Children of the Forest is one of the babe’s favourite books. It’s about a family of tiny forest people who happen to have four children, two boys, two girls, just like us. Daisy, the littlest has platinum blond hair just like the babe. They live in the forest, our house backs up into forest, and my littlest just loves blending into things just like the forest children have to do sometimes. They gather nuts, berries, and mushrooms for the winter and their mama knits them hats and sweaters too. They have toadstool caps so that if they need to blend in and not be seen, they can just squat down and disappear into their surroundings.

I knew that the babe would absolutely adore to have her own toadstool cap, so the search was on. I couldn’t find a pattern that was quite right until I found this pattern. I tweaked it slightly by eliminating the little tail at the top of the hat and it turned out perfectly. Then I needle felted some creamy roving into little toadstool spots all around the outside. She adores the hat, and I am so thrilled that I was able to pull it off. This was my first time needle felting and despite the fact that I broke a few needles, it was a lot of fun.

The babe always wants to take pictures with mommy’s camera, so I knew this adorable wooden camera would be absolutely perfect. It is used on a daily basis as she goes around snapping her own pictures. It’s really well made and the detail is fantastic, I know it’s going to get lots and lots of use over the years.

Before Christmas we received a gift of clementines from family traveling in California. They were indeed the best clementines I have ever tasted and after eating clementine after clementine I knew I needed to do something with that last couple of dozen before they started turning.

I have to say, I’ve never been a massive fan of lemon curd, I like the idea, I think it just had too much of a tangy taste for my personal preference, so when I found this recipe for clementine curd I was very excited as I thought the extra sweetness would be perfect.

I made up a double batch, leaving out the zest (just another odd preference of mine) and was so thrilled with the result that I made up another double batch the next day with the last of the clementines. The next day we had clementine curd over waffles topped with whipped cream for a treat. It was declared the best waffle ever by the children, me too.

I chilled the remaining jars of curd overnight in the fridge and they are now in the freezer waiting for a dreary February day to come out and cheer our tastebuds. So if you have a handful of clementines waiting around, I would highly recommend that you try this out, it is oh so worth it.

We had a nice big snow yesterday and the kids were able to play out for a couple of hours. I can’t tell you how nice it is to live in a place where it is still bearable to be out in the winter. In Wyoming in the winter it was regularly -20 freezing and just way too windy to play out. Here the kids can get bundled up and play for hours in the snow, for which I am very thankful, and they are too.