Berlin's Whimsy

A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I stand on the edge of change. Though I don't know it for fact, I feel it in my heart and I'm moving that direction... I ponder employment possibilities and an upcoming move into our own house. Stepping out into the world anew, it's what I dream about this midsummer.  

At this moment, midsummer, I'm full of these contemplations and dreams. Dreams of varying possibilities tied to circumstances. Sometimes it all seems so convoluted, like the Shakespearean play that shares this post's title. Very much unlike the play, however, my complications are devoid of romantic interests, by the way. 

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream, a magical flower plays a pivotal role in developing a character's love. At this point in my life, the flowers I receive come from my kids and I'm fairly certain that any magical qualities stem from the sweetness of intent for which they are given.

I receive my flowers and I place them in jars and marvel at my children's love. I also sit amongst the colors in the beds from whence the flowers come and I dream lazily in this midsummer heat-----dreams of possibilities and wondering what lies ahead for me.

**We're heading for our familiar coast for this week but I'll share some midsummer photos & thoughts all week long...

Tadpoles.

I grew up catching tadpoles in nearby ditches and ponds and setting them aside to miraculously transform into frogs.

We would dip our hands in the dirty ditch water and come up with a slimy little tadpole which we plunked into a waiting and clean pickle jar. The murky jar would sit on our counter and life would evolve within its glass walls----for all the world to witness. We were fascinated by them.

And I still am.

My kids have caught tadpoles up in the local high mountain lakes but never "raised" them like I did. They were so surprised to find that just down the driveway they could catch some of these wriggly little creatures for themselves.

Again I marvel at how much I forget from my childhood. I cannot remember what we fed our tadpoles in those big pickle jars. Nowadays we have the internet to answer such queries and found that they love plain old lettuce.

In fact, they munch little holes in the lettuce leaves and we can actually listen to them munching at the top of the water's surface.

They're only just sprouting their tiny legs now.

Ah, thank goodness for kids who let us old, forgetful adults into their worlds to remember bits of our own childhood...

Dinner Tricks.

 

I'll admit it, I pass off some fairly child "unfriendly" meals from time to time. I have my reasons: I like to experiment; I believe in exposing kids to lots of tastes and textures and I don't believe in the standard "child friendly" fare of high salt and high fat processed foods (though we eat them occasionally---I'm not a complete ogre, just half); I believe children who grow up with healthy food will return to their roots as adults;  and I can pass off some of my more healthy or gourmet dinners with a few tricks.

Dinner Tricks. Shhhhh, don't tell my kids but I have a few tricks when it comes to sneaking in healthy meals. I'll also add here that I don't play short-order cook at meals. We all eat the same meal together----yes, I'll pick off this or that from their plates (tomatoes for my son, red peppers for my daughter).

When putting dinner together, I look at our meal not only from a dietary standpoint but also with an eye for what I know my kids will like and eat. If they receive one dish they really like, they'll often eat the other stuff that they might not necessarily like as much. For instance, this meal in the photograph. Yes, we had tofu steaks again and they do love them but we also had a salad, which they don't always enjoy, especially when it includes arugula. I reviewed this meal and knew it needed that little something that would pass their acceptability test-----one of my stand-byes is applesauce. They love applesauce and it balances out almost the worst offender.

Back to that salad. Unfortunately, my kids don't enjoy salad much. But we have salad often, especially in the summer months. I've found one trick to make salad more palatable: homemade croutons. They are easy to make and are useful in a "whole kitchen" philosophy of using every little bit, transforming it into something else, if needed. Here's what I do:

Homemade Croutons

• half loaf of stale bread, cut into 1/2" cubes
• 1/4 C. olive oil
• seasoning blend of your choice. Ideas: 
  • This homemade garlic salt
  • finely chopped rosemary & salt
  • a blend of garlic salt, dried basil, oregano, thyme
  • salt & fresh ground pepper
  • Fresh Garlic Oil: my favorite seasoning. Coarsely chop three cloves garlic and heat in saute pan in the 1/4 C. olive oil until the garlic just begins to sizzle (do not allow it to brown). Pour the oil through a fine sieve over a bowl. Discard garlic bits but use the oil to season your croutons. You can also toss Parmesan with the croutons, too.
  • Pizza seasoning: 3 T. finely grated Parmesan, dried thyme,basil, oregano, and fennel.   
• salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, toss croutons with the oil and the seasoning of your choice. Spread out on a quarter sheet pan and sprinkle with salt. Bake for approximately 30 minutes, stirring every ten minutes or so. Let cool. For extra crispy croutons, leave them in the oven to cool with the door ajar. They become crisp upon cooling.

What are your dinner tricks?

Growing Up Online.

I watched the Frontline episode: Growing up Online with more than the usual amount of trepidation. It hits home for me since I maintain this blog and have made many online friends------friends that I don't know in real life. For me, my online experience has been a pleasure-----a positive corner of my life.

