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How Do You Know If Your Child Should Be Gluten-Free?

Disclaimer: the following post is about our personal experience – I’m always happy to share our story with others. However, the contents of this post are not intended to offer medical advice, diagnose health problems or suggest treatments. This post is not a substitute for medical care provided by a licensed and qualified health professional.

“There is more risk than benefit to a gluten-free diet for people — especially children — who haven’t been diagnosed with celiac disease or wheat allergy, according to the Journal of Pediatrics.”
(Gluten-free isn’t healthy choice for most children, pediatrician says)

Articles like this one make me feel so angry. And confused. And guilty. Basically all the feelings.

My daughter River has been gluten-free for two and half years now, minus the seven weeks that she ate gluten to prepare for a celiac test.

“Most of those consumers are eating gluten-free without checking with a dietitian or health professional, making it a fad that could be affecting thousands of children, Reilly said.”
(Gluten-free isn’t healthy choice for most children, pediatrician says)

I question my decision to force a gluten-free diet on my daughter at least once a week. After all, it’s a pain in the butt for everyone. Gluten-free flour costs more than regular flour. Packaged GF foods cost a small fortune. I hate that she misses out on birthday cake at parties. I hate that she can’t eat much of the food at most restaurants. I hate that potlucks – well, I just hate potlucks in general.

River started her gluten-free diet a few months before she turned six. The improvements were obvious and immediate, both physically and emotionally. Her colouring went from deathly-pale to Watson-pale. Her eyes became clearer, her teeth lost their yellow tinge. She stopped throwing up all the time. We were delighted and we settled into the gluten-free lifestyle for the long haul.

Over time, though, I started to second-guess myself. Were the improvements all in my head? Was I inflicting this weird diet on my child for no good reason? Of course being a typical mother, I worried about the opposite at the exact same time. Maybe I wasn’t being strict enough. If she was truly celiac, why weren’t we being more careful to avoid cross-contamination?

May 15, 2016
You CAN Grow Your Own Food

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links for Etsy and refers to seeds that were given to me for free. Mentions of the seeds’ magical qualities is solely a reflection of their determination to grow despite my ineptitude and not a claim of actual Harry Potty-esque magical abilities. But that would be cool.

You know those house plants that are indestructible? You know, the plants that “thrive on neglect”? I can’t grow any of them. I kill aloe vera plants, spider plants, cactuses – you name it. I do not have a green thumb. My thumb is brown – and not the beautiful brown of a rich soil, but more the pale brown of a dead leaf. I have dead-leaf thumb.

But every year for the past seven years, I’ve had a vegetable garden that has done just fine in spite of my terrible gardening skills. And honestly, if I can grow a tomato, so can you. And you should, because home-grown tomatoes are amazing.

When I planted my first bed seven years ago in a community garden, I had visions of my daughter and I joyfully working side by side in the soil. Like many first-time parents, I might have overestimated my seven-month-old’s abilities. She didn’t help me so much as she ate grass and breathed in the compost-fresh air.

Those cheeks. I. Just. Want. To. Squish. Them.

This little garden did reasonably well, though that was mostly thanks to my neighbour who watered the plants almost daily for me. And did a lot of the initial planting for me. And harvested the vegetables for me. I was still proud of myself.

I continued using the community garden until we moved a few years later. As soon as the weather was warm enough, James built a raised bed in the backyard and we planted. We planted a lot. Like, with total disregard for the suggested spacing found on the seed packets.

It was the first time that we gardened on our own. We messed up a bit, but you know what? Things grew. Every year, things grew.

Starting from Seed

Then, last year, I decided to try starting from seed. How hard can it be, right? In nature, things grow by themselves from tiny little seeds all the time. Surely I’m just as likely to succeed as a random seed in the wild, right?

For sure. I consulted Twitter for recommendations on where to buy seeds and the hive mind directed to Laura at Cubits. Laura offered to send me some seeds and I quite happily agreed. I would do her proud, I was sure.

When the seeds arrived, I wanted to plant them right away but it was too early in the year. I turned my energy towards the Internet and researched the best way to start seeds.

Wow. There are a lot of ways to start seeds.

Toilet paper rolls in an empty fish tank? Perfect. Wait – no, they can get moldy. Seed starting in an egg carton? We can do that! No – looks like that doesn’t give the roots enough room to grow. For every creative, low-cost suggestion I found, there seemed to be a downside.

Finally I realized that I needed to stop taking gardening advice from Pinterest and make a proper greenhouse in the basement. All I needed was soil, pots, a metal stand and fluorescent lights that I could gradually move higher as the seedling grew. Sure, it would cost money – but it would save money when we weren’t buying food at the farmers’ market in the summer, right?

Wrong. At least, that’s what my husband said. He wasn’t into the idea of spending money on my garden, especially since he’s convinced that I’ve never watered a plant in my life.

Planting the Seeds

By the time the seeds were ready to be planted, I still had no idea what to do. In a panic, I ran to Canadian Tire and picked up a little seed starter kit that included a heating pad. Finally it was time to plant. I tried to call the girls to the table so we could participate in the miracle of gardening together, but they were not interested. At all. So I waited until later in the day. And then I tried the next day. And the next. A week went by. Then another. Zero interest in poking holes in dirt.

OK, this baffled me. Planting seeds – how is that not fun? Did they suspect that I was counting on gardening being a good chunk of our summer homeschooling lessons? I started to worry that all this delaying made me miss my window of opportunity and that now we would have no seedlings for our garden and that I would have to buy pre-started seedlings from the garden store and then I would have to try and pass off a Spanish Spotted Cucumber as a Russian Speckled Squash or something and hope that no one would no that I had utterly failed.

No, I had to do this. I grabbed the kit, planted the seeds in the pods, and carefully labelled each row. Then I dragged four large Rubbermaid bins upstairs and stacked them in front of the nursery window since no one was using that room anyway. I plugged in the heating mat, put the tray on top, and then shut the door. Done.

And the seeds grew.

Before I knew it, little shoots popped out of the soil, followed by the two true leaves. All I did was spritz them with water from time to time and rotate the tray so that they’d all get an equal amount of window time.

Suddenly, I was a master gardener.

