Earth Day is Friday, April 22—tomorrow! Even if this holiday isn’t something you grew up celebrating, you can bet that your kids are aware of it and eager to participate. Over the last few years, we’ve been doing a bit more to honor the ideals of this day and our kids just eat it up. Here are a few ideas from our family to yours.

1. Plant a tree: This is every bit as appropriate on Earth Day as Arbor Day. This year we’re planting a tree for two reasons: My great-aunt Nana passed away last fall, and we will plant a tree in her honor and in honor of Earth Day. We have chosen a beautiful pink dogwood for our back yard.

2. Make a terrarium or a dish garden: I wrote a tutorial about how to make a moss terrarium for Little Acorn Learning’s April Afterschool Enrichment Guide, which is full of amazing activities, recipes, poems, and much more. You can find it here: http://www.littleacornlearning.com/.  Here is an in-progress shot of the dish garden we made yesterday. We used moss we collected on a recent trip to the foothills and wheat grass seeds. Lucas included a spiral of small stones we found in our yard. We are adding beeswax bunnies and Easter eggs to it.

3. Go on a hike, take along a trash bag, and pick up any garbage you may spot along the way. (Kitchen or latex gloves come in handy for this activity.) Recycle those things that you can. Note: don’t let children pick up certain kinds of trash, especially anything that looks like it might be medical waste. Many communities have park or creek cleanup days that need volunteers.

4. Do a science experiment. For young children, seed projects are great because they are fast. Here’s what we did last year. Some of our pumpkin seedlings even survived the transfer out into our summer garden and we harvested pumpkins in the fall from our Earth Day experiment! I don’t know about you, but I love cycles like that.

5. Start a worm farm: All you need is a boxy container (a styrofoam cooler does the trick nicely—I know styrofoam is lame, but it works well for this project), and a container full of red worms from the bait store, or else dig up the worms yourself. Put some normal garden soil into your container, shred some newspaper into small strips, wet it all down, and add your worms. Poke a few holes into the container for air circulation. Then put in your vegetable kitchen scraps daily. Stir once in a while and keep it moist but not wet. Before long you’ll have loads of worms (and worm babies!) and great soil for your garden. (It helps to have a plastic or metal container underneath the whole worm bin, to catch any drippings. These drippings make excellent fertilizer.)

6. Learn about the weather or the water cycle. Check your local parks and recreation department for children’s nature classes or day camps. Try this page of links at The Water Project for science experiments for kids.

7. Read books about caring for the environment with your kids. Last April, I wrote about quite a few children’s books we recommend for Earth Day. Adults can check out the works of Richard Louv, Rachel Carson, David Sobel, Robert Micahel Pyle, and Bernd Heinrich.

8. Start a vegetable garden! Good Friday (also Earth Day this year) is a traditional day for planting seeds and seed potatoes. Lucas is outside preparing his garden plot. We have worked into it our soil full of worm castings  from last’s year’s worm farm. That should give our garden a good start!

9. Make space in your yard for wild creatures: add a birdbath, places wild creatures can use for cover, and plants that attract bees, butterflies, and birds. This spring I’ve seen birds actually bathing in and drinking from my birdbath. It was very cool!

10. Take your recyclables in and redeem them for cash; donate your family’s proceeds to a charity such as NRDC or National Wildlife Federation, or any number of other worthy charities. Better yet, if you can support wildlife and habitat restoration efforts in your own community, do that.

That’s 10. I bet you can think of dozens more. If you have a nifty idea to share, please do so! Happy Earth Day!

A darling old friend of mine asked me to make some Easter eggs and bunnies for her to give as gifts for Easter. The 2.5-inch egg bases are a paper mache with a cutout and are from the craft store. The needle-felted bunnies I made from scratch fit nicely inside, with a bit of colorful eyelash yarn that looks rather like Easter basket grass. Making these has been an exciting project and super fun, but also a little bit nerve-wracking. I mean, what makes me think I can paint well enough for someone else? (Hear that? Those are the Weasles of Doubt and Fear talking.) The above design is cherry trees in blossom.

