In the Valley with the Sprites

Though we were sad to leave the rainbow gathering, we were glad to be heading home. After driving all the way up there in  and take 4 days to get homethings a little slower and take 4 days to get home, which sounded like a good idea at the time, but the reality was spending twice as many days bored in the car.

Littletree managed to pass the time by singing. At the rainbow someone had been singing a Christian song that has a refrain of "Jesus, Prince of Peace, Glory Halleluja". Littletree clearly had the song stuck in her head, and she sung it constantly for about 1500km. Well, a version of it anyway:

Jesus, princess bees.

We did stop often so we could stretch our legs and let Littletree have a run around. Her frisbee skills are greatly improving

We also searched for faeries in the gorgeous tropical parks around

Finally we made it to Valleysprite's house for a visit. The kids all had a great time, playing with the ducks,

Playing in the forest cubby 

and climbing the sheaoak saplings

Valleysprite made an amazing cheesecake - all organic with flaxseed flour

and we finished off with a go on their ginormous swing

It's seriously the best swing ever!

It was a fun trip, but it was nice to be home. Except for the huge pile of laundry we brought back with us!

Rainbow Gathering part II

In following on from my last post about our trip up to far north Queensland for the Australian Rainbow Gathering (which you can read HERE), here's some more highlights from the journey:

Regular drum circles in the evening

Me drying my hair after a swim:

I brought a pretty extensive first aid kit with me, both herbal/homeopathic and allopathic, so I found myself treating lots of minor injuries and illnesses, including this chamomile tea eye-patch:

We had some spontaneous lessons - Littletree decided that we would save her pocket money while we were at the rainbow (there's no where to spend money there anyway) and she wanted to work out how much money she was saving, which led to discussions about multiplication tables. She was fascinated with the idea and quickly learned the 1, 2 and 10 times tables, as well as a bunch of the 3 and 7s. When it started getting tricky, we moved on to using groups of pebbles to work them out.

Purple played his silver flute a lot and impressed us all with how good he's getting

Here's one of the things I crocheted - a rainbow striped hat that took me about 4 or 5 hours. I also added some sections to Littletree's blanket and made myself mohair leg warmers.

In rainbow people can really show their true colours :)

We had a resident hygiene hand-spray cowgirl

Hair-wrap workshops

and the best breakfast ever - here modelled by the most gorgeous woman

And of course no rainbow would be complete without an all-night mission to make more pizza than 100 hippies can eat!

The oven was awesome - made out of an old barrel and structured with stones and mortar made from termite hills, it survived four rainy seasons and is still going strong!

The beauty of rainbow magic was that one brother had a vision to make pizzas, and then 2 other guys showed up to help that turned out to be an Italian chef and an American pizza chef!

And what rainbow mission would be complete without some funky music and a bunch of people dancing!?

Okay, there's more, but this post is getting way too long. I'll save the trip home for another post tomorrow. You can check out the full album of photos on my flickr page HERE

Far North Queensland Rainbow Gathering

We're back from rainbow land! The gathering was wonderful; we had a fantastic time. And of course, it's also great to be home.

The journey up was pretty easy - we drove 1900km (about 1200mi) in 2 days, which included frequent playground stops for Littletree to run around with other kids (our favourite was the roadside JumpingPillow at Rollingstone)

We arrived to the area near the rainbow after dark, so we decided to camp nearby and come in the early morning, rather than trying to find hippie trails in the dark. After walking in 2 full loads of gear and setting up our camp, Purple and I collapsed into bed, exhausted, only to be woken up at 4am by the freezing cold!

Learning the lesson, I dressed warmly to sleep the next night, and we settled in to enjoy rainbow. We set up a great camp, which involved a lot of work digging and carrying sand to make a nice flat area in the rocky riverbed, but the end result was worth it.

I even had a great office area set up so I could keep up with my studies:

While the nights were cold (we were at 900M elevation - about 3000ft), the days were hot and sunny, so we spent a lot of time relaxing in the shade or the chai shop

And hanging around the sweet, fresh river, which was absolutely spectacular and had many little waterfalls and "jacuzzis" in the rapids

I joined in on Sisters' Circles, did a lot of crochet and held a workshop on natural fertility, as well as a lot of working in the kitchen. 

The kitchen is for me, the best part of rainbow. There are 2 meals provided daily, and a large main kitchen, but there aren't any workers or bosses. There's no one whose job it is to cook the dinner or buy the food or wash the pots or collect wood or carry water. People just show up to help and we all work together, cooking delicious vegetarian food for hundreds of people on an open fire, without running water or electricity.

I always have a great time in the kitchen. I think this photo was the day Purple and I made Cholent for the whole gathering.

