Beautiful snow & sunshine

What gorgeous snow and sunshine we've been having!  The thick flakes were so fun to photograph, and the slightly warmer weather with heavily textured snow was enjoyed on walks and tobogganing this week.

Winter ice garden

Oh, what lovely ice encapsulating every twig, stem and branch in our garden after the freezing rain...

Chickens love the snow (man)!

What a funny moment today, watching our hens trying to eat the carrot nose off the mini snowman Maya built.  I think we might build a few more bird-friendly snow creatures around our yard, with sunflower seed eyes, carrot noses, berry mouths...

Longest Night Celebration & Neighbourhood Lantern Walk this weekend

Happy solstice!  For the longest night of the year we love to gather outdoors with friends, with candles, lanterns, a bonfire to warm ourselves, and some wood-fired baking from the cob oven.  How will you celebrate the longest night? 

For anyone here in town, don't forget about the annual  neighbourhood Lantern Walk on Dec 21.  Anyone is welcome!  Bring a lantern, and join a slow wintery walk around the snowy streets.  What a lovely idea!  Here are some beautiful ideas for making your own lanterns.  And 10 more ideas for making your own simple lanterns from jars, coloured paper, brown paper bags, paper mache, and more recycled materials.

12 Favourite Children's Winter Reads

We love reading, and shorter wintery days give us many more opportunities to cozy up near the fire with a good book.  We have a basket of winter reads nearby, and our daughter can choose books to help us celebrate and enjoy the winter season.  Here are 12 of our favourites.

The Mitten, by Jan Brett (and so many other Jan Brett books!)
Ollie's Ski Trip, by Elsa Beskow
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss
Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen
The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats
The Tomten and the Fox, by Astrid Lindgren
First Snow in the Woods, by Carl Sams and Jean Stoick
The Story of the Snow Children, by Sibylle von Olfers
Findus at Christmas, by Sven Nordqvist
Over and Under the Snow, by Kate Messner
Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
The Night Before Christmas, by Barbara Reid
The Elves and the Shoemaker, by Jacob Grimm and Jim Lamarche

and all the lovely winter poems found in
Outside Your Window: A Child's First Book of Nature, by Nicola Davies

There are just so many lovely winter stories.  As an alternative to reading out loud together, we have also been enjoying listening to the audio winter stories by Sparkle Stories.   Sparkle Stories offers inspiring simple beautiful audio books about nature, family, community, celebrations, fairies, and more heartwarming themes, through their website (with lots of free sample stories as well).

Cozy fall breakfasts - Maple & Apple Baked Oatmeal

It's mid October and getting chilly around here!  We haven't had frost - yet... but the nights are cold and we've had the woodstove on a handful of times already in the past few weeks.  I even used a hot water bottle last night!  Mornings are especially chilly getting out from under the warm nest of blankets, and so, on the mornings when we need an extra special warm up we've taken to creating some cozy breakfasts in place of our regular yogurt and granola.  Since we are in southern Ontario, in peak of apple season and still enjoying the maple syrup of this year's harvest, we love to combine apples and maple into many of these warming breakfast dishes.

Cozy simple healthful and hearty breakfasts we love - and plan to have lots of this fall and winter.  These are some of the favourite ones we have served often in our B&B, and for our own family on chilly mornings:

~ warm quinoa with bananas, currents and maple syrup
~ warm oatmeal (oats soaked overnight) with apples, cranberries & cinnamon with organic cream
~ giant baked apple pancake (our favourite huge German pancake baked in the oven)
~ potato-greens frittata (with spinach, chard or kale, over fried potatoes, topped with eggs and cheddar)

And maple-apple baked oatmeal.  Here's the recipe:

Maple-Apple Baked Oatmeal
1/4 cup butter
2 cups whole oats
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup milk or rice/soy milk
1 large egg
1 large juicy apple (we like Empire) chopped or shredded
dash of cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts) and /or hemp seeds/sunflower seeds for the top
serve with organic cream, yogurt and/or maple syrup

1) Soak oats overnight in the milk to help provide optimum digestability.
2) Preheat oven to 350F. 
3) Add butter into large cast iron frying pan or baking dish and heat in oven until just melted.
4) Combine all the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl.  Stir well.
5) Pour into cast iron pan or baking dish, smoothing the top. Sprinkle with chopped nuts/seeds.
6) Bake at 350F for about 25 minutes. 
7) Serve warm with organic cream, plain yogurt and more maple syrup as desired.

Enjoy a warm and cozy morning!

Winter birds

We enjoyed our long weekend Family Day holiday by going on a wander through the woods with friends, looking for signs of spring.  Not too many signs of spring yet, but lots of active birds - nuthatches, bluejays, cardinals and loads of friendly chickadees like this one.  What fun to watch them land on the our hats, outstretched arms and open hands to eat sunflower seeds. 

The sun today

Doesn't a sunny day in early February (deep winter) feel wonderful?

Icy morning garden

After the late night freezing rain the garden looked like this! All that lovely packing snow has melted and the world outside is now a sheet of ice.  I headed out first thing to take a look.  Absolutely stunning!  Every seed, pine needle, twig and stalk completely and perfectly encapsulated in ice.  Drops of water frozen as if in mid-motion.  Beautiful, but treacherous.  Everywhere branches are cracking from the weight of all the ice.  You can hear tinkling like glass chimes when the wind blows and the branches sway, and then the ominous slow cracking as another large branch comes down and crashes in the yard.  Power seems to be off and on today too, with ice or branches falling on the nearby power lines.  This kind of ice storm comes at least once a winter to us here in southern Ontario.  Today will be a mostly indoor day!

Spring in southern Ontario

Here's what spring looked like when we woke up this morning....a beautiful frozen landscape, everything completely encapsulated in ice.  But the nesting birds surely didn't know what to make of it, and I was glad we didn't need to be out on the roads.  This spring weather is so unpredictable.