A Nature Shelf! {week 4, January 2013}

To round out our snowy themed Nature Shelf for the month of January, the Little Guy was really thrilled to find that the Fairies had built a snowman!

His first obsevation though? "I hope that snowman doesn't melt! He's so close to the lovely warm Fairy House", to which I asked "Is the Fairy House warm?" "Well, of course it's warm Mama, there's smoke coming out of the chimney, so they must have a fire inside"!

Of course!


What are you doing to bring a little of the outside environment into your home? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Shared on Friday's Nature Table, at The Magic Onions

Food Waste Friday! Breaking Some Eggs ... Metaphorically!

I just love The Frugal Girl blog. Really - just love!

Each week (well - most weeks) she blogs about her food waste, a kind of public declaration, aimed to reduce her own food waste. And she invites the rest of us to join her!


So, I have had two pretty disastrous weeks in a row (here and here), and I know that on first glance this week won't look much better.

Are you familiar with the saying "you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs"? Well, this week is my attempt to make things a whole lot better, but it had to get worse first!

I've been really inspired by seeing some of the pictures of the contents of people's beautifully organized and sparse refrigerators on other blogs for Food Waste Friday. So inspired that I actually cleaned out my fridge ... and found a bunch of really expired stuff. And some stuff that was just wasted, too. But I think that the combination of actually knowing (and seeing) what is in my fridge, and better menu/shopping plans, will be just the ticket.

(So you have to know, before you see the picture of the inside of my fridge, that My Good Man is the King of Condiments (really! - that is one of my nicknames for him!) so the fridge still has a lot of his sauces and whatnot in it).

Not too shabby! Let's see if it looks this good in another week!!

(I'm realizing that I'm not very good at remembering to take before pictures, only after ones, although I'm not sure you would really want to see the inside of my former, disorganized fridge).

And now for the not so good stuff ... the waste :-(

A jar of mincemeat from at least the previous decade, moldy pasta sauce and butternut squash soup, hard sauce (for Xmas Puddings!) and a half used sachet of yeast all bit the dust. I was really upset though about the breadsticks. They were made by me from left over pizza dough, and I was really pleased that I had found a great way to utilize the leftover dough. So I baked them, and popped them in the freezer ... and when I took them out to accompany a meal the other day, they were as hard as rocks. So now they're breadcrumbs in the freezer (thanks for the tip, SimplyBurbs readers !) but still it made me sad.

Mashed potatoes pulled from the freezer for a particular meal, then our plans changed and we didn't eat them, then they got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten, until they were all slimy and yucky. I tried to reuse these in something like potato bread, but they were too far gone. And these were potatoes we dug up ourselves from our CSA Farm, too.

Very old jar of fruit spread, jar of marmalade sauce (ditto, very old), herbal tinctures (about a decade past their best before date) and a plum pudding from a previous decade all saw the trash can too.

So, this looks bad, really bad. But actually the only real food waste from this week was the pasta sauce, soup and mashed potatoes; the rest is the result of a disorganized fridge.


How was your Food Waste this week? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

A Nature Shelf! {week 3, January 2013}

Each week I post new photos of our Nature Shelf (my own little nod at the beautiful Nature Tables that are found in many Waldorf classrooms, schools and homes).

Some of the Nature Tables created and posted on the web are truly spectacular; they are works of art, made of felted wool, plants, both live and dried, wooden houses for fairies and gnomes. Beautiful!

But frankly, I have neither the time, the skills or the energy to make that happen every week.

And the thing is, The Little Guy has just as much fun with the little Nature Shelf I put together for him as I think he would with an elaborate Nature Table.

And that is why I wanted to start posting about my Nature Shelf every week, to show that they don't have to be exquisite, or time consuming, or painstakingly made. All told, I usually spend less than 15 minutes on the Nature Shelf each week, and I am far from a skilled sewer or felter. If I can do this, you can too!

So each week, we add a little something new to the shelf. I always start out with a home dyed play silk as a back drop, and then our Fairy (gingerbread) House.

For the first week, I add Crystals and Rocks (week one represents the Mineral and Crystal Kingdom).

Week two, is for the Plant Kingdom, so I add something representing plants, flowers or trees. Sometimes it will be real, like pine cones or teasels found on a walk, other times it will be made, like the felt holly leaves I made for the December Shelf.

For week three, we include something from the Animal Kingdom; again sometimes I make something, and other times I will use a small toy.

And lastly, week four sees the addition of something from the People or Elemental Being Kingdom. I like to add little homemade Gnomes for this week; they are so so so easy to make (I should add a post about these some day!) The Little Guy just loves to see these little folk!

This being the third week of the month, I added a little creature to the shelf. Here in the Mid Atlantic states we are just beginning to truly see King Winter this week; it is quiet outside, but for the squirrels busy busy busy about their days!

I had half planned to make tiny origami birds to sit on the tree branches, but I'm not a skilled origami maker, and ran out of time, so this little squirrel (from our Spiel Und Holz Birthday Ring) stepped in!


What are you doing this week to bring a little of your outdoor environment into your home? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

Shared on Friday's Nature Table, at The Magic Onions

Food Waste Friday! Not Again ...

I just love The Frugal Girl blog. Really - just love!

Each week (well - most weeks) she blogs about her food waste, a kind of public declaration, aimed to reduce her own food waste. And she invites the rest of us to join her!

After the debacle that was last week's Food Waste Friday (posted about here) I vowed to pull it together and turn myself around this week.

Let's see ...

One of the things I like about oranges is that you can keep them in the fruit bowl for more than a couple of days, and they will still be fine ... apparently that isn't so with these ones :-(

I found this container in the freezer, with some serious freezer build up! I'm not sure is in it, to be honest, but I do know I haven't used those containers for a while.

The sad state of cleaning out the cheese drawer ... those sad little remnants of moldy, dried out cheese. And the ginger? I always think I love ginger, buy it and then realize that actually I don't cook with ginger often enough to warrant buying it fresh like this.

But the salad made me really sad; salad is pretty expensive, and I really hate to waste it. This was just too far gone to use.

There was also two kiwis, one popover and half a Chinese carryout meal that went out (My Good Man got to them, before I had a chance to take pics).

So ... what is my lesson learned here? Buying too much? Unclear planning? Eating on a whim, rather than checking the fridge? All of the above?! I'm not sure, but seeing these photos every week, is making me realize that Food Waste (something I would have previously thought I had under control) is somewhat of a problem in my kitchen.


And how was your Food Waste this week? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!