Cooking with Kids

  
  
  

I love cookbooks and I recently found again this old book from my own childhood called “Linus lässt nichts anbrennen” which brings me so much joy to read in and to look at the beautiful little drawings (from great illustrator Lena Anderson, it’s called in English: “Elliot’s extraordinary cook book”).
I really love the warmth that shines through the pages and the cosy happy-life-feeling the pictures bring me, and I simply love the Swedish lifestyle and the natural-romantic-design (oh, I am realizing that I actually really love Sweden for all its goods: the other Lena Anderson books like “Linnéa”, and books from Astrid Lindgren, Elsa Beskow and general things such as Ikea and H&M, ,…).

I am happy to recommend this book now to you and to be able to offer it to my own kids to establish their natural love for cooking, baking and food-making, alhamdulillah.

They already did love cooking and often are my kitchen-helpers. I simply prefer to give them a (not-so-sharp) knife and some vegetables to chop at my side instead of always looking after them when they do other things while I am cooking. It is just so much easier and they learn some important kitchen skills, they are part of the process with all their senses and they train their tastes. Sometimes we even have great discussion about God and life while working together and mostly all the doing is accompanied by some good laughter. But best of all: they really are able to help me with little tasks.

Now, having that beautiful book, we got some new inspiration for cooking, there are beautiful little recipes in, ideas for outside picnics, some easy-to-understand health lessons and a lot of good stories around food.
Autumn and winter are seasons when we do spend even a lot more of time in kitchen together, canning, baking, preparing for the cold months, making things, learning and living, and that book, alhamdulillah, definitely extends these moments.

I wish you a blessed Friday, friends, with a lot of joyful moments around the wonderful food of this colourful season that autumn is!

A blissful Home

  
  
  
  

What is it that makes a house our home? Where does comfort, “Gemuetlichkeit”, come from? What are the things that make us feel cosy and warm? What is the secret of creating a soulful, welcoming atmosphere with a lovely spirit in our houses?

I am a real home bird, a homebody that loves to be “chez moi”.
With the upcoming cold season and shifting more inside, I am asking myself often questions on how to beautify our own rooms and how to create a surrounding that would please Allah, a house the Prophet (sws) would feel comfortable in and a home the angels love to enter.

During my university years, while studying interior architecture, I learned a lot about forms and function, about building techniques, about shape and “good design”.
But we never really discussed the question of what gives the home a heart.

I don’t think it’s the furniture or the size and the shape of the rooms that make a home – I really believe that it’s the little personal stuff, materials that resonate with our souls, things that mirror our personality, our dreams, our values, our mood:
a garden flower, a children’s drawing, a handmade pillow or a piece of wood from the seashore; a lightened candle, some old family treasures, a piece of jewellery, the afternoon sun falling into a window; a pile of books, little pebbles or a beautiful leaf from the woods, a weaved basket or a wooden toy…
I think it’s imperfection that gives our homes a lively lovely spirit; it’s the things we’ve put our love and heart in, things that tell tales about our daily life.

I am not talking about expensive art paintings, about senseless magazine-like artificial decoration, nor about over loaded spaces – I am talking about gathered pieces of beauty, about inherited goods and crafted things, about things that remind us about our outside adventures and the blessings given by Allah.

“A real home is a place that nurtures us on every level… a home with a heart embraces us when we walk through the door; we can almost feel it wraps its healing around us…” (Jane Alexander in “Spirit of the home”)

So how can we improve a good and healthy spirit in our houses? How can we make the home a real mirror of our selves, of our dreams and our personality?

I think sometimes we have to take time to ask ourselves what message our rooms send out, what vibration they give. And we have to check out if being at home nourishes our soul and makes us really feel good.
 
Sometimes we have to de-clutter the rooms, we have to clean and tidy up and rearrange some things: to give hidden or forgotten corners a new purpose, to redecorate some places and to purify everything from Djinn and negative energies by letting in some fresh air, by playing some qur’anic recitation, by spraying out some natural fragrances, by displaying some beautiful calligraphy or landscape photography, by creating a little corner for devotion, filled with Islamic literature and a nice prayer mat and by cherishing Allah’s blessings by putting around some seasonal pieces brought in from nature.
And last but not least: we should always enter the house with a blissful “salamou alaikoum – may peace be with you!”
By doing so we may feel an uplifting move in ourselves, we may feel free in our mind and renewed, full of life and new power – and eventually the surroundings become a home that nourishes our family, that warmly welcomes visitors, that radiates with a joyful “charisma” and a faithful soul and that incha’allah really becomes an oasis of peace and happiness, just as Allah promises us in His holy book: ”And Allah has made in your homes an abode of comfort…” (Qur’an Sura An-Nahl, 16,80).

