Local Thanksgiving

A few months ago, some talented, young cool women from Lake Oconee Living magazine came to the farm to interview Gillen about his turkeys. In their article about his heritage bird business they also interviewed us about what our family eats for Thanksgiving. Here are some of the recipes we use since becoming more aware of eating locally, all glossy and beautifully dressed up by the magazine:





The noble birds who starred on the magazine's cover, here more humbly photographed by me:

These are a few of those who were experiencing the inside of a coop for the first time the other day. It was their last stage of life before becoming next week's meal. Their end was very quick and Gillen and Nicolas did all that they could to make it pain free. I'm glad that there are still several gobbling and free and that the very first bird, Cody, will die of old age.

Curing the blues

Sometimes, even the most cheerful of us have dire, out of the blue blues. The other day, it was Jesse who was feeling down. It wasn't, of course, completely random. He had waited all day for a Bionicle that he ordered to arrive and when it didn't, he lost his sense of purpose.

He didn't think that listening to sad music and really getting into it was the way he wanted to go (yes, I do that) but did decide to take my advice to go outside.

What do you do when you're blue, and you're Jesse? Create a "J" with your bottle cap collection and then bury it in the dirt.




Much better.

Moving sand art

My mother's father was from the Ukraine. I grew up hearing, tasting and admiring all things Russian. He died when my mother was 13 (murdered, long strange story) so I never knew him. But she passed along some of this heritage through her passion for Russian artists (mostly dancers), blinis at The Russian Tea Room, and through the music. Oh. How I love the music. I wish that she were still here to have felt this performance with me. I hope one of you watching is as blown away by it as I am.

A bright weekend

On Saturday, Jesse and I went with friends to a Tibetan Festival in Atlanta at a new temple there. We loved the food, the dozens of colorful prayer cloths shining in the sun, and learning how to make sand mandalas. There is a copper tool that is used to place the sand more specifically where you want it. In order to move the sand out of it, you vibrate this tool with a long copper bow. This creates a wonderful, calming hum while you work. I liked the sound and the mandala possibilities so much that I bought one there. It is called the chokpur. Elizabeth and our new friend Frances checking out the food:We liked all of the jewelry, journals and clothes that they were selling to help fund their temple. I especially liked Jesse and Eli in these hats:
Last night, the brighteness came from Jupiter, the Andromeda galaxy and the dumb bell nebula (an exloded star) - all of which we saw down the street at the nature center. The Atlanta astronomy club meets there every month and they really seemed to love sharing their passion and their telescopes with us.

A few more colors from today, with friends on the trampoline:

How to get out of my head - a reminder to myself

Sometimes I get stuck -mired in my own muddy thoughts.

It's usually when I'm not looking in the right direction.
When I forget to see life in unexpected places.

and lose sight of the abundance right in front of me.
It helps to put on the wide angle lens and take in their perspective (like when I watched Jesse the other day at our former beaver pond, patiently hunting for tadpoles with his spear).
Listening is good (here, Jesse is describing the interaction of his spear and the tadpole's skull).Or, I watch the way others interact.
In silence,

or not.
I like imagining through his eyes,

and the reminder to just keep moving.

Sara's WanderCraft book

I received a beautiful small scrapbook, sewn together and covered artfully by Sara at WanderCraft. Her etsy store opens today. Check it out! I blogged about her book here.

Halloween Orange

And when there was a blue moment, we followed our orange dog to the dirt roads, highlighted by orange of course.

Party for The Graveyard

At the beginning of the week we found out about a party being held last night for Neil Gaimon's (he wrote Coraline, among many other books) newest book - The Graveyard. We have been to this unique children's book store several times before, once for a rocking Harry Potter party, so we knew it would be worth it to drive in last night for this and we read as much of the book as possible during the week. The invitation asked that only those nine-years old and up attend as they planned to scare the life out of us. Gillen and Jesse wore frightening costumes but you'll have to take my word for it. I only have pictures of them with peeled back layers and with their sweet faces showing through.
I love that Gillen still gets scared. He didn't even go with Jesse and I on the dungeon horror walk. I think this shot caught the moment when his imagination got the better of him and he stepped out of the line.