Here is a kind of wildflower design, with daisies and California poppies.

A low-key meadow with butterflies. This one isn’t quite as girly, in my opinion.

Here is one with red roses that wrap all the way around the egg.

A kind of stylized bamboo design, meant for a male recipient. Simple and elegant, I hope.

More butterflies and bearded irises, which are now in bloom.

English country garden in spring, with azalea, Spanish lavender, and white Queen Anne’s lace.

Wisteria vines in bloom.

I also have two others that feature bright tulips and delphinium flowers. There are ten egg and bunny pairs in all. I am shipping them out to my friend today. I hope she likes them!

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – 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.

In Washington D.C. they are celebrating the National Cherry Blossom Festival, called the Sakura Festival.

Here at home, there is a fantastic Japanese cherry tree right outside the third and fourth grade classrooms at my son’s Waldorf school. It’s magnificent.

Mrs. M, the Eurhythmy teacher, was inspired to have a little cherry blossom  poetry festival with our third grade to celebrate spring. On Friday, the last day of school before spring break, the third graders wrote poems about springtime and cherry trees and hung their poems in the cherry tree.

Cherry blossoms feature heavily in Japanese poetry. The blossoms, sakura, symbolize the beginning of spring, purity, and also a kind of melancholy, for like the blossoms, life is short and beautiful.

The people of Japan have been on all our minds and in our prayers lately, although I’m not sure how aware the third graders are of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It’s hard to think about it. One tourism website I looked at had this to say: “This year’s cherry blossom season will be overshadowed by the tremendous loss caused by the recent earthquake. However, we believe that the blossoms will serve as symbols of hope and resilience and a source of motivation along Japan’s road to recovery.” 

There’s no doubt that these blossoms are exquisite and ephemeral.

Life is such a sweet mixture of joys and pains, celebrations and disappointments, and even exultation and tragedy.

Sometimes it hurts to live life fully; to do so means opening ourselves up to all the beauty and pain around us. It hurts to be human. It is a joy to be human.

I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had a lot of time to write lately. But while I’ve been working, spring has sprung! I did sneak away with Asher last week to visit the Sacramento Waldorf School farm in the late afternoon.

We wanted to see the black butterflies on the yellow flowers …

the seedlings in the pyramid greenhouse …

Princess the pony, grazing by the American River …

rows and rows of glowing lettuces …

Honalea, the school cow …

calla lilies growing in the shade …

But most of all, we went to see the baby lambs, Milkshake and Licorice. Asher says, “They are a-DOH-able.”

Happy spring!

With a little break in the weather, we were able to let the chicks out to graze a bit. This was only their second time outside in this pen. The first time we could only get six of the nine of them to come outside. The others were being too chicken.

This is pretty Buttercup (“As you wish!”). Remember how I used to despair that we would never be able to tell Buttercup apart from Sunshine because they looked so similar? Well, look at the top photo. Sunshine has a much taller, redder comb and the beginnings of red wattles. Buttercup’s comb is still yellow. I sense trouble of the cock-a-doodle-doo type brewing.

And this one, Chestnut, isn’t very chestnut-colored anymore. The feathers are coming in black and white. This bird is extremely aggressive (loves to play the Jump on Your Head game and bumps chests with Sunshine), which makes me wonder if this might be a male, too.

I put these blankets atop the pen for two reasons: I don’t want any hawks getting any big ideas about eating my chicks, and also, I don’t want my chicks flying out of the pen. I don’t think it would be very easy to catch them back up again and I don’t know if they have sense enough not to run off.

Whenever I go to the chicks’ pen inside our garage, Lightning flies up to sit on me. Many of the chicks gather around me or jump up on me. Perhaps some imprinting has happened.  Lightning always wants to cuddle.

Firefly is still sequestered in the house. She is doing great and seems recovered, but she’s still much smaller than the other chicks, so we don’t feel she’s ready to be with them yet. I am hoping she will grow, grow, grow. Ultimately size isn’t everything when it comes to a pecking order, as sometimes tiny Bantam hens can be bossy, but it’s often a factor—or so I read.

