our shared forest

We went to the Botanical Gardens yesterday for a field trip with some of our homeschool friends. The field trip was about bird migration and how they live not only where we are, but also all along the way the importance of conservation and habitat along the journey to wherever they are migrating to. I thought it was a well done field trip. They played games, did some bird "watching" and learned to identify some shade trees birds love.

Here the kids are in the classroom - they are labeling the parts of a bird.


Getting instructions for the first game:


birds have to pass through lots of power lines and they can be very dangerous, so these two mama's are being power lines and it is the first obstacle the kids had to go through. If they ran into it, then they had to go to another part of the game.


cats can be very dangerous to birds, so Beatrice was the cat and all the kids had to get past her too and if she caught them then they had to go to another part of the game.


Here the kids are in a safe nest, but who's going to sacrifice themselves to the cat for the others to make it across?


building and windows can cause problems in bird migration, so the kids had signs on their backs and those passing had to tap them and if their not card on their back allowed them passage then they could run on through. (the buildings were the kids who didn't make it past the other obstacles.)


Birds have to gather food


It turned out that only a few kids made it all the way and even then, some had gathered bad eggs or food. What a great way to learn how hard it is to be a bird. We learned a lot we didn't know.

Then we moved on to bird watching...


The kids had a list of birds they had to "find" and identify


here the kids are writing down the names of the birds they "saw"


Lastly, the kids identified trees in the shade garden that birds like to nest in. Here are the boys working hard at getting the names down of those trees.


I thought it was a pretty great field trip that managed to keep all the kids engaged the whole time AND we learned A LOT!

in addition to horse back riding

Jason's grandfather made me a chest out of walnut... Similar to the chest he made India for Christmas last year. It is gorgeous and now lives in my living room and holds our blankets and has a lovely seat on top where I put a lamb's wool pad under the window to encourage sitting, but not drinks. Jason's grandfather is so thoughtful and he knows how much I appreciate the handmade items he has made for us in the past. I just love them because I know how much work and attention goes into them and he is also all about the detail just like I am with my quilts. I love it and am so grateful for it because we've had our blankets in an old black trunk I bought at Kmart when I was like 10 and it scratches the floor and just looks old and junky and now we have another nice and heavy made of real wood and hand crafted piece of furniture in our home. I was talking to Gobby about his wood working and he pointed out to me that how many people can say not only that their grandfather made them a piece of furniture, but also that the wood itself came from the land. How cool is that? What I love most about items made from wood are the imperfections of the wood and that you get to see the personality of the wood...

Here it is!

horse back riding

Jason's grandfather has been encouraging us to come out and ride the horses. He's got the saddles and everything we need to do it, but alas... I know NOTHING about riding horses, but I have ALWAYS wanted to learn. So, Jason agreed to taking us out there and giving it a try. I made plans with his sister to take some pictures of her family out there and while we were out there to ride the horses. One of the horses is pretty temperamental and you don't really know what to expect with her, the other horse is just as sweet as can be, but the overall problem with them is they don't get ridden often enough to be used to it. Gobby has told us if we show real interest in riding on a regular basis, then he will have them trained for us. Personally, I'm all about it because it's another thing I would be able to knock off my VERY long list of things I want to do in my life, ride horses regularly. So, after we got done with taking pictures, Jason got Nevada out (Biscuit is the temperamental horse) and we got to ride him some. He's really out of practice and spent a good bit of time confused, not to mention some of us had NO idea what we were doing, plus they gave me a whip to get him moving and I just don't think I have the personality to smack him with it because I just don't think he would like it. They were all naturally laughing at me about it and they swear it doesn't hurt him, but it certainly jolts him and there has to be a better way to get him moving.

India had told me all day she wasn't going to get on him. Their size intimidates her a little, well a lot... it intimidates me too, but I think it is healthy to try to overcome our fears when given a good opportunity to do so and I'm really proud of her for going ahead and climbing on even though she was super scared. She walked all the way across the yard on him with and though at first she was scared by the time they got across the yard, she was beginning to let go and really relax. She didn't get on once he had a saddle on because it was getting dark fast, but there is always next time!







Kalib on the hand was totally into it. He couldn't hardly wait for his turn...




He also managed to catch a ride while Nevada was saddled and with his dad...




