Sprout Your Own Lentils

I don't know if it's everyone's kids or just mine who love sprouted lentils. My oldest eats them as a main course. They're so easy to do - Just fill a mason jar or a large cup 1/4 full of lentils and then fill the rest of the way up with distilled water. Cover the top with a thin cloth (we used some napkins) and set out of the sun somewhere on your counter. After 12 hours (or overnight), drain the water, and fill to the top again. This time, pour out the water right away. Rinse like this once or twice a day for a few days, and you'll have sprouted lentils! Transfer them to a baggy (don't zip it, though) and keep in the fridge.

Pumpkins!

Striving to give the girls a sense of connection to the seasons, we planted pumpkins in the front yard. They didn't get in the ground until a few weeks after the ideal window, so we weren't sure what the result would be. Much to our delight the pumpkins have finally started to turn orange! It looks like they might even make it in time for Halloween :)

A Steiner-Inspired Meal Plan: Monday

Monday:

The color is purple, and the grain is rice.

Tonight we made a lentil soup recipe courtesy of my dear friend Kristin, and tweaked it via suggestions of my dear friend Emma.

Put

1 cup of rinsed red lentils in a pot with

1/4 cup brown or green rice

4 cups distilled water

1 onion, peeled and cut up into small chunks

into a pot and bring to a boil

turn down to a simmer, and simmer for 30 min.

add

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon rosemary (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

juice of one lemon

Since Monday's color is purple, we added our natural food coloring from Whole Foods, made from purple carrot extract. We made Jiffy (don't judge me!) blueberry muffins and put food coloring in those as well, and served it in purple bowls. We had purple candles and amethyst on the table and drank wine! (The girls had water in purple cups ;))

Alpaca Festival

We are obsessed with llamas. Our family coffee house, Lucky Llama Coffee, is opening this Winter, and we are into everything llama. Seeing as there are no llamas in Santa Barbara (that I'm aware of!) we settle for alpacas. Settle is a bad word, since we love alpacas as well. They are just like llamas, only smaller, softer, sweeter, and more timid. What is not to love? Luckily my friend Tammy let us know about the Alpaca Festival last month at Canzelle Alpacas, in Carpinteria, and gave us the heads up. Isla got to ride alpacas, pet 4 day old baby alpacas, and feed them! It was such a fun day! If you missed the festival, they do tours on the first Saturday of the month for $35. Check out the website for details: www.canzelle.com.

DIY Silk Canopy

We love silk canopies. Love. But they are expensive! So, we bought the silk from the Waldorf supply co-op we are a part of: www.Cedarringcircle.com and dyed our own. For $4 something a yard, we dyed our own silk canopies and they came out great! We had leftover dye from Isla's "Trippy Hippy" party, but I'm sure any dye would do. Most people seem to use watercolor as dye, so we'll use that next time and report back with results. Anyway, we cut silk to size, got it wet, and squirted it with dye. Then I rolled it and bunched it to mix-mash the colors. I wanted the canopy to be pastel, so I rinsed the whole thing off right when we were done dying it. Then I just let it dry outside. To finish the edges, I rolled them and did a whip-stitch around them. Easy! *If you are not a co-op member of Cedar Ring Circle (you should be! Hurry, while they're still accepting new members!), you can order your silk from Dharma Trading. We used the 45" wide 8mm silk habotai. Right now they are being used as curtains in the girls' room, but they are easily whipped down for spontaneous play!

Fall Leaves Candle Holder

We celebrate Autumn with plenty of nature walks to check out the trees. Luckily, in our neighborhood, we have lots of maple trees, which have leaves that turn color and fall. On these walks, we collect the beautiful yellow, orange, and red leaves and bring them home to press in a big book. We do all kinds of fun projects with the pressed leaves: 1. sandwich between clear contact paper and then cut around. Hang these from any ring from fish line or thread to create Fall mobiles or 2. use as-is as leaf decoration or do the contact paper/cut out thing and use as leaf wands (my daughter's invention!). 3. Mod-podge a bunch of them around an old, short, wide vase to make an awesome Autumn candle-holder (see picture...*Project from Twig and Toadstool*)

The Perfect October Day!