Happy first day of spring! It’s raining like crazy. What’s up with us, you ask? Lots and not much at the same time, it seems.

Mama’s busy with work—two books are chugging along, hot and heavy. One new one is just starting up. All three feature different tasks and require different portions of my brain, so that’s something to celebrate. I give thanks whenever I get to use rusty brain cells. Alas, these hours spent working mean I take fewer pictures.

We are—at present—all healthy and strong. This is also something to be celebrated! Pardon me while I whoop and holler. Woo hooo! Yippie!

In fact, we’re getting stronger every day. Our workout regimen is paying off for Ian and me (which is something I feel I can finally say out loud in this space). It’s still very hard for me, but I’m doing it—and although I have a hard time being positive about it at 6 a.m., when it’s time to start sweating. It’s much easier to be positive afterward, when the workout is done, and now I can fit back into some of my skinny clothes. I’ve lost approximately 9 pounds. Ian, well, Ian looks and FEELS terrific! And anything that makes my love this happy is worth it—whatever it takes.

Asher gets stronger after every meal, just ask him. He bares his muscles and asks me to feel how they’re growing from all the good food he eats.

Asher’s Dreamland adventures are getting more complex and elaborate. There’s a new character there—James—who hangs with Asher and Kompatchuk. They go out everyday and fight bad guys. Apparently, they are extremely competent at the superhero business. They do ninja moves and kung fu and plenty of magic. Just about any weapon in the world is available to them and they rescue people in dire straits. Asher also does a lot of work there: mostly in factories with systems and equipment and donations. And, oh, the competitions! They are held often, and Asher always wins. Furthermore, in Dreamland there is tons paperwork to deal with, like chapters and grading. Asher works constantly on his computer, programming and energizing and downloading. I haven’t yet heard him use the phrase “leveraging the synergies,” but I expect it’s not long now until I do. Honestly, he can talk 35 minutes nonstop about this stuff.

Lucas is in a really good place most of the time these days. (Creating the triangle prism above out of skewers and string is how he spent part of this morning.) He’s happy at school, learning like crazy, and enjoying life. His only real complaints center around not having enough time to have all the play dates he would like to have, and having to practice his piano. Lucas loves playing the piano, just not practicing. Next week he will perform in his fourth piano recital. He’s been playing less than a year. Lucas would dearly love to start taking martial arts classes. Unfortunately, although I think he’s ready to do it, it’s not presently in our budget.

Asher has formally been accepted into the Red Rose Kindergarten at Sacramento Waldorf School. This is very exciting and wonderful, and is exactly where I want him to be. Now I spend lots of mental cycles worrying about how we’re going to pay for it. But never mind about that. Let’s focus on how he calls me the “Princess of Love” instead, shall we?

Firefly, our special-needs, almost-starved-to-death chick, seems to have made a complete recovery. I have to say, I’m flabbergasted. I thought sure she was a goner, and that we’d be having that kind of teachable moment around here. She is not only walking, but also now runs and flies short distances.

So, yeah. I guess we’re good! One final thing: Thanks, Mom, for the new shoes for the boys, and clothes for Lucas!

May your pockets be heavy and your heart light.
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.

Yesterday afternoon, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, we did some fun things to prepare for the coming of the Leprechauns. Asher and I made brownies together. We happen to know for a fact that Leprechauns LOVE to eat brownies, particularly if you cut them into shamrock shapes!

Then we set about finding natural materials in our yard from which to make a Leprechaun house. Is it hard to see there, up against the “rock” wall of our house? It has a flag on top of the roof.

We found some lovely squarish sections of bark that worked beautifully for walls. Then with short sticks and long pieces of bark found in our garden beds, we roofed the house. Lucas came home with Daddy just in time to help with the construction.

He carefully cleared an area for an outdoor picnic table, and gently placed small stones that Asher gathered to make a cobblestone pathway leading from the door of the Leprechaun house to the picnic area.