Delighted with my success, I started researching ways to help out my little sprouts. I worried when they became “leggy” because they had to reach way up towards the sun instead of just relaxing under a heat lamp, so I started blowing on them to mimic the wind and encourage hardier stem growth. I also noticed that some of the seedlings weren’t growing as fast as the others, so I plucked nearly a quarter of them out of their rows and carefully lined them up right against the window to give them more sun. Which meant that they nearly 20 little plants were no longer in their neatly labelled rows and I had no idea what was what.

Master gardener? Try disaster gardener.

Oh well, I pushed on. We’d figure it out eventually, right? And if a cucumber plant showed up in the middle of the tomato patch, well, I’d pretend it was intentional. Like the planting of the three sisters: squash, corn and beans. We could start the three brothers: radishes, basil and maple trees. Or something.

Hardening Off the Seeds

I continued to care for my seedlings and soon it was time to harden them off. Hardening off is when you bring them outside a little bit more each day, allowing the plants to gradually get used to the elements. The first day went great – I put them in the front yard in the shade. The second day was good too, I found a brighter spot for my seedlings to soak up some sun. On the third day I got bored of the whole process and just plopped them on top of our garden bed. Same with the fourth day, except I couldn’t even be bothered to bring them back in for the night. They survived.

Transplanting to the Vegetable Garden Beds

Finally it was time to plant. I ended up with far more seedlings than I could fit in my garden beds, but since I wasn’t sure if my plants would survive the transplanting process, I decided to plant all of them and then thin out the weakest ones once the plants established themselves. It made sense in my head. It did not make sense a month later when it was super hot and I didn’t want to go outside. So I just let them do their thing. My daughter was obsessed with watering plants at that time, so I can only assume that they were utterly drenched on a semi-regular basis.

Finally I dragged myself out to the backyard. I can only conclude that the Cubits seeds are magical because the plants had taken off beautifully. They had all tripled in size and my garden was a delightful tangle of horticulture. There was no way to get tomato cages over most of the tomato plants. The beans were using the evergreen trees beside the garden as a trellis. But my plants didn’t care – they just did their thing.

Harvesting our Vegetable Garden

We had herbs and beans and even ground cherries. We had the most amazing assortment of tomatoes. I discovered that my tomato-loving middle child only eats the perfectly red ones, so I gorged on the black ones, the purple ones and the yellow ones. My oldest sat on the edge and ate the peas right off the vines. We put basil and mint on anything and everything.

I admit that it wasn’t the beautiful garden I had visions of when I started the seeds. I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to post evidence of the messy garden on my blog or Instagram. Or even Snapchat. But despite the less-than-lovely look of it all, we feasted last summer.

If you’ve been thinking of starting a garden, I encourage you to give it a shot. You just have to provide soil, sun and water and that’s really it – Mother Nature pretty much figures out the rest. If I can do it, you can do it. And personally, I can’t wait to get started this year.

Linked up at: Simply Natural Saturdays, Small Victories Sunday

April 30, 2016
Our New Favourite Toy

What is this amazing toy, you ask? OK, it’s a stick.

Don’t go, don’t go!

I know what you’re thinking — you can’t believe you clicked over all the way from Pinterest to read about a disembodied tree limb. But scroll on down while you’re here and see the super cool ways that other people have used sticks. Think of it as a mini stick-themed Pinterest. Which would be the world’s worst website, I’m thinking. A total one-trick pony.

Anyway.

I cut down our pear tree a few days ago. I felt just awful the entire time, and I apologized profusely as I cut off the branches. Why the guilt? I recently read an article about how trees communicate with other trees in the area through the “wood wide web” – it’s pretty cool, actually. Trees send messages through their roots to warn other trees of danger; they can even care for each other by directing food from the healthy tree towards the weaker trees. So naturally as I sawed away, I imagined my pear tree as a Lord-of-the-Rings-style character sending out desperate warnings to the other trees while they watched on with deeps sighs of disapproval. Now my pear tree is the object of pity in our neighbourhood forest and it’s all my fault.

On the other hand, I couldn’t wait for that beast to be gone.

Until last fall, I would describe my backyard as oppressive. It wasn’t a nice place to play. The gardens were overgrown, the shed was falling down, and the pear tree blocked half the entrance to the yard no matter how much we trimmed it back. To get past the tree, you needed to duck down under the branches, and you had to run because the tree was covered with wasps and bees from spring to fall. I have nothing against bees. I hate wasps. Almost as much as I hate the raccoons that come for the pear fruit and poop all over our yard. Seriously, I don’t need that – I step in enough animal waste as it is.

Yes, the tree had to go.

It didn’t take long to cut down at all – in fact, I don’t know why I didn’t just do it last year. Oh right. The crippling guilt.

The only part of the tree that’s left is the trunk, and I’m hoping to even it up a bit so I can use it as a base for a bird bath. The part that overwhelms me now is the branches that are everywhere. The city will take them away, but only if we cut them down to size, stack them neatly, and tie them in bundles. We’re not really a “neat bundle of sticks” kind of family. We’re more of a “ignore them until the decompose” kind of family. Regardless, I got started on the branches right away.

And it only took me about ten minutes and seven sticks to realized that I had stumbled upon the greatest addition to our backyard since the sandbox. Sticks are great fun! They’re #1 in Wired’s 5 Best Toys of All Time. In 2008, sticks were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. And I was about to gift my children with a whole pile of them!

A flush of satisfaction came over me – the kind that comes when you know you’ve nailed parenting yet again – and I imagined for a moment the joy that these sticks would bring my children. I imagined all the things that these sticks would be: tent posts and garden markers and boat masts and javelins and … well, pretty much everything I thought of morphed into sword fights. Then I started imagining trips to the emergency room to treat “stick in the eye,” and then the inevitable blog post about first aid for eye injuries and the accompanying gory photos that wouldn’t be suitable for Pinterest at all.

Thankfully, other bloggers aren’t crippled by the thought of eyeball injuries and they’ve come up with so many clever ideas for using sticks. Not that kids need help with creativity, of course. But I plan to refer back to this post throughout the summer – like every time I pick up 72 sticks off the ground because I’m trying to cut the grass.

5 Unexpected Ways to Play With Sticks

(1) Just look at these beautiful magic wands found on the Nurture Store blog. They’re made with beads, wire, and string and they’re so pretty! I’d love for my children to make dozens of these and spread them through the backyard as garden art.

(2) Or how about this? Melissa from Fireflies and Mudpies gave her children twigs and playdough and let them build wonderful little structures. It reminds me of playing with Tinker Toys. I know that both my five-year-old and my eight-year-old would both enjoy this activity.

(3) Kristin at Craftiments shows us just how to make up a loom for garden weaving. River did this at forest school in the fall, but they used fabric instead of flowers and branches. Either way, garden weaving is beautiful and I plan to set up a frame as soon as I’m done cutting down the rest of the branches.

(4) This stick crown from Mama Miss is all sorts of clever. It was inspired by a lovely hand-stitched stick crown from KirstenRickert.com, but this version is simplified, using a glue gun rather than a needle and thread. I need to make a few of these in time for our annual visit to Magic and Mischief at the Royal Botanical Gardens.

(5) I love how bright and cheerful this rainbow wind chime is from Happy Hooligans. Next time we pull out the paint to decorate some rocks, I’m going to have girls make these as well!

I love all these awesome stick suggestions – they should last my kids through the summer, right? The month?

The week?

I’ve pinned even more ideas to my Crafts with Kids board on Pinterest – there are so many great ideas. I especially like the nature collage – which one is your favourite?

April 22, 2016
The One Item Every Settlers of Catan Fan Needs from Ikea

This post contains affiliate links.

Thank you for visiting Unhurried Home: Life in the Slow Lane! I hope this post helps make your next game night a little more fun. 🙂 If you enjoy this post, be sure to check out my other top blog posts from 2016.

About a month ago, my eight-year-old complained that it’s not fair that she has to go to church on Sunday morning when she is tired from watching movies on Saturday night. I can’t see the connection myself, given that she’s up to all hours of the night reading anyway, but I was fine with switching movie night to Thursdays instead.

At first, both girls were happy with this new night (because I’m pretty sure the whole conversation took place on a Thursday afternoon), but when Saturday evening rolled around, they were both upset that there was nothing to look forward to. And that there was no popcorn on the agenda.

Enter family game night.

We’ve been collecting a lot of board games over the year – mostly cooperative games for Harbour from Peaceable Kingdom. I wanted something a bit more challenging to play with River so I sent James out to buy Settlers of Catan Jr, which is a simplified version of the regular Settlers of Catan. It was instant love.

The rules were confusing at first, but only for a moment. Once you start playing, it’s easy to catch on. River and I played on Saturday night, and then we played again on Sunday night, this time with James joining us. It was fun, and I was happy.

We played each Saturday night for a few weeks in a row. Sometimes five-year-old Harbour joined in as the designated “ghost pirate” mover; other times she sat beside me and we played one of her games at the same time.

After about a month of playing the Junior version, I brought the regular version of Settlers upstairs from the basement. James and I bought it years ago, but I honestly don’t know if we’ve ever even played it at all. I went to the Settlers website and watched the little game demo, and then I showed River how the game works. Since we’d been playing the Junior version for a month, she picked up the rules without any trouble at all. We made some popcorn and started a game.

And it was great — I’ve been looking forward to playing board games as a family ever since River was born, and sitting around the table with my girls and my husband was such a satisfying experience.

We all loved the game – EXCEPT FOR ONE THING.

In Settlers of Catan, you arrange the hexagonal pieces differently each time you play so that your game is always fresh and new. But the pieces slide around when you bump them and it’s SOOOOO irritating. Especially when your five-year-old is “helping” you put pieces on the board.

Fellow Settlers fans: I know this picture makes you cringe.

Settlers of Catan: How to Keep the Pieces Together

Last week we went to Ikea and James was determined to buy a piece of glass to set over the board.

Really? A random piece of glass? And just what would I do with it the rest of the week? I had visions of one-year-old Forest finding it and running through the house, holding the glass up high over his head while the rest of us ran after him. But James had decided that we could not play another game without some sort of board protector and so every time we passed a piece of glass, he measured it to see if it was big enough. I thought I was doomed when he found something that could work beautifully – until we arrived in the picture frame department.

That’s where we saw the glass-free Saxnas frame, which is as cheap as they come. We paid $5.99 Canadian, so given the exchange rate, I can only imagine that Ikea in the US actually pays it’s customers to take them home.

On Saturday night, we set up our Catan board with the hexagonal shapes and the number discs, then we placed the frame carefully over top to keep everything in place. It fit perfectly. Like, so perfectly that every future Settlers game should come with a $6 gift card to Ikea. We played our settlement and road pieces right on top of the plastic and everything underneath stayed put. If you play Settlers of Catan, get to an Ikea and get yourself a Saxnas frame right away.

For the rest of the week, the frame hangs on the wall in our hallway. We decided that the winner gets to put a picture behind it for the family to enjoy until the next game — I thought the girls would get a kick out of adding some of their artwork. But as luck would have it, James won the game on Saturday and he picked a picture of Steve McQueen.

So this is what I see every time I leave the bathroom:

I’m not sure how I’m going to top that, but I have at least a week to figure it out. Any suggestions?

If you enjoy this post, be sure to check out my other top blog posts from 2016.

April 11, 2016
Trashing the Basement Floor
There was a fantastic storm last Thursday night: tons of rain, some lightning, and really loud thunder. Our roof was just replaced the weekend before, so instead of spending the stormy evening worried about shingles flying away and water pouring in, I worked on my blog. That’s right – I was so confident in our invincibility that I didn’t even unplug my computer. And I’ve had a computer zapped by lightning before, so I’m normally pretty good about unplugging.

It’s not just computers. During lightning storms I’m afraid to:
- be outside
- be under trees
- be under shrubs, because they’re just like little trees
- plug in my phone
- sit near a window
- talk on a phone with a cord
- wash dishes
- take a shower
- take a bath
Am I crazy? I don’t think so.

But last weekend I was feeling good. Leave-the-computer-plugged-in kind of good. That is, until I heard my husband slam the door downstairs.

I went down. “What’s wrong?”

“Water is coming through the door!” he replied.

And it was. Water was seeping through the door because the drain was clogged. Possibly even with debris leftover from having our roof done. Oops.

We’ve lived in our house for more than five years and we’ve never had a problem with water getting in the basement. In fact, we were so confident in our dry basement that we put down a laminate floor to double our living space. Well, our storage space. I can’t say we do a lot of living in the basement when it’s so full of stuff.

But suddenly the laminate was wet. Not with tons of water, mind you. There was a bit of water on the tile and we mopped that up right away. In fact, I thought we were in the clear at first. Then I started walking around.

