Family Traditions

Each year as my girls get a bit older, I continue to look for ways to carry on my childhood family traditions.  Coming from a family of ten, my mother was truly inspiring in all the thoughtful, beautiful ways she found to bring tradition and celebration into our home.

Celebrating St. Nicholas (also known as Sinterklaas) was one of our family traditions growing up. We looked forward to it almost as much as Christmas. I so clearly remember the sleepy, smiley faces and the high pitched, delight~filled voices as the stockings were opened... I remember doing plays and puppet shows of the St. Nicholas story with the siblings... I remember the St. Nicholas shaped speculaas cookies...
Fond memories.
My husband is dutch, so this tradition (celebrated a little differently) runs deep in his family too.
 This year we thoroughly enjoyed passing on these traditions to our girls ~ I think they enjoyed it too!

Their stockings ~ (finally completed this year!)

 That sleepy smiley face of delight 

A morning play silk dance ~ enjoying her stocking stuffer

Decorating their St. Nicholas shaped cookies

Such handsome fellows

Their puppet version of the St. Nicholas story ~ with wonderful felt puppets made by my mother (from when I was a girl).

We read the story together last night before bed and then took time today to take a deeper look at the example St. Nicholas set in giving generously, anonymously and with love. A wonderful opportunity to teach about the richness in self-less giving and helping the less fortunate ~ in this season and always.

Heres to celebrating family traditions and true gifting from the heart

~ Shanti ~ 

Celebrating Advent...

This is the first season where we will be trying to celebrate a traditional advent.  I was raised Catholic and I remember this tradition with fondness...the lighting of the candles week after week leading up to Christmas, the nativity slowly coming to life, and the magic of this season.

Yesterday we had our last craft class at my house.  Beautiful mama Leslie brought along the advent calendar she used for her own children.  There are 25 pockets, and each felt piece lives in the pocket and emerges day by day.  I think this is just one of the loveliest Advent calendars I've seen.

on December 6th, there is St Nicholas...

and the Christ child for Christmas day!  

Here is our own Advent stick all wrapped up and ready to go...each package contains a sweet little present, lovingly handcrafted by mamma friends.   If you want to see some of the treasures inside you can head over to 

the Knitty Gritty Homestead

Embracing the Now

  and Wabi-Sabi Wanderings

I think this was the BEST Advent Stick yet...as our craft skills continue to grow, and we share in our creativity...our children LOVE this Advent tradition, and it is our gift as friends to each other.  Each day one package gets ripped off the stick until Christmas day.

And lastly...mrs Knitty Gritty and I hosted our last craft class.  The choises were Rainbow Gnomes or a Nativity set.  Here are a few pictures of "works in progress"...to be honest I was so busy crafting my own Nativity set, I didn't have time to take many pictures...

Here are my wise men...one more headpiece to go!  They were simple to make...peg people covered in colourful cloth, a cape and then crown or head wrap.

And here is Mary, Joseph and a shepherd.  Essentially made the same way as above, but with a longer headdress.  The head dress is made from a large oval of fabric,  do a gathering stitch in the shape of a circle and then gather it up...glue it on the head and that's it.  Hair and beard are wool roving.

I'm excited at the prospect of having a little Nativity set that is mama made!

If you require some guidance with your own Advent celebration, I'm going to direct you over to 

the Parenting Passageway...there are some great posts there to help get you started on your own Advent celebration.

'this the season of celebration and creating tradition!

xo maureen

PS...don't forget about our giveaway!!!   We will close comments tomorrow night at midnight, so go and enter now.  You can enter once daily, the only thing you have to do is tell us your favourite item in our big cartel shop.  And from now until December 8th you can get 15% off in our shop with the code "toadstool".  Good luck to all who enter.  We'll announce the winner on Wednesday morning!

Advent Sticks...

Many years ago while perusing the internet for great Advent ideas, I came across the "Advent Stick".  I don't remember the original source, but the idea was to gather friends and gifts and create an advent stick together.  I put the idea out there and gathered up some of my crafty friends, (some folks have dropped out and some have stayed.).   This will be our 4th year we're still crafting these sticks together.  It is a tradition that we all love and that our children look forward to.  Every year you smile as these treasures come out of the Christmas box, and some are just so much fun they stay out year round!

