Our African Christmas

In our quest to be more enviro-friendly we decided to go the natural route for our Christmas tree again this year. Last years inverted tree root was great, but there were no trees that had been removed since we moved to our new house, so this was not really an option. We decided to find an indigenous tree that we could decorate.










Since I have my hands full with the kids and trying to get a new business off the ground, not to mention trying to settle into our new home, hubby offered to find a tree; with his busy schedule it was the 23rd December before he managed to find some young acacia trees in an area of the farm that is earmarked for bush-clearing and planting in the new year. Since we prefer to decorate our tree on the 24th and didn't want to keep the tree inside too long, so as not to kill it, hubby gently removed it and brought it home on the 24th where we planted it into a terracotta pot. Sadly the other trees in this part of the farm will not meet with such a favourable fate; but we are planning on taking several more out for our garden.



We kept the decorations simple using some ribbons from my sewing supplies, tea lights, painted jacaranda seed-pods and felted ornaments made by Dylan (with supplies bought from Carle - http://ourholisticlife.blogspot.com/)










Gnome made by Dylan






























Some more gnomes and faries


















We added some gnomes made by a fellow homeschool mom and our painted jacaranda pods

Bean Teepee

We finally got round to building the bean teepee which I promised my kids we would make...
It was originally done by a homeschool mom on a forum I belong to and when my 11yo son saw it he wanted to make it for his brother to play in. It is still a work in progress, so far we have planted some granadilla plants and today we are going to plant some runner bean and pea seeds.





Who would belive it is winter here in our part of the world....

Where Oh Where does the time go!?

I have been wanting to update this blog for months, and somehow just never seem to find a spare moment to do so - actually I should be outside working in the garden, or working on the pile of accounting work lying on my desk as I sit here and type this. My now two year old is demanding that we go outside...
So much has happened, that I would love to post about, we are still happily homeschooling, heading in a more and more unschool direction as time passes - schooling the kids has simply become part of sharing our lives with them. Ryan is now two and #3 is due in about 1 1/2 months.

Only time will tell if I manage to post here more often...