This Moment.

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.
Inspired by Soulemama. 

After The Long Hiatus, Unplanned, A Recap.

First things first, dear readers, a Happy New Year to you one and all. I do hope the holiday brought good cheer and festive shenanigans, with lots of jovial folk around you!

Ours was lovely, with lots of walks and baking and visiting and do-nothing days. We've sadly had no snow so far this year, although last years white Christmas was a spectacular anomaly, and we do hope we get some yet.

And so, a quick recap of the season's festivities in the Milkmoon household:

Walking the Solstice Spiral in school.

Christmas Eve in our kitchen.

St. Stephen's Day walk.

Out Walking.

My MIL's Christmas tree.

Visiting Family, Friends, Neighbours.

Every good wish to you all, dear friends, for bountiful blessings,

both big and small, for the coming year.

May you be surrounded by lots and lots of love and happiness.

The Tides Of Summer Rolling In.

Like an old friend, Summer has arrived again. Arrived and shaken out her bag, and we clamour round to peer in expectation, revealing a sparkling array of gatherings, of friends and family and celebrations.

And so we have been busy!

Making the most of the warmer weather, we have been shindigging and sharing, gathering and convening in all manners, spending time with family and friends.

We celebrated the arrival of summer, and the arrival of My Only Sister and her Darling Cherub all the way from the US, with our Annual Summer Solstice Party, a gathering of particular meaning and importance to me. And to be honest, what I would write here about that night I could not better what I wrote last year about it.

What is it? What is it in us humans that drives us to come together and share food and swap news and smooth out the wrinkles of time that have accumulated between us since last we saw one another until there are none? 

For all my pre-party stress I would not give this up. Even if I find that I miss out on actually speaking to some who come, for sheer want of just sitting down for a spell! This Gathering Together, this reconnecting, or indeed forging new connections, is the beat of my heart, is what fuels my passage through this blessed life I have been bestowed with. It is the oxygen in my blood.

Photo by Líosa.

And as I said before , if ever I need an affirmation, if ever I need an injection of wonder, of heartening wonder at the circle of life, then this annual event is just that. 

To witness, by virtue of this One Day a year, the passage through life of all these children as they swarm around us momentarily, and then fly off into the distant sun, they're wings outstretched in joyful anticipation, this is what gives me wings too.

So, as the air grows milder in this temperate isle of ours, as we brave our mediocre summer, we will, in true stalwart Irish fashion, make the most of it and carry on as though we basked in hot sun, regardless. We will take ourselves off to visit friends, and call them to visit us.

We will break bread and touch our glasses together, salute the long days. Give thanks for the bounty of friendship, more than anything, and the means to celebrate it.

And in doing so, I like to think somewhere, deep in their bones, our children will find these threads are woven tight, and so will continue this weaving and pulling together of family and friends, of holding tight.

For in the end it is in the weaving together we find our cushion in life. That which in turn holds us.

The Time Between The Years.

So Christmas has passed, 

and we lie quietly in the time between the years, when one year is closing and another preparing to open, when we reflect on what has passed and wonder what is to come.

And we pause.

Dawn, Christmas Day.

We have been spending our time quietly, enjoying the snow while it lasted, and now that it's gone we are glad to spend it with family, and dear friends, catching up and just being together. Celebrating a tiny new arrival in our family, a most perfect Winter Solstice gift.

I'd like to dedicate this post to my family, to these people who are my dependables, my unwavering bastions. Without them I would not be who I am today.
And I give thanks for the blessing, the honour that is mine, to share this privileged life I have been granted, with this group of incredible, amazing people. Truly, we have been touched with gold, haven't we?
I wish we could all be together tonight, this special night that closes this year behind us. So wherever you are as you celebrate, know that across the miles you are in my heart.

~*~

And, warmest blessings to YOU dearest readers,

for a peaceful New Year.

May it be shared with loved ones, 

and may this coming year bring us all magic and blessings.

Thank you all for your continued support and comments, 

it's what makes Milkmoon possible.

Love Ciara.

Bright Blessings To You And Yours!

Bright Blessings to you and yours for a

magical, peaceful Christmas and New Year.

May it bring warmth and good cheer to you all!

Look forward to catching up with everyone over the break,

and to getting back to some blogging myself.

