Why I didn't wish you a merry christmas and happy new year

I have completely abandoned you, and I'm sorry. I have never let one entire month pass before publishing a new blog post. But I have a great excuse!  

I had planned on wishing you a merry Christmas and happy new year, but then the power went out for four days. FOUR DAYS without power, running water or internet...

It came on again December 24th, and the whole Upper Skagit breathed a sigh of relief to have lit-up Christmas trees just in time for the big event.

I'm glad our family got our cookie baking done before the power went out. I invited my daughter's best friend to bake and decorate, and Kai invited his girlfriend to cut and dress the tree. And to eat the cookies, naturally.

As much as we're hard core homesteaders, I am a total wimp when it comes to power outages. I love electricity.

Yes, our pantry is stocked with canned food, and we can fetch water at the river. Yes, we have a wood stove for heat and lots of homemade candles. Yes, we have a generator to power the freezers with all our home raised meat. Our propane tank for the cook stove is full and the chickens give us eggs without electricity. There's lots of cheese in the cave underneath the house.

But... but... but... I like hot showers. I like flipping on the light switch and being able to read when it is pitch black dark at 4pm. I rely on my computer for work and pleasure.

So yes, I get whiny when the power goes out for days at a time. Sorry.

The other big thing that happened was our oldest kid turning 16 and getting his driver's licence. 

Do you know what that means? I am letting go when he gets in the car to drive down valley for a 3 hour roundtrip to visit his girlfriend. I am practicing trust and faith that no elk/drunk drivers/other inexperienced teenagers hit him. 

I have more freedom because I don't need to shuttle him around to basketball practice, and that's nice, but this letting go thing is harder than I thought.

On his birthday, we went to the driver's licence office, his favorite sushi place, and to a store where you can paint pottery and then have it fired.

In between raising my kids and working at my new job as Feminine Power Global Ambassador, there's no time for much else right now.

I go outside as much as I can, and it's a good thing we have gorgeous nature right outside our door.

Sunshine is rare right now, and whenever it makes an appearance, we drag the kids outside to get some vitamin D.  Here's a little excursion up the hill behind our house, where it was cold and we needed fire.

Don't ask me why it is necessary for my kids to wear shorts when it's freezing.

It has been very cold, but not much snow.

Just rain. Grayness. Clouds. Hibernation.

With our two teenage boys getting more and more independent, wanting to spend time with their friends instead of us, we try to get as much family time as we get.

One plus is that I get to spend more time with my girl.  It's pretty special to have that bonding time with my youngest - time I don't have to talk about basketball and mountain biking and the most popular rappers.

I'm becoming acutely aware of how time with my kids is going by so fast. When they are little and take so much of your energy, it's so easy to forget that they will be gone in a heartbeat.  I'm trying to cherish them as much as I can.

Tell me how you are doing. Have you missed me?

Christmassy mood and some heartwarming advice

Before you look at all my beautiful Christmassy holiday-ish pictures, and before you start feeling insecure and compare yourself and feel inadequate because you didn't bake fancy cookies yet, or you didn't knit cute Christmas ornaments, or you don't have a handmade advent calendar or wreath... I want you to know this:

Christmas can be really, really hard.  So many expectations, so much to do, so much to strive for, so much comparison going on, so many pinterest-worthy ideas you will never implement...

I usually don't like Christmas all that much, because of the above-mentioned reasons, and because of all the yucky commercialism associated with it, and because of sad childhood memories involving Christmas in my homeland of Germany.

But since I have three children who happen to be totally into Christmas, I do try to get over myself and decorate the house, endure endless Christmas songs on the radio, and bake cookies.

And this year, I am actually really into this Christmas spirit thing.

I made an advent calendar for the kids, and they take turns opening one little gift every morning.  

We also decorated the tree without squabbling.

And I did knit some pretty cute ornaments this year...

About the whole cookie baking scene: My 12-year old son initiated a cookie baking session, and we all got into it.  We actually got pretty professional when it got to decorating the things, all with a little powdered sugar, sprinkles and cocoa.  I also discovered natural food coloring made with healthy ingredients.

Since the oven was on, I decided to make some Foccacia bread to go along with the sweet stuff.

In terms of decorating, we've been going nuts with paper snowflakes and evergreen wreaths.  

In fact, I filmed tutorials on how to make both of them, and if you want to be a patron of our blog, you can access them here at our Patron-only section of the website (along with my recipe and tutorial for making the best cheese cake you ever had).

I wrote an article on how to prevent and treat cold and flu for our local magazine Grow Northwest, and Steve and I did a Facebook Live about it where we teach how to use our favorite natural remedies for cold and flu.  If you want to watch us (we are pretty fun), you can watch that here.

One of the things I talk about in the article and video is how to make natural cough syrup with onion and honey, and the other is a recipe for a ginger/lemonade/cayenne drink to help your immune system.

And talking of drink, I'm in full swing making lots of Kombucha.  I teach how to do this for the fraction of the cost of buying it here.

Also, we bottled our hard cider we made in the fall.  It's good!  Potent!  Talk about medicine!

My parting words today:  If you have a hard time with Christmas, it's okay.  You are not alone.  If you love Christmas and you think I'm nuts saying anyone could feel conflicting emotions around it, it's okay, too.  I'm happy for you!

For the rest of us, let's just take the good about this holiday season: the love, the light, the giving spirit, the good food, the generosity.

Allow yourself to relax a little.  It doesn't have to be perfect, okay?  Light candles.  Slow down.  Kiss your loved ones.

Sending a huge amount of love to y'all!

PS: If you want to support this blog, please go here and do it.  Thank you!!!

Holy Daze

I don't know about you, but in my life, Christmas can be a little tricky. I used to dislike this holiday, because of childhood stuff and weird expectations. For many people, family relationships can be weird around this time, standards of perfection running high, the stress of Christmas overshadowing its holi-ness.

This year, Christmas was perfect.

It was super mellow, starting early in the morning with some gorgeous back lit trees studded with diamond frost, a good cup of coffee, and all three kids well behaved as can be, taking turns opening presents, savoring the moment.

In fact, little Eva was so worried about getting coal in her stocking that she didn't come downstairs in the morning, although she could hear the voices of the rest of the family. When her brothers went up to fetch her, she confessed that she didn't know if it was morning already and feared it was still bedtime, when we older ones usually stay up later.

She didn't want to piss off Santa.

The kids were happy about their presents and shared nicely, and Steve and I kept smiling at each other, feeling the blessed-ness and gratitude of our lives.

Later on, I indulged knitting in front of the Christmas tree, while sun streamed through the windows.

I hope you felt some of this peace and deep gratitude as well.

I sure felt more of it later in the day, when the whole family went for a walk. By now, I should be used to all the natural beauty around us, but it still catches me by surprise on days like this, when the snow and frost transform everything into a magical fairy land.

Come with us and see for yourself.

I'm very, very, very thankful for these beings that make up my family.

And bacon, definitely bacon.  From our own pigs.  Yep.  It doesn't get any better than this.