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Farm Fresh Valentines

Spread some love this week (or anytime!) – find these printable valentines in the shop. Print in black and white and add your personal touch with watercolours, pencil crayon or whatever medium you prefer. If you use these, we’d love to see what you create – leave a comment below with a link or email us some photos!

The canning jar can also be cut out and hole punched to use as a sweet tag…

This post was shared as a part of Montessori Monday, Natural Living Monday, Simple Lives Thursday, Unprocessed Fridays, and Fight Back Friday.

February 12, 2014
Bird Love Links

A collection of links for more bird learning…

Okay, so almost all these sites are developed by one or more of these organizations – and they are all really helpful. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Studies Canada, and the National Audubon Society. These seem like the most visited and well-presented bird studies sites I have come across.

1. Participate in citizen science :: The Great Backyard Bird Count

2. Canadian bird education and conservation :: Bird Studies Canada

3. United States bird education and conservation :: National Audubon Society

4. Online guide to birds and bird-watching :: Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds

*We have had so much fun on this site listening to bird calls!

5. Info about birds, citizen science feeder watch projects and more :: Project Feederwatch

*This site has a really nice user interface that is easy to navigate and appealing for kids

* A friend recently pointed out this great Homeschooler’s Guide to Project Feeder Watch – so many great ideas here!

6. Another Cornell project – exploring urban birds through art and science :: Celebrate Urban Birds

7. Bird education site featuring a fun bird of the month section :: Wild Birds Unlimited

February 10, 2014
Coconut Oil Bird Feeders

We’re crafting some bird-watching goodness over here, in preparation for The Great Backyard Bird Count, starting on February 14th.

The kids have been working hard on Woodworking Wednesdays with their dad to design and make some wooden bird feeders for our yard. Plans to come. Sign up for our newsletter (top of this page) to be sure you don’t miss out on the bird feeder plans and other bird love.

With Valentine’s Day also creeping up on us, we thought we’d make something sweet for our feathery friends.

Suet bird feeders have been on our to-do list for a while. Since we generally don’t have suet lying around, I decided to use coconut oil (not our really pure one, but a slightly refined version). A lot of the recipes that we found included things like corn syrup and we really just wanted to keep it simple for our feathery friends.

** Parents of little ones with a peanut allergies (or those crafting with children who aren’t your own and might have an allergy) please note that almost all the birdseed I looked at had peanuts or ‘may contain nuts or peanuts’ warnings.

Coconut Oil Birdseed Feeders

Ingredients + Materials

:: 2 cups coconut oil

:: 1. 5 cups black oil sunflower seed

:: 1/2 cup organic cracked corn

:: cookie cutters

:: spoon

:: tray

:: string

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

2. Refrigerate mixture for 30-60 minutes to partially solidify the oil.

3. Stir the mixture and scoop into cookie cutters, smoothing out on top.

4. Place a pencil crayon, pencil, or stick in the feeder to create a hole that will be used to hang the feeder.

5. Set in the fridge for another hour before add the string and hanging outside.

This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday at Nourishing Joy, Natural Living Monday at Natural Living Mama, Montessori Monday at Living Montessori Now, and Fat Tuesday at Real Food Forager, and Link&Learn at No Time for Flash Cards.

February 8, 2014
The Week in Photos

Having a rhythm to carry our weeks is the glue that keeps us together. We’re not strict about it, though we do try to follow along with it as much as possible. If it’s baking day and I find the kids completely engaged in playing house, I leave them to it. Play is the work of childhood, after all. We also usually have project time carved out in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, yet this was a busy week and we all needed some down time to just be. And to cuddle on the couch, of course (see photo of two brothers who were found cuddled in a blanket)…

A few things we were up to this week:

:: Monday | Baking Day – We made a really tasty grain free bread, using this recipe.

:: Tuesday | Craft/Art Day – Our hands got a great exfoliation making felted balls for a valentine’s day craft – we actually had this craft out for most of the week, as it’s one that is good to do for a while and then come back to.

:: Wednesday | Woodworking – The morning was spent playing, cuddling on the couch, and making something wonderful with milk (part of a project you’ll see here soon). Then the afternoon is spent with Mike on Wednesdays – they are currently working on some self-designed bird feeders.

:: Thursday | Swimming – So, so much fun to go to swimming lessons when there are friends in the kids’ classes. Each of them has a friend or more in their class, which means I have a few there myself. To add to the fun, we enjoy lunch and a library visit with friends after swimming. There is a library in the same building as the pool, which is brilliant. The kids had a blast. Cohen and Breann each went to the desk to ask a question, and they carried our stacks of books to the front, along with my library card, and checked everything out for us. I think that’s why the librarian didn’t mention our late fines. Ahem. Often on Thursdays, the kids get dropped off at their grandparents’ place – a great little break for us all, and they have so much fun there reading, crafting, baking, watching shows (we don’t own a television), and sometimes going to the library, the park, or on other exciting adventures.

