Pine Cone Bunny.

With Easter fast approaching, we are deep into bunnies in our house. Teddy wants his peanut butter sandwich shaped like a bunny, Kitty hugs her beloved calico bunny to sleep every night and the bunnies who live in the garden (lol, their names are Mine and Yours) are being fed copious amounts of carrots and cabbage. In our house, bunnies rule at the moment.

So, it's hardly surprising that whenever I ask... OK, Kiddies, what shall we do today? Their reply is often 'MAKE A BUNNY!'

Here is our latest little guy...


He really is too sweet. He's made from things we collected on a recent walk around the neighborhood. A pine cone, a couple of pods and of course, a bit of wool fluff (from my wool basket... oh, if only we had sheep in our neighborhood :-)


I used my hot glue gun to stick the pods onto the pine cone and he immediately started to look like a cute little bunny.


All that was needed to complete this cutie was to stick the white bunny tail onto his bottom.


Here is our pine cone bunny. He really is too sweet... it looks like he's just asked a question and is waiting for an answer. I find myself telling him all sorts of things, he is such a good listener.


Happy Easter crafting :-)
Blessings and magic,
Donni

The Nature of Winter

We are especially lucky today! Sarah from The Forest Room is our guest and she shares such a wonderful photo journal of a recent walk that she and her kids enjoyed. Welcome, Sarah, and thank you for sharing your magic with us.

* * *

The Nature of Winter

It's too cold. I want to stay inside. Let me snuggle, stay warm.
This is my nature during winter.

Cold. Gray. Sleeping. Still.
This is the nature of winter.

Or maybe it just looks that way. When you're on the inside, peeping out.
Maybe if we go out there, we'll find more life than we expected.
Maybe if we go out into nature, and look for nature, we'll find that the nature of winter is as beautiful as the nature we find any other time of year.

Hmmmm . . . 28 degrees, snowflakes falling. Perfect time to find out.

I bundle the kids and myself, grab my camera and a book, Sharing Nature With Children, and we hop in the car to find a good spot.

Here, this looks good. Lake, field, woods. And the car will be close, so we can warm up.

And look! A buck! Before we even get out of the car.

We begin by exploring. Is there anything to be found in this cold?

A deer hoof print.

A dinosaur footprint! (Feel free to take your imagination along too.)

Then we found a fun crawly space, tree roots hanging over a bank.

The breeze off the lake is really cold. Time to move into the woods.
Aah! It's warmer here. Let's play a game. Find a tree you like. Look at the branches, the shape of the tree. It's easy to see in winter, with no leaves to block your view. Now be the tree.

Fun, isn't it? How about another game?
Close your eyes and hold up your fists. Listen. And wait. Every time you hear a bird, hold up a finger.

How many did you hear? 3? 6? 10? It's hard to stay still for very long in the cold. Go exploring some more. See what else you can find.

A leaf skeleton! We just learned about those!

Osage oranges. And sycamore bark.

A skeleton.

Now we're really getting cold. Hurry. Get in the car. We'll warm up a bit, then head over to that field.

OK. Ready? Let's go.



Oh! We scared up some birds, hiding in the weeds. Let's close our eyes and listen here. Did you hear more this time?
Look! Flowers. Flowers in winter!





So, the nature of winter? It was definitely cold. But we found so much that wasn't gray or silent or still. We found life and evidence of life and life that had passed and life that would come again.
In winter, we found nature.
Beautiful nature.

* * *

Enchanting, Sarah... thank you for reminding us that each season has it's own treasures. The happiness on the faces of your beautiful children is unmistakable. Even in winter, nature makes us free.

Sarah's blog, The Forest Room, is a delight. It was a very lucky day when I stumbled across it and I have been an avid follower ever since. Sarah, you are cleaving a beautiful life for you and your family and I want you to know that your sharing has helped me be the parent I want to be. Thank you.

Merry Blessings and magic,
Donni

A HUGE Thank You!

Oh, my dear readers. Today I want to express that I am utterly humbled by the love and support I have received from all of you over the past two years. It is an honor to know that you read me. I feel as if you are all standing at my side as I walk my path and I feel as if I am at your sides as you walk yours too. We are not alone, none of us! I started The Magic Onions as a way to keep my Mom, Dad and extended family, who live so far away from us, involved in our day-to-day lives. Little did I know the friends I would meet, the adventures I go on and the support I would discover in this magical Blogland. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart and the top of my soul.

You may be wondering where this outpouring of love is coming from... it's inside me all the time but has been brought bubbling to the surface today as I have just discovered that The Magic Onions has been nominated for the top 20 Homeschool Blog Awards. I am humbled and amazed and thank you all for inviting me into your lives.

If you would like to pop over to take part in the voting, here is the link, The Homeschool Post

There are other wonderful blogs nominated too and I hope you find a few new favorites in the list.

In humble gratitude,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Art

I can't help but admire the spider. OK, sure... big, scary ones give me the creeps. I really don't like their round bellies nor their hairy legs and, least of all, the thought that they might scurry over me or bite me. But, you have to admit... they are artists.

They make the finest, most delicate, thread and work tirelessly, weaving it into great works of beauty. Look at the geometric symmetry, the pretty patterns, the concentric circles of silverness.

The fragile strands that catch the dew to make the morning sparkle. Spiders spin perfection.