Asher especially enjoyed gathering items to use for our project. He gathered stones, spiky balls from our liquidambar tree, flower petals, and clover. He even found a small fairy jewel that we set into the cobblestone path. The spiky balls became a kind of garden fence.

Asher picked lots of “salad” clover for the Leprechauns to eat. We all thought the flower petals gave everything an attractive, magical ambience.

Isn’t that a handsome house? We thought it looked very cozy and perfect for little fairy folk.

This is the picnic area, complete with bark table and tablecloth, plenty of salad, and bark benches for sitting on.

Our Leprechaun house is right beside our “shamrock” plant and right where we always leave out treats for the Leprechauns. So we knew they would check that exact spot. We hoped that they’d enjoy the house and have a party there!

Then we feasted on a greenish dinner of sausage and egg wraps (green, spinach tortillas) with green (brown) rice and salad. The boys enjoyed the wraps a lot! Fortunately, the Leprechauns never eat all the brownies, so there were enough for us to enjoy for dessert.

We always give the Leprechauns milk, honey, and a brownie on the night before St. Patrick’s Day. Leprechauns can be so tricky, and we find that if we leave them yummy treats, they don’t pull pranks on us. Usually, they leave gifts in return.

We were pretty confident that they would be nice this year. Doesn’t that venue look inviting?

This morning, Lucas and Asher found GOLD NUGGETS on the cobblestone path. The milk and honey and brownie were all nibbled. Only crumbs and drops remained on the plate outside. But inside! The boys found Leprechaun dolls on their breakfast plates, with new notebooks for writing in! So I guess the Leprechauns liked our treats and the house we made for them. It seems, however, they couldn’t resist being a little bit tricksy after all. We found all of our shoes in a huge pile by the front door!

I figure we got off lucky, though. Leprechauns can cause all manner of mischief. In fact, Lucas was excited to get to school to see what naughty pranks the Leprechauns did there during the night! (I confess, I think they looked around in our messy house and figured, what’s the point? It already looks like a tornado hit this place!)

Tonight we’ll be having an Irish stew for dinner with some Irish deedly-deedly-dee music. We have some fun Leprechaun stories to enjoy after dinner, too. How will you celebrate? How will you invite magic and good luck into your home?

May good luck be with you wherever you go,
and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

I decided I wanted to make a new decoration for St. Patrick’s Day this year, and since Lucas was home sick for a couple of days, I took some time to work on it. Although it’s probably too late for anyone to make this for this year, I’m going to walk you through the steps to make a jolly ring of dancing leprechauns. Because this project has multiple pieces to it, this will be long.

I would say that anyone with a medium amount of needle-felting experience can make one of these, as I consider myself to be an intermediate-level needle-felter. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Materials

* wool roving in plain white and multiple greens and browns; you may also want scarlet (leprechauns in some Irish stories wear scarlet caps or scarlet vests)
* foam base and felting needle (any guage)
* chenille stems for crafts (aka pipe cleaners)
* multiple-needle felting tool (optional)
* carding brushes (optional)

Step 1: Fashion a round mat of white wool. Use your multineedle felting tool if you have one, for it will make the creation of the wool mat faster. You want your mat to be a good 1/2 inch thick, when it’s firmly felted.

Step 2: Now add thin layers of colored wool in any arrangement you like to the top of your white mat. I used a mix of greens and browns to create a realistic patch of earth.

You’ll get more realism if you card some greens and browns together to create a blend of colored wool for your mat. Occasionally lift your round mat off the foam felting pad and needle it from the back for a while. Flip it again, working the wool from both sides to felt the fibers together.

Keep felting until the whole mat is fairly firm and holds together when you lift it up. Here’s how my mat looked when I felt it was done.

Step 3: Begin your first leprechaun. Bend one whole chenille stem (I like to use white) in half gently. Now hold it about an inch down from the top bend and twist the top using your other hand. You’ve just created a loop at the top. Open it out into an oval shape of wire. Cut another chenile stem in half. This will be your figure’s arms. Just where the neck is, twist your small chenille stem so that it anchors onto the neck like you see in the photo below. Now you have a wire skeleton. Bend over the ends where the feet and hands are a tiny bit so that there’s no pointy wire sticking out. Roll a small ball of wool and place it inside the wire oval. Begin felting it into a nice head shape.