To my dismay, water squished up in the cracks I stepped on one plank, then disappeared when I moved my weight to another spot. My husband and I just kept walking around in silence, listening for the squooshy sound of water underneath the flooring. I knew immediately that it would have to come up. Plus, the Facebook hive mind was unanimous – the laminate had to come up or I’d risk mold. And I’m more afraid of mold than I am of washing dishes in a lightning storm.

We got started the next day. The first piece of laminate was really hard to get up – in the end, my husband had to break it in half. The next few pieces were still pretty hard to free. It was exhausting, but I refused to admit defeat, for an hour at least. Then I admitted defeat. And I went to bed.

The next day I pulled up half our basement floor during Forest’s nap time. At first, I tried to be careful, hoping that we could salvage some of it. Then a friend came over to reassure me that 1) there is no way we’re going to find the exact same laminate to replace what we pull up, and 2) we cannot just put something completely different down and expect no one to notice. He said that the whole floor had to come up. In a way that was reassuring, because I was afraid that I had gone overboard. From that moment on, it’s been a free-for-all, pulling up flooring in every spare moment. Right now we just have laminate left at the dry ends of the room, so I’m taking a break and instead I’m washing the dust off the floor. Which is next to impossible because we’re having the basement bathroom renovated this week, and that brings a truckload of its own dust.

It’s been an experience, for sure. I wanted to write a hilarious post about the seven stages of discovering your basement is wet – you know, despair, guilt, bargaining – but I don’t feel those emotions. I mostly feel completely overwhelmed by the enormous job of pulling up a floor and redoing it… and also a bit of gratitude. Which is weird, I know. Yet I just feel so thankful that James noticed the leaking early on in the evening instead of the next day. I’m thankful that my friend came by on Saturday to check on the floor for me. I’m grateful that my dad was able to help me over the phone. I’m grateful that my cousin is working on my bathroom this week and he is able to calm me down when I start to feel panicky. He is grateful that he’s already scheduled to be here to work on my bathroom, so he’s being paid to calm me down. I’m grateful to all my friends that hounded their husbands for advice. I’m grateful for the people that have offered to take Forest out of the house so I can get a bit more work done.

Yeah, it sucks that we put so much money into a floor that now we’re throwing away. But I’m not angry; I don’t feel guilty; I’m not bitter. To be honest, given how fearful I am of mold, I’m actually a teeny bit happy that we will have an unfinished floor now that I can monitor at all times. Paranoid people like me don’t cope well with nice flooring. Or lightning storms.
April 7, 2016
Letter from a Homeschooling Mom

School moms, I don’t know how you do it.

You know, the rumours about homeschooling moms are true: there are days where I don’t get out of my pyjamas. On those days, my kids and I might snuggle up under a blanket on the couch with a cup of tea and our lesson books. We’ll leisurely read about kings and queens and islands and earthquakes and I will never once give thought to putting on grown-up pants. Of course, there are other PJ-filled days where I drink six cups of coffee before lunch and the kids binge-watch The Magic Schoolbus on Netflix and I count that as a science lesson. And also a geography lesson. The bus goes places, right?

Not us, though. We don’t go any where – at least, not first thing in the morning.

But you do! I see you all walking your kids to school while I’m drinking my tea. You somehow manage to drag your kids out of bed and then feed them and dress them and groom them enough to meet the generally accepted level of hygiene, and you do this all before 9:00am.

I can confidently say that this is simply beyond my skill level as a parent.

This past week was March Break and we put River in a local day camp. She had the most wonderful time hiking through the woods and sliding in the mud and roasting marshmallows around a fire. I’m so glad that we signed her up. But getting her there in the morning?

It almost killed me.

Every morning for the past week, I dragged my weary self out of the bed so that I could go give the equally bleary-eyed River her outfit for the day. Then we both kind of wandered around zombie-like, looking for coffee and cheerios.

While River picked at her cereal, I started to pack her lunch. Packing lunches is horrible. HORRIBLE. My daughter is a picky eater at the best of times, but trying to find foods that she’ll eat out of a lunch box is a special kind of misery. I suspect it’s punishment for all the times as a kid that I refused to eat my mother’s homemade Lunchables and insisted on the prepackaged kind that cost twice as much.

River wouldn’t touch a Lunchable with a ten-foot pole, so I had to come up with something else. Actually, I thought I had it nailed at first. I went to the grocery store on Sunday evening and blew our budget on all the things that I thought she would eat. Gluten-free pretzels. Drinkable yogurt. Gluten-free cookies. Gluten-free bagel chips. Gluten-free lemon loaf, which is as close to a sandwich as my daughter would ever eat. All daughter-approved and lunch box-friendly.

Then, late on Sunday night as I re-read the camp letter, I saw the words “nut-free”. HOW did I forget about nut-free? GAH! I was so annoyed at myself. We quickly grabbed all the packages. Nothing had nuts in it but several items were made in nut-friendly facilities. Which means THEY’RE NOT ALLOWED.

With a sigh, I took the wafers and the cookies out of her lunch and figured that I’d just make a big pot of popcorn in the morning. Popcorn is a grain, right? It is in my house. And at 7:30 in the morning, that’s about the best I can do. Besides, I have no illusion that my child is actually going to eat anything I send – when I pack lunches, it’s all for show. I want other adults to know that I’m a caring parent that provides the necessities of life for her children. Honestly, I should just buy a plastic salad to pack in her lunch bag for show.

Once lunch was finally packed and the fewest possible quantity of Cheerios were eaten, we were ready to go. At least, that’s what I thought, until I realized that I was still in my pyjamas. Ugh! I have to get dressed too? Fine, but I drew the line at brushing my hair.

Or my daughters’ hair. I don’t think I remembered to brush it the whole week. Homeschooled kids are notorious for their messy hair. Or maybe I’m the only one that notices? I always check out other kids’ hair styles when I’m out at events because I want to make sure that my kids’ hair isn’t the worst. It actually is – but not by much – and I’m happy to make the other moms feel better about their parenting.

Now, I should say that some kids in the group do have lovely, even braids, but I just naturally assume that it’s because the moms have three kids or less. I know, I know – I have three kids or less. But I’m practically incompetent sometimes, so that’s automatically like having seven kids. And anyway, half of our outings are to a forest of some sort. I figure that if my kids get separated from the group, coyotes will be less likely to eat a feral-looking child and instead raise her as part of the pack. Really, it’s a security measure.