I love a party that can provide a terrifying ghost walk, an eleven year old great lead singer:AND the possibility of reading books while you party:
The party was held in answer to a challenge put out by the author, Neil Gaimon, to independent booksellers. Whichever book store put on the greatest Graveyard party will be honored by a visit from Gaimon in December. I don't know how anyone could have surpassed Little Shop of Stories.

WanderCRAFT book

About three weeks ago, right before going to the beach for a week on that spontaneous trip to Isle of Palm, S.C. to be with fellow unschoolers, I was quickly checking out some of my favorite blogs, seeking joy in places other than my long packing and cooking to-do list. On that day, I visited Sara, at Wandercraft, a crafty, dog-loving, great photographer in Boston. She revealed a giveaway for a small travel scrapbook that she had made. The winner would need to scrap a few pages of this book and blog about it and was given a more than generous amount of time in which to do so. Well, you know where this is going. I won! I came home from the beach to find this beautiful book and several scrapping accessories waiting for me on my table. I was so excited. I put it in my art room (a room that has seen far more food and Bananagrams than art lately) and envisioned all of the possible trips that I could scrap about. And, as recovering from the beach, new lives and early deaths took over, I conveniently blocked out the request to have a few pages scrapped for Sara's etsy store by this week. eek!

As it turns out, rediscovering this deadline last weekend was just the push my procrastinating, deadline-loving creative side needed. Despite laundry, cooking, knitting for fast growing new babies and planning and cooking for the next trip (in the mountains - leaving on Sunday), I rediscovered my art supplies and any printed out pictures I had on hand from past trips.

Here are the scanned images of the front of the book and of the first two pages (Sara created teh map cover and back and I did all the inside work - I love her sewn together book):
On the front of the book, I highlighted a few of the longer routes that we have taken (to Australia and Japan) on the beautiful map-cardstock cover that Sara had created.

The book will be a collection of moments from various trips over the years. It will live on our coffee table as a place to go to remember, and to find inspiration for the next journey.

Thank you Sara for these precious moments back in the art room. I never would have gone there without you.

Fall

The falling leaves, and many human reminders of seasons coming to an end, have me craving quiet and stillness. As much as I may want to just hole up under blankets on my couch, watching last year's "House" episodes on DVDs all day while I knit baby clothes, unschooling won't allow it - at least not exclusively. This is a good thing. My kids and their friends have films to make and places to go and ideas to help implement. There is no time to withdraw, at least not for too long a stretch of time.

The first several Bionicle based movies were filmed in my bedroom. Here is Jesse's favorite. My bed is now on You Tube. Luckily, I'd made it that day. ; ) The most recent one has been started at the farm, with yet more actors and directors:
Reviewing their work on Eli's Flip camera:In addition, there has been polimer clay to sculpt (This is our newly-unschooling friend Jack):
and Bananagrams games to play with me. Jesse did this one solo:I noticed one word that was missing a few letters and he rearranged whole words and fixed it in seconds. Jesse's Bananagrams ability is something to behold, or to run from , depending on your self-esteem that moment.
Another highlight of the week was going to a fund raiser in a nearby small town. Social Circle resident, Robbie Baldoni, was a passionate skate boarder who had just begun his own well-organized plan to create a local free skate park, when he suddenly died, at twelve, from a brain aneurism. His family has been continuing the work to make his skate park dream come true. Yesterday, a ramp company from Missouri donated ramps for a fund raiser (drove them here for free!) and we all bought Robbie shirts, Robbie hats and lots of food, to help create the dream park. Their story is here. They are home schoolers as well.

At the fund raiser:

Jesse, wearing a hat like the one Robbie always wore when he was on his board: