new shoes

As part of our One Small Change for March, we have been trying to keep our spending local, as much as possible. We happen to live in a town that has become world-famous for having its own currency, which is awfully inspiring. We are very fortunate to have access to some wonderful traditional, local businesses, and it's so satisfying to know that rather than lining the pockets of some faceless corporation, we are instead helping to put food on one of our neighbour's tables.

This week we picked up Imogen's new handmade shoes from this shop. Although the shoes are twice as expensive as the popular high street brands, they are handmade, handfitted and built to last. Imogen wore her last pair for a year! Because they are handmade in the traditional way, the leather can be separated from the soles in order to be stretched. And they have said they'll be happy to re-fit the outgrown shoes to our next little girl's feet when the time comes. How's that for service and value-for-money?

Another benefit to buying local is that I can feel certain that these shoes were produced ethically. I can't bear to think of another little child halfway around the world in a factory, making shoes for my little children.

Other things we've been buying that are produced and/or sold locally include our veg, our dairy products and cards and paper products. This month we also managed to buy all our craft materials here in town, including fabric, buttons, wool and ribbon. And we visited our small local hardware store for the bits and bobs we needed to spruce up a corner of the garden, instead of travelling ten miles to the big DIY store in the next town. Although I suspect we paid a few pence more for our purchases, when you compare that to what we saved on petrol, I think we've still come out ahead.

For our April Change, we are planning to take our household further into the cloth realm. We already use cloth nappies and I've been using homemade mama cloth for about a year, so moving from paper towels and paper napkins to washable fabric alternatives makes good sense. Hmmm. I sense a raid on my fabric stash coming on....

little hands knead to keep busy...

I was reminded how much fun it is to make homemade playdough by this lovely lady's post (which included the recipe) the other day, so the girls and I got to it! Luckily, it's one of those recipes for which you are bound to have all the ingredients on hand.

hope springs

Devon winters can be hard work. No, it's not the coldest corner of Britain. It's not the darkest. But I do believe it is the wettest part of the British Isles. Perhaps not in terms of total precipitation, but certainly in that damp feeling that permeates every corner of the home, pervades the air and penetrates the bones. From November to May, it can be very difficult to warm up. You know things are bad when you have to scrape the ice from the inside of the car's windows.

We moved to the Midwest of America for a few months last winter. Now that was cold! I'm talking about forty-degrees-Farenheit-below-zero cold. It was curious weather for a girl who had lived half her life in Florida and the other half in the south west of England. Almost every day was bright, with vivid turquoise skies, and the air was crisp and dry - so dry, in fact, that the skin on my knuckles became paper-thin and began to split open. The wind was bitter, and I had the remarkable experience of feeling ice crystals forming in my nostrils! Of course, there was much wearing of coats and scarves and gloves and snow-pants, but there was one thing in particular that became significant through its absence. Mud.

Devon winters (and springs and autumns) are full of mud. And this isn't just any old mud. No sir-ee. We're talking Devon red clay. Mud that stains your fingers with its ferrous goodness. Bright orange, sticky smears that insist on immediate removal and washing of anything they sully. The ground here stays wet for many months. The clay greedily holds on to every drop of moisture, and the sun is neither high enough in the sky nor present with enough frequency to encourage evaporation.

This makes for tough times when you have littlies who love to spend time outside. Trying to get my three little ones ready for an outing can take up to an hour. There are the wooly long-johns to go on, the t-shirts and trousers (or in Imogen's case, always tights and a twirly dress), the fleeces or wooly jumpers, the waterproof trousers, the gloves, the coats, the hats, the scarves and finally, the ubiquitous Wellington boots. But wait! The waterproofs and the boots are still covered in mud from the last outing. One of the hats is still wet. And where's the mate for this lonesome mitten? Then, just when you think you've got them all ready, a little voice squeaks, "Mummy, I need a wee."

But eventually, we are all ready. And in Devon, if you can just make it out the door, a whole world of adventure and beauty awaits. And in late February or early March, you might even just find a snowdrop or two. And that is when all the mud, all the wet, all the gray skies of the previous months fade into distant memories. And the fun begins.

a handmade birthday

We had a birthday in the house this week, and the girls and I have been very busy making all kinds of things for Daddy.

clean thoughts

The girls go back to kindergarten and nursery tomorrow, and I go back to work, so it feels like the holidays are well and truly over. And there's nothing to bring you down with a  mid-winter bump like a spot of cleaning. Yesterday was the turn of my own home - I took down the Christmas tree, tidied shelves and cleaned out the fridge. Today I turned my attentions to Imogen's nursery classroom.


