Nature & Nurture Journaling Class

It's time to sign up for Nature & Nurture: a six week online class (do at your own pace) covering the lives of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Beatrix Potter. We'll talk about their lives, the landscapes they lived in, how that nature translated to their writings, and what observations we can make about our own lives in nature. As a bonus we will also explore teatime with these authors and try our hand at painting some food.

Landscape has a huge effect on one's life, even when we don't realize it. The three landscapes of these authors are unique and varied. 

 

Each of these authors lived during a different time in "tea history" and we'll explore what kinds of tea they drank, what they had to accompany that, and how we can "taste history" ourselves.

The houses these women lived in played another role in their lives and writings.

We'll talk about the moods of landscape and how those moods appeared in the books that were written.

Included will be plenty of watercolor tutorials so you can add to your sketchbook!

And there will be an optional live Zoom each Wednesday evening so you can join others in the class to discuss what we are learning.

If you have any questions, find me on Facebook or Instagram and send me a DM.

I'd love to have you join me! Find the sign-up info by clicking this link. 

Beautiful August

I'm thankful for temperate weather so far in August -- it makes for a beautiful month. 

Flower therapy Monday: I loved the candy pink colors and the bright pink wheat stalks. 

I got two morning walks in and loved this view so much I had to paint it later in the week.

David met the sign that graduated in abstentia for him from eighth grade back in July.

White peaches are my favorite! They taste like a raspberry-flavored exotic fruit. Their color is just beautiful too!

I kept up the hard work on preparing for my fall online nature journaling classes. If you haven't checked them out yet, you can find all the information here! Did I mention that I'm also blogging exclusively about nature now on my new blog "The Nature Journaler"? 

Drew is about to end his Subway career so Michael and I went to visit him. 

Thursday brought more beautiful flowers:

Friday I snuck away to my secret point with blankets, books, paints, and food for a few hours of vacation.

It was glorious!

There was plenty of wildlife to enjoy as well!

Rachel heads back to college this week so we planned a mother-daughter outing to celebrate the end of summer. We headed to the Cake Bake shop in Carmel.

This was a FUN outing: chocolate cake, macarons, and loose-leaf tea!

This is a destination not to miss!

We're going to miss Rachel! She's got to go back and work hard on that engineering degree!

And that was our week......

Life on the Home Front: End of School

We are officially done with the school year! Hooray! Now for summer -- which may be more involved for me because there is no online school to occupy the kids for a few hours each day. Laura and I are going to brainstorm activities on Monday.

We made Laura her own "room" for the summer in part of our loft. She loves it and we love it. All of us want it for our own room. And she gets to sleep with a portrait of Grandma Laura above her bed.

We got a few senior pics taken of Drew -- at least enough to send one to the school and have something to work with if we need invitations for an open house later in the summer. Maybe we will get around to taking some more.

 I had a great day at the flower shop on Monday creating 40 bouquets. I loved the bright yellow pop of the Billy balls in these bouquets.

And then there were moodier red, white, and blue versions.

The day I've been waiting for has arrived: Laura has decided to read the Anne of Green Gables books this summer. Phew! I was worried she would never choose to read these. It should be a good summer!

I am working hard on my art this summer. I've been taking online workshops with John Muir Laws and Wendy Hollender. I'm nearly finished with this five-painting commission which is being turned in to cards and prints.

I'm also enjoying my in-person class. Last week was drawing, this week was portrait painting and I tried gouache. Next week will be oils!

And I need to keep up with the nature journaling too! Got the lily of the valley in before it died. The bloom life seemed so short this year.

And Friday we said goodbye to the school year. Laura graduated from elementary to middle school (heading into 5th grade). David said goodbye to middle school and heads to high school in July. James is done being a lower classman and looks forward to being a high school junior in July. Drew was still sleeping when we took this picture.

I spend a little time each evening crocheting while we watch an episode of something. I'm glad my arms have improved and I'm not in so much pain (sadly, it means no black tea again). I've been cranking out a lot of tea cozies!!!

Drew is happy to be DONE with high school!!!

 I've been so eager to create some beauty to photograph and managed to get the chance Friday afternoon. It made my heart so happy and full to be surrounded by beauty.

And bunting.....bunting is the best.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Life on the Home Front: End of School Term

In which I discuss schedules, the weather, and a headache.....

The children and I are sleeping in most mornings. I want to get up, but without the need to get the kids out the door at precisely 7:15am I don't feel as much pressure and sleepiness drags me to press the snooze button. Really I want to sleep in until 9 each morning, but it would be best if I got up by 8.  I am happy that the kids are getting more sleep -- I don't think they get enough during regular school times and it worries me. Moods are greatly improved by sleep.

My morning routine involves all the usual getting dressed, brushing teeth sort of things but I've got to be vigilant to throw in 15 minutes of gentle yoga. If I don't, I get all sore and achy and it takes weeks to get back to feeling well again. Everyone gets their own breakfast and most of us drink tea which everyone in this house is capable of making. The kids have had online school this past week so family worship has been at 8:45am before the 9am start of school. Michael reads the next passage of Scripture and we discuss prayer requests and pray. Then everyone heads off in their own direction.

