Magnolia Pods

For the past month we've been having fun watching the seed pods on our Magnolia tree change. They were the center of the flower blossom back in June, and now each pod has taken on a life of its own,

Changing from these pink pods, to something more pine-cone like, once it has fallen to the ground and released its bright red seeds,

The kids and I had fun collecting them to arrange in this example of the life cycle of the pod.

Harvest and the easiest soup ever

My aunt's wonderful garden on the farm in Asheville was just about at its end of production for the season when we visited last week,

Everything was wrapping up to be put to bed for the winter, but there were still a few things to be harvested and the kids were thrilled to help, treating it like a scavenger hunt to see how much they could find,

 We harvested, green peppers, banana peppers, spinach, lettuces, chard, acorn squash and other large autumn squashes,

 The kids also learned that it is great fun to pretend to be a garden bunny while harvesting. As garden bunnies they ate more handfuls of lettuce than they harvested, which I was not about to argue with!

My aunt sent us home with bags full of goodies from the harvest, that I've been finding ways to use in our meals for the past week, the easiest was making soup from this huge squash that Carys picked,

I simply cut it into four pieces (I cut it in half and then in half again), removed the seeds, put olive oil, salt and pepper on all of the pieces, and then baked it at 350 degrees for an hour or so. While it was roasting I sauteed a chopped Vidalia onion in olive oil in a large pot. Once the squash was soft when poked with a fork I scraped the fruit part away out of the skin and

put it in the large pot with the onion, I added some vegetable stock and then pureed the whole thing in a blender until smooth,

Really, the easiest soup ever, and so yummy served with seeded bread and a simple salad. Garden to table, Yum!

Loving the LEAF festival

Happy Halloween. We are getting all jazzed up to celebrate the holiday with trick-or-treating tonight, I've got two ninjas that I'll be walking around with.

Last weekend we attended the Lake Eden Arts Festival for the first time after hearing about it from so many of our new friends, it happens twice a year in an idyllic spot in the mountains of North Carolina and we found it to be the perfect blend of adult and kid friendly attractions. While there was live music that we wanted to hear in other parts of the large fair, we were hardly able to convince our kids to leave the "kids village" a special spot set up for children where we spent almost our whole day visit. The village was so full of fun things for them to do. My favorite was the kids handcraft market a special spot for children to set up and sell their own hand made things,

the setting on Lake Eden was picture perfect, a bit chilly to swim but there were canoe rentals and a zip line going down from the mountain into the water,

next year we hope to book one of the coveted camping spots and spend the whole weekend,

More sights in the "kid village", lots of active bouncy/climbing things to do, fairies parading on stilts...

our kids spent hours swinging in these hammocks, that were set up in the sand next to the tight rope line,

Carys became a butterfly,

and the kids visited one of the best costume tents I've ever seen, with a dress-up idea to fit every kid's fantasy,

We know families in Charleston who go to this festival every year with their kids, and I enjoyed seeing older children there who had obviously been coming for years and felt so comfortable running around without their parents, it was that kind of place. We'll definitely be back!

Autumn in Asheville

 Last weekend we snuck away for a quick trip to visit my family's farm in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. I've been trying to get back into the swing of our schedule here at home but my mind is still there taking in all of the beauty on the farm,

One of the great blessings of our move is that now we are only a 4 hour drive away form the farm (well 5 hours for us, somehow driving with the kids we always make so many stops!) and now we can visit more than just once a year.

The view from my aunt's deck is just breathtaking,

the perfect spot to warm up with a warm cup of coffee after a coooold night camping in the van,

Even with our sleeping bags and duvets we were freezing in the middle of the night, so we slept indoors the next night.

We loved seeing the autumn colors of the leaves, reminding us that it really is getting to be the end of October even though at home in Charleston it still feels like summertime.

On early morning walks we watched a flock of wild turkey foraging in the woods, Jasper stood stock still for a long time just staring at them.

It was a perfect weekend with all of the delights of being on the farm in autumn, country walks, crunching leaves and dirt roads, bonfires.

The kids made instant friends with the kids of the family that was renting the vacation rental on the farm for the weekend.

Other highlights included visiting the LEAF festival and harvesting the final bounty of veggies from my aunt's amazing garden, each of those deserves their own post that I'll share this week. I hope that you are having a good week!

Lovely Clusters

Its time again for the Lovely Clusters autumn catalog, I always enjoy flipping through the virtual pages, each cluster transports me to far away places and restful times of day. I want to open up that blue door below and walk through...

 My Lotus painting Hope is featured here on the Berry Tones page,

and can you believe these chandeliers in the photograph on this page, wow!

I hope that you are having a good week! I've been recovering from the Pirate Birthday party that we had last weekend, 14 young pirates took over our garden and searched for some treasure, exciting times!

Fire Pit

We've been using our yard so much now as it has been getting noticably cooler in the evenings, the mosquitos are around less, so we can be out more!
I promise to post the before and after story of our backyard landscaping project (I'm a little overwhelmed with editing all the photos that I took of the project but I promise!), it is hard to believe that this whole back yard was just dirt when we moved in 4 months ago.
Something that we have always wanted is a fire pit, there is something about having a fir out of doors that relaxes Frank and I, it makes us think of camping. Finally, we have a fire pit on the patio and we had our first fire in it the other night.

We loved it.

And we captured the moment with a family photo, 

Clearly Carys had other ideas...

I loved watching the world darken around us, and the sparks dance up through the darkness.