So each morning I dropped my daughter off with squeaky-clean but crazy-messy hair. I’m almost certain that her socks matched every day, and I’m holding on to that small success.

Once River was at camp, I returned home for a nice, quiet morning. Or not. My two youngest were at home with my husband, waiting for me to return and actively destroying my everything in the meantime. No rest for me! And school moms, I know this is true for you. You have other kids to deal with all day long – some of you even go through this whole ritual every morning and then go to work! It boggles my mind.

Honestly, if it didn’t mean leaving the house before 9:00am, I’d be outside with little cups of Gatorade to pass out as you rush past my house during your morning marathon.

Because I can’t believe you manage to get your kids to school every single day. I’m serious – teaching long division is nothing compared to this.

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This post is linked up at A Pinch of Joy • Motivational Mondays • Weekly Wrap Up

March 20, 2016
4000 Tiny reasons the You Shouldn’t Take Advice from Pinterest

My house is covered in lentils.

There was an evening this past week where my toddler, Forest, howled with anger every time I put him down on the ground. My eight-year-old was fighting with my five-year-old and the noise was driving me crazy. I just wanted some peace so that I could focus on getting supper on the stove. Delicious meatballs, in case you were wondering. Sweet and sour and oh-so-good. The kind of meatballs that kids live for. Well, not mine. All three of my kids hate meatballs.

But I love meatballs and James loves meatballs and I was determined to get supper going. I was trying to be frugal by substituting lentils for a portion of the hamburger meat, so I had a bag of lentils on the counter. When Forest started grabbing for the bag, I figured that a handful or two of dried lentils might buy me a few minutes to roll up the meat. I put Forest on the floor with the bag and a mixing bowl and a measuring cup and he immediately started scooping the lentils out. Awesome. I turned back to the counter.

A moment later, I heard the distinctive sound that approximately four thousand lentils hitting the floor makes. Like a whooshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It was kind of soothing, actually. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Forest had emptied half the bag onto the floor. Meh. Lentils are super cheap. With my blessing, Forest smeared the lentils across the floor.

A mess, you ask? Try a “healthy sensory activity”. That’s what Pinterest tells me, at least.

Never take advice from Pinterest.

But back to the meatballs. I filled up two trays, popped them in the oven for 15 minutes, and then started on the sauce. I grabbed the vinegar, soy sauce and cornstarch from the cupboard, then picked some lentils off the bottom of my socks. I added brown sugar and ground ginger to the pot, then used my foot to brush some of the lentils on the floor off to the side so I wouldn’t keep stepping on them. What next? Water and orange juice, which I hoped would be a decent substitute for pineapple juice.

As the sauce began to simmer, I stopped to pick more lentils off my socks. Then I grabbed the broom and swept a lentil-free path alongside the counter. Forest had moved his lentil scooping operation to the dining area, which was helpful because I had to open the oven and get the meatballs out.

They smelled good.

I grabbed the cutting board, plus a few peppers, five carrots, and a stabby pineapple. Then I took off my socks because I was tired of lentils sticking to them. I could feel every tiny one pressing on the bottom of my foot like 4000 tiny massage stones — except annoying more than relaxing.

Next came the rice. When I pulled the huge bag out of the pantry, Forest immediately ran back into the kitchen. Do you know what’s better than dried lentils? Dried rice. Ha! Not this time, kiddo. I quickly measured out two cups and put the bag away. While the meatballs and the rice simmered gently on the stove, I grabbed the broom again and kept sweeping. And sweeping. And sweeping. And for the rest of the night, it’s pretty much all I did.

The lentils were everywhere. They were all over the floor. By bedtime, they had taken over every room in the house. They were against the baseboards. They covered the kitchen floor. They spread to my living room couch, the bathroom floor, and burrowed into all three bedroom carpets.

They were in my bed.

Every room had lentils, plus an abandoned lentil-covered sock or two.

My house looks like a confetti bomb went off. Or maybe a lentil-filled pinata, which would be the saddest birthday party surprise ever. Actually, it reminds me of grade nine, when my best friend turned 14 and I surprised her by dumping a bottle of glitter in her locker. Glitter, of course, is the devil. You can’t get it off of anything. Years later, we checked to see if the glitter was still there. It was. Looking back, I’m surprised I wasn’t billed for damage to school property.

And that is what I’m dealing with a day later. The pulse-equivalent of glitter. Forest and I spent an entire morning washing the floors, removing every lentil by hand — but they keep coming back. And every time I put Forest down on the ground so that I can sweep them up, Forest howls in protest. Though I might have some luck right now if I try. He’s busy playing with magic markers, so that should keep him busy for a bit. And what could go wrong with that?

March 12, 2016
How to Turn Old Amber into a Stunning Wrap Bracelet

This post is for all the moms out there with a stash of old amber necklaces just begging to be made into something new and pretty. Because if you’re anything like me, those necklaces have been gathering dust for half a decade now. Go on and dig the necklaces out of storage – I’m going to show you how easy it is to make a wrap bracelet using the amber beads.

I posted about the bracelets yesterday and I went over all the things I did wrong. I’m not sure if it was helpful information or if I just scared people away. Perhaps it helps to know that I often mess up my craft projects. There is definitely precedent for my agony:

• Making Amber Wrap Bracelets (What NOT To Do)
• My Misadventures with Chalk Paint
• My Favourite New Thing (Work in Progress Wednesday) Okay, nothing bad happened in this post. I just really like the photo of my forlorn daughter hugging the mannequin.

Wow, I can’t believe I never wrote about stabbing a barbed needle clear through my finger while felting a crown on the eve of my daughter’s birthday. I’m talking in one end and out the other. That’s why you should never needle felt a gift at the last minute.

But back to the bracelets. You won’t mess up your bracelets; you’ll be smarter than me. It won’t take you a whole episode (season) of Downton Abby to finish the first one – I’ll bet you can knock off a bracelet in an episode of The Office or less. Although that might really be more of a knitting show. Maybe rug hooking? Whatever, it doesn’t matter.

To make a bracelet, you need to do is gather your supplies — a list is on the next page.

January 18, 2016
Making Amber Wrap Bracelets (What NOT To Do)

Want to make your own? Click here to see the step-by-step tutorial.

I made these pretty beaded amber wrap bracelets for my friends for Christmas. Each one took less than an hour to make, so naturally making five of them took me … four weeks.