What do you feel comfortable with and what means “home” to you?

Autumn in the fields

  
  
  
  

salam alaikoum friends !

with these snapshots from our autumnal afternoons I wish you a blessed Friday !

By the Fig…

  
  

“By the Fig and the Olive…” (Qur’an, Sura 95)

I love this time of the year, alhamdulillah, really, there are so many blessing just in the variety of food this season provides. The figs are ripe now and so are the pomegranates: lovely and sweet, fresh and juicy, red and delicious!
And they all have so many benefits in them. Have you ever thought of all the blessings God gifted us within just a single fruit? Subhanallah!

Figs are good against insomnia, memory loss, fatigue, constipation, blood pressure, stress, and they are very healthy and beneficial for the skin, the heart, our bones and the digestive system.

“… and We bring forth gardens of grapes, and the olive and the pomegranate, alike and unlike.”

The pomegranate (named several times in the Qu’ran, for example in Sura 6, verse 99 and 141) settle palpitations of the heart, it prevents and even destroys breast and other cancer, and it lowers bad cholesterol and helps against Alzheimer disease and osteoarthritis.
It is also reported that one who eats three pomegranate in the course of a year will be inoculated against inflammation of the eye for that whole year, and its said that pomegranate “cleanses you of Satan and from evil aspirations for 40 days.”

“There is not a pomegranate which does not have a pip from one of the pomegranate of the Garden (of Jannah/paradise) in it.”[Abu Nu'aim]

So we enjoy now, just as we did last year, and hope not to loose a single one of those sweet little pips that are a promise of paradise from our Lord.

Handmade Love

  
  
  
  

Some pictures from the last two felting-group meetings; a whole lot of handmade love…

While cleaning up the house, I always find a lot of “stuff” in my children’s room: broken pieces of plastic-cars, destroyed toys and a lot of nothing (undefined little things that maybe once have been something).
That always makes me sad and thinking about the throw-away-society we have become over the last century and it makes me wishing for a more sustainable living and for striving to more conscious consumption and for better manners in our own little life.

How much more beauty is in handmade and natural things, how much more soul, love and meaning in good quality work!
I am not just talking about toys, no, about nearly everything such as furniture, food, clothes, household objects and so on…
All that cheap (or even not so cheap) factory-made-plastic-stuff, all the synthetic clothes, the precooked and chemically-processed food, this all is just not good! – Not good for our bodies, nor for our souls, neither for the environment, nor for the society in general.
It is only about quick consuming and fast living and about throwing away and buying always new. Masha’allah.

Where is the love for handmade, for true values and the worth of manmade things gone? Where the appreciation for wood and wool, for homemade and handmade did went to?

How much more aesthetics is in natural handmade things, how much more nourishes a homemade meal not only the body but as well the heart and the soul? How much more speak natural goods to all our senses?

All the tastes, the colours, the shapes and the smells within natural things honour God’s creation, and the work someone put in it with his own hands makes the thing a prayer itself. Subhanalllah!

I say YES to homemade, to eco, organic and natural, to vintage, to repurposing, to recycling and to doing things by my own hands!
I say YES to declutter our house and to refill it with love and nature!

I feel an enormous wish to create and to make things now and I think the upcoming cold season is a perfect time to implement some warm handmade and homemade to our lives.
So let’s go and try some new recipes, some new crafting projects and some greener living!

… Off to a whole lot of making… and a happy crafty weekend to you, friends!

By the way, I got Amanda’s new book “Handmade Home” – a perfect inspiration on that topic…

Newborn Baby Essentials

  

A lovely friend of mine is pregnant, alhamdulillah, and she recently asked me for some recommendations about what she will need for her first baby. So I post my thoughts and experiences after three kids right here, maybe someone else will find it helpful as well.
 
First, know that you will not need a lot of things, because the most important things you are already carrying with you: your motherly love, comforting arms and the milk your body provides – mashaallah, all the essentials are there with you! Just follow your natural instinct and all will go well, inchaallah.

But ok, there are still a few things you will need apart, so let’s see what I really find important and please don’t forget that these are personal experiences and your situation may ask for other things. I really like how Meg put this in words on her post.