Laura has been using my computer for her e-learning and that means I get a bunch of background commotion while I sit down to do my morning quiet time -- I mark the weather and temperature in my five-year diary, write a few lines in my yearly diary, record 3-5 things I'm thankful for in my gratefulness journal and then arrive at my Bible and prayer journal. I'm focusing on psalms right now in this crisis and trying to even pause and read one mid-day and evening as well. It doesn't take long (even 30 seconds) but it helps to re-focus.

David had a virtual cello lesson yesterday. Michael set the iPad up with the perfect angle and at 11am our teacher Face-timed in. Imagine this pandemic hitting 30 years ago without all the technology available to us now?

Outside the day began in the mid-60's but was predicted to drop about 35 degrees so I had to prioritize getting out for a walk. It was glorious! Temps in the 60's is wonderful! I have a severe allergy to cold and temperature change and try not to go outdoors if it is less than 55 degrees. I had to get my walk as the temps predicted for next week are colder until Wednesday. Our gym is closed now too -- so no indoor walking. I have to rely on the real deal.

For our first week at home we made a loose schedule:
8:15 Get up and Eat Breakfast
8:45 Family Worship
9-12 School
12-1 Lunch
1 Reading time (alone)
3:30 Tea Time
4 Chores
6:30 Dinner
8 Family Time with an episode

Loose schedules help me. We all know "what comes next" and can get ourselves on track. Today we are going to come up with one for "spring break" which runs for the next two weeks.

I managed to take a little time to try a daffodil painting with gouache. I paint at a table in my bedroom because that's the space I have. Our daffodils popped open in the night so it seemed the right thing to paint! I checked my diary and they bloomed a full 2 weeks earlier than last year! By the way, I've been posting Nature videos the last two days so others can see spring as it unfolds in my part of the world. You can find them on Facebook under Heather 'Winslow' LeFebvre or on instagram under heather_winslow_lefebvre.

It was Michael's day to bake and Laura volunteered to help him. They decided on shortbread. Every two minutes she ran up the stairs to ask me about the next step. It turned out great! By the time they finished it was quite past tea time and the shortbread was too hot to eat without crumbling so we decided to make into dessert later.

About that time I came down with a nasty allergy headache. I've been so thankful not to have had one of these intense headaches for some years and thought I had reached a good level of self-management to avoid them. I guess not. Or this is a bad year. Or something. Dinner plans changed. I went to bed and Michael got put on duty to make frozen pizza. Good thing we had some! I was grateful the headache calmed down after about 2 1/2 hours. What a relief. But I stayed off duty the rest of the evening to keep from lowering my head and bringing it back. Just as the headache was ending its worst we managed to get James out back to play his bagpipes as promised to the neighbors on the Next-door App. He valiantly stood in the 39-degree weather and played about 8 songs, ending with Amazing Grace. A few neighbors had come out to sit in their backyard to listen.

With Friday finished we ended the school term and have two weeks of break ahead. The Governor of Indiana did shorten the school year requirements by 20 days this year though. We wonder if our school will take advantage of that and give the kids a longer break? I don't know. Drew is a senior and is pretty sad that this is how his final semester of school is ending -- no prom in April, no sports, no getting together with large groups of friends, no "being a senior."

Food Eaten: Two leftover scones for breakfast with tea, toast and leftover sausage gravy for lunch, a piece of toast for snack, and leftover turkey soup for me for dinner while the others ate frozen pizza.

Life on the Home Front: The First Day of Spring

In which I discuss the first day of Spring, monitoring the butter situation, and the nearly exploding refrigerator...

I was reminded by Ann Kroeker earlier this week that this is a very important time to be recording what daily life looks like as life as we knew it rapidly changes into a new era. It didn't take much encouragement for me to return here.

We are a week into life at home, one week into the three weeks of groceries I bought last Thursday, one week into at least seven weeks of the kids being home from school (I'm guessing this will change to be longer.)

Everything is surreal. We are all hiding at home, waiting for the tidal wave to hit, wondering who will  get sick, who will be the first one, not wanting to even ask "who won't make it." Is this how it felt on the home front during Word War II?

I spent years reading books about World War II, interviewing friend after friend about their actual war-time experiences when we lived in Scotland, and watching my mom and other missionary wives live life in post-war Uganda in the early 90's. All that knowledge is rushing to the front of my mind as if it was there for a reason.

So it's not the toilet paper I'm worried about: it's the butter. It's hard to be excited about food when there's no butter! I have a limited diet: no gluten, no dairy (except butter), no nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, or peppers), no fermented foods or foods with vinegar, and the list goes on. Butter is important to me! And my family eats it at an enormous rate. It might be the first thing we have to break out for. I have 9 pounds left. At our current rate, that equals a little over two weeks. Why so much butter?

