Goodbye Noisy Cottage.....

Noisy Cottage is taking on a new life without our family. This is a little goodbye post and thank you to all that followed our adventures.
Noisy Cottage will be full of love and light and we are forever grateful for that......

Singing the Praises of Eating Flowers

Last night prepping for a lovely combo dinner with my soul sister, I had a revelation-- the kale, producing vivaciously all through the winter is in bloom- let's add flowers to the salad. So, I sent the eldest daughter out (she volunteered with enthusiasm) and she brought in some beautiful yellow flowered stems. We washed, cut and threw them into the salad. What a delight it was to settle in and discover the sweet crunch of those flowers and stems. We ate like fairies last night!

Art, Art and More Art, Yo!!

I can't stop- we have an addiction here at Noisy Cottage- with Spring fever hitting hard, it isn't just cleaning it's ART. You bet!
We say "Okay, it's Down Time, let's all take a little lie down to rest and find some quiet space- you can read or write or just rest." And you know what happens? You guessed- someone smuggles some art supplies in and BOOM! The time is up and art comes flowing down the stairs.
This is from my eldest daughter this week, she said that the soul of the horse was flowing out but that did not mean it was dead, it just was:

Then, I find myself staying up until the wee hours making gnomes for the Gnome A Day Project and then, as if that isn't enough on my plate, new obsessions in art arise: Candle holders with gold piping (using glass paint) for a Moroccan look- and no, I couldn't wait to use them so there is wax (orange, white, you name it) spilled in there but at night (photos will follow with that when it is dark) they are so lovely and so FUN:

And then, as if these are not enough, Ukrainian Easter Eggs (I'll post about those with photos later!) and lace covered stones, or, as I like to call it "doiling" a stone (hee hee!)- all the way to the left was my first stone, the middle one is my mother's lovely handwork (she can follow a pattern, unlike her unruly daughter, wink, wink) and the last on the right, that was my "I-will-figure-this-out-and-make-it-look-lacier-even-though-I-don't-know-how-to-crochet-I-guess-this-will-do-hm-now-I-will-try-this-hm-how-about-this-hm-what-will-this-look-like" stone- ah, yeah, I am hooked (no pun intended!):

So that is what's going on at Noisy Cottage, the cottage that has been so silent on this blog for so many months. With the sun out, four children to chase after, teach and learn from, I can only hope I find the balance I always seek and spare the time I always want, to post a little here.

It's all about Dessert Night!

In an effort to bring order and more than anything, rhythm, to our days, weeks, months, our dear friend recently trained in Simplicity Parenting came over, sat me down and helped me start sorting it out. The daily rhythm is particularly difficult for me to hold and she is a natural with that and so wonderful to work with so I was grateful for her generous offer.

Prior to this, my husband and I had sat down over tea and plotted out some weekly and monthly rhythms- being slow and selective with our choices in hopes of being able to stick to them.

I will post later about the daily rhythm our friend helped me create but now, the weekly rhythm:

Tuesday night is Dessert Night

Wednesday night is Game Night

Thursday is Breakfast for Dinner Night

Sunday is Family Afternoon Swim (at the indoor pool- not the river!)

Then, once a month we hold a Friends Potluck Night here at Noisy Cottage.

Our first official Dessert Night, I attempted a pie made with a little rice flour and tapioca flour mixture.

It looked beautiful but, alas, was not quite as tasty as I would have liked. Better luck next week!

But what really was lovely was this feeling of knowing what would come next- not in the scheme of the universe, of course, but in that gentle way of being able to let go knowing that it was Dessert Night and with that some small ritual for the day.

Thank goodness for the small ritual, woven into our days holding them finely together like a spider web here and there with space in between for surprises and change.

For this, I am truly grateful.

Are you nuts?

Well, actually I am!

Last night, slightly plagued with the beginning of a cold and feeling that slight "Tomorrow is Monday" sort of glum, I decided that I needed to create.- Something edible, something sweet, something that would bring cheer to the week in little doses as we set off on the second leg of our two week grocery shopping from a week ago- when things start to run out usually and we have to get creative with our meals.

So, I splurged and made Spicy & Sweet Nuts.

Sunflower seeds are usually the cheapest so I tend to have more of those than anything else but I happened to have almonds and walnuts too-- thanks to a holiday splurge.

So in they went as well.

I altered this recipe Sugar and Spice Candied Nuts

2/3 c brown sugar (made with regular sugar and molasses)

1 1/3 c sugar

big dash of cinnamon

big dash of coriander

2 teaspoons salt

whatever else you have a hankering for

2 egg whites

2 Tablespoons water

3 or more cups of nuts and seeds

I frothed up the egg whites and water until they were really frothy but not stiff in a nice big bowl.

I added the spices and sugar together in a separate bowl.

Next, I put the nuts into the egg white/water mixture and stirred- play around with that part in case you feel like you need more nuts in there.

Then you lay them out on a parchment lined cookie sheet and sprinkle the sugar spice mixture over top and toss until they are covered.

Bake at 300 for 30 minutes or so and then let cool.

Break up as you put them in a big bowl once they have cooled.

Delicious!

Touched with a sudden need to organize, I had the inspiration to use the sheet metal of the stove's backsplash to start planning our meals and lunch and breakfast options. Dry erase markers are incredibly helpful!!

Sheepishly saying hello to the New Year

(yes, my friends, our turkey had actual breasts......)

Uh, so (shuffling my feet)- I was MIA for a while.

I sort of fell out of blogging and into the world of children and homeschool and the overwhelming realization that I had holiday fairs looming very close on my horizon and no inventory to speak of- not to mention holiday orders and children who needed holiday magic themselves.

