One Small Change for March - Food Choices

Did I say I would get this post done this weekend? Hmmm, that was silly of me. The weekend seemed to have other plans, very nice ones, not involving the computer, (except for just a bit of vintage fabric browsing, and a bit of homeschool lesson planning)...

So our March small change is not really small at all for us, as you may have realized by now we put a lot of though into our food choices, we always have, and now some big changes are happening. I do realize there may be other families whose goal is to move to closer to a vegan diet, and here we are doing the opposite. Kinda funny. Food choices are so personal, I am certainly not saying that what we do is best, I do wish for everyone to have good healthy food from this earth to feed their bodies, we are trying to do what we believe is best for our own family. (My post here last week explains a bit of where we are at now, and this one here really starts at the beginning.) You may also have realized by now that I tend to ramble on and on about this, (can you just imagine the conversations we have here at home, or the thoughts swirling around in our heads), so now I am going to try to be somewhat brief...

What we are no longer purchasing...

Margarine! You know, the earth balance stuff that is supposedly good for you because it is non-hydrogenated, etc... long before I became concerned with our consumption of various vegetable oils I was greatly distressed by the plastic tubs it came in. This was the first thing to go from our refrigerator. I could not bring myself to buy another tub of it at the store! So we bought organic butter instead. Of course it still comes wrapped in paper and in a box, still too much waste in my opinion, but until we can be making our own someday, this is what we will have to do.

Soymilk. Whatever size carton it comes in it is still totally un-recyclable. Again, I could not bring myself to purchase another box. So for now we are buying organic, whole, unhomogenized milk in glass bottles. We trade in the used bottles when we buy more. I am in the process of looking into raw milk sources in our area, fortunately there are some...

Soy yogurt. Not something that we bought regularly anyway, but a good example... there are at least 10 to 15 ingredients in plain soy yogurt! Or we could eat yogurt that is only one ingredient. This we will definitely be making for ourselves soon!

Speaking of dairy, I am going to help Sara with goat chores on the farm this season. After babies are born and mamas are ready I will be helping with the milking and everything! We hope to learn a lot over on the farm this year!

More things we aren't buying...
Vegan mayonnaise (yes, veganaise tastes really good, oh well...)
Vegan cheese. We didn't buy this much either. (Neither the cheese nor the mayonnaise have been replaced with the real versions. I'm sure we will never buy mayonnaise in a jar. Not too sure about the packaged cheeses either.)
Canola oil. I have been buying only olive oil and butter. Sometimes I am using palm shortening for baking. Good cause it is organic, non-hydrogenated, etc... very bad cause still in big yuck plastic tub. Need to stop using it, but if I baked with only butter right now it would be way too strong for us, we are still adjusting to these new tastes.

Things we are still buying but cutting down on...
Tofu and tempeh are the big ones here. We especially like tempeh, and need to keep in the good protein sources, though of course we eat a whole lot of beans too!

I suppose eggs would be a good substitute for the tofu. We are working our way towards eating them, but some of these changes are happening slower that others. We want to eat them, but wow, this is all pretty crazy for us, it's like we aren't sure how to go about it... I have found a local source for free range, organic, soy-free eggs though. Yay.

We are still doing well with our original small change, food packaging. Haven't even bought a box of crackers in several months. Though still haven't made our own either. Crackers and tortillas are on my list of things to make soon.

We are comfortable with our decision to no longer be vegan, and we are making steps towards what is an ideal diet for our family. We would prefer to be eating eggs from our own chickens, to be milking our own goats, but for now we are making the best choices we feel that we can. We could not wait to make these changes, so this is were we are starting.

One of the craziest things about this all though... I became vegan when I was barely 20, anything I can remember ever cooking has been vegan... I sure learned how to be a good vegan baker... now I feel like I am learning to cook all over again! Fun. I am up for the challenge!

WIP Wednesday (on Tuesday evening, again)

I am happy to say that I spent much of my weekend stitching away at various projects! First there was some sewing.. did I mention the apron I am working on? It is for dearest Suzanne, (down in the meadow), it is so fun to be making something for her, but I cannot show you pictures, it must be a surprise! So onto other projects...

