A full moon day

The girls were quite excited to get out Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury book. It was such a pleasure to read Treva's adventure with the trolls and the other wonderful stories of this book that they remembered from last year.



We celebrated my grandma's 88 birthday. It is so special and unique to share our everyday life with her. Our realities are so very different. She has too much time, and I never have enough, her gaze is turned towards the past and I cannot help but think about the future, even if it's only tomorrow... We have been living together for over a year and it has been such a journey. Not always an easy one, but a great lesson for all of us.



My latest creation with Kathy's yarn. I had other plans for this baby but I ended up needing more yarn than I thought to make it... I'll keep looking for the perfect yarn (and the perfect length) for my secret project...



Today, I had a day alone with Mara. Aïsha and Mathilde were at my Mom's. We cooked and baked, and went to play with the sheep and took a bath together at 2 pm.



And we put our pj's on and I sewed and Mara painted.



And we prepared a nice dinner for papa and the sis (forgot to take pictures). We made buttermilk hamburger buns with deer patties, with homemade mayo (so yellow thanks to our beautiful hens' eggs!) and homemade lacto-fermented pickles. For dessert, we made a pretty yummy ricotta cream with the cheese that I made with the leftover whey from JF's cheddar. I simply added honey, vanilla and some lemon zest to the drained ricotta and served it with thawed strawberries that we picked this summer and a bit of demerara sugar on top. It tasted like the cream of an Italian canollo (a Sicilian treat!).



So, I could end my post like this and you would think: What perfect life, this girl rocks, where does she ever find the time (oh, and I baked two loaves of pumpkin-molasses bread and some pumpkin muffins too!). But to be honest, I was crabby today, I dropped the quiche in the oven (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I also made 3 broccoli and cheese quiches - with spelt dough), I yelled at Mathilde when she came back from my Mom's because she was super needy and I was just not available for her, I sewed the pants I was making the wrong way. You know, that kind of day. And now, I just feel tired and miserable. Not in a guilty way, just tired and grumpy. And when I saw Amanda's beautiful photo, I clicked! The full moon, of course! It affects me more than my own moon cycle...

And I seriously need to learn to do less. This is such a struggle for me. I know, it may sound silly to many of you, but it's a real challenge. I cannot wrap my head around the idea of buying a loaf of bread when we can make our own much tastier and healthier sourdough bread, I cannot buy mayo when I can make it with our own eggs, I cannot, I cannot... and I LOVE to cook and to craft...
But I seriously need to learn to put some things on the back burner for now, while the girls are so little, because I want to be available for them, I want to have fun with them, and I don't want our lives to be about doing. We chose to homeschool because we believe home is the best place to learn... I want our home to be peaceful and I want to slow down and enjoy this moment, because I know I will turn around and it will be over...

I took one giant step in this direction this year by not making gifts to anybody (sorry if this comes to a surprise to some of you!). I did it for my own sake and for my family's sake. Last year, I went a bit crazy (and there is more here). I had fun, don't get me wrong, but it's not what I want our Advent season to feel like. It really has changed my focus to not be into gifts this year. I had been making my own gifts for over 10 years, but it was almost more frantic to make gifts than to buy them! So here we are, making no gifts, but cooking like mad and filling the days with things to do, things to check on my ever-growing list... One day at a time, I am working on being more present, even through my excesses, my frenzy to do, do, do... I am quite aware of it, but still struggling to make it happen!

And another good step for my less perfectionist-self-in-training to take would be to tell you that I am just too tired to translate the whole thing in French!