How does the Santa Barbara Mama celebrate Autumn? There are so many amazing ways to do this in and near Santa Barbara. Wanting to really embrace the season, we set out for a Fall-themed day. First, we drove to Santa Ynez to "Seeing Spot Farm" (www.seeinspotfarm.com) to ride mini donkeys, feed huge turkeys, and pet goats. While we were there we picked four varieties of apples. The drive wasn't bad at all - about half an hour from Santa Barbara. On the way back, just before turning onto the 154, we stopped at Summerset Farms to pick our own blackberries and raspberries, and sang the blackberry picking song from the Magic Garden, kids 4 kids CD I mentioned in an earlier post:

"Come along, come along to blackberry hill; the berries are ripe, you can pick them until your tongue is all purple, your fingers are sore. Oh, but let's keep on searching for sweet ones. The green ones are bitter, and too hard to pick. They're sour and they're bitter; you're sure to get sick. The red ones are warning, 'we aren't yet black! We'll be riper tomorrow - be sure to check back!' ...over the hill, where the honey suckle grows, there's a very special place where nobody knows. You can't go in, unless you're brave. It's a prickly, stickery blackberry cave. Prickly, stickery blackberry cave. You can't go in unless you're brave, but I have my boots on and very long sleeves, and I know I'll be safe when I'm hiding beneath the leaves. Tug a tug tug, tug a tug tug, there are prickles - beware! but the berries are calling, 'Come and pick us if you dare!'"

There we also picked up the awesome "Australian Blue" pumpkin you see here at Isla's ever-changing nature table.



We came home and decided to make some tea with some of the apples. To make it extra festive, we hollowed out some apples to make cups (kind of falls into the "easier said than done" category, but if I can do it I know you can!). To make the tea, we cut 1" chunks of apple and put them in a pot with drinking water (one apple per cup of water... as a rule I'd use one small apple per person at your tea party). Then we let it simmer for maybe seven or eight minutes. We strained out the chunks and poured the tea into the apple cups. To fancy it up, we put a little cinnamon sugar in it. I would have liked to have cinnamon sticks to stir it, but we didn't have any this time. With the leftover chunks in the pot we made "crustless apple pie" by spooning them into bowls and sprinkling with cinnamon sugar. So easy!

We finished off the day with the Apple Story, author unknown, and some parts changed to please my kid: A young girl has played with her toys all day, and now does not know what to do. She goes to her mother and asks her what she should do next. Her mother tells her that she can look for a little red house, with no windows or doors that has a star inside. The little girl goes to her grandfather and asks him if he knows where there might be a little red house, with no windows or doors, with a star inside. He does not know, but tells her to ask her grandmother. So the young girl goes to her grandmother and asks her if she knows where there might be a little red house, with no windows or doors, with a star inside. The grandmother does not know, but tells the little girl to ask Father Sun. The little girl asks Father Sun where there might be a little red house, with no windows or doors, with a star inside. Father Sun replies that he does not know, but that the little girl should ask Sister Wind. The little girl goes to find Sister Wind. She asks her where there might be a little red house, with no windows or doors, with a star inside. Sister Wind replies, "Whoooooooooooooooo," which sounds like, "Follow meeeeeeeeeeee," so the little girl follows the wind out to the orchard, where she sees an apple on the ground. "A little red house with no windows or doors!" she cries, and runs home to show her mother. But then she asks her mother about the star inside. Her mother cuts the apple in half (we did this at this point in the story) crosswise, not lengthwise, to reveal the star in the middle of the apple!

I love this story, because I remember the exact point when I discovered the star in the middle of an apple: My pre-school teacher had shown it to me. I thought it was incredible, and Isla was very pleased with the story. What a great day!

Autumn Cleaning and Beautiful Handmade Toys

I am in the process of getting rid of at least 75% of our earthly possessions. I felt like all I did was clean, and still our house always looked like a hurricane just came through. My girls had too many toys, most of which they never played with. So, out with (almost) everything cheap or plastic, as well as all of the non-handmade soft toys and dolls, unless it was something one of the girls really loved. We donated the books that weren't favorites and the clothes that hadn't been worn for a while. The result is a house that is always clean and in order! Yay! I still pick up a little all day, but the house looks a million times better than before, with much less effort. Even better is that the girls really play with the toys they have, since there is much easier access to their favorite things. We've noticed that the toys Isla gets out are played with for a much longer period of time, and she never asks to watch movies anymore! Another huge plus is that I feel so much less stressed. Less is more!

Anyway, needless to say we are not really in the market for more toys. However, I just stumbled upon this great website for natural, waldorf inspired toys. It's called Sage Dream Design, and has the sweetest playscapes and dolls made from wool, and her things are so magical I may just spring for a couple.

Waldorf Window Stars

I love Waldorf window stars, and was so excited to try my hand at a couple. It's a really easy DIY project, and was fun for me, but I'm trying to find a way to make it fun (i.e. not frustrating!) for my 3 year-old. We found this great tutorial online, on one of my favorite Waldorf-crafty blogs, Twig and Toadstool, and used the same colors since they were perfect for this time of year. I'm excited to decorate our house in honor of the season, since you can't always tell by looking outside!