This little embroidered girl received my attention most of the day on Sunday. I really needed to begin a new embroidery project, missing all that stitching I did on Chloe's special gift, I had done a sketch of this little girl earlier in the week, I am using wonderful organic cotton poplin again, one of my favorite fabrics! I outlined her in stem stitch, that is all I was going to do, then I filled in the ribbons on her bonnet, then I started filling in her whole dress, now the blue on the bottom is looking kinda off, not sure if I will fill that in solid or perhaps work some other little design in there... wish I had a lighter pink to fill in the bonnet, there is a surprising lack of pink in my piles of embroidery thread, shall have to remedy that soon... Perhaps I will do a vining flowery border around her, I don't even know what it will be made into, so fun to work on though. I have this obsession with filling in embroideries, tiny stitches, I am using only two strands of cotton...

When the girls were outside playing, or sleeping at night, I did a bit of spring surprise needle felting, my first attempt at some little eggs, I need to make more of these...


And then , as if I don't have any projects going on, I decided on Monday afternoon that I could not go on any longer without learning how to knit granny squares. I think I got off to a good start, not perfect, still trying to figure out a couple things, but one step closer on my way to making that granny square afghan!

I think I have enough to keep me busy for a while! Happy creating!

vegan journey pt. 2 & one small change

I know I had said I might write next a bit about our experiences raising vegan children, perhaps I will at another time, but because I also want to write about our one small change for March, I just really need to get on with the story now...

So there we were, vegan forever, of course. (Oh yeah, part one is right here.) Our families were for the most part supportive. It was simple because it was a given that there were no compromises to be made. (We face many more issues trying to explain our reasons for most of our other lifestyle choices.. homebirths, no vaccinations, homeschooling, Waldorf, no television, no plastic toys, no synthetic fabrics, super particular about books... we are surely sometimes considered to be difficult. So us being vegan was really the least of it.)

For so many of the earliest years being vegan was a very big part of our lives. But eventually life became about so many other good things, and we just happened to be vegan, and in many ways we didn't think about it much anymore.

I wrote once here about our decision to start using wool, and how it really it all started with beeswax. The feelings we were left most with were how could we choose these synthetic materials, these petroleum based crayons, fake leather shoes, I don't care if it's recycled fleece, it's still plastic... (personal opinion here, respectfully shared, not at all judging!) ... and so we chose beeswax. And a couple years later we started using wool. You see it takes us quite a long time to come to these decisions...

But we certainly were not at that time thinking that we would ever not be vegan. Obviously something changed though. I am realizing now why it has been a little bit difficult for me to continue this story, there is so much to it and we are still so much in the middle of it. So what you are reading here cannot be all of the story...

I will tell you now though that we are no longer vegan. And I will tell you just a few of the specific things that brought about this change, these things that we have been putting much thought into over the past year or so...

Much of it goes back to the natural versus synthetic thing. We want to eat real food! Now of course we have always eaten plenty of real, good food. We eat a lot more beans, whole grains, and vegetables than we do tofu or other soy products. We almost never ate any of the fake soy meats, only occasionally bought soy cheese, (in recent years only, cause most soy cheese wasn't even vegan a long time ago), and in general our use of processed packaged foods was fairly minimal. But... we used soy milk everyday, not to drink but for cereal, baking, Jason's coffee, that he drank every morning for 10 years, (but he quit last year, hasn't had coffee in almost 6 months!), and sometimes we bought soy yogurt, and then there was the soy margarine, in the plastic container, with the various vegetable oils... And I would say that we don't eat a lot of soy products? That sure seems like a lot to me. Lots of trash too! Only recently has there been recycling options for the #5 plastic tubs in our town. And I am seriously sad and disturbed to think of all the soymilk boxes that we have thrown away over the years.

And not only do we want to only eat real food, we want to produce as much of our own food as we can. Jason and I grew our first garden together 13 years ago, since then we have had gardens of various sizes, but moving around a lot makes it a bit more challenging. We own the house we live in now and this will be our third season gardening here, but still, we have plans to move to a bigger piece of land, we will grow everything we can, and we at least want to have chickens and goats. Now of course this brings up more issues for us, can we really take responsibility for these animals, for bringing new lives into this world, and what will the outcome of that be? What will we do when the chickens are not laying so well, can we even emotionally handle losing an animal to illness or tragedy? We sure do not have the answer to these questions yet. But we are putting a lot of serious thought into it.

And now friends, because this has gotten to be so very long, I think I need to say again to be continued. But much sooner than last time I promise! By next weekend at least I will be back to tell you our March one small change, which is all about new food choices.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read what I am sharing here. It comes out so long, and really sometimes I am actually being brief. I am very happy to read any thoughts you might like to share as well.

