Simple Living

Screen-Free Week!

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

Neko and I have decided to challenge ourselves by taking part in Screen-Free Week. I will need to be online to work, and on my computer when I want to work on my novel, and on Facebook just a little to keep up on events (and update the store’s page). But neither of us will be watching TV or movies. The week runs April 30-May 6. If you’re taking part, please let me know in the Comments! Wish us luck!

Oh, and I may, possibly, break this next weekend as I’ll be away on a girls’ weekend. If everyone else is watching a cheesy movie, I’m not sitting in the other room. More likely, though, we’ll be playing games and dancing, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Two Days in the Life

/ Lindsay / Leave a comment

What might a day in the life of an unschooled only child look like, on a day when her mother is working? Well, like one of these, perhaps.

Currently, on Mondays I need to be at my store at least 3-5 hours. Ideally this will be 12-3, but it’s flexible. Yesterday I had a chiropractor’s appointment in the morning in the same building as my store, and we had the opportunity to join some friends on a nature walk in the afternoon, so our day looked like this:

7:45 am Mom gets up, meditates, does yoga, makes tea, eats breakfast.

8:30 am Neko wakes up, eats breakfast.

9:30 am Mom leaves for the chiropractor and to work at the store for a bit. Neko and dad stay home, Neko watches a bit of TV.

10:45 am Mom comes home, picks up Neko and dad, and we all go to the Weaselhead, a beautiful park here in Calgary that follows the Elbow River into the Glenmore Resevoir and is made up of some really nice woods.

11:00 am – 2 pm We spend a couple of hours roaming the woods in the Weaselhead. We look for deer prints, point out chickadees, see ducks in the river and check out the field where the wild strawberries will grow in the summer. Neko hides in the bushes and we find her every time, which makes her mad. An old friend of Neko’s comes along and the two of them spend the walk beside each other talking quietly – later she tells me they mostly talked about Narnia.

The kids playing on a log down by the river. Sorry about the creepy ghost faces on the kids besides mine.

2:15 pm Dad and Neko drop mom off at the store to work some more. Then they go to the library to pick up some books we had on hold; to Toys R Us so Neko can spend her $20 gift certificate from Nana (she chooses a stuffed cat that meows, purrs and walks); and home for some crackers and cheese.

4:00 pm Neko and dad pick up mom from the store. We get home and Neko runs off to play with the twins from down the street, who are nine (and frankly, not very nice to the six-year-old – cue conversation about how we let others treat us, and how to stand up for ourselves). She plays in the park with them for about an hour. Then we eat delicious Pumpkin Dal over brown rice. She then plays with them for about another hour.

7:00 pm Neko watches a bit more TV.

8:00 pm Neko has a bath, then dad reads a chapter of Prince Caspian to her while mom goes for a run. At 9:00 her eyes are closed before her head hits the pillow.

Today, Tuesday, I had to work all day, so it went more like this:

8:45 am We all wake up. Justan and I didn’t sleep at ALL (weird mutual insomnia) so we are beat. We all stay in bed until 9:15 and snuggle.

9:30 am They drop me off at the store for the day. They come home and eat breakfast. Neko watches The Cat Returns (a Studio Ghibli movie).

12:30 After lunch, they pay a visit to a cool playground near my store. Next, they have to meet up with someone Justan works with.

2:30 A visit to the Glenbow Museum in downtown Calgary, taking in the exhibits and making masterpieces in the art room with watercolour pencils.

4:30 pm Home again. Neko plays with the girls down the street again for about an hour.

5:45 They pick me up from the store. We come home and eat pizza (bought frozen from our favourite local pizzeria). While the pizza cooks, Neko practices typing words in Pages on my laptop.

6:45 pm We go to the park down the street with Neko because she wants to show us the big pine tree she can climb. She can climb really high! We play in the playground for a bit.

7:30 pm We come home and practice writing. I say word combos out loud and Neko writes them, then makes them out of pipecleaners. She gets bored with this and plays on Reading Eggs for a bit.

8:15 pm I read a chapter of Prince Caspian to Neko, she eats some almonds as a bedtime snack, we snuggle and she’s off to sleep.

So there it is. A bit too much TV sometimes (though she watches more on days Justan mainly has her), usually lots of time outside, plenty of socialization, no worksheets, no real structure (she’s a kid who does fine without a routine), and I spend my days wavering between feeling guilty for not giving her more math and literacy work, and confident knowing that she’ll pick it all up when she is ready – maybe in the fall. Maybe when she turns seven. Right now we have lots of time. And she’ll have these sunny days with her friends, and her mom, and her dad, to look back on, always.

And Then We Learned To Make Cheese.

/ Lindsay / 1 Comment

Neko and I took a cheese making class this week. It was quite neat! It had never been on my “to do” list to learn to make my own cheese, but when this opportunity came up for Neko to take a class, it seemed like it would be right up our alley. She has loved the different cooking classes we’ve taken in the past, and of course we love cheese.

