This Week.....

.... we have enjoyed an early family Christmas celebration...

All very busy opening presents.

.... we have celebrated Eden's fifth birthday...

Please forgive me for the paper plates and cups - at least we could compost them afterwards!

Birthday Girl.

Enjoying the very talented face painting by a clever kindy mum.

Eden's tiara birthday cake.

.... we have done some Christmas crafting, by ourselves and with some local friends...

The spice angels we made with our friends.

Christmas cards the kids made with their Grandma.

.... we have coped with the current heatwave by going swimming and relaxing...

.... we have had Grandma over for a stay...

.... we have enjoyed cricket and homemade beer...

Even Brannen has taken his place on the couch to watch the 'kiyet' (cricket)

.... we have done some Christmas cooking...

Gingerbread Christmas tree decorations.

.... we have made some Christmas gifts...

Lined tote bags for the girls to carry their swimming gear to swimming lessons.

My first attempt at a reversible tote with box corners - happy!

 ....receiving my university results. One distinction, and two high distinctions. I am very happy with that. I am changing my course slightly for 2014 onwards, to a double major in Sustainable Development and Community Development. I am slowly hatching ideas and plans for my future 'career' (or not) direction and am very excited about what the next few years may bring.

.... the lead up to Christmas is so exciting! What have you and yours been up to?

Our Family Christmas Rituals

Christmas is such a magical time, I truly love this time of the year. The Christmas story is beautiful and meaningful for even those of us who just loosely align themselves with Christian beliefs. It speaks of the timeless strength of love, the humanness of spirituality and the humility of greatness. Christmas is a time of reflecting on one's journey, drawing inwards as a family unit, yet always offering hospitality and kindness. It is a time of sharing, and celebrating what each of us have to offer our communities.

Establishing Christmas rituals has been something I have very much enjoyed over the years since Nath and I were married, and have had children. We have put a lot of thought into what we would like our children to learn from the rituals we put in place, and what messages we want them to take away from the Christmas period. In recent years, we have become adamant that the commercial face of Christmas is not for us, and have tried to instil a different way of celebrating into our children's experience of Christmas.

We do this in a variety of ways. Our focus is on giving. We don't write Christmas wishlists, we write lists of what we are going to give to others. The kids don't get to peruse catalogues circling every toy they wish they could have. The focus is on how we can make someone else's Christmas that little bit lovelier.

Every year before Christmas, we ask the kids to choose some toys that they would like to give to children whose Christmas may not be as bountiful as ours. We donate these toys to our local women's and children's domestic violence refuge. Our kids choose without much input (sometimes I need to say, no sweetheart, that one is broken/sentimental/not in good enough shape to give as a gift)- it is their choice as to what and how much they give. They know where their gifts are going, and they accompany me to do the drop off. We discuss the traditional story of St Nicholas (a version of this story of the impoverished maidens) and talk about how this links to the modern story of Santa. (Interestingly, even though we have always been very upfront that the 'Santa' of today is not 'real', they cling to this belief in the jolly fat man in the red suit. We have given up and now just go with it. Childhood only lasts so long.)

Another tradition we have is to travel the 55km to the nearest metropolitan train station, then catch the train into Perth CBD to show the kids the Perth City Christmas Lights, the illumination of the old Perth GPO and then go up to the Myer Santaland so the kids can ride the Santa Express train. This year, instead of buying tea, we took a packed picnic and sat in the Government House gardens. We put all our leftovers in a clear plastic container and left it on a bench, hopefully for one of the homeless people who use the gardens as a sleeping place.

 

Of course, a much-loved part of our Christmas ritual is the putting up of the Christmas tree. We did this today, a couple of days early, but I felt it was deserved after we attended our local community Christmas fair with three very tired but very well behaved children. We dress our tree with homemade (mostly kid-made) decorations, and other homemade decorations adorn the room. This year, we set up the absolutely beautiful wooden Nativity Scene that Nath's parents bought the kids from Taiwan when they moved back to Australia, and used it to tell the story of Christmas to the kids. Over the coming weeks, we will have more craft days and make more decorations to put on our tree.