Step 4: Now begin wrapping your skeleton with small bands of wool roving, needling it down into place so that it stays together by attaching the fibers. Wrap more and more wool and continue needling until your Leprechaun has a “body” of white wool. The hands are the trickiest part, in my opinion. You have to wrap them enough so that the chenille stem is invisible, but not so much that you have big, puffy hands.

Here’s my lady Leprechaun in progress. She is just about ready for clothing. The more you needle your figure, the denser the wool will become. By focusing on certain parts, you can sculpt the wool to be dense and narrow where you want it to be, such as at the figure’s neck and arms.

Below is a male Leprechaun in progress. For male figures (or female figures wearing trousers), you have a choice: You can fashion the legs together (just like you would for a skirt for a female form) and then create the impression of separate legs by needling a line down the front of the figure, or you can wrap each leg separately. The advantage to creating separate legs is that your Leprechaun will look more like he’s dancing. The disadvantage is that it’s much harder to get the Leprechaun to stand upright and not fall over. (More about that later.) If you intend for children to handle or play with your Leprechauns, you should create a sturdy base by keeping the legs together.

Step 5: Dress your Leprechaun with bits of colored wool, needled down into the white body. I decided my Leprechauns would all wear greens, but in my reading about Leprechauns, I’ve found a number of stories that refer to little men in scarlet caps or red vests, too. Obviously, if you are making gnomes or fairies rather than Leprechauns, your “clothing” can be in any colors you wish to reflect their characters.

Step 6: Now give your figure some hair and/or a beard. My Leprechaun men didn’t look complete to me until I gave them caps for their heads also. It’s easy to create elaborate hairstyles for your lady Leprechauns, if you want. If you prefer your soft sculpture dolls to be in the Waldorf style, then leave their faces blank. Your child’s and your imaginations will fill in their features. If you’d rather give your Leprechauns faces, feel free to do so. Your needle can even sculpt delicate or bulbous noses, eyes, mouths, and eyebrows, if you like. Hmmm … I wonder what color eyes Leprechauns have.

Step 7: Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you have as many Leprechauns as you want! I managed to make four, two men and two women. I think I’d like to craft two Leprechaun children to add to my group, but I ran out of time this year.

Step 8: Now arrange your Leprechauns in a ring on your needle-felted mat, and begin needling their feet into the mat. You may have to do this a long time to get them to stand, especially if you made the male Leprechauns with separated legs. Mine wanted to fall over a lot (that’s the disadvantage I mentioned earlier). I opted to place “ribbons” or cords in their hands, to help complete the ring. My son Lucas enjoyed braiding bits of roving to create the cords for the figures to hold. If there were more than four figures, I don’t think the ribbons would be necessary. Once you get them balanced, you may want to leave them be! Will your Leprechauns face outward or face into the ring?

Here’s my finished Leprechaun ring. I also took a shot of them dancing around a pot of gold.

Now put on some Irish music and dance like your Leprechauns! Please let me know if this tutorial is helpful to you.

Here are two needle-felted tapestries that Lucas recently made to give as gifts. The above tapestry was given to Aunt Kellie for her birthday. These were both wholly conceived and executed by my darling almost-9-year-old. Both are about six inches in diameter.

This one of tropical fish is a belated birthday gift for another family member. We still have to give it, though, so I won’t say who the recipient will be.

I’ve been crafting a bit myself in fits and spurts, but I’m not ready to show my creations yet. I also have a big fat book edit going on now and it’s eating up my time. I am grateful for my glorious weekend spent among friends; I am trying hard to let it buoy me up this week.

I don’t have many words right now. I’m shocked and grieving for the people of Japan, and I wish I had resources to send.

Doctors Without Borders is taking donations here.

The American Red Cross is accepting donations here.