Those infamous words: let's make a gingerbread house

We are totally addicted to Masterchef in this house - a TV cooking show where the contestants are pushed to the limits of endurance, before having their dishes picked apart by the odd couple of Michel Roux Jr, and Fat-Boy-who-the-fuck-is-he-anyway-Greg-Wallace.

But I always say, that to really test them they should chuck in one kid having a tantrum, another trying to "help'", a pig sty kitchen, a third child destroying everything they do and then see how much they can cook!

So today I took that challenge upon myself. Yup. Nutter!

In reality when you utter those infamous words "let's build a gingerbread house" you start out with fantasies of creating something like this...

From christmaswarmth.tumblr.com on my Pinterest board Creating Christmas

If I were a cruel "perfect life" blogger I'd show you a cutesy finished picture, which you would promptly pin on Pinterest and go away hating me. But I'm not, so instead I shall regale you with the reality behind a "happy family time" making a real gingerbread house, in order to reassure you of my enduring lunacy, and why NOT making Christmas memories together is the sane loving thing to do!!

It all started with a 4 year old who came home from school and tantrumed long and hard. Hot on the heels of a 2 year old tantrum. The 4 year old ordered a chocolate bar, the fire put out, hit her sister, the sitting room to herself to watch TV, her shoes put back on (after having kicked over her sister's bowl of mushroom soup). He brother went and started banging his head on the door in anger and frustration, having spent the past hour lighting the fire. And also because it meant we couldn't make candles over the fire like I'd promised.

So I uttered those infamous words: let's make a gingerbread house. We've made one every year four the past four years. They are always a festive and semi fun way to destroy the house and achieve multiple arguments.

So we started. Me and the boy. It wasn't long before middle child smelt fun she was missing out on and abandoned CBeebies. Cue fight over whether or not she deserved to join in and forced apologies for having been a little so-and-so.

Carols on. CD 3 is lame ass. Change to CD 1. Much better.

Rolling out one part gingerbread with one part glitter from earlier "Christmas card making session". Can't find the rolling pin, so we use the cling film roll!

Guesstimate the house parts. Bake. Make caramel. Don't burn it. Assemble house - snapping off the bits that don't fit. It doesn't collapse like usual. Very chuffed. Haven't even burnt myself!!!

I start to get cocky and make a sugar work cage of spun sugar. Michel Roux Jr would be proud. Burn my finger on the last drop of caramel. Fuck it.

Girls come racing past for the second time. It is then that I realise that the youngest is chucking Hobnob biscuits out of the packet at her older sister whilst chasing her round the house. Her older sister was retaliating with a pot of blue glitter. I kid you not. And the cleaner was here only 24 hours ago.

Mama roars.

Boy makes icing. Littlest girl adds way to much water. We do a fine job of decorating it together. No one dies. Look at our handy work!

And look at the fucking mess!

Now I have to cook dinner!

For inspiration on Christmas crafting with friends and family, see my popular post from last year: Craft-Tea Christmas celebrations.

Happy days: celebrating autumn

I LOVE autumn - the changing colours, the bright berries, the bite in the air, the mellow afternoon light. Walking the country lanes and popping blackberries into our mouths. Another day, another warning, (for our first blackberry warnings see here!) This time, rats! Back off people and just let us ENJOY them!!

I also love celebrating. But we have no official mid-autumn celebration - harvest festival is past and halloween still a couple of weeks off...

So this is my own celebration of autumn, just because I can! We have an autumn wreath on our door, made of twined wild clematis (old man's beard), with fallen coloured leaves, hawthorn berries and crab apples attached with wire. 

Our nature table  (want to  make one of your own, see here!) is overflowing with finds, including a new little mama-crafted baby acorn boy in his own oak leaf snuggle bag. Do check out this season's Rhythm of the Home for craft and celebration ideas aplenty.

And walks, as many walks as we can, with gladness in our hearts. Happy days!

