Sunday Funday

We recently watched the documentary Rivers & Tides by Andy Goldsworthy and were so inspired.  He creates art from nature and it is BA-NA-NAS.  Below are a few of his pictures from Flickr, but watching his process is a lesson in patience that I've never known.

We ended our Thanksgiving weekend on Sunday at Secret Beach and tried our hands and creating something with sticks and smooth river rocks.  Not as easy as you might think, as there are so many factors to consider (i.e., wind, the right size materials, sunlight and trying to keep up with the family as they traipsed down the beach).  

Christmas cards have never been my strong suit, but a New Year's card seems so hopeful.  This might become a postcard.

The light was behind the rocks and really needed to be on the other side.  Trial and error is the key, but time is of the essence too and it was a big lesson in patience, solitude and keeping your focus.  All things that are not my strongest qualities.

I have many other ideas floating in my head for this postcard project and you will be seeing them in the very near future.

Peace out.

Sunrise in the Country

This is the light that has been bathing our home in the wee morning hours the last few weeks.  It's so beautiful and I love getting up, starting the coffee, checking my email and shuffling around the house before the guys get up.

Gobble Day

:: Perfectly BBQ'd Turkey courtesy of Kevin

::  Gorgeously latticed cherry pie homemade by John

::  Nature Tableau

::  Childhood Stuffing reincarnated by Mom

::  Secret Recipe Cranberries a la Grady & Steve

We had the most lovely of Thanksgivings.  After all the fits and starts leading up to the big day, it turned out to be a very mellow and stress-free occasion.  Everyone pitched in and contributed their specialties and I practiced the art of letting go.  I was the table-setter, dish-washer, photo-taker and drink-pourer AND I was pleased as punch to assist.  It struck me how often I hustle and bustle about without taking the time to enjoy the process.  Not today.  I loved every minute leading up to the grand dinner finale.

I was reminded how grateful I am for my family, my health and my home.  I am also grateful for my ability to take it all in and be present on this day to truly enjoy all that I have in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Mother Nature's Arms

::  Map of our home according to Grady

::  The girls having their own kind of Thanksgiving feast

::  Using leaves as place cards this week

::  My brother mocking the Thanksgiving centerpiece and pretending to get lost in it

Mother Nature.  Well, she is appreciated every day around here and tiny bits of her adorn our home in the loveliest of ways.  We have a lot of found objects strewn about the house and I truly feel it is the most satisfying and economical art in our home.  Sea glass and smooth river rocks are displayed in glass jars & vases; we often use small stones as place cards when having guests over for dinner; wild bird feathers collected over the years reside in G's room on a bookshelf; dried opium poppies fill a small vase in my kitchen windowsill; gifted peacock feathers from a friend are perched on my desk; and on, and on.

Naturally, I wanted to decorate the Thanksgiving table with a few elements from nature and stay away from the floral department at the local grocery store.  So, on the way home from Tomales on Highway One I decided to pull the car over, put on my flashers, instructed G to stay put and grabbed my gardening shears.  (Gardening shears it the car?  Oh yes.  I learned this trick from Steve's mother who just can't stop herself from pulling her car over roadside and cutting silver dollar eucalyptus branches as soon as the Thanksgiving dinner dishes are done.  I come by it honestly.)  Well, just as I was madly cutting a few lovely yellow-orange branches to bring home, G rolls down his window, looks at me with his dead-pan expression and says "Mom, you're cutting Mother Nature's arms off".  I tried to explain I was only giving her a haircut, but he was having none of that.  

It's hard to argue with a little boy who has been paying attention to the world around him and has such a love of nature.  He is constantly teaching me and his words did make me pause to think.  I doubted he would yet understand my environmental impact rebuttal regarding the tree branches in question versus those store-bought Ecuadorian roses, but I liked that he spoke up.  I look forward to hearing what he has to say as he gets older and learning what he has to teach me.

Sunday Funday

I love Sundays.  There is a definite feeling to a Sunday, right?  It's always been there and I have never quite put my finger on it.  As a child who did not attend Sunday services, there was a different kind of church going on in my household.  Light chores, dinner cooking on the stove a little earlier in the day, finishing up a project or homework before night fell and the Sunday evening bath rituals began.  Safety.  Comfort.  Love.

Over the years, I have worked a fair amount of Sundays and the feeling has not gone away.  My circumstances changed and work prevailed, but the beauty of a Sunday still remained.

Now that I'm home on Sundays with Grady, I realize that my new Sunday pattern has emerged and is slowly galvanizing.  The brewing of coffee, slowly making breakfast, doing a little laundry, perusing cookbooks, making to-do lists for the week, planning meals, catching up on my magazine pile and trying to create just one thing.

I am going to post a few pictures of my weekly creations here, so that I can remember and remind Grady of our Sunday Fun Days (okay, lame I know - but my kid loves a good rhyme).

I didn't want to go out into the world today, so I decided to look up a play-dough recipe online and make a batch or two for G to play with.  We ended up borrowing cream of tartar from a neighbor (what is cream of tartar used for anyway?) and then the fun began.  Measuring, stirring, adding color and kneading were the chores for today.  Voila!  Our very own play-dough!  So great and so very easy-peasy.  Here is the recipe I used from my new favorite website www.ehow.com:

Things You'll Need:

• 1 cup of water
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 Tablespoon cream of tartar
• Food coloring
• Medium size saucepan
• 1 cup flour
• Container for storage (I used pint size yogurt containers)

Combine all ingredients (except flour) and simmer on stovetop.  Remove from heat, add flour and work together with hands once it cools.  That's it.

