A great way to save money and the planet... one bin at a time

It might sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but buying organic, is definitely good for the planet, and good for our health. But how can buying organic be a great way to save money, may you ask? I know organic, as a general rule, is more expensive, so I used to buy it when I could, but not always. Not to mention the issue of actually finding the organic produce in my little town, made it tricky to find anything other than organic apples, bananas, leafy greens and the occasional carrots and celery.

Then a few months ago, a friend of mine decided to organize a bi-weekly produce order, like a CSA. There are two size of bins to choose from, but I always get the small one, since it's just the kids and I at home. And at $36 for a bin full of all this, it's hard to go wrong!

This is what was in our bin last Thursday:

• oranges, two varieties
• apples, two varieties
• bananas
• 1 mango
• bok choy
• 3 avocados
• asparagus
• green onions
• romaine lettuce
• cauliflower

To tell you the truth, I've been having a love/hate relationship with my produce bin. I love variety when it comes to my fruits and veggies, and usually end up buying more from the grocery store as well. And then there's the issue of "you don't get to pick what comes in your organic bin". It's been a few times that we've had bok choy in our order, and I still don't have a clue what to do with it. And there's been produce that went bad before I was ready to eat it (a good indicator that pesticides do more than just repel bugs... imagine what it's doing to your body! if it takes your produce twice as long to go bad?!). I got tired of throwing food out. Especially with the recent rise in the price of food, the global food crisis, and just making waste in general. It just didn't seem worth it.

And then I went a few weeks without it, and was really missing it. So, what to do?

With the price of food going up considerably here recently, I decided to bring back the produce bins to our kitchen, but I am going to do things differently this time. Here's how:

• Make sure I use up most of the fruit from the bin before buying more at the store. (I really like variety, especially in fruit. But I'll have to get used to doing things differently now in order to avoid waste. Because I hate waste more than I love variety).

• Find recipes online for the veggies I have no idea what to do with (aka the bok choy). If I can't use it all while it's fresh, freeze it and use up at a later date.

• Take out the juicer! (When this last order came in, I still had more than a few organic apples left in my fridge, so we juiced them. The kids love helping making fresh juices and my son loves drinking fresh fruit/veggie juice. My daughter has never liked any of the juices from the juicer, but this was the first time that I did a single fruit (and no veggie) juice. She had a few sips and though she didn't drink more than that, I could tell she could get used to it after a few tries :)

• Fresh fruit (and veggies!) make excellent snack on the go! Produce is the original fast food, invented by nature, not by man :)

So now, I'm looking forward to get my produce bin every couple of weeks, and see what's going to be in it. I'm looking forward to eat our way through it. I'm looking forward to the challenge of finding new and creative ways to use up the produce. I'm looking forward for us to eat our way to health!

(If you've never been part of a csa, you should look online. I did a search online once, for my area, and was very surprised to see that there was several options available.)

Have a happy healthy day!

Finding balance

A couple of months ago, I started taking weekly yoga classes for the first time, right around the same time I started taking my course. I felt very overwhelmed at first, at the idea to add two (new) things into my life that would turn it from busy to chaotic. But that's not what happened.

Yoga taught me to relax, be at peace, and reconnect with myself. And let's not forget to mention just how much more flexible I have become, and how great it makes me feel! My course, on the other hand, reignited passion in me. You know that feeling you get when your doing something you love, something you were meant to do? Meant to be? I get that from studying Holistic Nutrition. Every time I open my books, I'm in this place of happiness and it's just been amazing. I know I'm doing what I was supposed to be doing. I can barely explain how that feels, but I hope everyone gets to feel that, at least once in their lives.

Source

Something funny that happened, when I started feeling passionate and happy, thanks to my course... this feeling of passion towards my studies reignited another passion of mine, that I had been putting on the back burner for a long time. Arts and crafts.

Since studying, I've also be crafting lots. Hence all the felt food and wood peg creations :) I even started a painting last night. Now THAT is a major change! You see, I took art, back in college. I was going to be an artist. That's what I always wanted to do and be. It's who I was (and am now realizing is who I still am). As a kid, I even had my own craft room with a desk and supplies and all, thanks to my mom. She saw my creativity, and she gave me the tools and space to allow me to grow through it. Then in college, I took art. Drawing live nude models, colour theory, history of art, sculpture. I loved it all! Things happened after a year in art, and I was unable to finish. I'm so happy with where life took me now, but it took me a long time to accept that I could never finish my art program. Even with all those years of doing arts and crafts, I only ever did 1 painting, and to this day, it's sitting on my piano, unfinished. (I will show it to you soon.) And since then, I have never painted again. Ever.