See you here very soon!

Love from Ciara.

Glimmer Lantern Glimmer.

I thought I would share with you another post from our now defunct blog I mentioned before. This is something that we won't get to celebrate this year on the day as we have someplace else to be!

Tonight, my man, Jay, is having an exhibition opening in Dublin, so if any of you happen to be around then do join us! You can read about it here. So in the midst of him preparing for this we have had a run of sick kiddies and storm and flood warnings, all mixed in to the general daily tizzy and winter wildness settling in. Great fun!
I do hope to actually do this lantern a walk at the weekend, or the next. I am so mindful of all the things I did with the older two that the younger two might miss out on simply because life is twice as hectic.

So without further ado...

~*~

There is a lovely tradition we try to celebrate every year which I first came across through some Steiner/Waldorf friends. It is usually celebrated on Martinmas eve which is the 11th November, although it is a lovely thing to do once the darkness draws in and the evenings shorten, a simple symbolic way to entice the light back.

The basic premise is that the children make lanterns and then take a candle lit walk in the dark dark woods! You can either make them together as part of your evening together, or everyone can do them at home and then get together.

There are so many types of lanterns to make. What we did was very simple. 

You will need:

A glass jar for each child.

A roll of thin wire eg. florists wire.

Some sheets of coloured tissue paper.

Some pva glue in a small container like an egg cup.

A small brush for each child.

A tealight for each jar.

To begin, tear the tissue paper into small pieces.

Start painting glue onto the glass jar and press pieces of the tissue paper onto it. Continue until the jar is covered.

Once the glue is dry, measure a length of wire to form a long loop, plus extra to wrap around the neck of the jar. Secure it by twisting the ends tightly around the wire where it meets the vertical lengths.

It's important to have a long loop so as to avoid little hands getting too close to the candle!

Once everyone has gathered together outside, the adults can help light the candles. Then we can set off into the dark, dark woods.

These next few photos were taken with a flash so of course it loses the candlelit atmosphere.

It was equal parts thrilling and slightly scary, even for the older children!

They really do get such a thrill out of doing something they would rarely get to otherwise.

There are simple little songs that are traditionally sung for the duration of the walk. It helps if a few people know them to start off.  But any song that includes light or sun would do. The walk by the way need only be ten to fifteen minutes long. Believe me, after ten to fifteen minutes tripping through the darkness, their imaginations start to take off, and it's not long before everyone is ready to head indoors for some warming soup! 

Lord Of The Fires.

Thoughts following reminiscent conversations with friends.

When we were young Halloween night held a wildness to it, a lawlessness that shook the trees and sent an unruly wind snapping at our heels, a dark and sinister sky closing in like a cloak, some looming spectre just beyond the gloom.
For weeks it was building. And it was the bonfires that did it.

For in the months leading up to this most wicked of nights, in suburban Dublin every housing estate became a military-like scene of organisation and strategy, of planning and plotting.
Us against Them.
For there is only so much wood to be had in a given area.
Who would get it first?

We would start by asking parents and neighbours, knocking on doors and begging for any old bits of furniture that was no longer needed, anything wooden that could be burned was taken. Then we moved further afield, knowing the estates that had grown older, the children now moved away, or the houses that always had a yard full of junk out the back just waiting to be pilfered. And in someone's garden or yard nearby we would build our stash, accumulating a growing pile that needed guarding and protecting from poachers!

It was gang warfare. And we meant business...

I remember so many standoffs between gangs of children from neighbouring estates that the rest of the year we got on fine with, and some we didn't. We found ourselves face to face with gangs who were much more used to confrontational behaviour but we always amazed ourselves at our own newfound tenaciousness!

No one was going to take our fire!

And the satisfaction when the day came and we built our fire in the field at the end of the road. Dads passing on their expertise on bonfire building, the whole road coming out to lend a hand.

Hands down best costume last night!

And then home we went for colcannon with money hidden inside it, and brack with a ring in it, for our homemade costumes made out of old clothes and a mask, or if you were lucky like us and had a mother who sewed, something more elaborate.

Snap Apple!

And there was Snap-apple and Bobbing-for-apples to be played, and then off we went into that dark and scary night, knocking on doors with a chorus of "ANY APPLES OR NUTS?" And that is all we got!!