When we saw this beautiful web this morning, we gasped in wonder. Kitty was enchanted. We talked about how pretty it was. We noticed how it hadn't been there the day before. We realized that it probably wouldn't be there tomorrow. I watched in wonder as the understanding settled upon her face. The spider had worked tirelessly to spin his web. Already, it had broken in several places and soon it would break apart completely... a person would swish it away, a dog would run past, his tail wagging into it. No matter... the spider would wait patiently under a leaf and, when it was his time again, he would spin another, even more beautiful masterpiece... rest and work... in-breath and out-breath.

Aah... the magic of nature.

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Introducing Timone, our Squirrel.

My whole life, I have wanted to live in a place beautiful enough to have a squirrel want to live there too. Don't get me wrong... I have lived in beautiful places; Northwell, South Africa, where I grew up, was very beautiful, in a windswept, rugged kind of way. And Northland, in New Zealand, was green and fertile, youthful and exuberant. These were very beautiful places to live but, alas, no squirrel. I have always had a picture in my mind of a big, 100-year-old oak tree shading my afternoon tea, dappled shade throwing oak leaf patterns upon the prettily embroidered table cloth as I watch the squirrels burying their acorns in the garden. Perhaps it's all the Beatrix Potter I grew up with, but to me, this is where I have always wanted to live.

A while back, I decided to let go of my longing for 'the perfect place to live'. Not that I stopped longing for good things... longing for good things is good... it drives us and motivates us. What I did was make a conscious effort to stop allowing my longing to overwhelm the joy I did have. I was in a place in my soul of great disequilibrium where I focused so strongly on the few little things that weren't perfect in my life that it completely over-shadowed all the beautiful things that are so abundant around me. I realised that I could not be happy with what I had, this precious moment of now, if I was constantly wanting for something different... And, oh the happiness I have found since letting go! What I missed before!

And, would you believe, very soon after letting go and truly accepting the beauty around me (even if it wasn't that of an English story book), guess who came to live in our little tree in the garden...

A squirrel!

Her name is Timone and she visits our fence each day, usually around lunch time. T, K and I watch her with delight. We give her a nut or two. At first we left the nuts on the fence. Then she allowed us to hand feed her...

Now she comes into the house to say hello!

She even jumps onto our laps!

Last spring, she had a baby in the palm tree in the front of the house and now her baby is grown up and comes to play in the Brazilian Pepper in the back garden with her... She is a highlight in our lives!

The moral of this story is... if you let go of all you don't have and focus, instead, on all the joys you do have, perhaps, just perhaps, some of those things you wanted so badly before will find their way to you after all. And herewith, my first photo on The Magic Onions...

Ooh... getting brave! What you expected?

Blessings and magic.

Pine Needle Forest

We have a pine forest that we love to play in.

With a pine needle carpet under our feet.

Lovely places for children to hide.

And gnomes too...

Pine needle beds to lie in, castles to bulldoze, nests to make...

We are reminded of how rich and sensory Mother Natures toys are and how fulfilled we feel when in her presence.

Blessings and magic.

A Rainbow of Leaves.

Aren't the leaves just amazing in Fall? They are ablaze! A way to bring a child into connectedness with nature is to help her become aware of the changing of the seasons... to show her that nature is an ever-changing cycle that always comes back to the beginning. It gives a child confidence to know that things can change but still stay the same, like her changing body... she is growing, getting taller, loosing her teeth but she is still the same inside.

K and I made it our Fall challenge today to find all the colors of the rainbow in leaves. We set out in search of fallen leaves, a bit skeptical that we could succeed.

Here is RED.

Orange.

Yellow.

Green.

Blue.

Purple!

On our walk, I asked her what color a leaf is. She immediately answered... 'Green!' Then she thought for a moment and changed her answer to... 'all the colors of the rainbow!'

Blessings and magic.

A Magical Mushroom Hunt.

We went on a mushroom hunt this weekend. We set out in the hopes of finding as many strange and wonderful mushrooms as possible and, boy, we were not disappointed!

This was the first one we spotted. It was just like a fairies shade umbrella and we decided that it must be a local fairy picnic spot. We pictured the fairy family sitting comfortably in the shade of their mushroom umbrella while they ate their nasturtium sandwiches and drank their dewdrop tea.

Mr T got so carried away with his imaginings that he had to search the mushroom more closely for fairy evidence.

Next, we found a gnome village...

Perfect little white gnome muchroom houses. We discussed how gnomes like to live in a community as they like their friends to live next door. K, in particular, thought this was a good idea... that way, she could play with her friends all day, every day!

The next find was a fairy throne. There had obviously been a fairy ball the night before and this comfy white mushroom is where the Fairy Queen sat. It 's fairy tradition that the Fairy Queen sits on a raised throne to let her watch all of her pretty fairies dancing the night away. Don't worry, she dances too, but when she is tired, she rests on her lovely soft mushroom throne.

And now for the find of the day... a goblin lookout platform! It's very rare to actually see these. Goblins usually leave very little clue that they have been around... this was clearly left by a lazy goblin! Goblins climb onto these platforms to survey the land around them. As we all know, the higher you are, the more you can see. A goblin climbing this platform would be on the lookout for fairy treasure, gnome jewels or elf gold. We do wonder if he got SO excited when he actually found some that he completely forgot to dismantle his platform and hence left it out for us to find?

Isn't it a most curious looking mushroom?

So, next time you are out on a walk with nature, see what treasures from the fairy realm you can find... I am certain you will be happily surprised!

Blessings and magic.