Until last night. I decided that I didn't need this 1 unfinished piece to hold me back from starting (and finishing) another one. I only did the background so far, but it was so freeing, so liberating. I felt like ME. That free spirit hippy from my college days. (That's how my studies make me feel too, by the way, just with a more intellectual twist, not to say nerdy ;)

Enter a post I just read this morning, over at Twig and Toadstool called Searching for balance in blogging. It brought up the whole blogging and actually living life issue. Finding balance as bloggers, mothers, and anything and everything else we do as moms and women. How to make it all work. How it's easy to get sucked in online and avoid spending time in our real lives.

It was a really inspiring post, and made me realize something important.

I've been struggling with the whole "spending too much time online" issue for a while now. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I started another blog just for food (that I've been having trouble keeping up with), even though the few of you who commented about my question to blog about food here or not, told me you'd like me to add that aspect to this blog here. Well, I'm stubborn, I tried it my way and failed miserably.

Don't worry, I wont be shutting down Petals and Sunshine anytime soon. But I am shutting down my food blog. I am sorry about all the back and forth about the food blog, but an extra blog is just way too much work for me right now. Maybe after I'm done my studies in a couple of years, but right now is not the right time. I'll just put it all here, that way, I don't have to write as many posts. After all, Petals and Sunshine is all about what inspires me, so I guess you wise souls who shared your opinion with me the first time around were right. Why not just add it here.

In the end, what really matters, even though I love blogging, is to spend as much time as possible in my real life. My kids deserve that much, and so do I. Life is a juggling act sometimes, and juggling is an art that has to be learnt. Right?

Note: I'm sure I could have made this post a lot shorter and just say, sorry people, shutting down the food blog, look for recipes to come right over here! But when you're inspired to write and share, I think you should just go with it ;) And if you read this far, thanks for reading!

A taste of spring/summer

This past weekend, I was going through the kids spring/summer clothes to see what still fit them and what didn't. I donate all my son's clothes to our local thrift store (all the money they make, they donate to different organisms and charities in our community, so I love giving to them! and I don't have anyone to pass down boy clothes to), and my daughter's too small clothes all go to a friend of mine for her daughter who is younger than mine. In the organization process, there were a few lost treasures found (aka, the cherry bucket hat!). My daughter was so excited to see it again! And though it's still to cold here to be dressing in anything other than our winter clothes for now, both my kids insisted on wearing their summer attires that day, so I let them :)

I obviously had spring and summer on the brain that day, because I couldn't resist buying a quarter of watermelon when I saw it at the grocery store that morning. It didn't last long at all. And I barely got any. My kids polished the rest of it in no time!

Arianne said, "Mmmm, it's so juicy!"

And Ashton said: "Mommy! It tastes like summer!"

Yes, yes it does. It was like sunshine in a bowl, and I enjoyed every bite of it!

Our new Apple Sprite

A little while back I told you about how I decided to participate in my first online swap. The little pegs have been made and are long gone by now, and unfortunately, I completely forgot to take pictures of the ones I made. But I wanted to share with you the ones we receive :)

And today, I was so excited to see a little package in the mail coming from Caroline, one of the members of my swap group and couldn't wait to open the envelope! Look what we got!

A little apple Sprite with a crochet apple, a little story and even a recipe on the back! I have to say, I've never done the whole "adding a story to go with my crafts" thing, like they do in Waldorf fashion, and I'm not very good at it (yet!). Though I sent out all my wood pegs, and had fun transforming them into all kinds of things, from gnome, spring fairy, to lady bug and even a bee, and though I made them all with lots of love and care, I didn't have much of a story to add with them. I hope my swap mates will still like them.

Back to the cute Apple Sprite though, I don't know who's more excited, my kids or me? Ha! And since I've been wanting to bring back the nature table (if I can find a little table) or plate, this is such a great addition.

Thank you Caroline :) We love, love, love it!

{this moment}

{this moment} - (inspired by Soule Mama) A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

A new little spring fairy!

With the arrival of Spring yesterday, I thought it would be nice to welcome a little Spring fairy to our home. Arianne picked the colors, and she could barely wait for me to finish her before scooping her up and taking her to play!