The class was taught by Ella from Make Cheese here in Calgary. For $40 we got the two-hour class and the cheese-making kit with enough supplies to make cheese 30 times (minus the milk of course)!

Look how cute the little kits are! I really do love her packaging.

It was all quite easy, really. We started by having the kids dissolve some citric acid in water.

The kids mix the citric acid with water.

Meanwhile, we had heated our 4L (each) of milk on the stove. We then added the citric acid mix to the hot milk.

Neko and friends mix their citric acid into the hot milk.

We then heated the milk again, dissolved some vegetarian rennet in water and added that to the milk mixture. We had to count to thirty… we left this to the kids, and they did it very slowly and carefully. As we found out later, it may have been better to just time 30 seconds, as leaving this step too long can throw off the process a bit.

The kids count verrrrrry carefully (and slowly) to thirty.

We let our concoctions sit a while, and curds formed. These are quite gross looking. We strained out all the curds into separate bowls.

These curds would soon become mozzarella.

The process after this was: pack as much curd as you can into a slotted spoon. Lower the spoon into the heated whey for 30 seconds. Remove, and knead the curds about eight times. Reheat once more, and knead until shiny and smooth. And…..

Mozzarella ball!

Now, from four litres of milk, we only got this much cheese:

The whole of our fresh cheese.

Ella said that storebought milk is really hit or miss. She said if you’re using milk from your own dairy, you’ll get to know the qualities of it and what to adjust in order to make it work. At any rate, there are plenty of things you can do with even this small amount of fresh mozzarella.

By the way, it doesn’t taste like much. BUT…

It’s great on pizza!

We sliced it up and put it on pizza when our wonderful Australian friend Andie rolled into town. And just because I feel like bragging, the crust is made from my homemade bread dough, the sauce from my canned tomatoes, and while this one shown is asparagus with caramelized onions, the other had turkey marinated in my handmade harissa, with homemade, oil-packed, roasted red peppers. Yum!!

Solstice Celebrations

/ Lindsay / 5 Comments

Happy, happy Solstice to you all. I’ve been excited for weeks about celebrating, officially, for the first time ever this year. Justan and I share the shortest day of the year as our mutual favourite, and of course Neko’s birthday is this week as well, so this time of year always feels special to us. Last year, as we stood outside at 12:30 am to watch the lunar eclipse through our neighbour’s telescope (we had woken Neko up to see it, as it would be her only chance to see a lunar eclipse on Solstice and her birthday), I regretted not having planned more formal or extensive celebrations. I planned out this year’s Solstice celebrations over the following few days, and this year, all the planning was done for me in advance!

I had included plans for a Solstice feast, ice lanterns to be lit at sunset, and a few different craft and activity ideas which we could choose from.

Preparations started earlier this month, with grocery shopping for the feast, and the making of ice lanterns. We found the instructions at Love in the Suburbs.

Gathering materials for the ice lanterns, and Neko standing beside some partially assembled lanterns.

We also made popcorn garlands that we could give to the birds on Solstice.

Then my friend Jen invited us to a Solstice party, where we could make prayer flags to set our intentions for the new year. Her inspiration was this post from Rhythm of the Home.

I spent the week before Solstice preparing any foods I could in advance, and getting the pieces of the prayer flags ready to assemble. I baked the fruit cake, cut out triangles of fabric, chose intentions, chopped onions, and measured spices for mead.

Jen’s party began Solstice, the night of the 20th. We drank sunshine punch and snacked while we painted, cut and sewed. The kids played for hours in the dim house.

Candles, sunshine punch, and prayer flags in progress.

Jen drew, then painted, beautiful Celtic knots on hers with Gaelic words beneath. I wrote my words on in permanent marker (I’m not a perfect crafter, okay…) and sewed up the edges of the flags by hand. My fabric came from a damaged nursing tank; fabric bags from prefold diapers; a clothing swap romper; and an old dress I had bought years ago to make beanbags as party favours for Neko’s third birthday party.

On the morning of the 21st, we lazed in bed for a bit, then Justan made us scrambled eggs (from our hens) while I had a nice, warm bath. We cleaned up around the house a bit, then headed out for a hike near the river to hang the popcorn garlands. It was a beautiful, sunny day (I always picture the Solstice as so dark in my head! But the daylight hours, of course, are just as bright as ever.), but the pathways were icy because we’ve had such variable temperatures recently, and there was a biting wind blowing. We hiked down into the river valley with our popcorn garlands and our warm drinks in hand (hot chocolate for Neko; homemade mocha for daddy; homemade vanilla cafe au lait for mom).

Neko shows off the popcorn garlands we’ve hung for the birds.

In the afternoon, Justan and Neko played Just Dance while I packed for Christmas. Okay, okay – video games are not my idea of something you do on Solstice. But, it was daddy and daughter time, and they had fun. There are worse things.

