Clean.

Leaf Art.

One last Kid Craft post before the weekend sweeps me away from the computer for a while. This one was inspired by a simple afternoon with my people. I hadn't even planned to post about it. It was so simple. But really, that's the point. Spending creative, quality time with the small (and big) people that you love need not be complicated. (And not everyone lets their kids paint with acrylic paint or had a bucket of wooden peg people on hand, as per yesterday's post so I wanted to share something more accessable to all.)

This one is easy. And almost free. Because everyone has leaves. And most of us have beautiful fall leaves right about now. (Not all of us, but most.) So go out and gather great baskets of gorgeous leaves. (The walk and gathering is half of the magic.) Then come home, grab your glue, glue sticks, pencils, and colored paper and have at it. Make what you ever comes into your head. No rules. You can even follow Lupine's lead and make a "Bye Fishie" piece, inspired by the end of trout season. A-dorable.

You can also create gorgeous sun catchers with clear contact paper and fall leaves. Simple allow your kids to press leaves onto one sheet of contact paper, then top with a second one. (Leaf sandwich style.) Punch a hole in the top and hang up in a sunny window.

Wishing you a creative, simple, joy-filled weekend.

Love,
Rachel

Edited to tell you that I found a wonderful leaf dress that Lupine made while I was cleaning up. She had glued two leaves together (top and skirt) and then cut them into the shape of a fancy dress. The possibilities are endless! Have fun this weekend, friends. xo

Painting Peg People.

One dreary, wet morning was all the encouragement we needed to dig out the paint, glitter, acorn caps, and peg people and create. The simple nudge of me quietly sitting down and painting one little elf by myself lit the creative fire of my two kids. They joined me with gusto (nearly crowded me right out of the craft corner!) and we painted together for an hour, and then I slipped away to prepare our lunch. They painted happily for the morning, guided by their own interests.

They are planning a new wee house built of scrap wood. I'll let you know how it turns out!

A Nikki McClure Decopauge Suitcase.

I am such a nerd.

I do most of my writing in the evening after my kids go to bed. Last night I was tired after a day harvesting the garden and feeling a little "eh". I didn't feel like doing much more than sleeping, so I pulled up this post from 2009 that I wanted to share with you (again?) about decoupaging suitcases. I was going to rework the post a little to share how I make them and then be in bed by 9.

It had been a couple of years since I had made one. In fact, I'm still using a once-lovely origami paper covered case for my toiletries bag. I broke the handle off of it on the last day of my road trip with the kids a year ago. But I love it so much I'm still using it, floppy handle and all.

So I got that post ready, rearranged the pictures, adding a bit of text. And then... I got totally inspired. By my own project. I'm a nerd I tell you. A craft nerd.

The next thing I knew it was midnight and I had mod podge in my hair and on my camera and my pajamas and stuck to my cheek, but I also had one amazing new decoupage suitcase. My best one yet.

The case pictured here, made all bleary-eyed last night is the case where I keep cloth pads in the bathroom. Every few weeks it sits there on the floor, looking ordinary. Now it will look extrodinary.

The process of decoupaging a suitcase is surprisingly straight-forward. (Especially if your case has few rounded edged.) Using a craft knife and scissors, I cut out the shapes to fit my case, piecing multiple pieces together and overlapping. (The only complicated part is cutting around hinges and handles.) Then I spread a thin layer of Mod Podge on the back of the paper, place on the case, and smooth it out. After the first layer of Mod Podge dries, add a top coat and allow to dry. That's it! Done. Beautiful.

There will be imperfections. There will be small rips or bad cuts or wrinkles. But who cares? We're not going for perfection. We're going for handmade. And handmade is so much better than perfect, don't you think? Leave your perfectionist behind on a project like this or you'll drive yourself crazy.

And if you don't have any Mod Podge you can improvise a batch yourself by blending 1/2 water and 1/2 white glue. It's supposed to work just as well as the real stuff.

The artist who's work I used is Nikki McClure. You've seen her prints all over my house. I was introduced to her work several years back by a friend. She bought me a new calendar each year for a bit, and while I don't save much in the way of craft paper I couldn't bear to throw these calendars away. I knew inspiration would strike eventually.

And it did.

A day out of time and place.