I found the tutorial and template HERE, if your interested in making one. And trust me, it's super easy! I made a very similar one for the peg doll swap that I just participated at. Except the other one was pink and had a layer of green leaves above the petals at the neck, but I forgot to take a picture before mailing it out :(

You see, we used to have a nature plate (not a table since we don't have enough space. Must go find a little table soon!), but I had to put the plate away at Christmas time to make space for the decorations and completely forgot to put it back out. I didn't think about it until last weekend (talk about forgetful!). So I'll be bringing the nature plate back out, and though a little Spring fairy would be a great start!

But I'm guessing the fairy will only be on the plate for short sporadic visits, as someone will most likely whisk her away ;)

Linking to:

Felt food fun

I guess I also could have called this post: the tiniest sushi ever!

My pile of felt has, well, been pilling up (no pun intended), and I've been just having so much fun creating different things weather it's play food or many other different things. So yesterday I got busy making some sushi rolls...

And the kids loved it! I took out their chopsticks and let them play with them, since they never use it for food anyways. I think it made their sushi experience even more fun, as you can see :)

And here is the whole set. Different types of rolls, and a few edemame pods. My daughter has been so excited about this set, she was almost jumping up and down!

I've been thinking of making more felt and wood peg creations to sell, so my kids have been great little testers for me. And if I don't end up selling much of it, well at least I'm having fun doing it ;)

Linking this post to:

Sunshine foods and inspiration

Happy spring everyone!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I took the last few days to wrap my head around the whole dairy allergy thing. I'm not going to lie, it was very overwhelming at first, as dairy hides in everything. It's in places you wouldn't even think it should be. And surprisingly, I found myself going through some grieving process.

For the last few weeks, it was denial. I kept telling myself that my allergy had to be to something else. Following that, I went through panic, fear, sadness. And then Friday morning, I woke up wondering what the heck I was freaking out about!?! I mean, I've been wanting to eat mostly vegan for a loooong time, here is my chance! And really, there are millions of people who are vegan, weather it's for ethical, environmental or health reasons, and you don't hear them complain they have nothing to eat!

So I dug out all my old recipes from one of my vegan phases, and saw just how much choice I have. Now that was overwhelming, and in a good way ;) So I brought back some old favourites of ours, and tried some new stuff. It was ALL good and satisfying!

Sweet potato fries, salad and rice paper veggie wrap

So with all that said and spring putting me in the mood for a bit of change, I decided to revive my food blog. It had been barely active for almost a year, but not anymore. I erased everything and starting from scratch! And I have lots of inspiration coming for you. So if your interested, go check out Sunshine Foods, I already wrote my first post :)

I know some of you said you'd like me to just post recipes on here, but I feel that if I do, it could easily hijack this blog. So I will continue posting here about our family life, crafts, nature, photography, etc, but I will also create a weekly post here, called In my kitchen. It will link up with my food blog and the recipes I shared there during the week with some pics.

Stay tuned on Petals and Sunshine, I have lots for you this week. And for some droolicious food, go to Sunshine Foods :)

Have a great week!

What I've been up to

The past week and a half has been a complete blur!

Between lots of crafting doing the most intricate craft I've ever made (posted about it HERE), finishing and posting little peg dolls on Monday for the online swap I took part of, regular housework, taking care of my kids, 2 play dates in the last 2 days, working (did I ever mention on here that I also work part-time??), AND finishing a chapter of my current school book followed by the online test that goes with it (and got a perfect score! Yay!).... Yeah, it's been a bit crazy!

Add to that the fact that I've been having an allergic reaction to something for the past 2 months and figured out very recently that it's to dairy. I don't drink milk, and rarely ate cheese, but as I've been realizing, dairy hides in almost any foods with an ingredient list. Baked goods? Check! Chicken nuggets? Check! I've even found dairy hiding in the ingredients of salt and vinegar chips. Not that I was going to eat them, but I looked out of curiosity and sure enough, I found it there too. At this point, after seeing dairy being SO present in prepared foods, nothing surprises me anymore.

So for the past few days, I've been making a real effort to make everything from scratch, as much as humanely possible with the time that I have. Bread? I didn't have the time for that. Actually, I haven't had time to make much of anything with this crazy life of mine. Thank goodness I found a few batches of homemade soup, some chili and left over shepherds pie in the freezer, all vegan. It should keep me fed until the weekend, when I have some down time to sift through my recipes, figure out a meal plan and make the recipes. Thankfully, I've got quite a collection of vegan recipes and it will come it handy finally. You see, I'm not a vegan. I enjoy salmon from time to time. I still eat meat from time to time, but don't like cooking it, and if I eat it too often (like more than once every week or two), it really affects my digestion and I feel quite ill from it. So if you take out the meat and now ALL dairy, well eating mostly vegan is the obvious answer/choice for me. It's something I've been wanting to transition to for a long time. So I guess this allergy is the kick in the behind I've been needing.

