Monthly Archives: June 2008

What I won’t give up to be ‘green’

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A few weeks back I was tagged by Two Frog Home to tell the truth about the 5 things I won’t give up for the environment. This was a really hard one! Every time Toby would mention something I would say, “well if I had to, I’d give it up” :-) But, here are 5 things that are not going green any time soon that I don’t want to get rid of:
1- my computer: There is a ton of waste produced every time one of these puppies is made and trashed, but I don’t see any green options on the horizon for this one!

2- my car: I’m still very reliant on my car and would have a hard time doing without. We have looked and looked for a more environmentally sound option, but they don’t (yet) make affordable family size electric cars that I could power off of a solar panel. Here’ hoping!

3- prepared cat and dog food: With all the food allergies we have in our pet family, I have no idea how I would be able to feed the pets without the already made foods I buy. I know that there is a lot of waste in the packaging and the shipping, but there ain’t no way I could make my own perfectly formulated rabbit and venison food! Believe me, I’ve tried!

4- Toilet paper: I’m with Two Frog Home on this one! It will be a while before I’m willing to give up the paper and use washable cloths. I know I used cloth wipes with Kaia when she was a baby, but I was glad when we ‘graduated’ to toilet paper.

5- I don’t know… I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes trying to think of something else… What do you think? What should I give up??

Oooooh, she’s growing too fast!

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My sweet baby girl turned 5 years old tonight!!! I can’t believe it was 5 years ago that she was born. I mean, I can’t remember life without her sweet giggle, but it seems like just yesterday that we met!

She had some grandparents and friends over to celebrate with pizza, cake, ice cream, and pin the tail on the mermaid. And she requested a Unicorn cake. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to outdo last years cake but I may have done it! :-)

I made a 10″ round cake and 4 cupcakes, then cut and placed the cupcakes on top of the cake to form the unicorn head. The rest was done with icing. It was a Honey cake from a Winny the Pooh cook book Kaia has, and cream cheese frosting.

Sibling stories needed

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Ok, so I’m writing something that I can’t tell you too much about, just yet :-) But I need some help from you! I’m looking for honest stories from the mouths of older siblings about what it was like when their little brother or sister was born. I’d love to hear their impression of the new baby. Any stories would be great! Things like: How did you prepare for the new baby? How did you feel when the baby was born? Did the baby make a lot of noise? Did you like to play with the new baby? Was the baby funny looking at first? Did the baby take over mommy’s lap? What funny things did the new baby do? etc… Any stories are fantastic!

These stories may be published, and of course, I will get your permission first.

I can’t give you too many more details right now, except that I’m writing something very special! :-)

Please email them to maria at dirtundermynails dot com

Thanks so much! Oh, and pass this on to any friends with kids who may want to share their stories.

Oat Medicine

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I harvested the rest of the milky oats today. Almost 3 pounds worth!!! I made a half gallon of milky oat tincture and laid the rest out to dry to use for tea later.

Milky oats (Avena sativa)are when the unripe seed heads can be squeezed and a milky juice comes out. At this stage, the oats are very high in minerals, particularly minerals that are good for relaxing the body and dealing with stress (like b vitamins and Magnesium). Taken as a tincture or tea, milky oats are wonderful for exhaustion and soothing frazzled nerves, moistening and nourishing the nervous system and brain, and helping get to sleep. I find I use it a lot in my practice. Good stuff!

Tending the bees

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It’s been a long while since we’ve really gotten into the bee hives and taken a good look at what is going on in there. After the swarms, we have 4 hives, but we have no idea how they are doing. So, Tuesday, a friend and bee mentor came out and helped me go through them. It took us 3 hours! But, I’m happy to say they are all doing well. Both swarms (including the top bar swarm that I thought would die) are settling in well. When we put the first swarm into their hive box, we left 3 frames out and forgot to go back and put them in. So, the bees built comb off the roof and in every different direction. We had to cut some brood comb off the top of the hive and rubber band it into a frame. We also had to cut out a bunch of honey and pollen comb to try to straighten up the frames. I will need to go in at least once a week to be sure that they are building along the frames.

We found all four of the queens and all the hives seem to be building up stores and making lots of baby bees! Yay! One of the hives had a full honey super from the great poplar nectar flow. So, I will take that box off and extract some honey this weekend.

I also took the comb that we cut out of the swarm hives and squeezed the honey out. There was a good bit of pollen in there, so the honey it pretty cloudy and strong tasting. But, still good! We got about 1 1/2 quarts. I also took the comb and melted it down so I could use the beeswax. But, I think there was too much pollen in the comb, ’cause it’s not hardening up…

Here’s the honey. I didn’t heat it… I just put it on the stove to take the picture.

Here’s the comb melting in a double boiler.

Flying high!