Each friend crafts 5 items times 5 people.  We always give people an "out" if life gets too busy...up to 2 items can be store bought, or a food treat.  Here are my contributions for this year...it's a little "set" of Christmas gnomes gathering around a fire.   I got the great idea for the fire pit from woman wife momma.  The gnomes were made using the pattern from Wee Folk Art.

Here's a close up of the back of their capes...I simply cut out some holly leaves and berries and glue gunned them on...I must say, they do look rather festive!

We were supposed to put our sticks together last night, but hailing ice pellets got in the way of our fun.  My friend over at Wabi Sabi Wanderings posted a picture of last years stick, (we were hoping to do a rainbow stick this year, but may just have to settle for getting the darn thing together.

Other participating friends are

the Knitty Gritty Homestead, Embracing the Now, and of course my lovely co-blogger Shanti!

This is another fabulous way to get your crafting community to come together in the JOY of creativity!

Now off to gather the other folks contributions and get this stick together!  Hope to post some pictures of the finished product after the weekend!

xo maureen

ps...don't forget about our fabulous giveaway!  You can win a lovely little gnome house with gnome and a peacock blue playsilk.  The giveaway closes on Tuesday Nov 30th.  You can enter once daily.  Please just tell us what your favourite item in our shop is.  We're also offering 15% off of everything in our store until December 8th.  Just type in the discount code "toadstool"!

Good luck to all who enter.  

Day of The Dead/All Souls Day Celebrations!

Today Maureen and I united our clans to celebrate the day of the dead/all souls day.

This is not something I have celebrated before but in learning about it I loved the idea of taking a day out of the year to honor and remember our loved ones that have passed. This morning we began our days festivities by creating an altar. The girls loved scurrying around collecting the photos of our loved ones. We talked about what the deceased had enjoyed in their life and then we added some of those items our table. 

Together we lit a candle and spent some time remembering, sharing and soaking in their beautiful, dearly missed faces. This was the first time I have had all them all looking at me at one time... it left me a little emotional and grateful for the gifts they had each offered to my life. 

We made the dough for Pan de Muertos (Day of the Dead Bread)

Kneading the dough was fun... but playing with it was even more fun! 

Then we then headed over to the toadstool homestead....

 Where the girls each shaped their dough into a skull...

we baked it and I must say they came out looking much happier than when they went in!

We also made sweet little skeletons found over at Sewing Stars.

And inspired by one of our favourite blogs Moment to Moment, a place where we often find inspiration, we saw sweet skull necklaces.  We just painted ours, and will hang them from a string for over the nature table.

I think it would be nice to spend this week celebrating our loved ones.

After an afternoon of crafting, we ended with a slice of pan de muertos skull bread and Mexican hot chocolate, (we just added a pinch of cinnamon to the hot chocolate).  A lovely full day with the Twig and Toadstool clan!

In honor of all  loved ones who are no longer with us 

Shanti and Maureen xo 

Halloween!!!!!

The whole fang damily enjoying the afternoon!

Keith and Matilda were Gnomes and Ruby was our distant cousin the Russian Gypsy!

(and yes, I'm the giant, somewhat perplexed looking Toadstool)!

Matilda..the little gnome.

Mama Toadstool and little gnome!

A handful of the kids at the afternoons Family dance!

Some more of the kids!

One of our friends generously rented the local Lions Hall so that we could have a Family Dance this afternoon!  Another friend offered to be the DJ, and the afternoon was spent dancing away to "Thriller", "The Time Warp" and "YMCA".

Now, all my Trick or Treaters are safe and sound at home...Papa Gnome and I are going to enjoy a quiet night eating the kids candy, (come on...you do it too), and watching Nightmare on Elm Street!

Hope you had a wonderful Halloween night!

xo maureen

Gratitude Feast!

 With Autumn here, we decided to celebrate the bountiful garden we shared over the summer.

So Much Abundance ~ So Much Gratitude!

 

The girls and I soaked up the late afternoon sun and  harvested our dinner from the garden...

Solana picked our salad greens

 

and nibbled the sun warmed tomatoes along the way

the girls got down and dirty digging out the potatoes...

loving the fun of discovering them one by one!

We marveled at the abundance the garden had given us...

Luna gathered up a bouquet for the dinner table...

 Papa and Solana soaked up snuggle time while dinner cooked

Together we gave thanks

***

 For the golden corn and the apples on the trees
For the butter and the honey for our tea
For fruits and nuts and berries that grow beside the way
For birds and bees and flowers We give our thanks today
Blessings on our meal
And on our family!