(with thanks to my dearest husband, Mr Dreaming Aloud himself, for his wonderful photography skills  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

Creating a Nature Table

Nature corners or season's tables originate from the Steiner tradition and are a mainstay of every Steiner kindergarten. I have been creating them for about three years for my children. I am certainly no expert - there are a host of great resources out there to educate and inspire. This basic overview was requested by Rachael from The Variegated Life, leading on from my post earlier this week on Everyday Zen about creating pockets of  beauty, sacredness and calm in our busy homes.

Finding Form: a meditative guide to creating Random Acts of Beauty

I went into the woods, wanting to make something. And blanked. Fancy images from Andy Goldsworthy flashed before my eyes. But here I was, a mama, with a helpful nearly-three-year-old on foot and a fractious teething, just-turned-one-year-old in a buggy. And half an hour to spare before I had to collect my husband from the doctors. So it had to be quick, simple and I wanted it to be seasonal. Oh, and it's going to go on a blog... And my friend is coming down tomorrow to hunt for it...panic... stage fright...blank...

Breathe. Look around. Walk with your eyes open...

So I did. This is like beginner's mind in meditation. Always start again with beginner's mind: open to all possibilities, to the joy of everything.

And that's when I saw the catkins. Lots and lots of them. Little shaggy fairy lambs tails. In acid yellow, ochre and brown. I started to gather them.

Creative mamas questionnaire

I am writing a book on the subject of creative mothers and would love to include lots of mothers' voices in it.

If you consider you are a creative person (not necessarily a professional artist) at the same time as being a hands-on mother, I would be so honoured if you would share a little of your experience... and if you struggle with creating with children and consider yourself NOT creative, please tell me about it here

What vision did you have of yourself as a mother BEFORE you had children? 


How did you think your life would look/ your role would be? What influence did YOUR mother have on this?

How did this measure up to the reality of mothering?

How far developed were you in your creativity before you had children? 


How did having children affect your path?

How did you balance your creative and mothering sides:  practically, emotionally, energy-wise?

What drove you to do this?

Did you have any mentors, models for how to do this? Any words of wisdom given to you?

Where were your greatest challenges?

What are you most proud of now, looking back?

Just a couple of sentences for each would be wonderful, unless you feel called to really get stuck in and write me whole paragraphs!

Deadline? My experience is that if you don't do it now, the chances are you'll forget about it! I would really like to have all this compiled by the end of June at the latest.

Please let me know how you would like your comments to be attributed: I would like to use first and last name, age, number of children, your art form and location, if this is acceptable to you:

(e.g. Lucy Pearce, 30, mother of 3, a writer based in East Cork, Ireland)
Or more biographical information if you are happy...
I would really appreciate an image of yourself too, preferably with some of your work!

I have big hopes to inspire mothers in their mothering and their creativity, and am really excited about you being part of this.

Thank you, thank you for taking a moment and sharing so generously.

Please email responses to pearcelucy@yahoo.co.uk

Happy days

Today didn't start out promisingly. Boy with temperature home from school, girl with the ever-lasting screaming whinges, baby with lentils all over the floor, house a tip...

But then I created some divine coconut kisses... recipe on Queen of Puddings...how I love creative cooking... and chocolate making (when I'm not under pressure! I used to have a little handmade chocolate business) Oh mama these are good!

And we did some more of our favourite pasttime...

Marbling!

Have you discovered marbling? It is fun, simple, you can't tell the difference between a 3-year-old and an adult masterpiece. It's very Zen, you can't plan it, it's all about feel, timing and luck...

We tried making our our marbling inks last week, thanks to an online craft tutorial, with cooking oil and food colouring... the results were mediocre. I found some marbling inks on Amazon, and umm-ed and ahh-ed, they are an extravagance, so I didn't...

But then yesterday I took myself to the art supply store in Midleton to stock up on yummy arty crafty mama goodies...

And there they were... so I got them...

And I'm so glad I did. We must have spent an hour marbling whilst the baby slept. For a past time using inks and water, surprisingly we had NO mess! Double hurray. (For technical advice see comments section below.)

