Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Recent Wild Art Adventures

We've been mixing up various games with wilderness adventuring and art adventuring (indoor and outdoor), as usual. The kids seem to have developed nice relationships, and our Wild Art Tuesdays are delightful!

To the right, the kids were trying on a big felt mask. This group has decided they'd like to make felt masks... As soon as I've rounded up all the supplies we will begin!

Tali (my son) was feeling miserable and tired, and did not to come to Wild Art last week. So the rest of the group created protest signs and marched straight up to, around, and eventually into the house to get him out to join us. He was pleased!

...taking advantage of a sudden heavy rainshower to run out and get soaking wet...

Book corner!


These days the mushrooms are going crazy! Today the older group spent the entire four hours exploring the forest, finding amazing mushrooms, and creating various concoctions, a game of mushroom harvesters, wholesalers and retailers (the things they come up with often surprise me!), and enjoying the enchanted feel of the autumn-slanted sun through the trees.

Making an inedible stew in a bucket! This came with some beautiful inedible side-dishes served on leaves.

...working on the stew inside the forest fort...

Various customers shopping at Tali's mushroom emporium.

This is where the game got very serious. In the background you can see the kids shopping at wholesalers', harvesting, and selling to each other, as well. Currency was "dollars" made of cedar leaves, fern leaves, and moss clumps, some of which were far more valuable than others (as in: "This costs either one clump of moss and a cedar leaf, or 20 fern leaves, or... way too many cedar leaves by themselves").

slugs and pet supplies in the pet shop

Ah! To do business in the great outdoors!

Beautiful mushrooms in the "50-cents-to-a-dollar" pile.

Some rather more expensive mushrooms.

The "so-expensive-you-can't-afford-them" pile.

Wow. Cool mushroom.

Harvesting a sample from each species clump.

Seriously... the beauty out there in the woods is a bit ridiculous. Sometimes I wonder how we were blessed with this life and the wonderful world we have.

Oh my goodness! Giant boletes!!

Earthstar! Cool! I was shown this on the "mushroom tour", which I paid 10 cedar leaves to participate in!

Paxillus atrotomentosus. Remind me of fat chanterelles, but different, with furry brown stems.

Ooooh. Blobs. AKA Hoof fungus.

We didn't have time to look many of these up... no idea what this one is.

Tiny red, orange and yellow hygrocybe were everywhere!
Stump-and-stick art.



The enchanted glade. We spent a long time here, soaking up the beauty!

Monday, October 7, 2013

Rhiannon!

Beautiful table-decorations from Tali.
Rhiannon loves to play. So play we did, for her birthday this weekend! After a great adventure of swimming and rock-climbing with Uncle Adrian and Ginger, we had pizza and cake at home, and stayed up late playing Scotland Yard, afterwards (and of course she was Mr. X!) Then pancakes for her birthday breakfast, the next morning, and a big visit with her cousins! What a wonderful birthday!

My beautiful daughter, though 9 years old, manages to keep a beautiful sense of innocence, delight and playfulness about her that I cherish every day!


A new dress from Nana Heidi!

Scotland Yard

Her request: chocolate cake layers with orange marmalade in between! Yum!

Years gone by overnight.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Not Back to School Picnic

Every year we celebrate the fact that we are not going back to school...
This year we played in the sunset and the beautiful phosphorescence with our friends!

Beautiful artwork.

Beautiful conversations with so many beautiful people...




Beautiful times enjoying the evening, the swimming, the view, and the sunset.



Beautiful friendships.

Beautiful phosphorescence.

Beautiful night.
We are grateful for the world we live in, the lifestyle choices we've made, and for the people who share this beautiful life with us!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Parkinson's Walk

Yesterday we went to the annual Superwalk for Parkinson's. As usual we were entertained by the kids we had with us, and then returned to the house in North Van for some yummy brunch.

My sister Mischa volunteers for the society.

Walkety walkety walkety... L to R: Daddy/Grandpa, Mitch with Aiden in stroller, Mischa, unknown-purple-shirted walker!, Roberto, Rhiannon and Tali, Bree, baby Jack and Hermelita/Grandma. :-)

Gratuitous baby photo...

Mischa and Aiden

Would you like some funny-dancing entertainment??

Grandpa and Jack

Ooooh - it's the hall of tubular mirrors...

Ceperley playground is pretty cool.

Every family needs a good photo-bomber!

MacDonalds Advertisement...

Oh yeah - that was a fun morning; now time for hugging Grandma's leg...

Complete Chaos

Welcome to our disastrous abode!
This is how we've been living for over a month, now. We're redoing one end of our house... while still living in it. Consequently, about 3/4 of our belongings -- the contents of the library, office, 2 bedrooms, and the attic -- is in the living room and dining room. Alarmed face.

It's pretty alarming.

How much stuff we have!!!!

It's pretty frustrating to live this way; there's no room for some necessary jobs like threshing our oats (that's a basket of harvested but un-threshed oats in the middle of the photo on the right), there's no room to dry the laundry when it's not dry enough outside (and unfortunately the weather has not been cooperating), there's no place to sit and eat dinner together, so we're just eating on the porch until dinner, when it's a bit too wet and chilly, at which point we huddle around the bare corner of our box-covered table, and try not to spill on the living room floor. And things get lost. You put something down, and invariably that means you put it somewhere on the pile of other stuff -- and you will never see it again! Like the hairbrush. That was lost for three days.

So -- just to document for ourselves, and to share with friends and family who might think we're exaggerating a bit... here are some photos.


The view from what normally would be the dining room! All the piles of wood are our dismantled beds, storage unites, shelves, etc. On the right you can see the free corner of the stored dining table with some stacked chairs beside it. In the evening we unstack them (but then it's impossible to get to the other side of the house) in order to eat dinner.

Part of the problem is that this little project has gone on long enough that the stored belongings are now getting waded and dug through, as the kids want to find things they supposedly need. (Bah!!)

But here is the silver lining -- or the plywood lining, I should say! Our attic now is lined with plywood (it used to be just rotting insulation and torn vapour-barrier) and it beginning to have some of the things put back into it! What you see below it is the partially-finished new office, with the lovely french doors going outside, which will now bring some beautiful light into our house from the west!

And here's our bedroom! Same shape and size, but the bed and closet have switched sides, and the rotten/moldy wall and floor have been replaced.

Now some spackle -- and then the fun begins when we we get to decorate it!!