:: Friday | Herb Fairies – This week we met Cerulea, the Elder fairy. The kids are always excited to colour a new fairy page and learn about the fairy and his or her plant through the story that goes along with it. I usually read it aloud and we look at the illustrations together, but yesterday we listened to the audio story instead, while sipping elderflower, rose hip, and mint tea. After the story, the kids were super engaged in playing house. Cohen owned the puzzle-shop and was a wonderful puzzle-maker. Milo, a little boy, wanted a puzzle and so his mother, Breann, ordered one for him. She ran a restaurant where they sold all kinds of scrumptious foods, including calendula spray and calendula syrup. The puzzle-maker ate at the restaurant on his lunch hour. I had a great time sipping my own tea and flipping through the recipe book that I won (first time winning an online giveaway!) through Vintage Remedies, and listening to the kids’ story-line develop.

After the kids were satisfied with their play time, we also made some lovely Valentine’s Day gifts for our backyard birds! See the photos and instructions for making coconut oil or suet bird feeders here.

*For those who would want to know, the play kitchen we have is this one from Hape/Educo – we’ve had it for about five years now and it gets played with at least three days a week by our three youngest – ages 4, 7, and 10. It has become a cherished part of our home. Watch for a sale – ours was about $129 CDN.

Please note that we are a part of the Amazon associates program. If you visit Amazon.ca through a link on Tiny Peasant and make a purchase, our family will receive a small percentage of the sale. The products that I specifically recommend in blog posts are products that we love in our home – if they aren’t they are on my wish list and I will note that. Our bookshop (coming soon) has a mixture of tried and true, and wish list items. If you ever have any questions about a product we link to, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thank you for your support!

February 8, 2014
Maple Butter Calendula Popcorn

Well, we did intend to bake some sort of calendula muffin – different from last week’s – but the day sort of got away on us. It felt more like a lazy kind of day, anyway, and so a big bowl of popcorn suited us just fine. It had been a while since we’d had popcorn, as we hadn’t been going to the food co-op we’re a part of and were missing out on the organic popcorn they source.

So we ended up making calendula popcorn rather than calendula muffins. What goes with calendula? I sure didn’t know – but took a guess that almost anything paired with butter and maple syrup would be amazing. And it was. It might be a contender for the go-to of honey-butter-salt or honey-coconut oil-salt around here.

To make Maple Butter Calendula Popcorn, just pop a batch sized to suit your family, and then you’ll have to eyeball how much butter, maple syrup and calendula to add. Or you can try this:

:: 1/2 cup butter

:: 1/2 cup maple syrup

:: 1/2 cup dried calendula flowers

:: 1 big family sized bowl of popcorn

:: generous sprinkles of sea salt

This post has been shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday at Nourishing Joy, Fat Tuesday at Real Food Forager, Simple Lives Thursday at My Humble Kitchen, Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade, Unprocessed Fridays at Girl Meets Nourishment, and Simply Natural Saturdays at the Pistachio Project.

February 2, 2014
The Week in Photos

Lots of home photos as usual, as I rarely want to bring the big camera out in 40 below (or, any below really), and the iPhone battery goes oh so quickly in this weather… The kids are still enjoying daily excursions out to the backyard fort, or the neighbourhood park and playground where there is a community fort that is worked on by various visitors from the neighbourhood. I just love that kids can be connected in that way, each adding their own architectural touches to the structure – and that it hasn’t been knocked down by possibly less enthusiastic kids.

What we’ve been up to this past week…

:: Morning tea + story time

:: Learning about birds and bird-watching

:: Projects on cats, video game development, and electricity

:: A special visit by papa who helped make a circuit board

:: A certain little boy has learned how fun it is to stuff a pillow in his shirt and then slam himself into things, because ‘it doesn’t hurt’

:: Wet felting and baking cookies at homeschool co-op

:: Making all kinds of contraptions (the one shown was made to see if air would go through the tube)

:: Exploring math through a Waldorf approach with a set that we crafted together

:: Using some of the Waldorf math set as building blocks and to explore electrical current

:: Swimming lessons and our first time at a water polo and kayaking night at the pool

:: Making Maple Butter Calendula Popcorn – oh so good!

:: An almost-daily coffee break for mama

:: A fun friday night sushi dinner and a lovely weekend pumpkin pancake breakfast

February 2, 2014
This Moment

“A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.” {joining Soule Mama today} If you’re inspired to follow along, please leave a link to your moment in the comments!

January 31, 2014
rhythm + rice

Folks, this is such a simple post! These two little things, though, have really made a lot of difference in our meal planning and weekly meal rhythm that I wanted to share them with you.

For many years, we’ve been planning our meals with a framework of each day being earmarked for a certain main ingredient or type of food – pasta, rice, soup, nachos, pizza, frittata, chicken, etc. It has been so helpful to know what main ingredients to have stocked in our home, has helped the kids to have a sense of rhythm to our week, and still allows for so much freedom within the framework. You can find our menu planning resources, including tips and printable blank menu planners, grocery lists, and more over in the shop.

