thoughts going forward.

I cant say this is one of the prettiest photographs out there of me. But this is me, right at this very moment. Babywearing, smudged attempt at one handed make-up application (just so that I dont look like death itself) and regrowth of my hair that hasn't had a touch of dye in over a year.

This is me! This is all me in my life right at this very moment.

I've had plenty of moments like this over the past couple of months. Moments where I have had time to reflect as to were I am going with all of these moments. Moments were I have thought were am I going with my shares, with this blog and the dreams I had before all these moments came to be.

Although, I still fiercely believe in the magick of the seasons, I am also fiercely walking the stepping stones of a mama with children in various stages of life. Tristan will be handed his key to his life this coming new year, he will be 21. Joshua at 16 still figuring out if the subjects he has chosen at school will be relevant in his dreams for his future, and consciously trying to figure out how to get away from the noise that is his younger brother and baby sister. Garren anxious about who will be in his grade three class next year and if another kick to his older brothers shins at the dinner table might go unnoticed. Danika.. well lets just say I am doing all the figuring our for at this moment. Rob and I trying tor juggle and balance the bliss of family life with the stresses of work. These are all real feelings and thoughts and milestones not just for me but for all of us.

So, where am I going, where do I want to be? Not 20 years from now- cause that would make me like.. almost 60 something or other. But where do I want to be right now, tomorrow and the next day. What do I want to share with you today, tomorrow and the next. These are the kind of thoughts that twirl around my head now that we have welcomed a little baby girl into home and our lives. After being a mama to boys for twenty years, I thought that it would be just the same with a little girl. But, I am not too sure about this anymore. They are very different - aren't they? Like a delicate little flower? They kind of change all those perceptions you had – dont they?

So, I am going back and forth in my mind and can feel change not only happening within me but change within our little tribe now that our boy tribe has a growing little flower, a little lady.

I have hopes to keep this little blog going in the same direction, with shares about our family and shares about what is cooking in my kitchen and growing in my garden and of course shares about whats all knitting up on my needles. But, I think its time for me to also share my intentions and my personal traditions as I, we... us... live by the seasons here in South Africa.

So that is what my plans are for the new calendar year. Intention.. Intuition.. Family.. Magick… and trying to keep it all constant, with a dash of smudged eyeliner. 

Who knows maybe those smudges may start a new tradition out there.

Thank you for sharing in all these with us my friends. May the new year bring all your intentions to life and bless you with not too much or too little but rather exactly what you need.

❤ Angie

Sock Wool

Merry in between everything day everyone. This little space between Christmas and the New Calendar year is always wonderful. One coming down from the high of the holidays and reflecting on whats new on the horizon for the Calendar year. Do you do resolutions every year? I haven't for a good couple years gone by now and I think that this year I may go against all that from before and set my intentions for the coming year this old years day.

For Christmas I was gifted my first Sock Wool ever and a set of new DPN’s from my beloved family. I am so super excited about knitting up with these. I have never made socks before and I have always wanted to try my hand at it. Sock wool is rather an expensive buy around these parts so I will be going slow on this pattern and just enjoy learning and growing with the experience. I have no intention of rushing through, although I know the temptation will be strong to get them done as fast as possible to see the finished project, and I think our wee one will help with the go slow process too.

I have cast on for Vanilla Socks with my Bermuda coloured sock wool. Who will these be for? I always say they’ll be for me, but that never ends up being. So, I will weave them up and add them to the homemade gift basket for the our Yule celebrations in the coming year. Who knows, as I knit up a face or name may come to mind. Time will tell. I will just have to wait and see, again a patience game.

If you would like, you can follow along or get the pattern from my Ravelry account >HERE< and my Instagram account >HERE<

So, slow and easy does it. I also cast on for a Toadstool Baby Rattle in left over bits n threads that we have plenty of. Danika will be coming of age for something to hold onto and jiggle about soon. I cant believe that she is close to heading into her third month in her beautifully gifted earth suit.
 

I remembered that it’s Wednesday today – for a change - so I will be joining in with the lovely creatures over at Ginny’s yarnalong. Looking forward to catching up with you all again ladies!

hugs a plenty.

Angie.

xox

T’was the day before Christmas.