And our dear special angel cleaning lady was here today, working her magic with cheery kindness...

So we gifted her back with a thank you card made on one of our beautiful pieces of marbling (another two have gone out to Granny and a godmother!), and of course a coconut kiss (as well as her pay - of course!)

Happy days!

A Wishing Day

Today has been a sunny wishing day. Timmy has been home from school for the past two days, awaiting spots, which never arrived! I have enjoyed our couple of home-schooling days. Since we can't formally flexi-school, then we are freestyling it. We take a day out of school, now and then "for family reasons" and have a special day of craft and educational outings. A day for the soul and creative spirit which doesn't get much nurturing at school.

So we made wishing eggs, inspired by my dear friend Laura at Nestled Under Rainbows. The eggs came from our happy-ish free range hens who live under the trampoline. we wrote wishes on paper, put them into the empty shells and wrapped them in bright tissue paper and raffia ribbon. Wishes included... "I wish I was a digger driver", "I wish for a pants super hero birthday party at my house" and "I wish it was Christmas"!!!

They are now adorning our seasons table and will be taken out and hidden in the woods at Easter time where the fairies will find them and grant our wishes. We are waiting for the arrival of our very own fairy: the cherry blossom fairy, who will grace our nature table any day now. The buds are swelling in the garden outside and we're counting down the days till our first o-hanami (Japanese cherry blossom picnic) under the cherry trees in our very own garden in the Pink House. But for now we are enjoying the bright yellow daffodils, and blue wood anemones and grape hyacinths we planted last September.

If You go Down to the Woods Today...

If you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise!

We were there first! Weaving our magic.

We made a sun web out of catkins...

And rearranged fire stones to make a heart ...

A home waiting for fairy folk to inhabit it... a project for another day!

Want to know more about random acts of beauty? Read here for my introduction to them...

Tomorrow I will post some more on them...

Away with the Fairies

A confession: I am officially away with the (flower) fairies...

There, now I've lost my three male readers!

I adored the Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairies books as a child and am delighted that my two-year-old loves my original books just as much. These are some of my favourite images from them...

Craft-Tea Christmas Celebrations

Welcome to the December Carnival of Natural Parenting: Let's Talk Traditions
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama.

Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
***

We love Christmas in our house. And for me it has to be a home-made Christmas. 

The excitement is two-fold: the craft element of making and decorating, and then the food aspect of stocking up and then feasting on special seasonal treats. I start to get excited about Christmas in September, so by the beginning of December I feel entitled to go all out in celebration. After all I have been waiting so long for it!

Christmas is coming...and mama's getting panicked!

Life has been fraught in the Pink House - sick children, non sleeping baby (see Adventures without Sleep, written about Number 1 child five years ago, and just slot in Number 3's name in its place!) And having got hyper excited about Christmas back in September, and decorated the house on 1st December, to occupy sick kiddies, we are now less than 2 weeks to Christmas, only 6 days till my mum arrives. I need to get motoring. I have lists to write, and lots of them - shopping lists, cooking lists, Christmas card lists, lists of lists.

Reading Delia's Smith's Christmas book in bed this morning, post-it note bookmarks to hand, she gently says "to avoid panicking, you should get planning and write lists in mid-October." OCTOBER! It's now mid December. I have no lists. I am panicking. So no more blogging for this mama, (boo hoo) instead I will be writing lists. And bleeping Christmas cards, addressing them (by memory as I've lost my address book, grrr!) Though I do have EVERYONE'S pressies bought. Hurray!

Material memory - Women and Quilting

For me the passage into womanhood was marked by a summer I chose to take off, between University and beyond, to teach myself to bake bread and make a quilt.

I love quilts: the patterns, the details of the fabrics, the interplay of light and dark, the art, the maths and the craft of them. 

Wonderful Women's Work

As promised, a round up of women I would like to salute for doing their thing with vision, courage and creativity...

First off... a very special event to celebrate 100 years of International Women's Day 2011, linking women's circles around the globe. Visit  http://www.flarewales.com/  to find out more and join in.