These window stars are made from kite paper, and you can find it in packs online. The paper I had was 6x6, so there was a left-over strip of paper after cutting out the rectangles for each piece. I cut that strip in half to make the smaller window star you see in the picture, and the same pattern worked for that. The next project I'll post is dying silk... you can see the purple and turquoise piece I did this afternoon drying on the chairs in the background of the first picture. It was my first try, so we'll see how it turns out!

My Natural and Organic Sugar Cookie Recipe

In search of more Autumn crafts and projects, Isla and I decided to make cookies in Fall-inspired shapes, and frost them in the color of the season. We came up with our own version of the classic, to make these cookies a little more on the natural side. I am a big advocate of less sugar for kids, so we made these "sugar" cookies with hardly any sugar. To make them sweet, we glazed them with a little *wince* store-bought frosting which we made orange with natural food coloring. We bought our food coloring from Whole Foods, but if you are crafty in the kitchen, you can make a good orange using tumeric (for the yellow) and beet extract (for the red), and mixing it all together. Our make-shift cookie recipe:

1 c. organic unsalted butter at room temp.

1/2 to 3/4 c. (up to you) organic sweetener (we used evaporated cane juice)

2 eggs

3 teaspoons vanilla

2 3/4 c. organic all purpose whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix up the butter, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Combine dry ingredients in another bowl. Stir in the dry to the wet a little at a time. Pat the dough into a ball and pop in the fridge, covered, for 3 hours or overnight.

Flour a cutting board and roll out the dough. Cut with cookie cutters and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet (or line with foil) and bake approximately 8 minutes at 350F. While cookies are in the oven, if you are using store-bought frosting like me, scoop some out into a bowl, add food coloring and mix together. Let cookies cool before frosting.

Autumn Nature Table / Playscape

I love the Fall! Isla's Autumn Nature Table is always changing, and she spent a lot of time and care making it just right this afternoon. She uses it like a playscape and has fun finding new things to add to it. We walked the neighborhood in search of Fall leaves, and were lucky to find a bunch right around the corner. All of the extras we are in the process of pressing, and then we'll mod-podge them onto a short, squatty glass vase for a candle-holder centerpiece for the dinner table. I'm hoping the pumpkins from our garden will be ready soon so we can add one to the Fall scape. Later this week, if it stays chilly, I plan on making apple cider and we can serve it in cups made from apples!

Wonderfully Odd New Kids Books

The Worry Woo books by Andi Green are so great. I am drawn to the uniqueness of the collection. They are whimsical and strange, and have sweet messages. They kind of remind me of the Serendipity books by Stephen Cosgrove that I grew up reading, but with a more current vibe. You can get plush dolls to go with the books, which I was a sucker for. We started with Rue, the monster of insecurity, but now have four books in our collection. I like "The Nose That Didn't Fit" because it teaches little Rue that it isn't his nose that's the problem; it's just how he sees it. Nola learns that friends are all around her, and that they can come in all shapes and sizes, Squeek learns to take calculated risks so he can enjoy life, and Fuddle learns how to make decisions and stop worrying about what the "best" thing is. Cute.

Magical Willow Forts

My husband made this fort for the girls by planting willow stalks at four points and then bending them to meet and tying them together. There are a ton of YouTube videos to help. It will, theoretically, fill in (the stalks have just started to sprout) and there are plans for windows and a tunnel, but until then it's fun to tie up some play silks for walls. We hung some crystals and shells inside and I kind of want to live there. Cost: $0

Or, another option is this little GardenFort, which comes with three kinds of seeds and is $70 on magiccabin.com.

Baby Doll Friends

Lyra and Isla love baby dolls. And not just White girls. We get strange looks from people at the zoo or grocery store when Isla carries around any of her babies that aren't of the blonde haired, blue eyed variety. When the brave passer-by questions why her baby is Asian or Black, we smile and tell her we have lots of different friends. Some are Black, some are White, some are animals. Santa Barbara is pretty lacking in diversity, but that doesn't mean Isla's toys have to be!

Mer-Baby Outfit

Why did I not own this when Lyra was a newbie? $18 for this sweet get-up... I love etsy.

Needle-felting Natural Toys

Lately I've been trying my hand at needle-felting. Isla loves the little dolls and spends hours playing with them. She loves them so much that her choice for a present for her teachers was a felted doll. I made a rendition of her amazing teachers at both of the schools she attended, and the first picture is of the "Miss Jeannie" doll. I thought the teacher appreciation doll was such a cute idea I made customizable options on my etsy store, NatureBaby.

Magical Music for Mellow Play Time

I've really noticed how music affects the mood in our house, to the point where I've temporarily shelved the spazzy, silly kids' music and replaced it with these two albums: The Magic Garden by Diane Tatum and Come Follow Me!, by Lorraine Nelson Wolf. They are both kind of mellow and inspire hours of imaginative, magical play time.