 

Our gift giving focuses on the handmade and secondhand treasures. We usually give the kids two or three presents plus a stocking filled with little things like new toothbrushes, cherries and hair elastics. Christmas gifts are not an extravagant affair in our house. We make batches of hamper foods for gifts for grandparents, teachers and friends, and have a Kris Kringle for Nath's brothers and their wives. We keep it small and personal and very much enjoy thinking about each person we are making or treasure hunting for.

Finally, our last Christmas ritual is to go camping over Christmas. We head down to Margaret River and spend a few days camping, swimming, beach-going and exploring. Christmas Day is quiet, usually a roast on the Webber or prawns and cold meats, and as it's just our family, we kick back and relax and enjoy the day together. When the kids go to bed, Nath and I sit under the stars with a homemade alcoholic eggnog, Nath plays his guitar and we reflect on the year.

I'd love to hear what you and yours do around Christmastime - do you have any treasured rituals? What does Christmas mean in your family? Happy, happy festive season, everybody!

Right Now

Last exam tomorrow. I feel as if life is about to un-pause. It's marvellous. Sadly, my commitment to study has diminished slightly with every exam that passes, I am limping to the finish line whilst dreaming of the unimaginable freedom I will feel when uni is finished for the year! Not that I haven't enjoyed it, on the contrary, I have loved the content and the learning. But..... summer holidays!

Meanwhile, please allow me to indulge some of my holiday dreaming...

Wishing: ...we could have been with family in the UK for the dedication of a delicious newborn nephew.

Reading: ... An Anthology of Modern Verse, found in an opshop for $8, complete with old clippings and an inscription from 1925. Lovely.

Looking Forward To: ...Christmas! I love this time of the year, and I have so many gift and craft ideas to get onto after exams!

Creating: ...a memory wall in my bedroom. A place for artwork, photos, quotes, letters and inspiration.

Planning: ...handmade Christmas gifts, including some beautiful wall name plaques for the girls.

Cooking: ...Christmas pudding. All the fruits are soaking in a generous amount of sherry and brandy, ready for baking into pudding for Christmas Day.

Arranging: ...Christmas meat. We sent a pig, purchased from a friend, to slaughter last weekend, and are picking it up butchered and dressed next weekend. A full freezer, including a lovely rolled pork roast just in time for Christmas!

Enjoying: ...the longer days. Evening swims, walks and bike rides, drinks on the deck, no wonder it has been hard to concentrate on studying!

Hoping: ...my baby boy (who really isn't a baby anymore) enjoys his second birthday this Saturday!

See you on the other side of my last exam!

Oh, The Weather!

Here in our town, for most of the year, we complain about the weather. It's a local pastime. A not entirely unwarranted one, however, if this year's transition to Spring is anything to go by. Until two weeks ago, we were pretty consistently still getting very cold nights, and rainy, grey days. We got back from sunny Queensland in the school holidays and were disappointed to be considering the need to light the fire! Two weeks on, however, and yesterday we reached 40 degrees celsius, with hot days forecast for the next week, at least. The air has changed, the cicadas are out (as are the blowflies and mozzies, with a vengeance!) and Summer is definitely here. We really only have two seasons here - bloody cold and bloody hot.

However, the mornings are beautiful. Nath and I have been getting up at six most mornings, and it's such a lovely way to start the day - before the kids get up, soaking up some early morning sun on the front deck with the birds singing in the garden (and Bella bellowing at us for her morning milk!).

The arrival of what is promising to be a long, hot summer means we have to get a few things in order. We have been working on getting the retic set up in the backyard for all the vegie beds to minimise need for hand watering. We received a decent amount of dripline retic from someone on Freecycle a while ago so Nath has been engineering that into a workable system. The front yard is on an automated retic system but as it is sprinkler based we would like to get someone out to talk us through converting it into something a little more waterwise.

We are also buying a self filling cement water trough for the goat pen. At the moment they just have buckets of water but two rambunctious kids means lots of tipped buckets and on these hotter days their water requirements are quite substantial. It means buying 'new', and I feel like we've done a bit of that lately, with fencing equipment and feed tubs and beekeeping equipment and so forth, but I think it is the best decision for the health of the goats.

Also, in not very eco-friendly news, we have decided to get our backyard pool up and running. As we don't use air conditioners, the pool would be a lovely way to spend the hottest days, and a local pool pass for the family costs $250. We can get our pool functional for far less than that. We have recently learned from a friend that we can run the pool for far fewer hours than we thought so we will trial it for the Summer and see what difference it makes to our energy usage.