It started back in December when I decided that I would make matching bracelets for an upcoming gift exchange with a few of my friends. This was after those two evenings of reattaching doll heads, and I was excited to come up with another handicraft project to work on.

Given that I’m both green and cheap, I was happy that I’d be able to reuse something that I already had lying around in the house. As a family with three kids, we’ve gone through a lot of amber necklaces, and I always throw the outgrown or broken necklaces in a box so that I can reuse the beads to make jewellery for myself. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for eight years now.

Finding Amber Necklaces

Once I came up with the bracelet idea, I was eager to get started. I ran to my room to retrieve the beads. The necklaces, of course, were nowhere.

I looked everywhere I could think of. I looked in my craft supply cupboard and my jewellery box and my stash of shiny choking hazards that I keep hidden from both my one-year-old and my-four-year old. I looked through my knitting supplies. I looked under my bedroom dresser – the one that holds my clothes. I looked under my other bedroom dresser – the one that holds my yarn. You have one of those too, right?

I have no idea where all the amber went.

You know, some people believe that amber has magical properties. I can assure you that it does, based solely on it’s ability to completely disappear and then reappear months and months later – usually in the middle of your living room floor.

After a frantic night of searching, I put out a call on Facebook: does anyone have old necklaces that I could have? Several of my friends said yes — but they didn’t know where the necklaces were. See? More proof of amber’s magical ability to disappear. Thankfully I one friend was able to locate her stash of broken-necklaces-that-will-someday-be-made-into-something-else; she generously sent the bag to me and I was all set. (Thank you Tanja!) I had five whole days to make the bracelets. No sweat.

I knew right away that I wouldn’t have enough beads to do all six bracelets (five for my friends, one for me), but that wasn’t a big deal. I really love the look of bracelets that mix up amber with other beads. I headed over to the craft store and picked a bunch of beads at random. And I bought a bead design board for organizing the beads. And I wasn’t sure what kind of cording I’d need, so I picked out a roll of soft suede. My project ended up costing a touch more than I expected, but I figured that the kids would enjoy having any leftover supplies for their own handicraft projects. Why, that meant I could count it as a homeschooling expense. How could I not spend the money if it would enrich my children’s education?

Five Days until Gift Exchange

I was ready to start. I watched a quick video on how to do the ladder stitch and then I got out my supplies: suede cord, assortment of beads, all-purpose thread, sewing needle, and Season One of Downton Abbey on the computer.

First, I put my beads on the bead board and rearranged them a few times until they looked just the right amount of “randomly sorted”. I cut my suede cord and threaded it through a button, tying a knot to secure it. Then I measured out the 16 feet of thread that I’d need for sewing the beads.

16 feet.

Have you ever measured out 16 feet of thread? I pulled and I pulled and I pulled from the spool, counting out foot by foot. As I pulled, the thread pooled on the floor and tangled itself into a giant polyester tumbleweed. I picked it up and tried to find an end so I could start unravelling, but clearly it was a lost cause. I threw the whole mess in the garbage.

Again, I measured out 16 feet. This time I was more careful to stop it from tangling. Once the full amount was measured out, I threaded it onto the needle and slid the needle to the middle so that my thread was held double. This effectively meant that my working length was just 8 feet – much more doable than 16. I carefully poked the needle through the suede knot and then pulled all 8 feet of thread through. It immediately tangled together at the end, creating a riculously stubborn knot.

I put the project down and retreated to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

Five minutes later, I sat back down with my mug and decided to tackle the knot rather than measure out another 16 feet of thread. It took a full episode of Downton Abbey to get the knot out. Finally I was able to put my first bead on. I pulled the needle through the bead’s hole, then looped it over the cord and pulled it back through the bead again. It snagged, but I was quick enough to untangle the thread before the knot got too tight.

From there on, I was able to put the rest of the beads on without much trouble. The further along I went, the more thread I used up and the easier it became. By the time I got to the end, I was feeling good.

I knotted off the cord and carefully examined the bracelet. The beads were beautiful. The workmanship was … well … uneven. Oh well, it was the first one. The next bracelet would be better.

At this point it was well after midnight, but I was so pleased with myself for finishing the first bracelet that I started a second one. I measured out 16 feet of thread and then put on the first bead. The thread immediately tangled together. Honestly, it was like working with leftover spaghetti noodles. Covered in super glue. In a bowl of molasses.

I packed up and went to bed.

Four Days until Gift Exchange

The next day I went back to the craft store and bought more beads. I figured that I had a better idea now of what size and colour would work, and I could always come back later on and return the beads that I didn’t use, right? I was confident that, in the end, I’d come in under budget. Or reasonably close.

That night, I pulled out my supplies again. I was more careful this time. I knew what I was doing. I gave myself more workspace. I was sure that everything would go more smoothly.

It did. I made it right to the end of the second bracelet before I realized that I had cut the leather cording too short and that the bracelet wouldn’t be long enough. I put it to the side to deal with later.

I started the next bracelet. The thread knotted up right away and when I tried to untangle it, I snapped it in half. I couldn’t figure out how to elegantly add more thread in the middle of the bracelet so I took the whole thing apart and started again. This time, I didn’t measure out enough thread though, so again, I couldn’t make the bracelet long enough. Why was this happening to me? I took it apart. Again.

I decided to call it quits for the night, given that it was well past midnight and all my bracelets had been failures. With a yawn, I slowly started to pack up my supplies and then proceeded to drop half my beads on the floor. It turns out that my hardwood floors are almost the exact same colour as amber beads. I spent the next 30 minutes as a broom zombie, sweeping them all up so that my baby wouldn’t eat them in the morning. Can you imagine if he had? “Here’s a bracelet, dear friend. The beads have actually passed through my son’s entire digestive system, so now they’re extra valuable. Just like kopi luwak, that really expensive coffee bean that is collected from cat poop.” It’s a thing. Believe me, I used to work at Starbucks.

I didn’t work on the bracelets for the next two days. I just … no.

One Night until Gift Exchange

On the night before my gift exchange, I pulled out my supplies. In a sudden epiphany (I’ve been full of them lately), I realized that the thread didn’t need to be a continuous 16 feet long – I really only needed two strands that were each 8 feet. If I cut two 8 foot strands and then held them each double with the needle in the middle, I would effectively have 4 strands of thread that were each 4 feet long. So. Much. Better. I was able to get one more bracelet almost all the way done before another knot appeared out of nowhere. It took another entire episode of Downton Abbey to untangle. At this point, I was practically in Season Three.