So, blogging fell by the wayside.

I am back, trying to make amends.

I vow to myself that I will not make promises I can't keep but I will try and I promise to try to blog regularly to share life with four children. Daily, maybe not- but frequently I am sure I can manage- complete with the joys and burliness of child rearing and self-rearing- the latter being perhaps the biggest of all.

I will start this New Year off by showing the miracle of the breasted Thankgiving bird that graced our table this past Thanksgiving.

For some strange reason that I am sure has its roots in physics and air pockets, our bird came from the oven with a pair of round breasts. Shocked, the children, my husband and I stopped to stare and then burst into a roar of laughter that echoed through Noisy Cottage.

Who knew?

Oh My!- The Apples Are In & the Squash is Ready!

Early one morning this week, we woke, got dressed and headed to pick up a couple friends and headed to an orchard.

This orchard is on public land and is a free, with hope in our hearts, we headed out to see.

Then we were there- a big old house (one of my dream houses) and a little clutch of giant pine trees where owls live and fields and an orchard.

We walked through the owl woods to the orchard and began to pick the apples and pears until we had well over 100lbs.

There were several times where the children stood on each other's shoulders like a circus act just to reach some cluster of delicious apples. Of course, with one pick a torrent of ripe apples would rain down on our heads and laughing and running we'd chase and collect them.

It was pure joy.

Then it was back through the owl woods where we collected a dozen owl pellets to dissect later and home.

Along the way we stopped at a local farm and grabbed up 30 squash - a mix of acorn, spaghetti and delicata and headed home to start working.

The children were blissful.

Huzzah! Huzzah!

Every year as summer puts out one last effort and autumn sneaks in to steal her thunder- we cut up sheets, sew them into over dresses and chemises and we head south for a renaissance fair.

The children run barefoot through the sudden village hundreds of years old and check back with us, giant turkey legs in their hands, blue glass bottles of homemade sarsaparilla tied to their belts and feet so dirty they look like hobbits.

It is magical. We are part of a booth with fiber works (of course) so I sit and spin and knit and felt and then we head off to watch the jousting, sitting on a grassy slope and rooting for our chosen knight or just walk through the village, basket in the crook of the elbow.

We return home dirty and tired but happy and full of history of one of the remarkable pasts that the human species has to draw from.......

"I love me"

As part of our homeschool organizing, we picked up some used binders to hold things together in addition to our main lesson books, etc. It didn't take long for the children to discover that they could draw pictures and insert them into the front and back of each binder personalizing each one. They got right down to it.

Later, after we had played with math, I was putting the binders away and discovered this written on the back of my youngest's binder.

I almost cried to see those words, plain and clear in a declaration of self-love, -- in all places on the back of her binder.

Tomatoes, tomatoes everywhere

It is officially tomato season and everyone is snacking in the garden- even the dog has discovered the bounty and carefully picks ripe tomatoes and eats them straight off the vine.

The greenhouse is in the process of being moved and has therefore been taken down temporarily.

And so, one evening recently my oldest daughter and I went and harvested the sweet tiny

tomatoes.

We washed them.

We sliced them in half.

We placed them on the dehydrator racks and we dehydrated them.

They are like crisp candy tomatoes- unbelievably delicious!!

What gifts this earth provides!!

Finding the time to live the life you love and blog?

the light over our dining table

This is a tricky one for me, as I sit here, I know I am burning the polenta and wondering what things I can be doing with my children.

Blogging is fun- but it's more than that, it's a little bit of "hey, check out this idea" and a little bit of "the funniest things happen when" and it is also a delight to just be writing about life- truly. And yet, taking the time to be on the computer has a certain push-pull to it.

I find myself fighting the urge to throw the computer away (which would be a silly thing to do considering all the things that I rely on the computer for-- including some serious homeschool information) but still- there is that balance that I seek.

I see photos on Facebook pages and blogs of families off in woods, on the beach, in the world and I am misty eyed about how fantastic that is and then I realize that at some point they left that piece of paradise for just a little while to post about it in whatever venue they use and I wonder how they work that. I get lost in that. I find myself lost for days and weeks in the world of children and home and marriage and friendship and then I worry and worry that I have forgotten all the wonderful things I could share on this blog about projects or recipes or what have you. Finding balance, always seeking to find balance.......

I was encouraged to blog by friends who called to find out what we were up to quite often and would ask what we had been doing recently? What magic was afoot in Noisy Cottage? So, I will continue to strive to find the balance and blog but, sometimes, I get so lost in the every day moments of life that I forget that there is a such thing as a computer or the internet........

Times They are a Changin' so We Ate Pizza

It is August and with that comes all the overwhelming quantity of ads for Back to School supplies.

Though we have home schooled on and off since we moved into the city, this time it feels more solid- have we put more into it? Perhaps or perhaps not.

We are trying to see everything as a learning experience and a celebration of life. So, in the midst of the back to school rush, we made gluten-free pizza- well a sort of pizza- this is where some learning came in.

By shredding zucchini and salting it then rinsing it and squeezing out the moisture and adding a couple eggs, we made a pizza crust that was then baked.

Then we added all the "normal" goodies- veggies, too much cheese- you know the drill. To make mini pizzas, we used slices of a polenta log that we naughtily sautéed in butter before decorating them with our greenhouse goodness.

The tomatoes which are coming faster than ever from the greenhouse, were a main focus and the children have begun to incorporate gardening and food growing information into their daily focus. The pizza gave them that reminder of why we do all that planting and watering and tending.

My son was inspired to add a vote and hope and wish for world peace to our dinner using fresh basil leaves.