However, when I watched that show there were a couple moments that I considered closing the whole thing down because of the example I'm showing my kids. Watching the program's examples of the internet's influence over families gave me more than a few doubts of my own. However, I'm often one to overly worry, especially when it comes to my children. I watched the program a few weeks ago and have slowly weighed it all out since then. I'm still unsure about blogging and especially children living online but I also believe in my kids. Parents face many obstacles these days but I believe that a good dose of good old-fashioned communication and judgment takes a child far in the world. 

I will continue to encourage our "unplugged" family time for I think it balances out the virtual.

And without the internet entirely, my kids wouldn't be able to giggle and laugh and virtually see their friends back on the coast.

**What about you? What do you think? I would love to hear from other mother bloggers and how you weigh it all out... Have you watched this Frontline program? (You can view it from the link above)...

Grind-it-up Mystery Mash

My daughter took to the fields today in search of mystery mash ingredients. With her own little mortar-and-pestle in hand, she plucked flower petals.

The flowers were ground up and mixed with water to create her own purple dye. I was amazed at the iridescence of her dye-----almost like butterfly wings. Is that from the flower petals? 

She used her dye to dye a piece of white linen. It turned out a very subtle shade of lavender. We'll use the cloth later on to make a tiny little fairy dress...

This was one of our kids' activities listed here. We look forward to new combinations of flowers to produce varying colors of dye.

Wearing Nature.

I didn't win Margie's giveaway for one of her wonderful crocheted acorn necklaces, so I decided to make one of my own using her helpful tutorial!

I used this hemp yarn from Elann that I had in my stash and a size 2.75MM crochet hook. The hemp is an excellent yarn for crocheting!

What's even better about this necklace? It makes a perfect pouch for flowers! The stem fits through the little hole in the bottom. My daughter had a difficult time choosing between her flower, one of our wooden acorns, or a real acorn. In the end, we decided the necklace is a "nature necklace," to be filled with trinkets of the seasons...

The pouch is just single crochet but the necklace's string is made with a Solomon's Knot, or Lover's Knot----here is a tutorial on youtube.

I am very enamored with this crochet technique and I hope to take on a larger project using this knot. I thought the Solomon's Knot chain looked very nice in conjunction with the nature necklace and it also worked up very quickly. Now I'm off to make one of my own!! Have a wonderful weekend!

All White.

As if the heat wasn't enough, we must now suffer the white/grey smoke (yes, picture me saying this in a whining voice). Of course, it goes hand in hand here, the hot temps and then the smoke----hot temperatures often create one of two things: human lapses in judgement or mother nature wielding a lightning bolt. Both of them spark fires. Whichever is the cause, we now have the fire's smoke blanketing the land...

I retreated to my sewing machine today and produced a white linen shirt for my daughter. Ah, linen... It's so refreshing in summer. Though for me, linen is a favorite all year long----it's a convergence of both refinery and simplicity woven together.

I planned on embroidering her blouse and my daughter requested a mushroom. I'll admit I'm a little "over" my mushroom phase but "ask and you shall receive" was in order today.

She likes her new linen blouse. Especially after observing (Or coveting--- Are we to that phase yet?) my absolute favorite linen shirt that I've been wearing day after day recently. My shirt is not handmade-----it's from the clearance rack at J. Jill. I would LOVE to reproduce this blouse's cut and design-----a little femininity mixed with a little utility----one day I just might do it when I'm feeling a bit more adventurous...

But not today. Today, I used my old stand-bye pattern Simplicity #4589 . In fact, if any of you have used this pattern, please post your finished photos to my Flickr group: Simplicity 4589... I would love it if you shared!

The smoke won't be leaving anytime soon---perhaps more sewing is in my future!

Behind the Screen.

I meant to write a post about how far behind I feel crafty-wise. I have crafty swaps to catch up on, Etsy reshipping to take care of (due to my own error in shipping weights), 40th birthdays to catch up on with many of my friends (are we ALL turning 40 this year?), family obligations, legal stuff...

And a newfound focus on my own well-being and health...

This post is about all of those things and more. It's a little glimpse behind the curtains of this blog, if you will.

This blog has always been my place to focus on the positives in my life and I'm reticent to discuss many of the negative aspects of it right now. But honestly, I haven't been coping as well as I wish I was. This doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me in real life as I probably seem sad, distant, and not myself. Yes, I get out of bed everyday, I care for my kids, we have fun with our projects and enjoy the summer, I make food, we have dinners together and we talk... I do all of those things. But when things slow down, I wade around hip deep in a sludge of self-pity, frustration, fear, and sadness.

But a few difficult hurdles have been crossed... While with our kids, I ran into my estranged husband walking hand-in-hand down the street with his young girlfriend. I didn't know if I should laugh because he looked like her father or cry at the absurdity of it all.

At the end of September my divorce is final and I turn 40. Ah, the irony. If it's the universe's idea of a joke, I'm not laughing----at least not yet.

