Feast Day

We had our third annual All Hallows' Eve feast last week. This year it was a Renaissance Feast, and we welcomed the Locksley children back to our home. (You may recognize them from our trip to the Renaissance Faire earlier this year.)

Grace at the main table

The toddlers' table

Despite the Renaissance theme our menu ranged far and wide, and we didn't worry much about authenticity. After last year's feast we knew we wanted to scale down, so we limited ourselves to two main dishes that we knew we could cook.

Cooks in the kitchen

Good, stiff mashed potatoes

The menu looked like this:

First Course (Appetizer): Homemade bread and gourmet cream of mushroom soup, right out of the Cambell's can (yeah, we kind of cheated on that one). Lemon squash from the Narnian Cookbook to drink--it's a lot like lemonade, but more bitter because it's made of a puree that includes the peel.

Second Course (Main Course): Baked ham and cottage pie, which is just like shepherd's pie--meat, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and cheese--except that it uses beef instead of mutton. To drink, ginger beer from Ingles.

Third Course (Dessert): Turkish Delight and champagne. Okay, so it was sparkling juice really, but it makes a good substitute.

As the night wore on we also had oatcakes and Halloween candy with hot cider.

We decorated the dining room with wall-hangings and curtains to cover the bookshelves and other unsightly objects (computers, CD's, you know the sort). The tableware was goblets and wooden bowls (which contributed their own flavor to the soup). We did use forks; the Locksleys had to learn how to use them, but they caught on quickly. The food was good, the feast went well, and I may say with certainty that the Locksley children had a lovely holiday.



Previous feasts: last year and the year before that.

There are more things in heaven and earth...

"A Christian...living as he does in the huge universe all ringing with the footfalls of hurrying seraphim, cherubim, archangels, angels, men, and devils, will never be too peremptory concerning what creatures aren't in on the traffic. He can only demur and say, 'Elves? I don't know much about them. I've never come across one (worse luck).'"

- Thomas Howard, Myth: Flight to Reality

(I've been reading The Christian Imagination this term--one of those happy occasions when the interests of school and inclination converge on one book. It's an excellent, inspiring anthology of Christian perspectives on art and literature; this quote is from one of the essays printed in it.)

Keeping your kids from being dumb as rocks

I saw this article posted at HomeschoolBuzz.com.

Read a provocative column recently from the SF Gate titled "American kids, dumber than dirt: Warning -- the next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history." Ouch. The writer, Mark Morford, maintains -- as if none of us knew it already -- that the problem "is not bad at all. It's absolutely horrifying."

Read ten things parents can do to help here.

In the Mirror

Similar?

Miss M's picture reminded me of another picture of another child - it was taken almost exactly 14 years ago of another 3 year old. But that 3 year old is now 17. Where does the time go??

The Yellow Dress

This dress was given to Miss M by one of our favorite people, and we have an adorable picture of that person wearing the same dress as a toddler. So we wanted to have Miss M's picture in the dress, too. The problem is, I can't decide which picture I like best. I know that "less is more," but I have the hardest time weeding through and culling pictures of my kids.

OK, I deleted three. That was hard!

Cleaning

On one of my message boards, there was a post about the ten germiest things in our lives - would you believe that a load of clean, wet laundry was near the top of the list? Clean laundry - it topped even public drinking fountains! That led to a search of disinfectants, which led to some websites about hydrogen peroxide, which led to more natural cleaners, with the final result that my kitchen floor is cleaner than it's been for years.

I found these sites about replacing toxic household chemicals with natural products:
http://allnaturalbeauty.us/ani12.htm
http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/

I haven't used a lot of different chemicals to begin with - some diluted bleach for disinfecting, and soapy water for almost everything else - but these ideas will help me to get things clean that weren't really getting clean before. I used a vinegar/baking soda paste on my floor with a little bit of elbow grease, and it made a big difference.

Set Out to Dry

Morning in the Field

Evening on the Street