I am Norwegian. And German. And Russian. And dozens of other European descents (including "Italian Gypsy" if you asked my Grandma Lee). But mostly I've always felt Norwegian. The Norwegian stories were the stories I heard often as a child. The Norwegian spinning wheel (belonging to my great-great-grandma, made by my great-great-grandpa) sits next to my modern spinning wheel in my living room. Holidays since childhood have brimmed with Norwegian foods and customs, and I, personally, am in charge of lefse (yes, me, gluten free and all) for my entire family. I am Norwegian. Even if it is less than 1/2 of my blood.

This weekend we headed to a nearby Norwegian heritage center for a fall celebration, the "Threshing Bee". Lefse. Brown cheese. Threshing. Flailing. Rope-making. Grain-grinding. This place, suspended in time and space, feels somehow like coming home. And while we may already know how to blacksmith and make butter and cheese and keep animals, it's still a perfectly magical day brimming with wide-eyed learning. We feel normal here in some strange lost-in-time way.

Butternut Squash and White Bean Soup Recipe.

(I know. That's not a butternut squash up at the top of the post. But the cut up one is! Another great example of use-what-you've-got.)

I made a soup this weekend that I could eat every day. Warm and sweet and savory and nourishing through and through. Local butternut squash. Kale and sage from the garden. White beans. Homemade stock. Amazing goodness in every way. I love food like this.

Pete and I thought it was the best soup of the year. The kids were honestly so-so about it the first day, so on day two I added a few pieces of crispy bacon minced up and, well, there was none left for day three. Oh, my. (Mind you I haven't had bacon in most of a year since it is not GAPS legal -sugar in the curing process- so it was over the top for us all.) Hallelujah. With the added bacon it was elevated to the best soup ever.

Since I made this up as I went along and I never measure anything, there was no recipe. But I love you. So I did my best to make up a recipe so you can share in a bowl of my new favorite soup. You can't go wrong with this combination. And so while my quantities below are a bit sketchy, go with the flow. You'll find your own perfect combination. 

Autumn Squash and White Bean Soup

1 medium-sized squash, cubed and roasted (I used a butternut but the red kabocha pictured at the top will be in the next batch later this week.)

1 qt of just under-cooked white beans. (Ideally you will first soak for 24 hours in water and 1 tb of whey from your yogurt; drain, rinse, and cook in bone broth for 20 - 40 minutes on low heat with 2 cloves of garlic.)

1 large bunch of kale, approximately 12 decent sized leaves, stemmed and chopped

1 small bunch of fresh sage or a big pinch of dry (if fresh use 8-10 leaves)

1 medium sweet onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Butter, ghee, coconut oil, or bacon grease

6 slices of crispy bacon, chopped

Salt to taste

Bone broth (4 C or so) (Homemade. Please?)

In your favorite soup pot, saute onion in 2 Tb of fat until translucent. Add garlic and cook for another minute. Add cooked white beans, roasted squash, and enough bone broth to cover. Stir, salt, and bring to a simmer. Remove 1/4 of the soup and puree until smooth. Return to pot, add kale, and stir. Cover and simmer until kale is tender. Serve topped with crispy bacon (or not).

Eat, laugh, and then dance around your kitchen pondering where this lovely soup has been your whole life.

Love,

Rachel

P.S. Do take the time to make your own bone broth this season. All you need are the leftovers from any meat-eating you do (fish or beef bones, chicken carcass etc.). It might be the single most important thing you do for your and your children's health. I've always made my own stock but bone broth became vital when we noticed Lupine's early childhood tooth decay. We need what's in this magic potion! Every. Day. Okay - stepping down off my soap box. Or bone-broth-box, as it were.

LuSa Organics Coupon Code and Giveaway!

 

 

It has been a while since I've hosted a giveaway for my company, LuSa Organics. Since many of you know me just from here rather than through LuSa - and others have come here only after falling in love with LuSa but don't know the story of how LuSa came to be - I thought I'd share the story with you today. In addition, I am sharing a coupon code and hosting my own giveaway, so read on!

You see, I blame Martha. Yes, Stewart.

It was 1995. I was 22 years old. (Feel free to do the math.) I had pink hair. (Magenta, actually.) I was spending the night with Pete at my parents' house. They made us stay in separate rooms even though we already lived together. But I digress. I was sleeping in my sister's old room and found a Martha Stewart magazine by the bed. So me, all punk pink-haired and nose ring decided to read Martha before I fell asleep since Pete wasn't there to talk to.