One of my friends points out the "gift" in all of this. The gift of liberation from someone who obviously didn't respect nor care for me and the opportunity to blossom into my full potential. After hearing my story of this past year, she laughs and tells me: "this is your book"----my future book. Ah, but right now the words are still lost somewhere in that sludgy water---I'll wait for it to clear up a bit to search for them.

A counselor once told me that I cannot control all aspects of my life----bad things happen, they just do. When we discussed my children, she pointed out that perhaps part of my children's life's work is to overcome their parent's divorce----that it was inevitable. Being one who attempts to orchestrate things the way they should be----fair-----her words were a lesson. I can only open the door for my children's lives----I cannot walk along their paths with them, brushing aside the obstacles the whole way.... I'll be on the side, applauding their growth...

I feel I have a bit more clarity now. I'm playing catch up and focusing my positive thoughts, beliefs, and dreams in my family's future in each part of my day---each loop I knit, each circle I hook, each vegetable I chop, each step I take, each yoga position I practice, each breath I take. It's the positive intention that counts-----the positive intention of moving forward and recognizing the pain and sadness and then letting it go...

**Resources---

For anyone interested, this episode of Oprah (Children of Divorce Reveal Their Secret Thoughts) is very informative about children and divorce. The guest's book, Helping Kids Cope With Divorce The Sandcastle's Way is one of my favorites on this tough topic.

Simple pleasures.

 

Thanks to a friend's visit, we have a new tradition at dinnertime, just the three of us. We take turns reflecting on the best and the worst parts of our day. I was pleasantly surprised when my daughter's new friend shared her family tradition with us at dinnertime because it fit so perfectly into our lives right now. It fit because we need to reflect on the good things, and discuss the bad ones, too. Vocalizing the bad parts of our days helps us put it all in perspective and to gain the feeling of togetherness.  

Today, after a long pause while trying to come up with my "worst" part of the day to share, I eventually settled on too many dishes to do----- in my life right now, it's a good day when too many dishes to clean is the worst event of my day. And my best? Oh, there were so many. Right up there on my list was running into people we know and enjoy at every single stop throughout the day.... Such a pleasurable happenstance.

Within my son's favorites of the day was this dish----which, in turn, became another of my day's favorites because it's not only very simple, cheap, fast, and healthy, but my son actually ate all of his dinner! (He's become quite picky at dinner lately)...

I don't know if this would be as popular with your family as with mine (we're huge tofu fans) but I'll share it because I was apprehensive at first, too, and it turned out to be such a hit! It seems a little silly to write it out as a "recipe" as it's more of a method. The method/idea came out of one of my favorite healthy living books, Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living From the Inside Out. 

Choose a good quality firm tofu-----my favorite is produced by Wildwood Organics and I find it at Safeway and Whole Foods.

Tofu Steaks

• 1 pkg. Firm Tofu
• 2 T. olive oil
• 2 T. soy sauce
• 2 tsp. sesame oil
• salt to taste

Method: Slice the tofu into 1-inch thick "steaks." You can either slice the tofu long-ways or short-ways depending on the desired serving size.

Heat a wide frying pan over medium heat. (I don't use non-stick pans very often and I like the "crust" that forms on the tofu in this dish but to loosen it from the pan, you will need a metal turner---it WILL stick!).

Add the olive oil and sesame oil and heat to shimmering. Add tofu slices and sprinkle the exposed side with a little of the soy sauce. Do not crowd the slices in the pan. Saute each side for approximately five minutes, adding soy sauce to each side. When a browned crust forms, the tofu is done. That's it!! So fast and simple!

Fun: Battery powered or not.

We celebrated so many birthdays this past week! Including my son's. He turned 12. 

My son loves technology and has far surpassed my ability to read diagrams and build intricate projects (well, except for projects involving yarn, I guess). In fact, he's the one we all turn to when we must switch around our audio-video equipment.

Amongst other gifts, he received a Lego robotics kit. He's been enamored with robots for many years. Last fall, during one of the many festivals here (what's up with that----is there a festival every single weekend where you live?), we visited a high school robotics club booth. I thought my son might faint when the teenager at the booth handed him the remote control to his "bot" to try out.

The downside to my son's new robot building? It requires my laptop...!

But these potato guns are so much fun without all the batteries. I guess potato guns have been around for awhile but they're new to me. Though shooting potato plugs at targets around the yard is plenty of fun, so is feeding chickens at the same time. Our chickens love those plugs and they come running each time they hear the trigger pull. The leftover potato is a little odd looking, however... I'm not sure about the following photo----it isn't very politically correct, even if they are benignly cleaning potatoes out of their guns.

And lastly, I gave my son this game for his birthday: Hyper Dash. I highly recommend it. It's a great game to wear your kids out and get a workout yourself! It has won many parenting awards and I agree with its merits----we love it!