Great Lent right now

This past week, my sister and her daughter flew down from Canada mainly for the baptism of my new little nephew.  She was also here while the icon of the Mother of God, "The Softener of Hard Hearts" was visiting our parish.

Elizabeth, who we call "Liza" for short loves to draw.  I'd gotten this easel at IKEA for $14.99 recently (and a roll of paper was $4.99) and Hannah and Olivia drew with her.  Liza is now 20 months old and asked the girls to draw books, cars, crosses, horses, etc. AND says, "I lub you." 

I'm really enjoying the cookbook Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian that I got from my aunt and uncle last month. 

I made French panisses, which is a nice vegan treat.  Basically, this recipe:  http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Panisses.  In the cookbook, she goes into great detail about how to handle the gram flour (chick pea), which is very fine and can clump easily.

 We sprinkled them with powdered sugar.

Our friends invited us over to make a grass garden with a small pot to resemble the tomb of Christ. 

The girls did a great job.  We helped them make 3 crosses to put on the top, and we talked a lot while doing this activity, about what Christ said to the men who were crucified with him, and the one who said "Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom." -Luke 23:42 

It's a Great Lent project that I think we'll do again in the future.  Maybe with our Sunday School children next year?  Hopefully by Pascha (we have 10 days more), it will be full of green grass!

Spring in Ohio

I made more cards last week for Pascha, the feast of our Lord's Resurrection.  I left some of them blank so that you can color them in as you wish, or let your children help color.  Check them out in my etsy shop:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/homemadegoodness ♥

Friday our homeschool co-op went to the Krohn Conservatory, which is a giant greenhouse, and was so humid in the rainforest room that my camera lens kept fogging up, hence this fuzzy group photo:

One of the boys reaches toward a cacoa pod!  That's our chocolate starts off...pretty cool, huh?

The main room was Avant-Garde theme, lots of glass flowers and bowls in bold colors.

 In the cacti room, isn't this aloe stunning?

This is in the bonsai room! 

My friend, Anya, took this picture of some of us after church yesterday.  You can see 5 year old Sofia in her wheelchair and my Godson, 1 year old Timothy in his mom's arms. Her husband was working with the other men helping to assemble the new playground!  My daughter Hannah holding my nephew Timothy, who is now a month old!

Making scarves

A friend of ours showed us these pretty scarves she's been making.  Super easy and pretty ruffle scarves like this awesome tutorial.  I think she puts 4 or 5 loops on the hook before pulling it through, we did 7.  If you try this, you can do whatever look you like best, the more loops, the more fluffy your scarf will be.

So this is "art class" today.  This is the yarn (I ♥ Hobby Lobby) that Olivia is using:

 See how it stretches into a mesh?

 

And she just finished it!

Today

I spotted these pretty glitter heart earrings today and am thinking I will try to make some like them!
It snowed a few inches today.  It's cold and beautiful in this part of Ohio.  I went on a nice walk with Lusy the dog, she just loves the snow!

Olivia just finished reading Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses.   It won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since.  Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in Connecticut is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day.  One of Olivia's final assignments was to write an imaginary letter that Maddie (one of the girls who wasn't very kind to her, but also felt sorry for her) could have written to Wanda.

Hannah had to write an essay comparing how Ebenezer Scrooge felt when meeting the 3 ghosts and how it changed his life, since she just finished reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  A good wrap up to this week of homeschooling...and as it is the 12th day of Christmas for us Orthodox Christians who follow the old calendar!

Rob is at work right now.  He has a terrible cold.  Runny nose and cough.  Olivia has a bad cough, too...she was up many times last night.  I convinced her to take 10mL of elderberry syrup, along with some apple juice, because other wise it's too tart and sweet (very concentrated).  I hope everyone will be healthy soon.

I got a letter in the mail this week from Joscelyn and was just amazed at her lovely calligraphy.   I found my old box of nibs and got to work with various colours of ink...pretty soon Hannah and Olivia joined me and we sampled writing out words and alphabets in various different ways:

This weekend, we celebrate Christ's baptism!  Water will be 

blessed at church, and then sprinkled around our home.

When Thou was baptized in the Jordan, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity wast made manifest; for the voice of the Father bear witness to Thee, calling Thee His beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of His word. O Christ our God, Who hath appeared and enlightened the world, glory be to Thee.

silhouettes of my girls

Portraits of the 18th century in the 21st century.  I enjoy connecting with old traditions and techniques.  What a unique portrait!  Can you tell who is who?

We traced the silhouettes on 9 x 12 inch black paper and then cut them out.  If you want to do it yourself, you can take lamp (I removed my lamp shade to get better light, but if you have a spotlight that would work better) and positioned it about 4 feet from the wall...then taped the black paper to the wall and had my girls sit right next to it and traced, using pencil, then cut it out using scissors.

I put them on the wall above the little couch and then made a frame using the black and white polka dot washi tape. 

Our self-portraits

A gentle way to start off the school year...with a mirror and some art supplies.  The previous post was meant as inspiration, so that YOU or your children may want to make self-portraits. I think it's a really neat way to document your growth (artistically), if you do one each year!

Now you've seen the self-portraits that Olivia and Hannah drew, from 2009, 2010, 2011 and the one in the lower right is from August 2012...and finally, a few that I did:

♥  And if you do self-portraits, please add a link in the comments so that we can see yours!

P.S. Don't forget to look out in the sky tonight....a full moon, that many call a "blue moon," because it's the 2nd full moon in August!