I really do love Summer. I love the lead up to Christmas, and all the plans for crafting and gifting, and driving around looking for Christmas lights, and taking the kids into the city to see the Christmas displays, and soaking up their wide-eyed wonderment at being allowed up so late and being in the city and going on a train! I love Christmas carols and getting geared up for Christmas camping, and choosing the Christmas menu, and cooking a roast in the Weber in forty degree heat, then not feeling like eating it because it's too hot and eating prawns instead. I love Pimms, and trips to the wineries and breweries and cideries and distilleries. I love TV cricket and backyard cricket and BBQs at the beach and lazy days swimming at the local lake with friends. I love seafood, and mangoes and berries, and salads. So many salads. And shorts and singlets and summer dresses, and bare feet, and beer at the pub on sunny Sundays. I love thinking that I love fishing, and then complaining when Nath wants to take his fishing gear everywhere we go, then, once all the hard work of setting rods up and those first few awkward casts into the water (and around jetty legs and into each others' lines) are over and done with, realising that I actually do love fishing after all. Until I get bored. I love the noise of the cicadas and frogs, the cry of young magpies, and running away from swooping, cranky, mama magpies while waving my arms around my head like a lunatic. I love longer days, with the house all opened up overnight to try and cool it down before another hot day, and evening drinks on the deck, while a bare-chested pack of kids runs hollering around the garden but doesn't come too close to the house in case they get sent to bed. I love Vacswim, and spending days sitting by the pool, or floating in the pool, counting kids' heads and meeting half the town around the splash pool. I love hanging the 'swimming bag' near the back door, where it is needed on a daily basis, and wriggling into wet bathers that we forgot to hang to dry the day before, and frantically searching for thongs, kickboards and towels when a spontaneous swim is announced. I love the constant slightly panicked neighbourhood talk of snakes, of learning again to walk with our eyes to the ground, and keeping a tally of all the snakes that have been sighted so far, and how far they are from our house, and what kind, as if to determine how close we were to actual danger. I love Christmas beetles, and Christmas spiders. I love watching my skin turn from milky white, to cream, to the colour of sand, and finally, to the golden bronze it settles on after a couple of weeks in the sun. I love the smell of suncream and salt and chlorine. I love that my hair colour wavers between the whitest sunbleached white to slightly green, pool tinged blonde, and that the kids all end up looking like little surfie dudes, all long legs and bleached, windswept hair and brown skin.

How are your plans for the festive season shaping up? Do you love Summer, too, or does it make you want to hibernate with iceblocks on your belly and an airconditioner pointed straight at you?

Keep Your Cool

We are already a week into 2013, and I hadn't intended on being away from the blog for so long. Sometimes, though, it's nice to take a break from all the things we think we should be doing, and instead spend time on things we actually should do more of.

We have been camping, and swimming (lots of swimming!), and playing cricket, and frisbee, and having water pistol and water balloon fights. We've been bike riding, and scooter riding, and kite flying, and going to the beach, and sand castle making, and kayaking, and searching for fresh water mussels in the river. We have been to wineries, and breweries, and distilleries, and ice-creameries. We've been through a giant maze, and four wheel driving through a giant forest. We have been spending time with lovely friends, and lovely family, from near and far. Nath and I went to see Katie Noonan, Mia Dyson and Wendy Matthews, playing an intimate acoustic gig at my favourite hotel in the Hills. Miya learned to swim in the river near where we were camping, and now she is like a little fish, so full of confidence. A very happy sight, from my girl who screamed whenever we took her close to water when she was younger. She was the oldest of the eleven children we were camping with, and took to the role of pack leader with reckless abandon. Our little tribe of barefoot, grubby little campers became independent explorers and friend-makers, and were right at home among the tents and caravans.

What a lovely holiday.

Too soon, though, it is over, and we are back amidst washing and work and weekly routines. It was very hard to drop Nath at work this morning. I told him it felt like he was a book I had borrowed from the library, and now had to return. Like he doesn't fully belong to us anymore.

Nevertheless, this is where we are at and our days are largely about coping with the heat right now. While the news stories focus on heatwaves happening right across the Eastern Seaboard, our little town in the West quietly goes about it's business of enduring strings of days of 40-degrees-plus. Tomorrow, it is expected to be 45 degrees with a possible thunderstorm (which usually means no rain but bloody muggy!) and as I type at 7pm it is still 37 degrees.