And inside that magazine I found this article which unquestionalbly changed my life.

I read and re-read the article three times, then dreamily obsessed over the idea of making soap as I fell asleep that night. In the morning I asked my mom if I could borrow the magazine because I needed to read the artile like six more times before I could give it back.

That Christmas my mom gave me "The Natural Soap Book" by Susan Miller Cavitch. I read it as many times as the article, maybe more, building up the courage to actually make a batch of soap.

Fast-forward three years to late 1997. I was a graduate student and naturalist, working without a stipend on the north shore of Lake Superior at Wolf Ridge ELC. I had exactly no money. And Christmas was coming. I lived with 14 other grad student interns and sprang the idea of making soap for holiday gifts on everyone. I think five of my friends (from as far flung as Hungary and the Netherlands) joined my crazy mission. We begged whisks, spatulas, and mixing bowls off of the paid staff and bought supplies from the grocery store and one angelic local soap-maker (more about her in a bit).

Nervously, we set to work on our first batch of soap. It was an unscented honey-oatmeal soap because we had no - nor could we afford any - essential oils. We carefully weighed and mixed the lye, oils, oats, and honey, and stirred. And stirred. And stirred. For like 4 1/2 hours. (Remember that local vetran soapmaker? This is where she really saves our forearms and our night's sleep.) We called the local soapmaker and told her our troubles and she guided us throught the final steps. By the next morning we had soap. Real, beautiful, magical soap! We cut, cured, and gave it all away. It was alcemy.

I was hooked.

While I had gone to the North Shore for an education in my chosen field, I had found soap-making. At the end of the year as we packed up and found the left-over oils I bought everyone else out. I remember the foreshadowing of saying to the others as I packed up the oils, "I think I want to do this again."

I had no idea.

I plunged into a career in Environmental Education (which I loved), working on lovely things like residental environmental ed. for public school kids and endagered species recovery (this project was my last and favorite project I participated in.) But even when working with cranes or kids, soap was in my brain. In the woods on trail with kids I'd dream up new scents. We gave out bars or my homemade soap as favors at our wedding. The momentum of this thing was unstoppable. Soap was in my blood. (So to speak.)

Then when I was preganat with Sage in 2002 I ended my career as an educator and went home. For good.

My soap hobby for the six years since the first batch of honey-oatmeal transformed gradually into a microscopic home-business. By the time Sage was two I was making and selling soap, lip balm, bath salts, sugar scrub, and my baby line (inspired by my first pregnancy and Sage's babyhood), with the first versions of now well-known products like Baby Wipe Juice and Booty Balm.

The name of my business then was Queen Bee's Earthly Delights (body care) and Baby Moon (proudcts for baibes and mamas). By 2006 Pete had also quit his job to join me in the body care business and we renamed Queen Bee and Baby Moon "LuSa" - for Lupine and Sage, the two kids you know pretty well by now. At that time we transitioned to organic ingredients and the products you see here emerged.

And the rest is history.

 

Now LuSa Organic employees Pete and I and three other lovely people. We're pretty small. But everything is joyfully handcrafted in our small town. That's important to me. We are still a home-based business (really!) but in two weeks we're moving into our first professional production space. I can't wait to share it with you.

Because of this blog we've sent LuSa Organics products all over the US and to Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and many more far-flung locations. I love sharing what we make with you.

I'd love you all to try LuSa! It is what allows me to come here day after day to share these words. It's our livelihood and also our passion.

From now until September 30 receive free domestic shipping on any retail order over $75 (Use coupon code "CLEANSHIP").

Or type "Clean Blog - free soap" in the comments field and we'll add a free bar of soap to any order over $35. (Our choice.)

Thanks for coming here, day after day to read my words. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sharing this space. It means so much to me.

Want to try LuSa for free? I'm giving away a LuSa gift collection! (Your choice of A Mama is Born, Welcome Little One, Manly, or Delight gift collections.) Simply leave a comment below to enter the drawing. For additional entries, feel free to share this giveaway via email, Facebook, or twitter (make one comment per entry), or fan LuSa on Facebook, and fan Clean: the LuSa Organics Blog on Facebook.

Comments will close on Sunday. Bring all your friends!

Comments are now closed. Thanks for all the kind words, everyone!

 

The winner is Paula who said:

I would love to win!! thank you so much for the opportunity!

XO

Rachel