I left the last two bracelets and went to bed. Surely if I had this much trouble working on them at night in a quiet living room, it would go much better during the day with three children running around. Right?

As I climbed into bed, I noticed that I wasn’t feeling so hot. I lay down and immediately fell into a deep, satisfying sleep that lasted a good 20 minutes. Then I spent the rest of the night up with my one year old; he apparently came down with a cold at that exact hour and suddenly had a barking cough that reminded me of that famous seal that took up smoking. What? That’s not a thing? I was too tired to know what was real any more. By the morning it was obvious that all three kids were sick. I was too, but not as bad as them. I was just healthy enough to get up and take care of everyone else. Sob.

Halfway through the day, I told my friends that I couldn’t join them for the Christmas gift exchange due to my plague-monkey status. Then I tucked the bracelets away until after Christmas, knowing that I now had three more weeks before I’d see my friends again.

Starting Again

I waited a long time before I pulled the bracelets out again. When I finally laid them on the kitchen table, I gave them a careful once-over. The beads looked pretty but the sewing didn’t. The thread didn’t lay evenly from bead to bead. Sometimes it wasn’t pulled tight. It seemed to keep catching on the suede, which was square shaped. I looked at pictures of other bracelets online and I realized that everyone else used a smooth, round cord on the outsides instead a square-shaped suede.

I decided I had to start over. The next day, I went to the craft store and bought more cording. And more beads.

At home, I started my first bracelet with the round cord. I carefully measured out the thread and started sewing the beads. My instincts were right – the round shape of the cord made a huge difference and the thread was able to lie more nicely against it. I kept adding beads. Then the thread tangled. I found where I had left off on Downton Abbey and picked out the knot. After an episode or two, I finished the bracelet. It looked much nicer than the original ones.

Again, I started to feel the pressure of the deadline. I wanted to finish at least one more bracelet before going to bed, but it was 11:00 at night and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to tackle another length of thread. Then I remembered – totally out of the blue – that I had a kind of waxed polycord in the basement that I had purchased last year for a different project. But it would probably be too thick to thread through the beads, no? I quickly found it and gave it a try. It worked, and given how much thicker it was than all-purpose sewing thread, I wouldn’t even need to double it up. I measured out a scant 8 feet.

Working with the waxed polycord kind of felt like using dental floss. For a brief second, I thought about using actual dental floss because it would give the bracelet a festive pepperminty smell. Or not.

The bracelet finished in record time. There were no tangles of any kind. No snags. I was so pleased with how well it went and I couldn’t wait to start the next one … except that I couldn’t stop thinking of dental floss when I looked at it. I decided that I needed to find a brown version in the morning. Then I promptly knocked over my bead board and spent the next 30 minutes sweeping up beads before heading for bed.

I hate beads.

The next afternoon, just one day before I’d see my friends, I drove out in a snowstorm to the store that sells the waxed polycord. I picked a nice shade of chestnut brown and then drove home. I waited until the kids were in bed and pulled out my beads again. This time, the bracelet practically made itself. I quickly made a second bracelet, then left the final two the next day.

The following afternoon, with my girls gone out and my son down for a nap, I pulled out the beads for what I hoped was the last time ever. I made two bracelets in no time at all, and then, because I couldn’t stop thinking of dental floss, I remade the white-threaded bracelet as well. Five bracelets. Done. And they were pretty, and I loved them.

I love them almost enough to make one for myself too. Almost, but not quite.

Tomorrow I’ll post a tutorial on how to make the bracelets in case you have your own necklaces to upcycle. I recommend you find waxed polycord and round leather cording before starting. And at least a couple seasons of Downton Abbey.

Find my on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/tea4tamara

January 17, 2016
My Epiphany

Thank you for visiting Unhurried Home! This is my post from last year (2016), when I first discovered the whole idea of Epiphany and our very simple, very last-minute celebration. Today I’m busy getting ready for our very first Epiphany party — we’ve never done this, so feel free to send me tips here or over on Facebook.

Yesterday was Epiphany, the day that we celebrate the three wise men visiting Jesus. We don’t know many of the details of that day – we don’t even know how many men there actually were. We do know, however, that they arrived much later after the birth than our Christmas cards depict – likely a whole year or two.

I reflected on their visit at our church service on Christmas Eve as my own 15 month old boy made a dash down the aisle for the third time in four minutes. Well, not so much reflected as commiserated with Mary because I can only imagine that the entire magi visit was exhausting.

I picture Mary getting Jesus’ lunch ready when the men arrived. She was carefully slicing the grapes in half lengthwise to reduce the chance of choking. Jesus was sitting on the floor near her, banging on some dishes with a spoon – the noise was annoying but at least it kept him occupied for a minute.

Then, out of the blue, a group of royal-looking men showed up at the door. Mary, pushing worries of a missed nap time out of her head, welcomed them in and frantically looked for a place to sit. Did they have chairs, lovingly hand-crafted by Joseph the carpenter? If they did, I’m certain that they all were laying on their side under a table to stop Jesus from constantly standing on the top of them.

You know how later on Satan tells Jesus to jump off a cliff because the angels will catch him? Toddlers don’t need the devil’s prompting; they will jump off of anything and everything, firmly convinced that if the angels are busy, a mother will be there to break the fall.

So poor Mary was busy putting all the chairs upright, muttering apologies as she dusted them them off. Jesus was not making matters easier because, overcome with shyness due to the strangers in the house, he was now clinging desperately to her legs. Mary didn’t get frustrated though – she seems like a very patient woman, based on the statues I’ve seen.

Once everyone had a seat, Jesus warmed up to the visitors and started playing peekaboo with them from behind Mary’s robe. At one point, they held out their gifts for him to inspect. Jesus immediately tried to eat the frankincense and then put the bowl of myrrh on his head like a hat, spilling the contents all over the ground. He immediately uttered an adorable little “uh oh” in Aramaic, which Mary and the wise men instinctively echoed back.

As Mary quickly cleaned up the myrrh, the wise men looked around for somewhere high up that they could stash the gold, safely out of Jesus’ reach. In the commotion, I can only imagine that Jesus snuck out the side door and started finger-painting on one of the camels with mud.

