Marigolds in a Glass Jar

Today was a busy busy busy day. I started by taking Natalie to get her portrait taken (we had a free coupon) since her smile is so cute right now with the 2 front teeth missing! Then we headed to Next Step Produce to meet Gabrielle's husband and find out the possibility of moving to the farm to work/live. Things seem to be going well so next step (no pun intended) is for Steve to go tour the farm. He is the one who would be working there and Gabrielle and I would co-op teach the kids. They have 3 girls as well, each slightly younger than our three. And she is looking to do Waldorf. My problem was trying to juggle Natalie getting academic content with the other 2 kids -- do I send them out of the room and, if so, what do they do? do I keep them in the room and assume it will go over their heads? -- but if we have two teachers, problem solved! I really like Gabrielle too and her daughters are adorable. They are a total Waldorf family so it would be like, whew, a load off my shoulders. We did it, we're in, hurrah.

I am very excited about this possibility. Their farm is way off in the middle of nowhere, yet 5 minutes from a major highway and 10 minutes from town. It is so quiet there, and they have a long winding unpaved driveway through the woods. Magical. It's a completely organic fruit and vegetable farm and the lunch we had there was sooo good.

Then I rushed to Natalie's school conference with her teacher -- no good news there... long story... they are talking occupational therapy and all this stuff... it might be a good thing to move to another county and pull her out of school (wow, kindergarten was fun huh, that was nice but now it's time for first grade). Then came home, changed, packed the car, and headed out to do a TOHE party from 7 to 10 pm.

Tomorrow is our Sunday School fundraiser with our used book sale, hand-dipped pine cone fire starters, and organic lemonade. Goal is $100. We'll see how it goes!

While meeting with Natalie's teacher and volunteering to help with candle dipping, carding wool, and vermicomposting, she showed me a kit she bought at a Waldorf store in New York. It was a small amount of wool roving in a glass jar with some dried marigold flowers in it. You fill the jar with water, set it on the windowsill, and let the sun heat the water, making "sun tea" except it dyes the wool. She thought it was a cool idea. I looked at it and thought gift idea! We could easily make a ton of those for Christmas presents. So I wanted to pass it along.