HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPROUT!!!

I year ago today give or take 30 minutes.

and today (this was hard fought for, he's ON THE MOVE and much too busy for pictures!)

Continuing the house search...

Yesterday we looked at an 1870's school house in a PRIME home based business location (its currently a B&B) but it is on the main road into town so LOTSA TRAFFIC
also lotsa space and charm and what have you.


Tonight we're looking at two little farms - one with 16 acres and a pond and an old barn, the other is 3 acres surrounded by orchards, and it has two barns and a small house. There's a tire swing out front.

Then later this week we're looking at a house in Kingsport - actual deeded ocean access and room to build a workshop, and a crazy cobbled together 150 year old house and a TON of work to be done (like GUT the upstairs and live downstairs for awhile while its being rehabilitated from a shag carpet and stucco 1970's nightmare) but it is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP and we LOVE LOVE LOVE Kingsport.

And then the house above - a circa 1750's acadian house. Pretty huh?

Wish us luck on finding our forever house!

In contrast...

Nature Girl did her own mini harvest on the way home from school. I'm not looking forward to the worms coming out but I think we have 144 acorns now for our times tables work!

I don't even like cantaloupe that much

But this is part of why I love Papa Pan.

Its big news here in the Valley that the big grocery chain told a local farmer they'd buy melons from him. So he planted 50 acres of them. Then the grocery chain backed out of the deal. When the "he said - she said" dust settled the farmer invited neighbours to come pick all the melon they could carry before they rotted in the field.

So Papa Pan went melon picking after work yesterday.

This is what was left after we gave a trunk full to the neighbours, to my daycare families.

The calm after the storm

This is my favorite time of day. Breakfast finished, lunches made, kids dressed, washed, brushed. Papa Pan and the bigguns off to school, diaper changed, and the rhythm of the day is in swing. When the quiet descends on us and I catch my breathe Wild Thing draws.

Pirate adventures...

The most luscious volcanoes you ever did see.

Snapshots of my home...

Our make do mudroom.

Remnants of a pirate snack, Wild Thing insists that apple cider is rum.

Dollmaking at its most gory stage!

We value sleep too much to keep our clothes in the bedroom. Papa Pan and my dresser is in the livingroom.
The beach nature box on top.

Dresser in the diningroom that holds art and school supplies and a gross of cloth napkins, and the cutlery, and...

Modelling beeswax krpt on top so the sun can warm it.

For Robin, little beeswax bee guardian.

I always love seeing into the homes of the bloggers I follow so I thought I'd take some pics today.

No, the cat does not look worse

Rule number one with cranky old cats: Don't wake them up at face level.

The cat hissed. Sprout yelled out in surprise, but it was poor little Wild Thing who needed the rescue remedy. He was SO upset that the cat would hurt his baby!

NO TUNA FOR YOU LUNA!

I'm trying to tame my own mama lion response because I kinda understand...I expect this is what she saw....

Laundry Day musings...

Who am I kidding, with four kids EVERY DAY is laundry day.

I love folding laundry. It is a strangely intimate way of touching base with my kids without them realizing it too.

Six folded piles, the first and second are mine and Papa Pan's - utilitarian, socks and underwear, workaday tshirts and jeans, Papa Pan's trademark vests, my thrifted skirts and long sleeved tshirts.

The next four piles are full of personality, the first is black, grey, and orange, tshirts full of pithy commentary, sleek grey vests and oversized hoodies for a gangly teen still getting used to being over six feet tall.

The next is a rainbow of colours and patterns. It has moved from being purple and pink into this trademark rainbow pile over the last year as my sweet Nature Girl matures in her tastes and preferences.

The next is almost entirely in stripes and tie dye, Wild Thing is all about the pirates, and pirates love them some stripe-y shirts.

The last pile is all nostalgia - handknits that Aunt Zoom did 15 years ago for Dark Mirror, a favorite sunburst t-shirt worn by Nature Girl as a baby, an orange stripe-y onesie that I dressed Wild Thing in until he was busting out of it. A friend commented that I have the ultimate hippie baby, there's a devil may care attitude in this boy's mismatched gender misidentifying wardrobe. Rainbow crochetted shoes, purple yellow and pink knit pants, and purple tiedyed onesie. I realize that the Sprout is seldom dressed well, no matching outfits for this boy. I dress him in family memories, and I'm glad I can.

House hunting continues...

(not actual toilet)

It may be hard to believe, but this is the sort of thing that makes my heart sing and makes me just about ready to overlook major structural flaws.

I covet robin's egg blue bathroom fixtures. I'm not joking.

I grew up in a red brick school house with doors for the girls and doors for the boys, and a bathroom in a turret. That bathroom had robin's egg blue fixtures.

