COME OUT AND SEE US THIS EARTH DAY WEEKEND

Maya and I will be at the Northfield Earth Day Celebration this Saturday April 27th from 12 noon until 4 pm selling our handmade soaps and knitted washcloths so if you are in town drop by and say hi, we'd love to see you. 

This is going to be a great eco friendly event with educational presentations and workshops.  Come out to make a birdhouse, seed balls, and a pollinator box. Learn about growing your own food, creating bee lawns, composting and much more. 

We hope to see you there!

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SPRING HAS SPRUNG, THE GRASS IS RIZ, I WONDER WHERE THE FLOWERS IS?

The flowers are coming 😊

Spring and Autumn are my favorite times of the year.  Spring is a time of rebirth, a time when everything comes alive again after the long, cold, quiet winter. This time of the year is when I feel the most inspired to move and create. I spent last month making soaps and knitting washcloths and this month I'm focussed on planting. I have several trays of seeds going under the grow light right now and the chamomile was the first to emerge. The excitement of nurturing something to life never gets old. 

A few days ago Ulises and I made a 1.5 hr drive north to purchase a locally handmade potting table. I'd been looking for one the last 3 years because our backs can no longer tolerate the squatting and bending over every planting season; his back has been pretty useless for years and mine is headed there. I was lucky to come across a potting table I could afford on Facebook Marketplace and not only was the price right but the craftsmanship is beautiful. The couple that built it used repurposed wood and I was actually surprised at how solid it is. I really love it and it will be nice to finally stand upright while filling pots with soil and plants. 

So far I've started the following:

Calendula (for my salves)

Banana Pepper (for food)

Celosia (for the dye)

Zinger Hibiscus (for tea)

Beans (for food)

Bunching Onions (for food)

Gomphrena (for soap decorating)

Mongolian Giant Sunflowers (for the birds)

Spinners Ivory (or my spinning wheel)

Broom Corn (to make a broom)

Bergamot (for the pollinators)

Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers (for the dye)

Echinacea (for tea and tincture)

Yarrow (for pollinators and skin issues)

German Chamomile (for tea to stabilize mast cells)

 

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NATURE JOURNAL FOR MINNESOTA KIDS IN SPANISH!

Ever since our homeschooling days ended I've wanted to create something fun for the homeschooling community in Minnesota but I wasn't quite sure what. There are so many great curriculums and activity books out there already but one thing I feel is missing for kids are nature journals. We created our own when my youngest first started observing birds and then we started using a nature book for adults but I always wished we had something more geared specifically towards Minnesota children so I'm putting together a nature journal page by page for kids that can be used by homeschooling or non home schooling families and it will be in both English and Spanish. 

As we move through the seasons I'll be sharing individual pages for people to download and use and then next year at this time I'll compile all pages into a booklet that can be downloaded as a whole. The nature journal will be only for things native to Minnesota. If you are interested please subscribe to my blog to get alerts for when each page is ready for download. 

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