We have made it! We have made it all the way to Christmas Eve, the day before Christmas. The build up has been excruciating for some I might add. I love this time of year and the excitement that comes with it from our littles. And, just as we thought we were coming to the end of the deep seated belief of it all with Garren and his moments away from finally becoming a “non-believer”. We were gifted our little Danika.

I think he confessed that .. “When I am in Grade 3, I cant believe in Santa Claus anymore” – with great thanks to his peers at school for that, and yes, my heart broke. Who knows, just maybe, Santa will gift me another year with him?

I will keep believing in the magick, no matter what, and now I get to do it all again with our littlest of them all.

Merry Christmas my friends may you always believe in the magick of it all.

Love Angie & Family.

solstice blessings

I love how my feeds are filled with snow and how my favourite humans are all welcoming in their Solstice, the Winter Solstice. And I'm here breathing in our Summer Solstice and reflecting on how I will share this dark half of the year with my beautiful tribe.

I love how in my little space the earth is awash with all shades of green and that there is an abundance of magick in the air around us.

May this day, whether it's the longest or the shortest be filled with peace, love and light.

santa's message

I absolutely love this time of the year. Especially this week, the week that leads up to Christmas Day, I've always been about getting the kids all crazy excited for the day.

Garren has been getting his yearly message from Santa for years now and we have just added Danika to Santa's long list of messages that he has to send out.

I had hoped to embed the actual video of each here on this post - but this looks just as sweet and can be kept for our littles for a later day to look back on.

I am certainly excited about this year. We seem to have been able to get all the pressies done on time. All except for one. Which I am still busy working on. Hold thumbs!

Happy week before Christmas everyone.

changing tables

This sweet little flower of ours is a whole two months. I look at her precious little face and ask where on this sacred earth does the time go to? Surely not two whole months already? But, in all honesty, I have to check myself and just come to terms with it and acknowledge it. So what better way to acknowledge it than to do it right here.

I had also told many a face that I was not the kind of Mama that broadcast each and every milestone that my little ones (who are now all big - I might add) had achieved. And, I promised not to go through all of that here – but… in all fairness there was no social media or this blog here when they were all small. So, who knows in all truth if I would have been that kind of Mama or not. AND, I rearranged her dressing table in celebration of her turning a whole two months as she has grown so lately that her changing area was just getting too darn small!

This was a team effort and I presume the start of many other changes to come in the future. They were ever so eager and oh so proud to be part of it all.

Oh and those little purple and white shoes there that look all a blur – (‘cause as Ive said before.. children like chickens are hard to capture) they are a little crochet gift in celebration from our Oumie.

hello..tap..tap..tap.. is this thing on?

Hello?

Is there anyone out there?

I really haven’t left you or gone that far away. I think I may be back to share with you again!

tap… tap.. tap…. is this thing on?

So much has happened and if you followed along here ~> instagram <~ you would have seen all of these moments…

Yes, we have finally welcomed our littlest seed from the stars.. our pretty flower – our baby girl, Danika Robin, to our little tribe.

So, I am sure you will forgive me for my absence. She has consumed all of me and all of us. With only a few moments to share with the world through the day a picture here or there I hoped would suffice for the time being?

I hope to be back and gentle ease may way into sharing again. I do hope you stay?

Many beautiful blessings to you and yours my friends.

Love Angie x

Day-Night Hockey Festival. Term 3

As always there were a gajillion photos taken in the vain hope that there would be a few pictures we could share here. The late afternoon into early evening lighting does not bode well for amateur photography.

There were 3 clusters of 4 dots that followed through on all the photos and most of the video clips – did you spot them? I think we should call them the little angels watching over our team as they played against the various school.

Our little team did very well, we are so very proud of them!

(ps Rob has become quite the vocal cheerleader on the sideline, dont you think?) 

September. Spring. and His day.

Well hello there, September.. Spring and a Happy Birthday to our eldest who adds another meander to his travels around the Sun.





Our eldest Spring baby turns 20 today and sadly this will be the first year that he will not be home for me to bake a cake for on his special day or to make him sit down at the table for the mandatory “happy birthday sing song”. I am sure he is smirking and breathing a sigh of utter relief from the safe haven that is his digs in another city altogether.

But, I will be sure to double up on all the aforementioned when he does come home!

Happy Birthday Tristan!