The Best Toddler Movies

In my opinion, Disney movies, and actually 99% of all kids movies are totally inappropriate for toddlers. It seems like almost all of them involve either scary villains or parents who die. I don't want my daughters exposed to either of those themes right now. Ideally, I would have liked to wait until Isla was three before introducing her to the television, but that wasn't our reality. We tried a couple of movies ("Finding Nemo" and "Dot and the Kangaroo") that ended up being much too scary for her, before I remembered an old favorite of mine: My Neighbor Totoro. By the same director we have my daughter's favorite: Ponyo. Totally appropriate for a 2.5 year-old, it is sweet and magical, and I can actually stand watching it more than once. Isla likes to snuggle a little felted wool version while she watches, and then uses it for imaginary play after.

A Green Valentine's Day

I was especially inspired to throw a green Valentine's Day bash since green is the color of the heart chakra. Making the decision to have the party with just a couple of weeks to plan, I scoured the internet for ideas on how to throw an eco-friendly age-appropriate Valentine's Day party for toddlers. I was actually surprised by how little I found to help me. What would two year-olds like to do at the party that would go with the theme? I also wanted to use materials I had vs. buying new. I settled on three crafts: Card Making, Pasta Necklaces, Felt King and Queen of Hearts Crowns.

For the cards, I cut out heart shapes from newspapers and magazines that were on their way to the recycling bin. I then cut hearts out of paper Isla had colored on, which was also on it's way to the recycling. I glued the un-colored-on side of the heart facing out onto the newspaper heart, and set up a table with eco-friendly, non-toxic paints (I used the Clementine brand from Lazy Acres), glue by the same brand, and some feathers I had left over from other crafts.

For the pasta necklaces, I found some all-natural food coloring from Whole Foods. The red was made with two ingredients: beet root extract and hibiscus extract. The purple was just purple carrot extract. I used spinach pasta, un-dyed, and whole wheat pasta, un-dyed, and then dyed some "regular" pasta with the red and purple dye. To do this, put some pasta in a plastic baggie. Add a few drops of the food coloring, and a few drops of white vinegar. Smoosh around until evenly coated. (Isla loved this project!) Then spread out on newspaper to dry. I used some yarn I had lying around to string it, and I dipped the ends of it in some paint so that it would harden, and be easier for little hands to string it.

The felt crowns were easy: cut crown shapes out of felt and sew together at the sides. Cut out hearts, leaves, flowers, etc. out of felt and cotton fabric. I also put out paints which were left over from Lyra's baby shower, and also happened to be pink! Since I was crunched for time, I didn't sew on buttons and make slits in the shapes like I did for Isla's birthday party. Instead, that was a "mama-help" station, where the kids could pick out the shapes they wanted to use, and the mamas sewed a stitch in the middle of them to keep them on.

Isla made the goodie bags. We used brown paper sacks and I drew heart shapes with the non-toxic natural glue. She then sprinkled them with candy sprinkles we were given a few years back, but don't cook with ;). Another option for this would be to sprinkle the glue hearts with sand, and decorate the bag with a feather. In the goodie bags were some trinkets Isla had picked out from my craft materials bin: polished abalone shells and feathers. Her grandmother also came by with some musical treats we threw in the bags. We left the goodie bags relatively empty, figuring the kids could fill them with the crafts they made. Some of the kids brought valentines for everyone, and the bags were perfect to store those in.

For treats, Isla and I made little mini carrot cakes, dyed purple and pink with the beet and carrot extract dyes, with frosting using the same dyes. We decorated them with dried goji berries, cranberries, and blueberries.

We made Love Potion out of coconut water and the purple carrot extract dye. I had wanted to make little heart-shaped ice cubes using the red dye, but ran out of time. Some of our guests brought fun things like apples cut in the shape of hearts, open-faced strawberry cream cheese heart-shaped sandwiches, no sugar added oatmeal treats, etc. We also put out some totally unrelated green spinach dinos, pretzels, and whole wheat pasta with cheese.

As for what I'd do differently, I definitely should have had some full-body activities. Our little pink plastic car outside could have had a tag on it: The Love Bug. Tunnels could have been put out and dubbed: The Tunnels of Love. Our swinging chair, always a toddler favorite: The Love Seat... Maybe next year <3

The Birth of Lyra

We were so happy to be able to have our second baby born at home, just like her big sister. We were beside ourselves to be able to have the experience of being the only ones in the house when Lyra was born. Of course we didn't plan to deliver the baby on our own. We had a plan, and the best team of midwives around. They were waiting by their phones, and sped over the minute Ryan called. They were there in less than ten minutes!... but Lyra was out of my womb and in my arms in less time than that! It was the most perfect, intimate experience either of us had ever been a part of. And the first midwife, Anna Bunting, was there within a minute or two of Lyra's birth to make sure everything was perfect, and to deliver the placenta.