May Christ be in us,

Christ be over all!

May Thy Salvation, Lord,

Always be ours,

This day, O Lord, and evermore. Amen.

Blessings to you and your homes