At sunset, we lit the ice lanterns. They were in kind of rough shape after a full week of thawing and re-freezing, so their candle-spots had largely filled in. I tried to fix this using water, containers, and our freezer, but it only partially worked. They still looked really pretty though. They were lined up right across our front porch, and I kept them lit until we went to bed, to welcome the sun back on the morning of the 22nd. As the sun set, we prepared ourselves for the longest night of the year.

I spent the rest of the afternoon putting the finished touches on the dinner. Our menu was:

I chose the menu to be as local as seasonal as I could, while including foods we don’t eat on a regular basis. I wanted to eat foods that we could have grown ourselves, and I wanted the meal to be special – not something we would have any other time. We ate by candlelight, which was really nice, and Neko loved.

After dinner, we played a co-operative game that we got from Riva’s: The Eco-Store, called Wildcraft. We felt this was appropriately hippy-ish for a Solstice celebration. There was a moment of hysterical giggling when Justan asked me a question about finishing the game and I answered him by shooting back, in a very serious tone, “No, Justan, we each need to gather two buckets of huckleberries before we go back to Grandma’s house!” Justan thought this was hilarious. It may have been the mead, though.

After Neko was in bed, our plan was to play board games, but Justan said he didn’t want to play with just me, because I always beat him. (Note to self: next year, invite friends to join us for board games.)

I finished up the prayer flags and on the 22nd, after the longest night was over, I hung them from the chicken coop in the backyard.

The intentions we set are: transcendence, security, intuition, expansiveness, prosperity, integrity and love.

I’m already taking notes for next year’s Solstice! I will change a few things about the menu – we didn’t love the barley bake, and the recipe for the Mashed Potato casserole made a ridiculously huge amount, even cut down to three portions (it would have fed ten!). I would leave the oven at 500 degree for 14 minutes for the bison before turning it off, as this roast was quite rare. And even though I think fruitcake is perfect for the occasion, maybe next year I’ll make a crisp or something. I also think we could plan more activities for the day – I didn’t, this year, because I didn’t want to pack the day and make it stressful. But next year, maybe a trip to a local pond to skate would be nice. I would like to incorporate friends more, next year.

All in all, it was really lovely to formally observe Solstice for the first time. Tomorrow will be six seconds longer than today, and after that the increase in light will accelerate daily until the summer Solstice, when we’ll be on our second annual Solstice camping trip. I hope that all of you out there are also celebrating the return of the light (or the waning of the light, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere).

Furoshiki: The Ultimate in Eco-Friendly Gift Wrapping

/ Lindsay / 1 Comment

We all remember the newspaper gift wrapping trend of the 90s. Anyone who was at all eco-conscious at the time was encouraged to wrap their gifts in newspaper or the Sunday comics – it looks fun! It’s reusing! Yay! That got old pretty fast, though. Since then, there have been a lot of ideas generated on the most earth-friendly ways to wrap our gifts. Recycled kraft paper; reusable cloth bags; and cloth such as towels are all fairly popular ideas. A few years ago, while researching an article to collect some of the best ideas for eco-friendly gift wrapping, I came across one idea that I’m still shocked hasn’t really caught on in the mainstream: furoshiki.

My furoshiki creations for this Christmas.

Furoshiki is a traditional Japanese method of wrapping and tying cloths to wrap gifts or transport items (such as library books). I’ve heard from some sources that the tying cloths were considered special and passed among families over time.

It’s really very simple. My furoshiki usually consists of just wrapping the cloth around the item and tying it in the way that intuitively seems to work best. That said, there are specific methods that work best for different sizes and shapes of items.

While there are websites where you can buy furoshiki cloths, and they now carry them at Lush (and the ones at Lush are really cute!), I mostly buy scarves for $5 or less at thrift shops and garage sales. I stockpile them during the year and when Christmas rolls around, I have quite a few and can usually manage to wrap a large percentage of my gifts in furoshiki. Many of them get passed back to me and I reuse them, though I hope it will catch on among my extended family and they’ll start using the cloths to wrap their gifts, too.

Top left: DVD wrapped in a plain green scarf (from a thrift shop) // Top right: book wrapped in another thrift shop scarf, with coordinating ribbon added // Bottom left: Lego set wrapped in a full sari (it’s twisted and brought back around at the bottom) // Bottom right: Notebook wrapped in a furoshiki cloth from Lush, with a tag made from wood paneling and painted.

Not a fantastic photo, but I love this gift. It’s a tartan scarf doubled and wrapped around a Contiga travel mug. I think the knot at the top worked out really well.

Another furoshiki cloth from Lush. I’ve already used this one to wrap gifts a few times. So cheery! This is a birthday gift for Neko.

Sometimes, I use an item like a playsilk, towel or scarf that I’m actually giving as part of the gift, to wrap another gift.

This is a large, rainbow playsilk that I bought for Neko for Christmas. I decided to make it do double duty and also use it to wrap her new wool jammies!

How fun is this? I get to skip the tape and scissors, be waste-free on Christmas morning, and they look so pretty! I also find wrapping this way much quicker than any other method I’ve tried.