I'm actually not sad about the situation. Well, I was freaking out for a couple of days. You know, thinking "Oh my gosh, I'll never be able to eat out with my kids and hubby again unless I order salad and bring my own dressing!" (not that there would be anything wrong with that once in a while). But after a few days of having a pity party, I realized this morning that all I have to do is focus on the positive (eat mostly vegan) and stop thinking about the negative (you know, not thinking "waah, I can't have Feta cheese anymore!"). But now I'm OK, I'm feeling in control of the situation. All I have to do, is try a few more new recipes (and hopefully my kids will like them too!), write down the ones I already really enjoy to make sure I have enough to make different meals for a couple of weeks and go from there.

So I probably wont be posting here until Monday. I really need to take care of this and get busy in the kitchen. Find those old recipes I told myself I HAD to try and actually make them now, tap into my inner nutrition goddess and inspire myself to make some awesome whole foods, and have fun while doing it!

Enjoy the rest of your week and I'll be back on Monday with lots of inspiration!

Love and light,

Stephanie xx

My Creative Space: A Fairy Treehouse

This post could also have been titled: What I've been up to ALL weekend.

It was my friend's daughter's birthday this Sunday and we were invited to her party. Our kids are in the same Kindergarten class and we try to get together, along with another friend (and mom) from the same kids class, as often as we can. All three of us LOVE to craft, and love hand made things. So when I received the invitation for her daughter's birthday, it was a no brainer. I was going to make something hand made. But to tell you the truth, with all the crafting I love to do, I've never actually given a hand made present. Well, not since I was a kid, anyways.

I had seen a similar box set on Etsy made by Beccijo, the very talented artist behind The Enchanted Cupboard, and knew I wanted to try and make it, even though I don't paint much.

So this is what I made:

I started by decorating a portable wood box (or purse).

The fairies had lemonade, cupcakes and fresh berries to snack on.

And even a wood stove to warm up in front of, and to bake cupcakes and make yummy snacks!

I used felt and this tutorial from Wee Folk Art, to make them matching Spring sleeping bags.

Birds eye view of the whole thing put together.

And fairies would not be complete without wings :)

The present was well received both by birthday girl and her mama. All in all, this was very time consuming to make. Much more than anticipated, but well worth it. My kids could not keep their hands off of it all weekend. They were hovering around me, as I was slowly completing each little piece. Their little hands slyly touching each piece when I'd turn my back, even for a second. I'm guessing their interrupting and touching and grabbing could have been a big reason why it took me as long as it did ;)

As I wrapped the present before leaving for the party (because I literally finished it 45 minutes before the party... can you say: cutting it close! lol), my daughter, who's 4Th birthday is approaching, informed me that she would love something like this for her Birthday. She said when she saw this fairy tree house, she knew right away that that's what she wants for her big day, and nothing else.

How can I say no to that?! I don't! So I'll me making another miniature wood kit similar to this one soon, since her birthday is in a little over a month. And I promise to share pictures of that one as well when it's time.

I am just so proud of myself for finally having given a real handmade present. That's something I've been wanting to do for a while now, but never made it a priority until now. I now have plans to do so for my kids at Easter and their next birthdays. I love when my ideals become reality. And I love that I challenged myself to do a craft that I've never done before. It was a great challenge!

What have you been creating lately?

Linking to:

They thought it was out of this world!

My son has been into learning about space since this past January, when I ordered a set of books about the solar system from his Scholastic book order at school. We read those space books several times as bedtime stories (as per requested by him :) , and I've 'caught him' looking through them during the day numerous times as well.

I had been planning on making the kids some "space play dough", and it turns out, that space is this months theme in his kindergarten class. It seems to have taken his space enthusiasm to a new height! Bonus!

So yesterday, I created some space play dough. I used this recipe, and added a pretty large quantity of blue food colouring to get this color. I would have loved to get a deeper blue dough, like this one, but I didn't have those particular food dyes on hand.

When it was time to knead the dough, I took out my iridescent glitter from my craft supplies and sprinkled liberally, several times. I think you can see it sparkle a bit in this picture?