WIP Wednesday ~ Little Lamb

I have lots of spring crafting thoughts going through my head these days! There is so much great inspiration out there too. (Rhythm of the Home!)

So this here is what I call Angela's Little Lamb. She has written a wonderful poem as well which some of you may have seen in Living Crafts. I believe the pattern will be published on their website soon, but Angela had sent it to me a while ago. This is the first animal I have knitted other than hens and chicks, which are obviously as simple as can be. Hard to photograph a dark brown lamb, I would have preferred to knit it in natural colored wool, but this was all I had at the moment and I really wanted to get started. The girls are thrilled with him... we think it is him... He was half finished when the girls got sick. One day Chessa fell asleep on the couch with him in her little hand. His legs were not sewn on yet but he was already loved. I must confess though that he still has no tail.

Little lamb is standing in a flower meadow that the girls made. Do you see all those little flowers... teeny tiny ones cut carefully from fabric... It really is very pretty. To see the wonderful things that are created by my children makes me very happy.

Wishing you all many happy creating moments too!

happy monday moments

I had a pair of pink stripe knee high socks. They were my favorite. Pink. Stripes. Knee highs. Lots to love.

Plaid makes me happy too.

March makes me happy too!


(older photo, this is most certainly not March here!)

I could make a list of 100 ways my family makes me happy. Many more ways than that really...

A tree, a forest, a river... more than happy.

Words... kind words shared so generously by many of you. Thank you for that kindness!


We had a very nice weekend. There was a little bit of knitting and a lot of sewing. Health returning. I did a lot to make sure we were ready for Monday. Something I always try to do actually. On Monday's I try to get a really good start to the work week so that hopefully some of the other days will not be quite so intense. We do just a bit of school work in the morning, today it was some math practice and then a story. Tomorrow I won't work in the morning and we will get in some good lesson time. (Really, honestly, I will be doing homeschool posts again. It just seems that sometimes doing the school work and writing about, and photographing it, well it's perhaps a bit too much all at once...)

So I made sure we had a good nurturing weekend for ourselves. Creating, baking, planning some meals for the week. And I made sure that I was emotionally prepared! I made sure that I spent some time close with the girls this morning before I started working. I even took time for some yoga. And then I had a long but pretty good and productive day.

And I was sure to have happy thoughts and have happy moments.

So, about those great pink knee highs... I lost them a few years ago. I could never figure out what could have possibly happened to them. I was sad that they were gone forever. And then today I found them!

catching up, work at home woes, sewing love, etc...

Greeting friends! Quite a bit of catching up to do... Thank you so much for visiting here. If any of you have thoughts to share on my work at home woes I would be most interested in hearing them! Always striving for balance....

Sickness has decided to visit our home. We are on day five now! Not complaining too much though, can't remember the last time everyone was sick, probably at least a year ago. So, there has been lots of resting, cuddling, staring out the windows. Fortunately the view is nice. We got two more feet of snow over the weekend! Seems it has mostly passed, and now we have a bit of blue sky to cheer us. And plenty of books to pass the time. Farmer Boy, Milly-Molly-Mandy, Tiptoes Lightly... this is the first time Chloe has been sick since she has been reading well on her own. Makes it feel kinda special. Besides, we are pretty sure the sickness came from little miss Ila, it is totally worth it, we had a wonderful visit with our dear farm friends last week!

Where have I been? Sitting right here working. (Except for the day I was sick enough to join the girls on the couch.) I realize though that I have probably never mentioned here that I have a job. Two jobs actually. (Obviously I am not counting such jobs as mother, wife, teacher, homemaker... my favorite jobs!) Now I know that at least some of you have caught on to the fact that I have my own small business, an online cloth diaper/natural baby shop. That one makes me pretty happy too. But yes, there is another job. And while I am so grateful to have it, so grateful to be working at home, always with my children... it is so very hard!!! Details are complicated... I work for my mom, (she lives in los angeles, she is the best), I have done this job for about 5 years now. I work on the computer, I do not like working on the computer, we prefer to never have the computer on during the day, only after the girls are in bed, I try to do most of my work at night, I used to work only at night, but that can get very tiring, especially after years of it, so I am always trying to find a balance. Sometimes I have to surrender and spend one or two days a week working. Sometimes I feel like I am always working!! Sometimes I feel like I am just sitting here with my back turned to my children, sometimes managing homeschooling at the same time seems impossible, sometimes I break down in tears. Like yesterday, and last week.