This weekend we visited an open house at a lovely Victorian on one acre on the edge of a quaint loyalist town. It has a turret. It has a bathroom in the turret. The bathroom has robin's egg blue fixtures.

We're trying to wrap our heads around the street noise. Papa Pan hates that kind of noise. But I'll overlook just about anything when my nostalgia is kicked into high gear.

Breastfeeding public service announcement from Puerto Rico

I wish this was on television here...I might actually get cable!...o atleast a tv!

Okay let me figure this out outloud..

I want to keep this blog out in public, but I really don't feel that I can talk openly about dyslexia/learning difficulties here, so I am going to start a second more private blog for dealing with those issues.

At the same time I think our experiences might help out someone else so I am going to make it a searchable blog.

Why? Because, well, I don't want my daughter too feel under the microscope and we've never attached the label to her....and so far so good - she is more tuned into her successes than her trials.

But this blog, the one she comes to to look at pictures and make suggestions for posts etc, it isn't going to deal with any "issues"

If you want an invite, just ask

(Everyone who has contacted me will get an invite)

An interesting fact about our home...

You are never more than 5 paces from a 5x magnifier jeweller's loupe.

There are a million things you'll want one for so there's one in every room - at least one. You can stack them to increase the magnification so sometimes they are found in clusters too.

Dinner conversation -

Dark Mirror - "Hey did I tell you what happened when I came home from Labrynth?"

Me - "No, what?"

Dark Mirror - "A wolf spider swung down right in front of my face as I was opening the door to come in!"

Nature Girl - "There's one hunting at the back door too, didn't you hear me screaming earlier?"

Me - "Nature Girl, you scream a lot. Well there's another one on the window here in the diningroom." gesturing to window behind my head.

Papa Pan - "I put them there as guard dogs, Mica only guards Sprout's high chair"

Nature Girl - Is that one on the OUTSIDE of the window?"

Me - "Yup let me get a loupe, where is it?"

Nature Girl - "I put it in my basket"

1, 2, 3 paces

Nature Girl looked at it, Dark Mirror balked, remembering how he developed an intense fear of Ladybugs after looking at one with a loupe before, but Nature Girl convinced him because Wolf Spiders are "cute". Dark Mirror looked at it and agreed it was cute AND gross cause it was eating something. Wild Thing was all impressed with the hairs on its legs.

We finished dinner discussing Spider facts...like did you know all spiders have 8 eyes, but jumping spiders have 4 in front and 4 in the back of their heads? I do now.

That is why we have loupes everywhere.


and spiders.

How much elbow space do we need?

Dark Mirror comes home on Saturday.

Hs bed is freshly made, and I'm working on clearing out the stuff that has seeped into his room while he was staying with his father. Mainly books. We have too many books. His room is half teen hideaway and half library. We won't really be changing that, but I thought the books I reach for most often should come out of his space.

Dark Mirror's room is in the basement (he likes that, what teen doesn't like their own space!) so all week I've been hauling books back upstairs.

It has had a really profound affect on the energy here.

I've been really busy with the books the last while - deciding on things to do with the waldorf coop, crafting books, books on dyslexia....and because they were shelved in the basement I was in the basement. It makes a HUGE difference to be upstairs reading! All of us on one level - me aware of the weather and light at all times. Ah settled.

There's another reason I'm doing this too...

We've found a really amazing property with good neighbours, a pond, a forest full of trails, garden space and tons of fruit trees and bushes, a woodworking studio for me...and a house the size of a teacup. We're so enamoured with the property we're trying to get our heads wrapped around the house. It has a wonderful feel, it does, but just how will it feel come February when slush falls from the sky and everyone is crowded inside?

Feeling it out for me involves spiralling into as small a space as I can manage in this house and so...the basement is being abandoned in favour of the 1200 sq ft of main floor we have here. That feels cavernous next to the square footage we're looking at though in this little craftsman cottage.

The little kids would share a lovely light filled bedroom in the teacup. Papa Pan and I would have a loft space with no walls, my studio would consist of a long tabletop under a window built into the forward eaves. Dark Mirror would have his own room on the main floor. Papa Pan's guitars would need to live under all our beds. We'd fully winterize the screened porch on the front of the house for the kid's to use as a playroom and then there is an open concept kitchen/living/diningroom. There's a mudroom too, and a wonderful multi platform deck that is bigger than the house itself. There's one bathroom and a dubious basement.

How much house space do you need? I NEED outdoor spaces I feel totally at home in, inside...I can live almost entirely in my diningroom and kitchen...but when the noise levels gets too high I want to send kids outside, not away from me in the house.

I once decided my perfect house was a ger or yurt. But then came the inevitable stumbling block... where will we fit all the books?