We are practicing a natural family living and sort of attachment parenting and that means in short that baby co-sleeps in our bed (all our kids still do), because it simply seems normal to us and it is so much easier to breastfeed and to feel the needs of a baby if it sleeps near to the mother.
It also means that I am fully breastfeeding baby until now (5 months) and longer, inchaallah, because the God-given mother-milk is the best we can feed our babies with and no factory-made-thing can replace its benefits.
And it means that we use cloth diapers (except during nights) and I carry my baby in a sling all the time she cries, needs love, contact and warmth.

So here is my have-to have-list for newborns and their mamas:

2 woollen sleeping bags
2 baby-caps
2 woollen long-sleeved shirts
4 cotton bodies
2 pairs of woollen socks
2 little woollen blankets
lambskin to lie on and a cotton cloth for the head-part
I really recommend using natural materials for the clothes and especially for the first weeks I think sleeping-bags or loose comfortable baby-clothes are best and I don’t think that baby has to be stylish and chic then- it has to feel comfortable and welcomed in this oh so cold and new world… (for all these things I love this shop). 

25 cloth diaper sets 
3 woollen/plastic trousers (I use these)
clip
body oil to clean
cream for the bottom
a place to change nappies (it also can be a simple towel you place on the floor wherever you are and a box with all the things you need)

bath tub
big towel
thermometer (to take the bath temperature)

a sling to carry baby (here’s the using-tutorial)
2 nursing bras for the mother
2 pairs of silk, woollen or cotton nursing-bra-inlays 

a place to sleep during the days, near to mom’s main working area (we use a mattress in the kitchen corner but it could be a cradle or something else)
suckle (I used them after 6 weeks and it really calms my baby, alhamdulillah)
baby car-seat
baby carriage (we do not use one because it is not possible in that stony-hilly environment here)
Your baby will not need much more during the first few months and especially toys and all that stuff you really will not need. Your body, babies own hands, a scarf or a suckle is way enough for baby to play with.

But maybe I should mention that you – the mother – will need some things to treat yourself well: healthy food, enough naps and time to relax, a lot of water and calming teas (like fennel) to drink, things you love and enjoy and sometimes maybe also some chocolate… be kind to yourself and pray and pay gratitude to Allah for the work your body did and will have to do.

I am sure, I forgot something important, so please feel free to comment about what you think, dear mothers!

And to all the first-time-mothers I wish divine blessings and that you may be able to trust in Him and in your inner voice, in your womanly instincts and in the power within yourself! Amen.

 

In the Mail

  
  

Alhamdulillah, what a nice morning!

I had to go to the hospital to get baby vaccinated. I do not like to do this, but unfortunately it is obligatory for all newborns in Morocco (… the medicine system- a whole lot of things I could write pages about…)
So after having been treated, I went to the post office to check the mail… and see, I got three (!) parcels! Wow, I was so excited and quickly went home. I opened the packaging and was blessed with so many beautiful things, subhanallah:

From the US I got lovely postcards I won on Elizabeth’s blog,

From New Zealand I got beautiful baby shoes as a gift from Melissa,

And from Germany lovely goodies and hats from my friend Kathy!

Thanks to you friends, and thanks God – it is such a blessing to have friends and to know people all over the world; it is a blessing to have met so many nice women by blogging and I feel so grateful for all the love that comes along.

The boys are still at grandfather’s house and I am enjoying now some free hours alone (with baby) at home before I will go to have lunch with them, inchaallah.

Wishing you a blessed peaceful week friends!

 

Golden Autumn

  
  
  
  

 

What a lovely season autumn is! – So much harvesting, enjoying nuts and fruits, a nature full of golden colours and a warm sun with blue skies.
Subhanallah to all that beauty around and thanks God for all these blessings!And I am having some good news as well: the felting with the girls will continue! Yes, after such a long break we finally will begin work again next week, inchaallah – I am so excited and will keep you informed about all the creativity going on here.

 

Blessed weekend to you!

Simply breakfast and a Reminder

 
Breakfast with home made peach-jam, nutella, milk coffee and old family treasures

Salam friends,

Our week was full of visits, of walks in nature, of developing projects and meeting lovely friends. I do not have a lot of time to come to this place these days, so I just wanted to step in, say hello and leave you with this beautiful reminder I found on a fellow sister’s blog.

Masalama and a blessed week to you!

“Woman was made from the rib of man,

She was not created from his head to top him,

nor from his feet to be stepped upon.

She was made from his side to be close to him,

from beneath his arm to be protected by him,

near his heart to be loved by him.”