Now would I sound totally crazy if I told you that I want a third job? (But it would replace the computer job.) Some of you may also know that during my first years as a mother my only job was the part time sewing I did at home. (Yes, I am so very fortunate, I have always been home with my girls.) It only provided a bit of extra income, bit it is of course something I LOVE TO DO. After Chessa was born I started working with my mom, and soon after that I stopped sewing clothing for sale, I did not have the time, I preferred to sew for my family only, and it was hard to do anyhow, there was nothing like etsy, we didn't even have a computer at first, we are in a small isolated town. Now though, I am ready to be sewing professionally again! Because like I said, it is what I LOVE TO DO! Not only is there etsy, (I have had shop plans for several years), but hey! I own my own online shop! I can sell my own organic children's clothing right there on my own website! So what am I waiting for? I bet it's not hard to guess that the answer is time! But I don't want to have to wait much longer, cause at the sewing machine not many days end up in tears, and it is something I can feel good about, stitching away in the space that shares my sewing area along with the girls play area. And of course these days they are often stitching away too. My dream, and it will come true, I just need to stay strong and make it happen!

(Some random pictures just for fun. Both taken on the same day about 3 years ago.)

Little Chessa, in a dress originally made for Chloe several years before, out of some favorite fabrics that I still have quite a bit of, somewhere...

mother/daughter sewing moment... happiness!

So I guess I should go ahead and let anyone who is interested know that our online shop is Little Sprouts. It is also something that I would like to be able to put more time into. Hopefully Jason will even be rebuilding our entire website soon. (And if any of you happen to know of some good logo design resources, something that we could do ourselves, preferably very inexpensive or even free, please let me know.)

The girls are doing much better today. Enjoying a morning snack of fresh baked bread and honey. And then their dolls are going to get up and have breakfast. They have been sick in bed for many days too!

This is the first time I have ever written a blog post during the day. (Though it was started last night.) Guess I just needed to take a bit of time for myself. And perhaps now you will forgive for some of my slow posting here. I really do intend to get back to my vegan posts soon. I think in the next one I will share a bit about our experiences raising vegan children. You may have to wait another week or so though!

Many of my friends have been posting their lists of ten things that make them happy. I would like to return this weekend and share my list too. See you soon! Now back to work....

WIP Wednesday ~ aprons and fairies and pinkness

Along with all the handmade valentines waiting in Sparrow Post, including many, many doll valentines, the girls found new aprons waiting for them.

A bit wrinkled already, they are being worn often, but not for cooking, because they are afraid to get them dirty. So I guess we still need some new kitchen aprons. Sounds like fun sewing to me.

I have had this fabric since last spring, really love it, happy I have more of it.

I also really love french seams.

I'm working on another special apron project already, but it's a bit of secret... I will share a little more soon though.

(and yes, I know it's not really wednesday yet...)

one small change update

I finally have an update on our first one small change project. I had made some bags right away, and then made a few more this weekend to make sure we were ready for our big grocery shopping today. (We only do one big grocery trip each month, then maybe a couple other very small trips.) I also spent time this morning making sure all of our glass jars were ready to go, because I am using those for a lot of the smaller grains, nuts, beans, etc... It was certainly a bit of extra work, but so so worth it. Look how many bags I saved! Now there were some things I already used our own containers for, but this time I really did every single bit of our bulk shopping, and it's a lot!, without grabbing a single plastic bag! (Wait, does this count... I used little plastic bags for a few bulk herbs, but I re-used empty bags from the cupboard at home. Some spices I was able to put into their own jars because they were already empty.)

My bags are nowhere near as pretty as Sara's. (Though actually the white floral fabric was a gift from her. I'm not saying it's not pretty, just not as pretty.) And I still am not sure what I am going to do about plu numbers. I did come across this lovely blog and saw that she has a great bulk bag tutorial. I thought I was crazy for considering embroidering on the plu's, but that's what she does, I think it is most likely what I will do too. I also really like how she sewed in the ties... wish I had thought of that.

I did purchase a few packaged foods, though not without some guilt. Three bags of pasta... I was surprised they didn't have any whole wheat pasta in bulk. We don't eat much pasta anyhow, someday we will definitely just make our own, but I felt like we needed it on hand for quick emergency dinners. Sounds silly, why would dinner be an emergency... I bought peanut butter in a jar, but those will of course get used for more bulk shopping later on. Olive oil. Three bags of frozen broccoli... I'm now sitting here sighing thinking of the plastic bags that will just go right into the trash. I bought a jar of artichoke hearts and a can of black olives. At least those can be recycled when they are empty. They are not even things I usually buy, but I am having a kind of "what to cook for dinner" crisis, mostly because of the great vegan dilemma going on in our heads!