Bobbing for apples!

Coming home at the end of our journey we emptied our bags on the floor, sure there were one or two sweets lurking somewhere in amongst the mountain of nuts, and maybe even a 50p! And we were the lucky ones, because our mum made TOFFEE APPLES, so we were always sure of callers in their dozens, eager to hunt down whatever sugar they could.

Colcannon.

And at the end of the night we had the bonfire to look forward to, and oh! how wonderful and marvelous that was. Creatures looming out of the darkness, voices we knew but faces unrecognisable, and everyone riding on a wave of chilling thrills that pushed the energy of the night somewhere into another realm of danger, of electrifying spookiness, rousing us like no other.

To this day a most very favourite night of mine!

What did you do?

And yes, this year we did go back to the Grandparents!

Where The Winding Road Takes Us.

Before the rains came, on a sunny autumn day, a Wednesday, we took a walk in a garden by a river. A beautiful garden in a magic valley. And we found the remains of a pumpkin patch, a decimated wildness of creeping green and the last of the bees, of trees like a golden splendour, where the sadness of leaves has blown the last breath of summer away, a cold frost that nips and bites and scolds.

And as we exclaim over Judith's 'grandmother' pumpkins all puckered and gathered like weathered dames, our voices meet the wind, tussle and dance away in the air above. And we ooh and aah over the most perfect shade of grey-blue ever seen, so perfectly flattered by this, it's dandy orange neighbour!

And there inside, in the quiet lull of the wind, we can almost hear the murmur of sweet pumpkin voices as they nod to one another, this way and that, and grumble of cold and damp and frosty nights.

So the rains come, and the weekend has arrived. And the little children have counted the days, gathered their costumes, made their plans. And we have colcannon and barm brack to look forward to, with treasure hidden inside. What will you be doing?

Happy weekend to you all!

A Recipe And A Little Bit Of Irish Tradition.

As today is the first day of the Mid-Term Break, we are getting into the swing of Halloween. Last year was a complete non-event as we'd had a week of sickly children and an exhausted Mama, and nothing got done in preparation. So this year we have a lot to make up for!

So first I want to share this recipe with you that I first posted here two years ago. If you like fruit bread then I promise you will love this. The tea makes it incredibly moist and it is dense with juicy fruit.
(I have yet to take the time to find a way of making this gluten-free but maybe someday...)

Barm Brack, or Bara Brith in Wales, means Speckled Bread, and is basically a Tea Brack. It is a traditional fruit cake, somewhere between bread and cake, that is eaten at Halloween, and as children, we were enticed to eat it because of the money and the ring that were hidden inside it! Whoever finds the ring will be the first to marry.

You will find recipes that use yeast but bread soda would have been more traditional. This recipe uses baking powder. It also has the addition of lemon and orange zest which would not have been traditional.

As well as the ring for marriage it would also have had: (all wrapped in greaseproof paper)
a coin for wealth
a small piece of cloth for poverty
a pea for plenty
a thimble for a spinster
a button for a bachelor
a matchstick to beat your husband/wife (imagine!!!)

You can guess why most of these have fallen by the wayside...

Ingredients:

12oz mixed fruit like raisins and sultanas.

6oz fructose or coconut sugar.

300ml hot, strong tea.

Zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange.

5oz brown flour, 

4oz white flour, (I use spelt for both)

1 and a quarter tsp baking powder

1 medium egg.

Pour the hot tea over the fruit and sugar and leave over night in the fridge.

The next day stir in the zest.

In a large bowl mix the flours and baking powder, and then add the fruit and the soaking liquid.

Stir in the egg and mix it well.

Turn it into a lined and greased loaf tin, level the surface, and bake it for about an hour and a half at 150c.

I'm lucky I got to photograph this before it was all eaten! Hence the dodgy quality of this pic. It's best eaten thickly sliced with real butter and a big mug of tea. 

Now there's one of my favourite combinations ever. Yum...!

It's also good enough to throw into a round cake tin and present it as cake. I make a thin glaze of icing sugar and enough milk to make a slightly runny icing, and if you have it, a drop of orange essence. 

I'd love to hear what you think if you get a chance to try this!