I'm going to invest in new food coloring gels to try and make really deep, colorful, play dough.  I think this would be a fantastic birthday gift for a little one, along with the recipe so the family could make more.  This project kept G engaged for hours and hours today.  I highly recommend you try this on your Sunday Funday.

Book It Dan-O!

:: This stack lives on my bedside table and I'm slowing whittling it down.  It often feels like (good) homework!

:: I found this in one of my old school boxes when I was cleaning the garage a few months back.  It is bringing back such wonderful memories.  G is really getting into it and slightly plagiarizing the book by using his typewriter to copy pages from it.

::  This stack lives in the living room and is a result of our bi-weekly pilgrimage to the bookmobile in Tomales.  Can't wait to dive in.  What are you reading?

First Frost

Must See T.V.

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Turkey Alarm Clock

I'd like to start this post with a few facts:

1.  I like my sleep.
2.  Turkeys are loud.  Oh, and dumb.
3.  I really like my sleep.

What I'm getting at here is that we were awakened early one morning to the sound of three really dumb turkeys stuck on top of the roof of our house.  They had a gaggle of friends screeching at them from the field behind our house (and directly behind our bedroom window).  I'm sure the crew on the ground was like, just fly down and be quiet - the owners of this lovely little house are trying to sleep in and they might eat you if you don't take it down a notch!  The three amigos up above just could not figure out how to get down, so they proceeded to cry for help, squawk, screech and raise a little hell.  I'd like to think I'd do the same thing if I was stuck on a roof, right?  Finally, I rolled my lazy bones out of bed, put on a robe, located my eyeglasses so that I could see what the heck was going on, slipped on my garden crocs and shuffled out to see what all the hullabaloo was about.

As you can see from the pictures above - the wild turkey party was well underway until I showed up and they quickly flew off the roof and into the open field next to our house.  Their so-called friends flew over to meet them and the entire flock had quite a little chat about the shenanigans that just occurred (I imagine all of this, of course).  There was a lot of tail feathers fanned out, loud turkey calls, short flights of fancy and attempts at jumping the fence in the lot next to us.

I don't know why, but this scene cracked me up.  How many people have this kind of alarm clock wake them on a Saturday morning?  It was a little annoying at first, but then it made me smile.  I'm still not a huge fan of the living turkey, but we're learning to get along.  I know their day is coming and like to think of their recent visit as a last hooray before D-day.  Who knows, maybe we'll be eating one of them in the near future.

Succulent Protest on Johns Street

See this image above?  It's our recycled red bench that was formerly a bed and it sits on top of a platform that covers the former well.  To the right, this big bush started out as a cutting from a succulent that our next door neighbors gifted the previous owners of our home.  It's quadrupled in size since we've moved in (over three years ago).  My husband wants it gone.  I want it to stay.

Our son has sided with me and created a protest poster regarding same on paper and posted it in our entryway.  I so love this kid.

A Visit from the Candy Fairy

The Candy Fairy paid a visit to our house again this year.  She rocks.  Oh, haven't you heard of her work?  Well then, allow me.  My BFF told me about her a few years ago and it has worked like a charm ever since.  A few days after trick-or-treating, we gather all the candy in the house, G picks out six pieces (or whatever age = number of pieces), leave it where we think she might find it and....voila!  She comes and takes all of the sacrificial candy, leaves a buck or two and all conflict-laden candy is gone in one fell swoop.  I'm happy.  Kid is happy.  Candy Fairy is happy.  I hear she works in conjunction with the Tooth Fairy and is just about the most clever invention ever.  Next to Santa Claus and God, of course.

Day of the Dead (Redux)

Day of the Dead, literally the English translation of Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday celebrated to remember those who have moved on, begins right when Hallow's End ends. The short, two-day holiday happens on November 1 and 2, coinciding with the Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day and All Soul's Day, which are celebrated elsewhere in the world.

We created a simple altar with pictures of loved ones who have died and small, quirky mexican folk art statues, along with candles and water (an important component for the afterlife, as it quenches the thirst of the spirits).  It's a surprisingly wonderful way to honor and remember the dead.  We're learning more each year about the rituals and customs associated with the holiday and it's been a sweet way to talk about life and death with G.  

Daylight Savings = Beach Day

Well, the beach called us out on Sunday, the first day of November.  After sleeping in and catching that "extra hour" of sleep due to Daylight Savings Time, something was missing.  We went for a hike behind our house to look for mushrooms.  No mushrooms.  We tried to do chores, but when I happened to look at my handy-dandy tide book - well, I knew exactly what we would be doing the rest of the day.  I lobbed a phone call in to my girlfriend in Jenner to see if she was thinking what I was thinking and, of course, she was.  We had all of the ingredients:  Indian Summer weather, low-tide in the late afternoon and kidlets that needed to run, roll, jump, collect, laugh and show us the way to Secret Beach.

The kids explored driftwood huts, gathered smooth rocks and sea glass, a sole of a rubber shoe (which is still in our possession) and lots of seaweed for over-the-head spinning.

We were only there for about an hour, but it was the best hour of my week.

Here are the treasures we brought home to remind us of our indelible afternoon on Secret Beach.