Breakfast circles were under some shady trees to hide from the sun

While dinner circle was on the rock in the riverbed.

So this is getting long - I came home with a LOT of photos, which after deleting crap ones, was still 111 photos exactly! I'll only share the highlights on the blog, but you can see the full set of photos HERE 

and just because I can't resist, I'll do a 'rainbow part II' post tomorrow ;)

 

We're Off!

We're all packed up and ready to go. the Nomad Family are housesitting for us and tomorrow morning we are driving north to the Australian Rainbow Gathering :)

We plan to do the drive the 2000km in 2 days, but we'll see. So I wont be around to post for the next three weeks, but I will, of course, have lots of photos and stories when we get back.

Just to tide you over; last night I heard the wind chimes on the porch going crazy, and looked out to see a small marsupial stuck on it! It was so funny so see it swaying around, trying to get off but unable to.

Happy Solstice

It's the shortest day of the year! Littletree has been waiting for the start of winter for ages.

This year we celebrated by having a dinner party. I invited some friends over and made a special feast following the Chinese tradtion of consuming "yang" foods at the winter solstice.

I made ox kidneys in a mushroom sauce, served with Purple's Arabic spiced rice and dahl with a salad.

Preparing the kidneys was an involved process, starting with making organic stock 8 hours earlier. We bought the kidneys from the local organic butcher, and I followed a recipe from the book Nourishing Traditions.

Starting with cutting the kidneys up and soaking them in lemon juice (fresh lemons from my friend's tree) while the stock was simmering in the pressure cooker. Then I browned them in organic butter, set them aside to keep warm in the oven, sauteed mushrooms and then made the sauce - stock and red wine, reduced by half, creme fraiche added and reduced again, finally the browning juices added and simmered some more.

The whole process took most of the day, but the end result was delicious! It was my first time eating kidneys, and I was surprised how good they were. Though possibly that was also due to the preparation process.

We had a great evening, and enjoyed a bottle of "Bulls Blood" wine with it.

The next morning the local market was cancelled due to rain, so we all went down to the cafe to hang out and it turned into a spontaneous jam with a bunch of my friends.

Here's a video I made of the jam:

I had a fantastic Solstice, and ended up feeling empowered and gorgeous :)

Nomad Family

This week a nomadic homeschooling family came to stay with us - Skelewhale, her partner, C, and their daughter T who is 5 and son J, who is 3. They're travelling around Australia, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for them to housesit for us while we go to the Australian Rainbow Gathering in far north Queensland next week.

Littletree and T have been getting on well... or crazily, depending on your perspective

It's nice to have some kids around :)

And of course our regular house guests have been making visits as well

At least the kookaburras keep the mouse population down around the house - who needs a cat! If only they wouldn't mess with the laundry.

Pizza

This week's home school group was a Pizza workshop. It was great fun, one couple brought the home made dough, and everyone brought toppings.

The kids had a great time rolling out dough and making their pizzas

The home-made pizza sauce was delicious!

Littletree with her pizza; mushrooms, roasted sweet potato, olives, ready to go in the oven

Cooked to perfection!

And the result: can't talk; eating! YUM!

We had a great day :)

The First Tooth

Littletree lost her first wobbly tooth! It was wobbly for a couple of weeks, and she has two more wobblies to come out.

Of course, she looks cuter than ever with the little gap.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the tooth fairy. I'm absolutely not into doing Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, because I'm not going to lie to my child. She has plenty enough magic in her life and a world full of fairies without me faking it to create more. LOL

Besides; we managed to get this far without her really knowing about Santa or the Easter Bunny.

The Tooth Fairy... well, I'm still not wanting to lie to Littletree to create a fairy that doesn't exist (especially when I would find it insulting to the hoards of real faeries inhabiting our garden).

But Littletree heard about the Tooth Fairy on her own. I asked her what she knows about the Tooth Fairy, and she told me that the Tooth Fairy is the first faerie she ever met, and it was she that taught her all about faeries and faerie magic.

When the tooth fell out, Littletree found a little magic box to put her tooth in to await the visit from the Tooth Fairy, along with some crystals that apparently the Tooth Fairy had given her when the tooth first started wobbling.

My friend asked Littletree if the Tooth Fairy would give her money for the tooth, and Littletree replied, "well, I've been REALLY good, so there's NO WAY the Tooth Fairy would give me money. She'll give me something MUCH better than that. Like, the BEST thing in the world. Maybe a dress-up, or a Diamond. Yeah, for sure it will be a Diamond"

So I was left thinking, 'how on earth am I going to get a diamond... in our little village... at this hour?'

In the end, I forgot about it :o and only the next day I swapped the tooth for a rose quartz. Littletree didn't seem phased at all.