Family Time...Nature Walks at Cape Cod

View from their deck

Well, Hazel and I returned home from my parents house at Cape Cod. It was nice and relaxing. We got out both Wednesday and Thursday for nature walks. It was not as warm as we had hoped, but it was nice. Of course we got to drive home through a wet snow/rain mix. Oh, well.

One of Hazel's favorite places to run

The best part for Hazel is she gets to spend lots of time with my parents. My father has amazing patience (funny I don't remember that growing up) and will play like a ____-year-old (fill in the age of his grandchild). So she loves to play with him.

Pop showing Hazel the blueberry bush--Hazel saying no pictures!

My father recently cut down a cedar tree and made some natural blocks for Hazel as well as some stumps for us to make a bit of an obstacle course for her.

Wood blocks and checking out the stumps

On Wednesday, my mother, Hazel and I went for a walk. (All of us were going to go to the Mass Audubon, but my father's stomach started not feeling well, so we changed our plans and stayed local.) On the Cape they have a bike trail from South Dennis to Wellfleet. It is an old railroad track that has been paved over. There are two parts near my parents' house. One takes us to the center of town and the other to Nickerson State Park. We drove over to near the trail (we could walk but we would have to walk on the streets with no sidewalks and it is a rather busy street). We parked near my mother's friend's house and went for a walk. The salt marshes are so beautiful to walk near. We of course also brought a pail to collect our treasures.

First Sign of Spring--Snow drops!

We walked quite a long way and Hazel got tired. Since it was not as warm as I would like I could only carry her for a short bit without my asthma bothering me. So I walked quickly to the car and left my mother and Hazel playing in the leaves to get the stroller.

The interesting moss we saw everywhere

Checking out some nature

Checking out the marsh

Checking out the view before we turned around

On Thursday, we went to the Mass Audubon. Hazel of course fell asleep in the car, so my father stayed with her while we went in to check it out. After a bit, we went out and woke her up and then went on a walk. We have a membership with the Mass Audubon since Hazel and I took a class for 2-year-olds and a guardian last year at Drumlin Farm. We highly recommend attending an Audubon program. It was wonderful.

Another sign of Spring--Don't know why it was in bloom, but it was great to see yellow in February!

Well when my mother and I went in we were told that there has been a very special visitor from Mexico. They did not know why this bird decided to visit them, but they were very excited. It is a blue bunting. Of course it did not make an appearance while we were in the Visitor's Center, but waited until we were on our walk and left before we returned. Oh, well. From the pictures they had, it looked more like this one, but a bit lighter. It was just starting to get its blue feathers.

Source: http://www.google.com/imgres

We however did have a lovely time. We walked toward Goose Pond.

Checking out the pond

The View of the Marsh and Cape Cod Bay

Checking out Goose Pond

The View and Wet Path (High Tide was Receding) from where we turned around

It wouldn't be a nature walk at an Audubon Society without some birds:

A Cardinal

A Chickadee under the feeder--I had seen some woodpeckers here but didn't take a picture

The One I was most excited to see---A Hawk (you can see his tail up there mostly)

We saw woodpeckers, sparrows (including I think they said a house sparrow), chickadees, finches of all types, doves, the hawk, cardinals and squirrels.

After our walk we went to Provincetown for dinner to our favorite restaurant--Napi's. We were in luck. Off season they have a Thursday night special of buy one get one free on most entrees. I guess it was actually a good thing our plans moved from Wednesday to Thursday for this trip.

My mother and I also did a bit of shopping. We stopped by my favorite store--The Priory at the Community of Jesus. It is such a lovely place to spend a bit of time with many religious books, handmade food (jams, granola), beauty products, candles, knitted ware and art. They always have beautiful music playing and it smells so lovely. I like to go just to relax. You can see the angel that watches over their new church from my parents' house.

Well there are our pictures of our week. Hope you had a good one.

Please, please, vote for me in the Circle of Moms Creative Moms Blog competition. You can vote daily!! And please join us later for Sharing Saturday!!

Oh, and an interesting article to share: How to Stop Your Kids from Stressing  from CNN.

So Excited!!

I'm so excited. I just received an e-mail from Circles of Moms saying that Crafty Moms Share has been nominated to the Top 25 Creative Mom Blogs 2012 list on Circle of Moms. Now I need you my dear friends and followers to vote for me (and you can vote once a day!!). So if you would please click on the picture at the top (and now on my left side bar) each day. I would really appreciate it.

I am still enjoying family time with my parents and Hazel. I will share pictures after I come home of our adventures.

For today I will share a quick You Tube link really explaining a lot about a Waldorf/Steiner Education. In case you have been wondering about it at all.

Being Creative

Every once in awhile I feel the need to create. Does that ever happen to you? It happens when I have let life get in the way and I don't feel like I have had time to make something on my own or my own design. Tonight was one of those nights. As I was trying to create some order out of the chaos my craft area is right now, I came up with an idea this afternoon. And tonight I decided I wanted to take the time to do it.

Hazel has started asking us to tell her stories after we read some books to her. Sometimes I tell her a watered down version of a fairy tale and sometimes I make one up. The made up ones don't have to be anything to difficult or too long. In fact I like the made up ones since they are short. Lately I have been telling her one about a princess who lives in a pink castle surrounded by beautiful flowers and then there are dark woods. In the woods there are many creatures including unicorns. The story is about the first time the princess meets a unicorn. The princess always plays in the woods and brings food to feed all the animals. One day when she is playing hide and seek with a rabbit she ventures to a part of the woods she has never been and runs into a mother and baby unicorn by a small pond. She realizes she doesn't know the way home from where she is. She offers the unicorns some apples that she had in her pocket and the mother gives her a ride back to her castle. After that they play every day together.

