Avalonschild and Her Mighty Minions: November in Pictures

In the beginning of November Zeds girlfriend has a birthday, she has very much become part of the family so we celebrated it like we would one of ours. She loved it and we all had a lot of fun.

Blowing out the candles. Happy Birthday sweetheart

Willowtree continues her experimenting with up cycling clothes and designing her own and Bug as tried a few ideas as well:) As part of the minions learning they each pick a country every six months or so to learn about. This time King Connaher has chosen Turkey, Willowtree Denmark and Bug Sweden. They will surf the net and learn what they can. We have an extensive home library with the learning series "Countries around the World" plus national geographics going back to the early 60's and if they need more a local library.They learn about the customs ancient and modern, where they fit into the world, politics, fashion, myths and more. They will choose a couple dishes from their country we try and find the ingredients and learn to cook them. Everyone in the house loves this part of our learning and we have stumble across some real treasures for the recipie book some that we have fallen in love with so much that we make them on a regular basis.
The puppies are growing and keeping us very busy with their antics.

Chubbs Magoo

Brewski Bear

Little turkeys get into a lot of trouble....

Bad dogs

I bought a bunch of lemons to make probiotic lemonade

So we decided to make a lemon clock

Bug making a lemon clock

She thought it was pretty cool and experimented with it a bit by sticking her finger and tongue on the lemon to see if she could feel the current and if it changed in flavor. She tried a potato, a glass bead, some wood and a stuffed animal. She is very fascinated by electricity and how you can create it.
We remembered the fallen dead at remembrance day with a poetry reading by King Connaher, talked about the ancestors they have that fought in the wars, listened to "A Pittance of Time" by Terry Kelly and had a minute of silence. Then we watched a documentary about world war 2 and talked about what the Minions thought needed to happen in our world to achieve a world at peace. They have startlingly different ideas. It amuses me often how they were all raised the same but are so very very different :) I consider that a parenting WIN!!

We found a gnome home in our woods

Bug investigated very gently to see if a little critter might live here...Nope its a Gnome home :)

Willowtree continues to experiment with costume and monster make up techniques and ideas.

Some of them are rather horrifying

She loves it and helps a lot of people with their costume makeup in October/November
Bug made a few different types of collages in art using, cut up magazines, ripped up fancy paper, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks and leaves and sticks.

Chocolate beet cake with a mint whipped cream icing

The Minions continue to bake and love trying new recipes. Usually as a group but the girls both bake on their own as well at least twice a month.

Dried Dandelion root

I think it is very important that we live in harmony with the land and have taught the Minions since they were little what was edible or not and what could be used for medicine in the wild. Since moving out to our acreage we have been able to increase our wild harvesting bounty to were we are enjoying it on a regular basis instead of a once in a while treat. We have incorporated wild harvesting into our lifestyle very comfortably and are putting enough down of certain things like dandelion root to last us the winter :) So we decided to experiment a with it and made a very yummy chai tea blend.

From the calendula we grew this summer we made infused oil and cream

Always aware of the turning wheel we started to prepare for Yule and since we had just made calendula cream we decided to make some body butter and creams to give as gifts. The girls also made some essential oil blends. Later that week we made flavored sugars and experimented with spice blends. Willowtree loves to cook and has talked often of starting a catering business and really enjoyed working with the spices. We butchered some of our rabbits and taught the minions how skin properly and to preserve the feet for talisman making. Then I taught them how to cook it, rabbit can be tough if not treated right. We do not eat meat very often in our home but when we do it is meat we have hunted or raised ourselves.