As part of our non-financial commitment to the girls' education, we (along with each family in the class) take a turn cleaning our children's classrooms. Imogen's class is very small - only eight children - so this was the second time this term I had responsibility for cleaning it. And being the holiday clean, I had to go in twice - once at the beginning of the Christmas break and again at the end to freshen up. Not really how I would choose to begin and end my holidays, but that's just the way this cookie crumbled.

Once upon a time, I had a little love affair going on with my vacuum and duster. My mother was the daughter of a naval officer and the product of convent school, so you can be sure cleanliness was next to godliness when I was growing up. In spite of my youthful abhorrence of doing chores, I eventually became enamoured of a spotless home, and when I became the mistress of my own home I took my cleaning duties very seriously. I am a little embarrassed when I recall a time, when our first daughter was a newborn, that I shouted at my husband and forbade him from ever hanging the nappies on the airer again. He had hung them all wrong, you see, and not only would it take them longer to dry like that, but they also looked awful! Eva had been born by emergency c-section, and for the first time during our marriage, I was in no state to run the house. I mark that experience as the beginning of the end for my standards.

With each new baby, I have had to learn to let go a little more. Once, laundry came straight off the line or out of the dryer to be ironed and folded immediately and put away. Once, the kitchen floor got swept twice a day - whether it needed it or not. Once, the kettle and toaster were rubbed  to a shine every week. Now, three babies in three and a half years later, I consider it an accomplishment if we don't wear all the clothes in the washing basket before I get around to folding them! Nowadays I'm just happy if the food the baby is eating off the floor is from today rather than yesterday. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but you get what I'm saying.)


But oddly, when I step into my daughters' classrooms to begin the weekly clean, something comes over me. I am filled with a calmness and begin to approach each task with love and care. The Steiner classroom is well known for invoking a sense of reverence in every person who steps over the threshold. It's a gentle space. One instinctively lowers the volume of his or her voice, and slows his or her movements to a gentler pace. I know that when my girls are in these rooms with their teachers and the other little children, they are embraced in a loving, homelike environment. And I feel inspired to contribute to the love held within the walls of these rooms by caring for the room and its objects.


Today, as I moved round that room polishing, brushing, wiping and sweeping, I thought of this article about cleaning I read recently. Linda Thomas writes, "...if you are not able to do what you love, you should try to love what you do." In my daily life, I often choose to forgo some of the more menial tasks in my home in order to spend more time doing things that I love - playing with the children, catching up with old friends on Facebook or knitting, for instance - but housework remains an inescapable necessity in any home. So tonight, as I tidied downstairs after the kids were asleep, I vowed to bestow the same love and care on these chores in my own home that I had in the classroom earlier today. Because surely if I approach my daily chores with a happy heart, the walls and the objects within will reflect love and warmth back onto my family.

snowy days

We don't often get snow in sunny (ha!) Devon, but the Arctic temps that have enveloped the Northern Hemisphere this year finally left their mark on our part of the world. The girls were ecstatic to wake up to snow yesterday morning.

 We quickly donned our snowgear, waved Daddy off,

and made for the park.

It was so cold!

But that didn't stop us from having fun!

We were really proud of our little snowpeople.

little hands at work

Today was a proud day for a mama. My eldest daughter, after watching me applique letters onto fabric for Daddy's surprise birthday bunting, asked me when she would be able to sew. I have been looking forward to sitting her down in front of the machine for some time now, but, mindful of the Waldorf philosophy of waiting until a child is developmentally ready (rather than until the adult in charge is ready), I haven't mentioned it even once. I hesitated for a moment - was my just-barely-five-year-old really ready to put the pedal to the metal? Wouldn't her tiny fingers be lambs to the needle's slaughter? I bit my lip and finished zig-zagging round the letter 'b'. Then I turned to my baby girl and asked, 'Well, how would you like to sew today?'


Her sweet face puffed up with excitement. She actually seemed to grow a little before my eyes. I finished up with the applique, then moved so she could take my place in front of the machine. We both laughed - her leg was too short to reach the pedal! So I moved it up to the footrest of her chair, then showed her how to lift and lower the presser foot, guide the fabric and which button to press to sew backwards. I surreptitiously moved the speed control to the slowest setting. She watched, listened carefully, and silently nodded her head.

My very grown up five-year-old then bit her own lip, lowered the presser foot and very gently eased her foot down on the pedal. As the needle started eating its way through our little bunting flags, I realised my eldest daughter had just sailed over a threshhold from infancy towards girlhood. I thought back to my earliest memory of sewing with my mother, some 28 years ago. I remembered the swell of pride I had felt whilst sewing two pieces of red felt together in the shape of a Christmas stocking for her. And I looked forward to cultivating a lifelong love of making for my own daughter.