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,
 

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,
 

New e-book for sale - St Patrick's Day

Announcing my latest e-book 'A Cherished Hearts St Patrick's Day'

As I said in the last e book release I am hoping to do a number of these books to share with you all.
I know this is on the eve of St Patrick's Day and am sorry to drop it at the last minute but life circumstance forced my hand.

Any way in this book - "A Cherished Hearts St Patrick's Day" it continues with some of the same content as the last one along with  a host of new activities.
'A Cherished Hearts St Patrick's Day'  contains over 90 pages of content: including crafts- of which some are edible, recipes, A St Patrick Snakes and Ladders Game, mazes to solve, pictures to colour and information not only on St Patrick but some information about Ireland and it's heritage.

The book has all original content and is still only $14.99 AUD for over 90 pages of printable information.

 

 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,
 

Welcome back and some Feast Day Celebrations

Well.... Hello long lost blog Readers,
No, I know you weren't lost, it was me 😉

The times they have been a-changing in our home. Nothing drastic (well some of it has been) but really its just the fact that life moves on, people grow, interests develop and our family life tends to reflect that. The end results have meant not much energy to invest here. Hopefully that will all be water under the bridge and we can become good friends again.

Maybe now that we are starting back to our 'scheduled' learning for the year I may be able to be more in this space and share what is happening in our lives.

The first week of a learning year is always an easy start with three feast days in a row.
St Brigid, Candlemas and St Blaise.

Naturally we celebrated in regular style for us with good food, good reading and activities as well as sharing St Brigid with a special guest.

We really do go all out for St Brigid- after all she is an Irish Saint and well we are of Irish ancestry. What else can we say!
Oh we did this year after reading more about her take St Brigid as our patron saint of our Homestead as she is patron saint of many farm activities 😊

This year we even churned some butter in the hand butter churner I received for Christmas. The kids loved taking turns at it and with that help it was done in no time.

 Next up is Candlemas and although not as big as St Brigid it certainly does get due attention.
 those amazing cupcakes in the first picture. They are actually meant to look like old fashioned candle holder with candle in it. You know the ones you carry up to bed with you. I think they are pretty darn cute.

 Each year we have our floating candles and doves  and have them lit while we do our reading and colouring.

This year on all three days we had a very, very involved little boy. He was quite pedantic about his colouring pages and towards the end of the week was a little testy about his ability. Not Mr Perfect - oh no!!

St Blaise was our final Feast day and the only edible activity we had were these licorice covered chocolate, which were supposed to represent the crossed candles of St Blaise.

Finally after these very 'light' filled liturgical days I think the children will be quite ready for some very 'boring regular' lessons on Monday.

Thank you for dropping by and visiting with us again.
We hope to be better company this year 💗


Blessings to you and your homes,