I'm really looking forward to getting back over there and trying again and I'm so thankful that it is something we are lucky enough to have available to us to do when we want.

mmmm butter

We made butter... and it was so easy... and it is so yummy... and every time we eat any we think "we made this and it is so good!" It is one of the most satisfying things we have done in weeks for me - especially since the garden and all our hopes for our fall garden have fallen very short due to daylight getting less and less and all the rain. The garden will prevail in the early spring and we are taking the time to assess our mistakes and work on planning, planning, and more planning for spring... not to mention there is A LOT of art and reading and music and dancing and yoga going on in our home right now, but enough of all that! WE MADE OUR OWN BUTTER and it only took us about an hour and next time we know what to do differently. I have to purchase a couple of things (so typical isn't it?!), but we need a sieve anyhow and some squared off wooden spoons... I had the goal of learning to can this year and I did, I learned to make lace (woohoo) and I wanted to learn to make cheese, but I haven't quite worked up the nerve to embark upon that yet, so, butter is a most excellent substitute for learning to make cheese for now. We found a recipe with pretty decent instructions and tried our best to follow them considering we have never made it before. We picked up the heavy cream at our Athens Locally Grown for a whopping $3.00, unfortunately it is NOT from RAW milk, but sometimes, beggars can't be choosers, and it is from good milk from cows who are treated in a good way and not filled up with all kinds of yuck to keep them producing milk in unnatural ways... blah, blah, blah... on to the pictures...

first we poured the cream into our bowl and we began beating it with the mixer on low...India's nose is all scrunched up because the milk was a little messier than we were thinking it would be.


this is a pic of the cream beginning to change to butter... very cool!


then you pour off all the excess liquid which is buttermilk, but not thick buttermilk like you buy in the store, it actually is very sweet and thin... we gave that to our kitties who really thought they had died and gone to heaven. I bet they can't wait for us to make more butter (I went ahead this week and bought another pint of cream for a second round)The kids also liked the taste of the buttermilk.


the butter before washing and adding a little salt to it. Isn't it so pretty?!


Lastly, you have to get all the moisture out of it before putting it up and shaping it because the moisture will cause it to go bad fast... We didn't shape it because we couldn't figure out to shape it (next time). But it is super yummy on freshly baked biscuits with homemade strawberry jam and it is also really good on whole wheat waffles and fresh corn bread. We've been cooking foods that we can use the butter on! One more notch on my belt to being more self sufficient! What's next?! CHEESE (I hope)!

hayride anyone?

On Saturday, I was working hard on finishing up the quilt I've been taunting you all with and starting a new one... turns out my machine may need to be serviced so please send some love to it because I REALLY need it to be working well... anyhow... Jason and the kids were outside working on the nesting boxes for our chickens who will hopefully start laying around Thanksgiving. Jason's sister, Tracey, called to invite us over to her grandparents for a last minute hayride and bonfire. I totally love this. It's one of those opportunities to spend time with his family doing something we ALL enjoy - being outside cooking hot dogs and s'mores over a BIG fire and then taking a ride around the property taking in the stars and just genuinely having a good time. They do it every year and I hated that we might not get to do it this year because they had planned to do it on the 30th of October, but we couldn't make it then because of India's dance performance, so thankfully it got postponed. I guess it didn't work out for anyone else either (thankfully for us)... anyhow... it was fun! Thank you to gaga and gobby for putting the effort into it.

getting close to done!

A while back I posted a teaser picture of a quilt I'm working on, so I thought since I got to spend a big block of time this morning working on it and since it sooooo close to being finished I would tease you a little more... Some of you have already seen it and know what it is, so PLEASE don't give it away. I'm really excited about this quilt. As usual, with every quilt, I tried new ideas and new techniques and further explored my medium. I will NEVER do super intricate stitching through batting again since I have learned it looks much better and turns out to be a lot easier doing it before I layer it and keeping the actual quilting to a minimum, then I don't have to spend so much time worrying about what the back looks like... (judges don't like messy backs!) Don't know where that's going to go next time around, but it's always fun to discover something new... I also used freezer paper to get some of the detail just the way I wanted and uniformity in my stitching. I was going to try marking my quilt which is something I have never done before and it made me nervous, but I found I couldn't stay on the lines because sadly my eyes can't see them all that well - even with reading glasses on, but with the freezer paper I could just sew along the edge - lift it iron it down in the next spot and sew again and it all looks perfect! WOOOHOOOO!!!!! Learn something new every day!
So... without further ado... teaser pictures!

halloween

Here are the pics from Halloween along with the promised pumpkin photos...

The one of the left is India's the other Kalib's.


I stole this one from my friends Flickr, so it's really small... India was an alien, Kalib was Glimly from Lord of the Rings, I was a Renaissance Maiden, and Jason was an Agent of Chaos Monkey...


Again, stolen from Jennifers Flickr, but this was the highlight of the night watching Jason and Andrew. He absolutely loved Jason's mask and Jason is such a ham that he went right along with it.


Here are videos of the two of them:

In this one Captain Jack is teaching Monkey Boy (what Andrew called Jason) how to pick his nose: (it's really dark, but we had have done anything to change it Andrew might have lost interest)


In this one he reaches down Jason's shirt at the very end... be sure to pay attention! It is hilarious!


Last, but not least the three alien girls! They looked awesome!