Blessings to you

~Shanti~ 

Nature Inspired Fairy Party!

Creating a Fairy Party That Embraces  Simplicity and Beauty ( and doesn't bite a hole in your wallet!)

Birthday parties are wonderful fun yet they can easily spill over into too much ~ too much work, too much junk, too much pressure. So my goal in creating this party was to use what we had on hand and embrace a simple way to celebrate in style! 

For my Luna's eighth birthday she decided she wanted a flower fairy party.  I knew between working full time and wanting to really enjoy the day of the party, I needed to find easy, nature inspired ways to bring this party to life!

So we made a plan...

First she made her party list of a few friends and her cousins...

She  created some simple birch bark invitations to offer out ~ giving them all the needed information ...like please wear wings if you have them (if not we have extra) and potluck fairy food snacks (shared food is the way to go in keeping things simple!)

This was all mainly her project and she was happy to have it that way ~ she loved collecting, cutting and creating these invites...

She crafted away ~ creating  a little pine cone fairy and a maple key dragonfly to give to each of her friends  and placed them in these satin flower bags...

We then decided every fairy needs to be crowned!

So we collected our supplies ~ raffia and paper flowers...

We braided the raffia (a great way for girls to practice their braiding) and then took the paper flowers (that had wire attached) and wrapped the wire  flowers into each braided band. I also collected a big bouquet of  flowers on the day of with the intention that each girl could fill her wreath with some fresh flowers too!

Where would a fairy be without a wand to sparkle her magic all around?! 

We created our fairy wands with these lovely"wands" I found made of dyed seedpods.

Feeling they needed a personal touch we added sage and curly grass from our back yard and tied it all on with ribbons of raffia.

When the celebration day came ~  we crowned each these beautiful fairies and offered them their magical fairy wands...

Our plan was to spend to whole day at Luna's favorite spot, crooked slide park. A hidden gem in our valley that has beautiful falls, rocks to climb and hop, paths to adventure on and a natural water slide! Needless to say not long after this photo ~ after the girls had jumped into their swim suits and were frolicking and I was getting ready to pull out all the food ~ IT DOWN POURED!!!

Lucky for me, my sister who was there with her girls, lives only a bit away and welcomed us to crash her home. So we packed up in a wet flash and relocated the party.

One more lesson in going with the flow and letting go!

Luna's flower fairy cake ~ cupcakes with whipped cream topped with an edible flower.

We resumed the festivities... not letting a silly thing like the rain drown our joy!

It was a lovely celebration ~  offering lessons on this journey of motherhood  ... learning to embrace simplicity  and learning to let go and allow the unexpected with a peaceful heart.

***
Peace

~ Shanti ~

Solstice Celebration

Yesterday when the sun was radiant in it's full glory, we headed over to our annual celebration spot at Echo Farm. It is a magical gathering space nestled in the rolling hills of Wilno ~ alive with lush, gorgeous gardens, fields full of wild flowers (with a peace sign mowed in it : ) a stage, a fire pit and of course a  big space for the potluck feast. It is one of my most loved community gatherings of the year.  It seems like everyone is glowing  with the joy of welcoming in summer ~ Old friends are re-uniting , kids are  finding their clan to run with, people are pulling out delights in the clothing swap pile,  musicians are jamming on stage,  people are dancing, hula hooping, and poi dancing. Good food is being shared and celebration is in the air with full force!

Last week when we made our sun cake my girls asked if they could make a sun cake to bring to the solstice celebration ~ by them selves!  

I gave up the reigns (not an easy thing for me) and stepped back to simply be the supervisor.  They worked together (with Luna directing!) and this creation was born...

The girls enjoyed walking this tight rope again, and again and again...

I loved being present for this moment in time of big sis being the support for little sis.

The children were ripe with  joy in this beautiful space of freedom
 

  
exploring, playing and soaking up the sweetness...

 We ended our night singing fire's burning to our blazing solstice fire. We then headed back home at the end of this longest day of the year...filled to the brim with sunshine, friends, dancing, fresh air, and fine food! I am grateful to be a part of such a rich, inspired, talented, diverse community to share in celebrating with.

One Love! One Heart!
Let's get together and feel all right.
Bob Marley 
 

Abundant sun infused love to you as you journey into this season of bounty and beauty

~ Shanti~