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For Father’s Day, I wanted to give Toby something that he would really love. He’s always done so much for Kaia and I, and I wanted to find a perfect way to say “Thank you”. I remember once when we were taking a road trip, Toby mentioned that there were two things he really wanted to try before he died, one was Subaru rally car racing, and the other was to learn how to fly. So…
Here he is taking his first flight lesson. It’s called a discovery flight. You get the basic info about planes and the controls, and then you go up in the sky for ~30 minutes to see how it all feels. The instructor has the controls most of the time…
Here they are, getting strapped in. They talked for ~1 hour before taking off. This is a C-172 Cessna Skyhawk 4 seater.

And off they go…

Wait… here they come again???

They taxied down the runway, and turned around and came right back… I thought maybe the weather wasn’t good enough (it was sprinkling), or maybe Toby got cold feet. Turned out there was smoke coming from the control panel!!

So, the instructor decided to take Toby up in his personal plane. It’s completely different to fly than the cessna, so he got another little lesson. This plane is a 1946 Aeronca Champ. The center of gravity in this plane is much farther back, so it’s harder to control and land (yikes!).
Kaia couldn’t have cared less about what daddy was doing…. there were puddle to jump in!

And off they go, again:

They flew over downtown Hendersonville, where some friends of ours live. So, I called them up and they said they could see them from the house. Cool!
And here they come, in for a landing:

We all had a blast!

Feeling Crafty

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I’ve been feeling like making things lately. Kaia’s birthday is coming up and I have been wanting to make her a ‘princess canopy’ for her bed for years. So, I finally got around to it. It came out pretty well, but I have to secure the hoop on the inside better so that it hangs level:

I also promised her that I would make her a ‘hoop skirt’ for her birthday. We’d seen this design at a festival and she loved it, but they were $40. So, I decided to try my hand at it. The first one I made came out badly, so I planned harder for the second one…
First I cut out three panels of fabric all the same size (9″ on top, 24″ sides, and 21″ on bottom). Then I hemmed the sides of each piece and sewed them together (leaving a strip ~2″ in between two of the strips that was not sewn together. I hemmed the top, leaving a small gap and enough space to thread an elastic in. I threaded 19.5″ of elastic (since Kaia’s waist is 20″) and sewed closed the little hole that I put the elastic in through. I then hemmed the bottom so that there was a 1/2″ gap to thread in 1/4″ flexible tubing (I used some plumbing tubing). Along the hem, I used some lace for decoration, and to conceal the hoop. (Remember that 2″ strip on the bottom where the sides weren’t sewn together? Once you hem it, it leaves a gap where you can thread in the tubing, and take it back out if you don’t want to use the hoop.) Thread the tubing in (~5 feet of tubing) and use another piece of tubing that has an inner diameter the same as the outer diameter of the hoop tubing to hold the hoop together.
OK, so if I haven’t totally confused you, here’s how it turned out:


When she walks the hoop holds the dress out away from her… and it has ‘great spin’, which is very important to an almost 5 year old! And the whole thing cost me ~$10.

I also found a skirt in a magazine that I really loved, but it was way out of my price range. So, I tried my hand at making that too. First I needed 20 ‘strips’ of fabric. I used 4 strips each of 5 different fabrics. I cut out a piece of paper to trace my strips from.
Here you see the paper and the pieces traced, before I cut them up.

Once I cut all the fabric, Kaia helped me put it into a design. This is what one of the four panels will look like

Then I sewed all the edges together, sewed an elastic the size of my waist into the top, and hemmed the bottom…

I like it, but it’s not as ‘flowy’ as I had hoped it would be… then I realized that the skirt in the magazine is made of silk, and I used mostly cotton.

I’ve also been gathering some herbs on the land for medicine.
Here’s a giant mullein that I got some flowers from to make an oil:

I also harvested some oats in milky stage to make tincture out of. The tincture is SOOOO green!

And here, just because it’s so beautiful, is a clary sage flower:

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I’ve got a moment of reprieve right now, but it’s been go, go, go! The first weekend in June I spent 4 days at the Medicines from the Earth conference taking classes and assisting Rosita Arvigo. She was the keynote speaker and gave some great classes on fertility enhancement, and spiritual bathing. Then I spent 6 days (ending tomorrow) with Rosita assisting with her Professional Maya Abdominal Massage training. It’s a very intense learning time, not to mention all the things that come up with the students after giving and getting so many abdominal massages. It’s pretty amazing! This morning I went in to class completely exhausted, so she told me to go home and take a nap. (I just got up from a 2 hour nap, so don’t give me crap about being on the computer :-) ) Tomorrow is our last day.

So, you can imagine that things are still not unpacked or cleaned up around the house. And the cabin is just full of unpacked boxes. I’m hoping to get the office/cabin set up this week (it’s funny how much I dread going in there now that we have the house built). Maybe I’ll put up some pictures tonight… or maybe I’ll go see a movie and eat some chocolate… hmmmmm, which should I choose…?