Then I took out some marbles that I bought a long time ago and kept hiding. I thought they were perfect for this. They sort of look like planets, don't they? But any marbles would do! I also had some of those glass beads that are flat. I had small and large ones, so I took them out too :)

They were so concentrated on their creations, that even his tongue was sticking out. I love it when he does that!

I also love when he helps his sister. The tongue sticking out again, see:

Their collaborative project:

They had so much fun, it kept them very busy while I was crafting at the table with them ;)

My daughter's master piece. I love this one!

My adorable daughter in her p.j. shirt (in the middle of the afternoon). What can I say, yesterday was one of those lazy Sundays, and it was great!

And just because, one last picture of my son's tongue sticking out.... I think it must help with his concentration or something ;)

I hope you had a great weekend!

I am linking this post to:

My first gnome: the story of a swap

A couple weeks ago, We Bloom Here posted an invitation for a peg-folk exchange. I've always wanted to do an online swap, but I always see the posts once it's too late. But I caught this one in time! I had already purchased a few wood peg people in the hopes of crafting my first gnome, but just didn't really know where to start.

Two of my swap recipients live in destinations that evoke the thought of the ocean and warm sandy beaches. One is in Australia, another in California. So with the help of a couple of incredibly helpful blog posts, and inspired by the ocean, I set out to make my first one this morning. Here she is:

I decided to keep her in fashion of the Waldorf gnomes and keep her faceless. I call her a She, because, for some reason, I associate the ocean with something feminine.. I just haven't found a name for her yet.

I found a very helpful tutorial HERE and the free PDF was included in the post. So just print it, cut your shapes, and your ready to start! It's just the help I needed to get started, but I'm not going to use it for the next ones... I'm more of a free handed kind of person.

First, I took a "sandy" shade of felt and wrapped her body with it.

I also hand stitched a wave in her cape. (Well, I hope it looks like that anyways ;)

For the hat, I added a "bendy" feature to it. I found the idea from this tutorial. Because I never would have thought of it myself.

And then you can do this with it, if you want to :)

If you feel inspired by my gnome, and have ideas for a name, feel free to share with me, I would love to get some of your ideas!

Now, go check out those links, take out your peg people and get crafting! ;)

I am linking this post to:

Remembering what the mess is about

Ever since my son was very young, he would take toys apart. If it could come apart, it wouldcome apart. And if it could not come apart... well, then it probably would anyways. That means there has been lots of broken, sometimes unrepairable toys along the years. Then, when he got out of the cute "I want to clean up everything" toddler phase and entered the imagination phase, the mess became much bigger.

He would take out ALL his toys sometimes and make the biggest of messes I have ever seen. And of course, it would just drive me crazy. One day, this was a couple of years ago, I walked into his room and saw that he had taken apart (and broken by accident) his toy BBQ and rebuilt it using other toys. He had a whole contraption going, but of course, all I saw was a mess and a broken toy. I asked what he was doing and why he broke his toy and his reply was enlightening... he said he made a juicer.

Yes, a juicer. You see, just the day before, we were at the store looking at juicers. I was trying to get my kids exciting about juicing, so I had explained to them how it worked. So that's what he was doing, in his room, in his mess. Juicing.

This was an eye opening moment for me. It really made me realize that he was not trying to break his toys on purpose, was not trashing his room (and sometimes our living room) to make me angry. He was just using his imagination.

And what an imagination he has! Since then, when as a mom all I see is a huge mess, I try to remind myself that he is just playing, imagining, and that I need to learn to not interfere with that. But when the mess is overwhelming, I gently remind him that he will need to clean up when he is done.

So with this said, I thought I would share a few moments of the past couple of days...

A line up of chairs and rocking moose (yes, it's a moose, not a horse. We're in Canada after all, eh! lol)

Shortly after, comforters and pillows filled up the hallway as well.

They were pretending to be camping at a lake, and the rocking moose was a sea-doo :)

See mom, we're just playing camping :)

Making a Monster Jam.

Ashton made this last night...

and begged I did not put it away at bed time because he wanted to play with it this morning.

So I had to take a deep breath last night when I walked on a Monster truck by accident because this thing was in the way. But my little guy was SO happy this morning when he saw that it was still there and he's right back to playing with it right now as I type this. But after today it has to be cleaned up... I do have limits ;)

Sometimes, a mess, isn't just a mess. Not to kids anyways.

Kids are just being kids,

and it's important to remember that they don't see the world as we do.

They are just being kids and we have to remember to let them.

But I'm still secretly looking forward for us to have a house with a basement or playroom where all the toys can go! lol.