I’m not one for believing that the first day of spring falls on the first day of September. It’s not in my practice but sometimes as a mama one puts these kind of beliefs to one side and let her children just go with the flow and mention in conversation that the change of seasons is rather a gradual celebration of the turning of the wheel. We do this… For our loved ones…

I tend to gravitate toward taking a more inward reflection and outward celebratory demeanour during our Equinox and Solstice times of the year.

But it’s fun, right, to think that on this day it is officially SPRING?!



The little boys will get all dressed up in their brights to celebrate Spring at school tomorrow and of course with the change of routine where their school uniforms are place aside for a more relaxed set of home attire - well, you can just imagine all the excitement.

The days preceding have found my now chubbier looking fingers knitting up a little something for our little human due earth side in the not so distant future. I had left over baby knit from the slip on booties I made in the beginning of this adventure. This little bunny reflects all things Spring don’t you think? And, I must add that its so superfast and easy to knit up too. I am not taking or making any claim to the pattern – but for the life of me I can’t find the picture tutorial that was once shared on my Facebook wall and I thought it would be so super sweet to share this for you to give it a go, if you would like. My Bunny Project will be on Ravelry and as soon as I know who to give credit to I will be sure to share it there.

Spring Day Bunny

Plain knit (or garter knit) a square.

Fold in half and make a rough stitch through the centre.

Keep stitch going from the one end to the centre of the top first row and then back down to the other side of the centre.

This should make a triangle through the top half of the square.

Where the piece of yarn meets at the one corner of the triangle meets slowly pull both sides together to for the head with the ears.

Before tightly pulling the piece together add your filling and then sew up and fill and sew together what is left of the outer edges to form the bunny body.

I will be leaving said bunny plain with no added adornments as it will be for our new born litte one.

You on the other hand can now go crazy-town on eyes and a pretty little bow and whatever your heart desires.

I thought this would be lovely for Easter gifts too – too early to be thinking about that? Nope – never to early!

Blessings for Spring (or Autumn) my sweet dear friends…

Monkey Scare Tactics – part one

Making use of all that we have around us we started on the first of our “scare monkey tactics”. So far so good but its when we are not at home that they come out in full force. So let’s see how this week fares shall we?

In other gardening news we got our basil, egg plant and lettuce seeds planted into pots, for now, while we sort through our scare monkey tactics and clear another bed for them. The weather was absolutely beautiful the whole weekend so we could focus on all things outdoors, absolute bliss I tell you. I cant wait to get more seeds in for the new season.

How are your gardens faring this time of the season? Do you have critters that you have to scare off from ruining your growings and harvests too?

the Boy, his Cake and the Recipe.

Today we had our school cake sale and who would have thought it would have resulted in all this excitement.

This year he we decided to go with a beer box cake instead of the usual 40 plus brightly green and blue iced cupcakes or as Garren used to name them “pup cakes”. I certainly will be adding this recipe to the bake again recipe list.

Not only did it come out just right but it really was a one box everything. There really wasn’t much cleaning up once baked as the cake was baked in the foil lined beer box and then iced with chocolate butter frosting and dotted with smarties minus one that somehow ended up in my tummy (for the baby… no, really! – well, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it).

I do have the same dilemma every time I choose to do chocolate icing though. It doesn’t matter how much cocoa powder I add – I just can’t seem to get icing to look darkly decadent, you know, like the deliciously gorgeous ones you see on those beautiful photographed foodie blogs.… Do you know how I can do this? Or at least attempt it?

Garren didn’t complain at all, quite frankly he was quite smugly smitten with the whole cake.

Have you noticed that the smarties have become quite dull in colour over the years? I’m sure they used to be bright and more on the psychedelic rainbow side?







Mega Beer Box Cake Recipe  

(this recipe was sent out on the back of the cake sale reminder letter from Garren’s school)

Boil, cool & strain 500ml water, 150ml oil and 150ml cocoa and add once cooled 2 teaspoons vanilla essence.

Beat 6 extra large eggs and 3 cups of castor sugar until creamy.

Sift together 3 1/2 cups flour, 6 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt and fold it into the egg mixture.

Add the boiled mixture by folding it in and not over mixing.

Line a beer box cake (shiny side out) with heavy duty tin foil and pour the mixture in,

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 to 35 minutes.

Cool and ice.