I guess we’re lucky that Matthew didn’t include any of the details in his gospel. It would have made the nativity pageant far too complicated to pull off, given how notoriously bad toddlers are at following stage direction.

Most nativity pageants I’ve been to have everyone visit on the night Jesus was born. I didn’t know that many Christians around the world celebrate the magi’s visit on a completely separate day from Christmas. Until last year, I never knew that December 25 was the first of 12 days of Christmas. For me, once Boxing Day hit, Christmas was over. And honestly, that was usually a relief.

Every year, I find myself more disappointed with Christmas. It just doesn’t seem Holy anymore. I want it to be a special time where we remember the birth of Jesus, but every year, the birth is overshadowed by presents and Santas and stockings and parties. I confess that I’ve become resentful that I have to share a meaningful holiday with people who couldn’t care less about the birth of Jesus.

And don’t get me wrong – I’m not the kind of Christian that gets angry when someone says Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. I don’t care how my Starbucks cup is decorated. In fact, I’d prefer that fewer people celebrate Christmas. Celebrate something else. Have your sleigh rides and winter songs and turkey dinners on the Solstice instead and leave Christmas for Christians. Don’t co-opt our day as an excuse to party. (I can get kind of grinchy.)

Last year I was ready to give up on it all. I thought Christians should get together and have a secret Christmas where we celebrate without the extra fuss. Maybe in February, so we could get great deals on the leftover decorations.

Then, this year, I read this on the Christianity Today site:

“We love to find—or even invent—spiritual reasons for various cultural practices related to Christmas. For example, we give gifts to one other to remind ourselves of God’s great gift of Jesus to the world or of the gifts of the wise men to Jesus. That may sound nice, but is it biblical? Or do we really give gifts because that’s what our parents did and what everyone else we know does (except the Jehovah’s Witnesses, diehard secularists, and some religious purists)? What kind of parent would you be if you didn’t give your child a Christmas present (or, in many cases, a whole roomful of them)? Or, just imagine, if you didn’t celebrate Christmas at all (like the Puritans)? Very little is intrinsically spiritual or biblical about these kinds of expectations. They’re almost entirely cultural. That doesn’t make them necessarily wrong, but we shouldn’t invent biblical rationales to justify them.”

When I first read that, I honestly thought it was totally backwards. And dumb. Everyone knows that we exchange presents at Christmas because Jesus was God’s gift to us. I think. Or it might be because of the Magi. Whatever, I was more confused as to why everyone else exchanges gifts.

But for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about that passage all day. Then sometime in the evening, my thinking suddenly shifted ever so slightly and I understood what the author was saying. Society hasn’t co-opted our holiday – we’ve co-opted theirs. We take the cultural traditions of the season – the Christmas tree, the yule log, the misletoe, the candy cane – and we try to give them Biblical significance. And we’ve been doing it ever since a Pope picked December 25 to be Christmas Day, replacing the pagan winter festival of the time. It all worked beautifully for a long, long time as much of the Western world identified as Christian, but now that society is becoming more secular, we’re stamping our feet and pouting that “our” holiday is being taken away from us. Was it ever ours to begin with?

Somehow, the thought that Christmas doesn’t belong to Christians was very liberating for me. I’m not obligated to participate, just like I’m not obligated to set off fireworks on Victoria Day or barbecues on Labour Day. I’m also invited to enjoy it for what it is – a cultural celebration. And I think I can embrace that.

I do wish that we had a different name for the two distinct celebrations – the cultural Christmas and the birth of Jesus. A different day would be even better. As I thought about that, I remembered hearing about Epiphany and decided to look it up on Google. I learned that Epiphany is the day when Christians celebrate the wise men coming. I learned that some people consider it a second Christmas and hold it in high regard as the day that God officially introduced himself to the Gentile world. I read about how people celebrate – taking down the tree, throwing Epiphany parties, eating cake with three beans hidden inside to decide who will represent the royal wisemen at the royal feast.

I knew that I wanted to mark the day but I wasn’t sure how. I asked my wise friend Jenny if she celebrates it and she replied:

My home school mentor celebrated by marking the holy nights (12 days of Christmas), when they were very introspective as a family, and kept things spiritually based. Basically, she said it’s a time to shed off the materialism of Christmas, and to really delve into focusing on Christ. … They also keep the tone of their home reverent by clearing out the old, and making quiet plans for the new year. … It’s been really lovely to just sink into it, and I feel this real relief of the “holidays’ and now it’s time to spend contemplating Christ. It’s like all the bustle and chaos is over, and it’s a simple, reflective time. Since she introduced the concept to me, I’ve really cherished it quietly.

And that right there is what I’ve been looking for. I love it.

Because it works, doesn’t it? For the rest of our society, Christmas is over on December 26. On Boxing Day, we shop. On New Years Eve, we party. On Jan 2, we see Valentine decorations on the shelves.

But as Christians, we can keep the Christmas party going. We can keep singing carols. We can feast some more. We can focus on Jesus. It’s like a secret Christmas that’s all ours.

Yesterday was our first time celebrating Epiphany. We tried our best to incorporate some traditions in a rushed, last-minute sort of way. We had a feast with the nice table cloth and wine glasses of grape juice and apple cider. We had a roasted chicken – well, rotisserie takeout – and we had cupcakes with (coffee) beans shoved inside two of them to determine who would represent the royalty at our feast. We read the bible story and we took down the tree. We had ice cream. Then we cobbled together some pretty star decorations to put on the walls, which helped make the room seem a little less dull now that the Christmas decorations are gone.

In all, it was a lovely evening. I can’t tell you how relaxed I felt as I ate dinner with my family. It was such a nice way to formally mark the end of the Christmas season, rather than our usual mom-couldn’t-stand-the-christmas-tree-taking-up-half-the-living-room-one-moment-longer-and-took-it-down-while-everyone-slept tradition that we usually follow.

What a blessing this second Christmas turned out to be. I love the days that I’m discovering in the liturgical calendar year – celebrations that I knew nothing about, that have been left untouched by the world. I feel like I’m discovering a whole secret side of my faith, rich with symbolism and beauty and even a touch of whimsy. And the Holiness that I’ve been craving.

Look for my post in the following link ups:

Think Tank Thursday / Mama Moments Mondays / From House to Home / WholeHearted Wednesday / Shine Blog Hop

Find me on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/tea4tamara

January 7, 2016