So my creation (perhaps I've been inspired by April at April's Homemaking and her 52 Weeks of Fairy Tales and the craft to go with each one). I decided to needle felt a picture of the castle, gardens, woods and unicorns.

I needle felted it onto a piece of white wool felt just for stability. I also used a embroidery hoop for the frame and used it to size the picture.

So, what do you think?

Speaking of creativity, Sharing Saturday is still open through Wednesday and there are over 100 creative entries. Please go check them out!!

Hazel and I are off to visit my parents for a few days so my posts may be sporadic and without pictures. First we are stopping to visit my longest time friend since she brought her daughter (my goddaughter) to visit a nearby college.  We have been friends since we were 6-months-old!! It will be good to see her.

Making Soup

Today Hazel is feeling a bit better. We went to the doctor's to have her ear checked and she does not have an ear infection. (I was surprised her pediatrician's office was open, but they were even on President's Day.) She apparently caught a nasty virus and the left side of her throat is still red and apparently the ears and throat share the same nerves so this is why she thinks her ear hurts. So since she seemed much better we let her have her weekly playdate with Nonni.

Before she went to her grandmother's though we put some soup in the crockpot. Hazel helped me chop the carrots and celery. (I did have to adjust some of the sizes in fear that they might not cook in time.) I cut up the onions and chicken. Then she poured in the chicken broth and a can of tomatoes. Then she also put the lid on and turned it on.

I have my Weight Watchers Meeting during dinner so now I know there will be a good dinner for them while I'm out and one for me waiting.

Here is the recipe we came up with:

Easy Chicken Noodle Soup
4 boneless chicken breasts cut into pieces
5 carrots chopped
4 celery stalks chopped
1 large onion chopped
1 1/2 containers of reduced sodium chicken broth (you could use more...this is all I had and I added water and bullion instead)
1 can of diced tomatoes with no salt added
dried oregano
dried basil
ground black pepper
4 cups of water
2 bullion packets--no salt added
1 cup frozen cut green beans thawed
1 cup frozen peas thawed
1 cup extra fine egg noodles

Instructions:
1) Add the chicken, onion, celery, and carrot to slow cooker. Add chicken broth and tomatoes and season with oregano, basil and pepper to your taste. Cover and turn on low for 3-4 hours

2) If it seems like it doesn't have enough liquid add the water and bullion or more chicken broth.

3) 30-45 minutes before you plan to serve stir in the green beans, peas and noodles.

4) Enjoy!

Baking Cookies and Getting Sick

Yesterday morning Hazel announced she wanted to bake cookies. I had been meaning to make something for Steven. His favorite candy is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and somewhere I saw an easy recipe to make something similar involving Reese's Peanut Butter Chips and Chocolate Chips. Well, I bought the supplies (Steve got into the peanut butter chips on me) and I couldn't find the recipe anywhere yesterday. So we made the recipe on the back of the peanut butter chip package with a few minor changes. We used one cup whole wheat flour and one cup all purpose flour and since Steve had eaten some of our chips we added some milk chocolate chips (enough to finish the 1 2/3 cups and then some more). The package recipe also was for dropped cookies. Drop by the rounded teaspoon full onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 8-9 minutes. The recipe calls to make 4 1/2 dozen, but I must have made them slightly big since we got just over 4 dozen.

Hazel beating the eggs (after I got the egg shells out)

Hazel did a lot of the mixing on this. I have to say I found it a bit frustrating because with Hazel mixing came the mess. We worked on holding the bowl with one hand after she put a good amount of the dry ingredients came out. You can see her practicing with the eggs. She also cracked one of the eggs herself. I had to get a few eggshells out, but she did well and is not as afraid of doing it. She also wanted to control the mixer, which was my biggest frustration of the day since she didn't listen to instructions on it.

After turning the mixer on high with the flour in it

The mess I got to clean up (besides the floor and the earlier one by hand)

I was afraid the cookies wouldn't come out well since she spilled so much of the dry ingredients out. The dough looked a bit sticky so I added a bit more all purpose flour. And the end result was they turned out great. We all loved them.

After cleaning up the kitchen and myself, we went downstairs to work on the craft room re-organization. Hazel painted while I worked. I decided to rearrange her areas. Now I have to find places for everything, but we decided to go buy more shelves for the organization which go on sale today. After painting we let her play with play dough and then draw. Steve sat with her while I kept working. Unfortunately she slowly got stuffed up and started sneezing and coughing. It was obvious that the scratchy throat she said she had wasn't made up. Well we went and ate lunch and took a nap--not as long as the day before but a two-hour one (Friday she took a 3 1/2 to 4 hour nap). Lesson learned when you 3-year-old who has basically given up naps takes a super long nap and another nap the next day, she is getting sick.

When she woke up from her nap she asked for something to eat and drink. I saw this as a good sign and of course got her something. Then I tried to finish something on the computer that I was working on while she napped and next thing I knew she was by her toys, coughing and vomiting. And this was the start of five longs hours of vomiting on and off. The first sign that she was about to be sick was no matter where I was she would find me and want to cuddle (even if Steven had been in the room with her). It is not fun to watch a small one have a stomach bug. Finally last night she stopped and fell asleep. She woke up during the night (I slept in her room for the first part of the night) and after a couple of hours of being awake and waking me up, she decided she wanted Daddy and they apparently slept pretty well after that. I slept fine in our bed after that. It was a long night. I'm not sure how my stomach is feeling yet, but am starting to feel hungry, so I'm guessing that is a good sign that I probably am not getting it. We are hoping both of us are healthy enough to visit Mimi and Pop this week since it is school vacation week so no school for Hazel and no tutoring for Mommy.

Hope all is well with you!!