We've instituted afternoon tea times with a mandatory sign-up sheet for baking. Even Michael has been assigned a day this week (he doesn't bake -- I think he baked four loaves of bread before he left home as a teenager just so his mom could be assured he wouldn't starve). The tea time is to provide an activity for the afternoon that will improve our spirits and foster social interaction in the family. It's also requiring a lot of butter.....

We had our traditional First Day of Spring Tea yesterday, something I started the very first year we were married. I started so many traditions early on in our family's life because I was often stuck at home with little children or chronic illness, lived in situations with few opportunities to see people, and wanted to bring up the mood of the family. As life has gotten busier, these little traditions have become harder to keep, and probably not as necessary many years. Suddenly, there's time and the need for the traditions. So we pulled out and ironed the linen tablecloth I found in Scotland 18 years ago with the first spring flowers on it (the snowdrops, bluebells, daffodils) and we even pulled out the spring teacups. We found an old, half-used bag of frozen strawberries in the freezer (fresh strawberries are the tradition for this day), and Laura helped to whip up a batch of gluten free scones to make strawberry shortcake.

I am encouraging each one of us in our family to find some small way to encourage others during this time. Laura has made an extensive list of people she can create cards and letters for. Drew and I are working on creating nature videos so no one has to miss the first glimpses of spring. James agreed to play his bagpipes out back for a few minutes on St. Patrick's Day. It turns out a few people heard him, including someone who was missing her father who had passed away a few years earlier and who loved St. Patrick's Day. All this was learned from a friend who found it chronicled on the NextDoor App. James is planning to play again. Anything, no matter how small, is important right now -- important for building camaraderie, keeping everyone's spirits up, keeping an outward focus and keeping love alive in our own hearts.

I've also made a list of household chores we've been putting off far too long. Things like reorganizing closets, cleaning out cupboards, and cleaning up dried ice-cream underneath the fridge. All was going well until we heard scary sounds last night and a son yelling, "The refrigerator is exploding! Dad! Help!" along with the accompanying sounds of water spraying at a great rate from the kitchen. Moving the refrigerator had caused the water hose to pop off the wall and pressurized water to begin flooding the kitchen. "The water shut-off in the pantry!" yelled Michael. Drew and I ran in and turned the water handle 1/4 inch each way. Nothing happened. "It's in there, keep trying!" yelled Michael with his fingers pressed hard against the opening of the hose. I handed Drew a dainty china teapot blocking one side of the water pipe, threw a bunch of extra kitchen towels on the floor, and vowed to clean the small pantry as soon as possible. Finally, underneath, there was an actual valve handle, and with a great tug, the water was off. That led to shop vaccing up all the water and a trip for Michael out "into the apocalypse" to get a brand new hose from Lowes. By bedtime all was well, the floor shiny clean, the fridge replaced, and the drama of the day done.

Food eaten: tomato soup and old bread turned into garlic toast for most of the family for lunch; turkey soup for dinner along with bread I'd picked up at Wildwood Market while making flower bouquets on Wednesday. I think breakfast was toast. And we did have strawberry shortcake for afternoon tea.

PS: I've put a "Follow by Email" link at the top left of the blog in case you want to receive these posts in your email inbox.

Tea Cozies for Sale

I'm selling tea cozies on behalf of a few high school art students who are planning to take the Sketching England trip which I am leading this coming January. (If you are interested to know more about the trip, sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar and I'll be talking about it in my next issue.)

The tea cozies are $35 each with free shipping in the USA. The entire $35 will go to the students. The cozies are sized to fit a 4-6 cup pot.

Fall is just around the corner and a new tea cozy is a certain way to add some coziness to your days!

There are lots of colors to choose from!

If you are interested in purchasing a cozy, leave a comment with some way for me to contact you! (or find me on Facebook or Instagram and PM me)

Happy tea drinking!

The Tea Trolley: February

The shortest month is over. Despite its brevity, we packed a lot of tea into the month!

Here's Laura at one of our Sunday afternoon teas.

Valentine's Day was an excuse to decorate and have fun -- we did a Sunday lunch this year.

Candy makes such pretty decorations -- but the kids have no restraint. I'm going to have to give up on candy for a few years I think. 

Each place had a pile of valentines and notes.

For dessert we decided on a waffle bar -- everyone loved it! We had gluten free (and dairy free) waffles with toppings like strawberries, whipped cream, sprinkles, ice-cream, chocolate sauce, and of course real maple syrup.

This is on my agenda to do again soon!

Last weekend was our annual church women's retreat. We started at one house for breakfast and vision board making.

Then we came over to our house for afternoon tea and a sharing time.

There were regular scones and cheddar/bacon scones, veggies with hummus and dip, butternut squash soup, and little sweet treats.

Here's the soup:

I liked the look of the tea tier set against the books. :) 

Best of all is the look of having friends around the table!

And the next day there were leftovers for a little tea treat.

And another Sunday tea with Laura.

 And now we are in to March -- with the first day of spring only 19 days away (as Laura informed me several times today). We always have tea on the first day of spring...I'll have to remember it this year. When I started that tradition we had plenty of time, too much time, for things like tea. Now it is hard to find time.

A happy weekend to you all! May it include a few cups of tea!