Phooey, the carrots came in a plastic bag too. Imagine though what we will be able to accomplish in the summer when fresh produce abounds in our community, including our own backyard.

My February small change thoughts have a lot to do with food choices, but I am not ready to share all those thoughts yet. That is where the "vegan journey" posts come in. I hope to spend some time writing another vegan/food post over the weekend. Thank you for sharing your comments, I look forward to continuing the conversation soon.

We visited the library today also. I was about to say that we broke our record for number of books stuffed (gently) into our bag, but I just went back and saw that I am wrong, it's a tie, 21 books again, all in one bag. (I made it as a diaper bag many years ago. Now it is used mostly for library trips and picnics.)

This is the second time we have seen these deer in the same place on the way to the library. Glad we had the camera this time. They did not seem at all concerned that we were there, these pictures are taken from the car, not zoomed in at all, this is how close we were. One peed right in front of us, and I did get a picture of it, but I feel kinda bad about it, so I'm not posting it. I think these are the same deer that Sara posted pictures of the other day.

These two started rubbing noses and being oh so sweet!

And my goodness, what a lot a writing I have done tonight! Thanks for visiting :)

Our Vegan Journey... part one

I call it a journey because it really has been a very long time. Nearly 17 years I believe. I was around 18 years old when I became a vegetarian. I had one other friend who was also. I hadn't learned anything in particular about vegetarianism, I just decided that I was not okay with eating animals. I eventually sought out more information. I remember sitting on the floor of the library with several of the books that I had found. And so I guess you could say that my real first reasons for becoming vegetarian, and then vegan, were all about the animals. The undeniable reality of what factory farming is made it impossible for me to be anything other than vegan.

I was 21 when I met Jason, he was almost 20, we had both already been vegan for a couple years at that point. As sympathetic as I was towards the animals, Jason was probably 100 times more. Or even more than that. His great caring can cause him much suffering.

A year or so later we were living our happy vegan life together. We learned more along the way, we became more committed along the way. We dreamed of having our own farm animal sanctuary. We did not wear leather shoes or wool, we did not eat honey or refined sugar. These things were always very easy for us, we were just living in a way that was common sense to us. We never felt like we were making a great sacrifice, we were certainly did not feel deprived of anything.

In addition to the obvious reasons regarding animal welfare, it was not long before we learned of many other reasons to continue our vegan lifestyle. There seemed to be so much illness and disease associated with the typical American diet, which is of course high in dairy and meat products. Antibiotics, hormones, chemicals in our foods... these issues are of great importance to us. Sometimes we would wonder why no one else seemed to care.

Now for a moment here I will jump ahead and share with you just part of my feelings on the subject today. As far as the unhealthiness of meat and dairy products goes, I realize now that there is a big difference between conventionally raised/factory farmed meat and highly processed dairy products, and animals that are humanely raised, organic, pastured, perhaps right in your own backyard. (And I am of course well aware that most vegans out there will completely disagree with the idea of an animal being raised humanely for food.) Remember though, this was back in the mid 90's (oh so long ago...) and there were not really any alternatives. So vegan we were!

We knew we would be vegan forever. I think everyone else believed it too.
But there is now a second part to this story...

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright...

Well, it was partly cloudy, and perhaps you could call it fair, if by fair you mean not super freezing... I am certain that winter has not gone yet, but I am feeling very hopeful for the return of spring.

We actually celebrate February 2nd as "Brigid's Day", as that is what Chloe likes to call it. She has quite a fondness for Brigid, as do I. I love the image of her as keeper of the hearth, as midwife, I see her as protector of the home, bringer of strength, and peace... I am so grateful to say I have felt a lot of peace in our days this past month. (Much more than in December, a month for which I had such high hopes, and at the end was left quite drained.) I am feeling more strength as we head towards warmer and brighter days.

Our nature table is reflecting the calmness I am enjoying these days, as well as the paleness of color that is surrounding us outdoors. There will surely be some pinkness joining the picture soon though.

We ended our day yesterday at our fire circle. (Successful winter bow drill fire.) Brought out the last of our fir branches from the holidays, laid them across the flames, and said goodbye to the darkest days of winter.