Despite the heat, we have managed to avoid using the air conditioner (apart from a very short spell one afternoon, when Nath's brother and his wife were staying with us from the UK. Nath's brother was unwell for a day or so and definitely needed some cool air! They coped extraordinarily well for the rest of the time!), and we even handled the weather okay whilst camping when nearly every day was above 40. We are acclimatising to the heat again, this being the first year we have chosen not to use air-conditioning, and are finding other ways of 'keeping our cool'.

We get up early to do the things that it is just too hot to do later in the day, such as hanging washing, feeding and watering the chooks, or going for a run. We use the ceiling and pedestal fans and have the windows and doors open in the evening, overnight, and in the early morning, shutting the house up and drawing blinds and curtains at about 9am. We then try to do very little in the heat of the day, to keep as cool as possible. We drink loads of water and have a thirty second cold shower if we need it. That's usually enough to manage the heat. In the evenings, we put the kids to bed, then utilise the rest of the light to do some more of the labour-intensive or 'hot' work, like cooking or gardening.

It has been surprisingly easy to get used to. In some ways, it is almost easier than having the air-con running all day, because it can be hard to acclimatise to the outdoor heat when your house is a constant 18 degrees. I often wonder at people who have their house so cool, that they need to wear warmer clothing! Some days are harder than others (I don't cope as well with the humid weather) but none have been unendurable.

We have chosen to do this for frugality and environmental responsibility, but I definitely do not think this is the right thing for everyone. We are young and fit and healthy, and used to the warmer climate, and are able to keep hydrated. People who are elderly, or unwell, or not in good physical health or families with very young babies should definitely use the air conditioner in extreme heat. Hot weather can be dangerous for some.

So, how do you keep your cool?

Peace For Yuletide

A very big welcome to my new readers, and thank you to Rhonda from Down To Earth for sending them my way. I feel very honoured as Rhonda is such a big influence in the world of living simply.... it feels a little bit like royalty popped in for a visit! I've enjoyed 'meeting' new people here on my little blog - I hope you have enjoyed being along for the ride.

Today, however, I am being a bit lazy, and semi-recycling an old post from an old blog of mine, with a few little updates.

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I was researching today the origins of the word 'Yuletide'. Tide was easy... this means season, or time. Time for what, though?

The word 'yule' has contested origins. Most sources merely state that the meaning of 'yuletide' is 'the Christmas season' or 'the period extending from Dec 24 to Jan 6'. It seems that the 'christianisation' (and commercialisation) of this festival has resulted in a loss of meaning, not just of the event itself, but even the literary roots of its name. In fact, the Oxford dictionary reportedly will only accept the meaning of yuletide that relates specifically to Christmas, despite the fact that the winter festival that Yuletide originates from predates Christ by a few centuries.

Traditionally, yuletide marks the festival of the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its southernmost point. Some believe that the word yule has its origins in the Nordic jol (wheel), which may be derived from ancient Indo-European word meaning 'to go around', the assumption being that yuletide refers to the turning of a season, or the time at which the year is at its low point, ready to come round again. Yule has been a time of significance for pagans across Europe for many centuries. It was a time of great festivity.

The celebration of Christ's Mass (Christmas) at this time of the year originated in the fourth century, and pagan Yule rituals were, over time,  incorporated into the Christian tradition. Since the Christianisation of the Yule festivals, the celebration of Christmas has undergone many adjustments and debate, according to the prevailing political and church leaders of the time, including the banning of observing Christmas on more than one occasion, amid fears that it was too pagan and unbiblical. Today's Christmas celebrations are a mix of ancient traditions (evolved and altered over the years) and newer practices.

I like the idea that Yuletide, or Christmas, or the Winter Solstice is a time of reflection at the turning of the season. In a more modern interpretation, I look at it as being a time of slowing down after the craziness of end of school years, holiday fun and Christmas preparations. It is a time to mark the passing of a year, thinking back on its ups and downs, and look forward to the coming year.

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Our family is spending Christmas and New Year camping with friends. To me, this is the ultimate way of slowing down and reflecting. Holidaying in the outdoors, spending time with friends, long lazy days in the sun, with only the bare necessities to get by on. I encourage everyone to put some thought into how they will unwind when all the gifts are opened, all the Christmas dinner dishes are washed and all the guests have returned to their homes. Another busy year is just around the corner, why not take some time to rest before it gets here?

