Baby Bunting

I have two Steiner School markets coming up this spring so I am busy trying to stock up on seasonal favourites.  I have been making little Waldorf bunting dolls out of cashmere, or cashmere silk blends, and really enjoying my Narina’s  reaction.  They are so soft and very simple.  I have been building up the difficulty of my doll making since I started.  From the simple newborn dolls through to limb dolls.  It is really fun to go back to a simple face and body.  Perhaps it is also awesome for me because it is the right age for babies under two and a lot of the dolls (limb dolls) I have been making have been for 4+.  I don’t think there is anything better than seeing a child hold and love a doll I have made.  Here are a few photos I took for my etsy site:

 

Waldorf Wednesday: Meal Time

There is something really satisfying about having home baked bread right out of the oven.  Top that with chutneys that are home made and soup made from veggies from your own garden and you have yourself my ideal meal.  You also have something I dreamed of for years.  The meals in our house are the biggest part of our day.  We spend a lot of time cooking or preparing.  It is where most of our money goes and where we show our love. Our goal this year is to bring intention into our food. We have done a good job with infusing our food with love but we are hoping to offset some of the cost with garden vegetables this year.  Last year's crops were so sparse. Fingers crossed.  Narina has already had her fingers in dough and in the soil.  Our family is creating our intention and that is awesome.   We are adding things slowly to the rhythm of our home. It is easy for me to get carried away with trying to over achieve an ideal, but then things phase out and we want these things to stick. 

Gnome on the Range

This week we have been going through some growing pains in our little family.  We are attachment parenting Narina and have co-slept with her since birth.  She has a really cool Global Brio bedside cot that  is the same size as a standard cot except one wall of it can flip over to the other side of the cot and make it a three walled cot.  This allows her to sleep with us but it also allows us to put her to bed before us (with the wall down) and flip it up once we go to bed.  Narina has always been breastfed to bed.  It is only as of this week that we have changed our routine (Thanks to our postnatal doula Ann!) and managed to get Narina not only able to settle without feeding to sleep, but sleep through the night!  To do so holistically as well.  What a blessing!  It has been the reason why I have been able to blog again and also the reason I have finished my first knitted clog!  Photos to come.

Waldorf Wednesday

 

For Christmas my brother and sister in law gave Dan and I a beautiful bees wax candle.  We decided, with a bit of inspiration, to light our candle with each meal.  Narina, with her growing vocabulary, says  “fire” and points towards the candle before we have lit it.  In this way we have created something simple that we can maintain but that holds the space of ritual and beauty during meal times.

Being Thankful

I think it is important to be thankful. Often times when I feel a lull in my energy, I take a look at three things:

My diet (have I been eating too much of one food type?)

How often have I been outside in the forest in the last little while?

What am I forgetting to be thankful for?


This week, this is what I am thankful for:

New Baby!

This is the beginnings of my first full sized moving limb doll.  Its arms are a bit lumpy by the wrists and I need to work that out.  It is only something I noticed  once the photo was taken. Cameras don't lie, and all that.  Because it will be a model for the doll clothing I make, I plan on making the hair rather gender neutral.  I have started working the wig already and can't wait to do the face next.

It is such a wonderful moment when a doll is at this stage.  The personality is just starting to come through.  I have started waiting a few days after I get a doll to this point to see if I can sense the features before I apply them.

Stuff stuff and more stuff

We have been working hard around here. Anyone who has been in our house knows that we are collectors. Not of anything in particular, but we own a lot of stuff. Speaking for myself, I know it stems from days of living out of a backpack or van and from moving so many times in my life (over 30) that I want stuff. I want the grounded nature of stuff. Something I am going to try to do this year is take a good look at the stuff I own and shift that which I don’t need. I have had friends do this in the past. They are radical. I have no interest in that. I like stuff. I want to buy more books, so it is time to move along some of the books I know I won’t read again to make room for them. The hard work of tidying each room of our house is only partially done but we can see the forest through the trees now . I feel so happy about the tidy that I am sitting here with food still on the dinner plates, clothing and toys on the living room floor and my intention for tonight is to return emails, write this post and knit the rest of my first slipper. Tomorrow is my crafting day. I have a doll to sew and I can’t wait.

The first post

The start of a new blog is daunting.  It is hard to maintain much outside my daughter’s wellbeing but as the first year of her life came and went, I am starting to see more time free up for myself again.  Unlike blogs of the past, this blog will have more of a purpose.  Gone are the days when I find drama entertaining.  This is my attempt to document our quest to cultivate harmony in our lives.  As they say in Waldorf pedagogy… I want to create rhythm in my home.