One of our struggles, though, has been breakfast. It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut with this one – toast, toast, yogurt, toast, eggs… We do aim to have a breakfast rhythm as well, and it generally looks more like oatmeal, toast and eggs, yogurt with fruit and granola, repeat until the weekend when we have pancakes/waffles/eggs/etc.

So what changed recently? Well, I started making a big pot of brown rice on sundays. One 750ml jar makes enough rice for a breakfast of rice pudding on monday, and a rice-based meal on tuesday. That rice based meal might be stir-fry, chicken or veggie fried-rice, a casserole, etc. There is still so much flexibility, but no 4pm panic around what to put on the table. So that one act of dumping a jar of rice into the pot, and adding 2 jars of water, sets us up for a breakfast and dinner (and possibly a night snack of rice pudding one night as well).

The second idea, one I really love, is storing our rice in these 750 ml jars. I write the ratio of rice to water and cooking time on a round label* on the lid , so I don’t have to keep the packaging. I store two or three jars in the pantry, so I can just grab a jar, pour it in the pot, and use that same jar to add two parts water before turning it on. Once it’s cooked, I divide it into glass tupperware and it goes in the fridge already separated. Done. The better part (or, well, at least the substantial part) of two meals for a family of six!

*I always have a stash of these labels kicking around – they are the best. I use them for jar labels, gift bags, for the kids to make stickers, etc.

How do you save time and energy during your week of preparing and enjoying meals? Share your ideas, thoughts, and questions in the comments.

This post was shared as a part of Natural Living Monday, Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday and Simple Lives Thursday, Fight Back Friday, Unprocessed Fridays, and Simply Natural Saturdays.

January 29, 2014
Calendula Banana Muffins

Our go-to muffin recipe, Choco-Banano Muffins are always a hit. It’s a recipe that has been shared among friends time and time again and is based on a banana muffin recipe from The 250 Best Mufffin Recipes by Esther Brody. This past week, since we were learning about Calendula, we adapted the recipe to be Calendula Banana Muffins. They were fantastic! We all hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Feel free to sub gluten free flour without making other changes – they turn out really well for us.

CALENDULA BANANA MUFFINS

Ingredients

:: 2 cups spelt flour

:: 1 cup unrefined sugar, such as sucanat or panela (we use a bit less than a full cup)

:: 1 egg

:: 1/2 cup butter, coconut oil, or applesauce

:: 1/2 cup dried calendula flowers

:: 2 ripe bananas, mashed

:: 2 tablespoons milk of your choice

:: 1 teaspoon (tsp) salt

:: 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

:: 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions

1. Beat together the butter, sugar and egg until well incorporated.

2. Using a mixer or wooden spoon, add in and mix the mashed bananas, milk, vanilla, baking soda, and baking powder, followed by the flour and chocolate chips.

3. Scoop into greased muffin tin, filling 2/3 full.

4. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes.

5. Cool for five minutes before removing from tin and placing on a cooling rack. Enjoy!

This post was featured on Girl Meets Nourishment, and shared as a part of Natural Living Monday, Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday, and Simple Lives Thursday, Unprocessed Fridays, Fight Back Friday, and Simply Natural Saturdays.

January 27, 2014
The Week in Photos

Another week of our living and learning journey. I often hear that this time of year can be the worst for wanting to quit. I’m thankful that we are all still firmly IN this journey, and though there are daily hiccups, we are happy with and thankful for our chosen path.

A few things we were up to this week:

:: A short snowshoe trip through the little forest in a nearby park, followed by an adventure on the snow-covered play structure and some hot cocoa.

:: Spotting beautiful blue winter berries on our forest trail.

:: The start of a new project for a six year old who is ready to answer his curiosity about electricity – and, ahem, also monopolizing my phone as he takes photo after photo of objects in our home that run on electricity and battery.

:: Lots of puzzle making, in particular by our three and ten year olds.

:: A couple of the kids got out the logic puzzles – Pirate’s Hide and Seek and Camelot Junior – that are so loved around here. Such a fun, sometimes frustrating, and always rewarding challenge.

:: Cuddled brothers reading about robots.

:: Wrapping litte drawings to gift to daddy just for fun.

:: Making a big table-top poster of drawings for daddy. Because he is “the best daddy”.

:: Creating new friendships and celebrating old ones at our homeschool co-op.

:: Learning about the healing properties of calendula through a magical tale of friends and fairies – and making delicious banana + calendula muffins.

:: A new session of daytime swimming lessons, with friends in each child’s class.

:: Lots of messes, some cleaning. Lots and lots of conflicts, resolutions, laughter, learning, and love.

Please note that we are a part of the Amazon associates program. If you visit Amazon.ca through a link on Tiny Peasant and make a purchase, our family will receive a small percentage of the sale. The products that I specifically recommend in blog posts are products that we love in our home – if they aren’t they are on my wish list and I will note that. Our bookshop (coming soon) has a mixture of tried and true, and wish list items. If you ever have any questions about a product we link to, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thank you for your support!

January 26, 2014