A Considered Christmas (Part Two - Joy)

Yesterday, I said I loved Christmas. I especially love how we do Christmas. Over the years, we have developed a few little rituals and ways of doing things to make our Christmas celebrations fit us perfectly as a family. There are a thousand ways of 'doing Christmas well', keeping the Earth and its people in mind, and finding a way that fits your family is essential, otherwise you will be unlikely to enjoy it or repeat the experience. With that in mind, I am going to share how we are preparing for Christmas this year in our house.

Decorations

This is an old photo - don't worry, our tree isn't up yet!!

This year, we are selling the bulk of our pre-children shop-bought decorations in favour of homemade ones. Some will have been made by me, such as our advent calendar bunting, and some will be made by the children. A couple of friends and I have organised to do a Christmas craft 'swap', where we each plan one craft activity to do with all of our children, and most of these will be Christmas decorations.

Gifts

This is probably the biggest area that we differ from the 'norm'. The gifts we give each other generally can't be found in a department store catalogue, and most of them will cost nothing. There are a couple of exceptions - I bought each of the kids a wooden toy from a friend's home based business, and I am buying Nath a hunting knife from a man who makes them locally. Most of our gifts, however, will be homemade. If we do happen to venture out to the shops for gift-buying, it will be to op-shops.

For extended family on Nath's side we do a Kris Kringle. Each brother (and partner if they have one) 'buys' for another brother. I use the term 'buy' loosely, as while there are no restrictions, a lot of us tend to homemake our gifts for each other. Since there are five brothers and four of them are married, it reduces the gift buying dramatically. For everyone else, it is handmade. Grandparents love gifts made by the kids, and we tend to give the kids' great-grandparents a homemade jar of something, and a photo of the kids.

We have stockings, which I made, but they are by no means stuffed full and consist of smaller handmade gifts (such as the halos in the picture - which didn't last too long!!). Our kids generally only get one or two gifts from us, plus their stocking, then maybe one to share.

Our wrapping 'paper' this year will be made from Christmas-y material for the gifts going under our own tree, or recycled paper painted by the kids for everyone else (our butcher is old-school and still wraps everything in butchers paper - I love it.) I am making all our gift tags by hand (apart from the ones the kids will make with their friends) over the next couple of nights.

If this all seems like it will take a lot of time, remember, we don't watch TV, and I save a whole lot of time by not needing to do Christmas shopping!

Food

I only buy one thing outside of my normal grocery shop - and that is a grassfed, organic, free range pork rolled roast from The Naked Butcher. Other than that, we just shop as usual, spending the same amount as usual, and make everything from scratch as usual. This year we are camping with friends from December 23rd until after the New Year, so we will take our standard camping fare along with us. Food gifts are made with things we generally have on hand anyway, or things in abundance in our garden. We even make our advokaat (alcoholic egg nog) from scratch!

Spreading Some Christmas Love

My lovely sister in law, Mezz, posted a question on her blog yesterday, which prompted some very thought-provoking discussion with our kids. What can we do to spread a little extra love and care around at Christmas time? Here is my comment on her blog after our discussion:

Hi Mezz,
Thanks so much for this post. We used it to provoke some very special conversation with the girls. We posed your question, then told the story of the REAL 'Santa Claus' (our kids know the man in the red suit is a fake!!) and talked about how in our area there are loads of people whose Christmases may not be very happy ones.
We decided to focus on our local Women's Refuge (there are often children staying there too) and the girls decided to wrap up some of their toys they don't use anymore to give as presents, make some Christmas cakes and Christmas decorations, and take them all in.
Unfortunately, most Christmas 'welfare' campaigns focus on people outside of our own communities. Its really important to focus back in. Our kids are so darn privileged, I worry that they may be growing up without a real understanding of some of the issues their own local people deal with everyday.

The girls made me so proud during this discussion! The ideas were theirs (except, of course, that we suggested where our gifts may go to), and we are very much looking forward to making extra decorations and cakes to brighten up other families' lives!

So, in a nutshell, these are our Christmas plans. Like I said, this way of doing Christmas suits our family perfectly, but I would love to know how you and your family celebrate!