Last Day of Pascha...

Today was the last day of Pascha. Tomorrow's liturgy will celebrate the Apodosis (or the "farewell") to Pascha. Somehow, even though Great Lent flies by each year, Pascha flies by even faster. We are encouraged as Orthodox Christians though, not to be sad at this time, but rather to look forward to the Ascension of our Lord, as well as all the other feasts that await us later on in the year.

When I baked 11 kulichi this year (Russian Easter breads), I did not expect that they would be eaten before the end of Pascha! But alas, they were. I was so devastated that I had finished off the last one a week ago, but my Mama, who came for a visit this past weekend, saved the day by bringing me her last kulich (a Mama's love, I'll say :)) I enjoyed it (and savored it!) with my leftover cheese pascha. I usually tried to eat it when the kids weren't around and I could have it in silence with some tea!

Today would have been my dearest grandfather's birthday. This is the first time we remember his birthday after his death, and I definitely had a few teary moments today when wishing I could call him and sing to him, like he always did to me on my birthday. We prayed for him this morning at prayers though, which is of course, most important. As a little comfort, I made eggs and bacon for breakfast this morning, which was the breakfast he always made for us whenever we would come over to visit. (We always made it a point to visit FOR breakfast, because his eggs could just not be topped! He fried them in bacon grease). Memory eternal, Deda! You are so very missed.

Omelette prep this morning

Help from Above

In an Orthodox home, the most important thing we, parents, need to relay to our children, is of course, prayer. We need to teach our children that we are not all-knowing or all powerful, even as parents. But as life gets crazy and our days get hectic (around here, every day is hectic!) it can be easy to forget to make time for prayer, especially prayer aside from our morning and evening prayer rules. For me, days like those are the ones that are difficult, and the ones filled with the most temptations. When I forget to put God first (which is easy to do in a secularized country especially), I find that I have the hardest days.

One of my greatest comforts is an Akathist to the Mother of God, Nurturer of Children. This Akathist is relatively new in my life but I have been finding that the days I remember to make time to read it, it is a lot easier to stay focused on my children and all of the important things, instead of on secular issues and petty things.

I have shared this once before, but I am sharing it again. I recommend printing out these beautiful prayers (this akathist) and standing in front of any icon, reading it (or singing it) aloud. I have read it in Barnes and Noble before, but I have sometimes read it at home too, right in front of my kids as they play. I hope it can bring other Mamas comfort like it has brought me. I love sticking in my children's names...it really makes it feel so personal!

Click HERE to go to the Akathist.

Happy May!

Christ is risen!

It's finally May! A promising month it always is, because the weather starts to get so much nicer. Lucky for our family, we just got a beautiful wooden fence put up in our backyard (it is less than a week old). We are so thankful to our parish for doing this for us! Outdoor playtime is so much more relaxing now for my husband and I, and the kids have so much space to run circles in (literally - that's what our oldest son loves to do). Mama loves to kick back on our new outdoor swing (a gift from a few families in our parish...thankful yet again!) and watch the kids play with sand, which is their current favorite outdoor activity.

We just got back from New York, where we visited my family for about 10 days and it was really lovely. Then, we had our parish feast day celebration today (the actual feast is this Wednesday, St. George's Day).

Now, I am working on trying to make a more concrete plan for school for our oldest son (who is almost 4.5). I would like to work on a little bit of homeschooling with him come this fall, and see how things go in preparation for Kindergarten. We have no set plans for what we will do regarding Kindergarten and there are many factors to consider. Hopefully, getting a feel for homeschooling this coming fall will help us figure out whether that is something that can work for our family for the future or not. I'm excited to try things out!

Preparing for Pascha!

Pascha prep is officially underway in our house! As usual, I started the preparations by baking our kulichi (Easter breads). I made 11 this year (it varies every year, depending on how high the dough rises, and the sizes of cans used)...and the house smelled so tempting all day! I have frozen and stashed all the kulichi and cannot wait to defrost the largest one on Holy Saturday, so that we can fill our basket and take it to church to be blessed on Pascha!

I initially baked 3 small ones...one for each of my kids. But I ended up with so much dough that I baked in 2 batches, so I re-used some of the small cans and ended up with many little kulichi instead!

Next up is buying farmer's cheese and then making our cheese pascha! And cleaning, of course!

A Kitchen Nook

I'm really excited about my kitchen desk area...it has turned into such a cozy nook now that I have managed to organize it nicely! 

I was so excited about this area when we were first moving in...until I realized that it can easily become a dumping ground for miscellaneous items (which did happen)! I spent a lot of time looking around on Pinterest for ideas for a kitchen command center and the result is a little mix of a command center and a cookbook keeping area. 

All the way to the left, you can see our family calendar (a photo calendar), with a wooden Long Island above it. I love that Long Island souvenir!!! Someone gave it to me a few years ago from my home parish, and I chose to use it only as a decoration and not as a real cutting board! I love that my first home is hanging above my desk for me to see in such a prominent spot. 

The inside of the cabinets were not easy to arrange because of the funny sizes of the side cabinets. But I took my time and things really came together nicely, I think. In the left cabinet I have my 3 home keeping binders. One is a general binder of my housekeeping routines (I have them written in the form of checklists). The other 2 binders are a recipe binder and a binder of magazine articles I have collected through the years, all pertaining to homekeeping. 

Looking at the center cabinet, all the way on the bottom I have cookbooks. I do have many of them, and this is after getting rid of a handful, too! These are ALL from my wedding shower and very few of them have actually been my own purchases. The shelf above the cookbooks houses my most-used parenting books, as well as a few books I use on a regular basis, such as my current Lenten reading. These books extend onto the top shelf, where I actually had to lay them flat due to size constraints. I think they look kinda cool that way, though! 

You'll also see in the left center cabinet that there is a light blue basket...that's where I am currently keeping my knitting. It needs to be in an area where I can reach it easily so it's not forgotten, but also out of the reach of children (until now it has been hanging out on my desk, which is so dangerous!) Next to that basket I have a black basket which is filled with miscellaneous items, such as missing puzzle pieces that I find at random times, and odds and ends that I find while cleaning...but all of these things are ones that will be gone back to later, and not junk that should be in the garbage. Instead of keeping them on our window sill, I put them in that basket. Then, once the basket is full, I can go through these things. 

Now, all the way to the right, up top, I have our play dough storage container (so cool!) which has not only all our play dough in it, but also all the toys that go along with it! (I got this idea from Pinterest. It's a Sterilite 3-level container...perfect for this!!! The play-doh is in the 2nd level, in round balls, and the other 2 levels store the tools for the play-doh). Next to this is our art caddy...again, out of reach of the kids. One day I can hopefully keep the caddy out regularly, but that has proven to result in a disaster for our family at the present time. 

Below the play-doh is another blue basket, in which I keep all the chargers. I HATE having chargers laying around when they are not being used!! They look so hideous! This was a perfect solution. (BTW...I got these blue baskets at Hobby Lobby on sale...less than $3 a piece). Next to the chargers is my little sewing kit (this doesn't really have to be here, but currently there's not a better home for it). 

And last...the lower level of the right cabinet. Right now, I'm keeping something current there, and that's our easter egg storage bags because we have to stow away an easter egg each day during our Paschal countdown. Next to this is a huge box of greeting cards that I have collected to use for whatever occasion is necessary. 

Now, on top of my desk... I hate having piles and piles of stuff laying around, so I really tried to think this through. You'll see that all the way on the left of the desk is a pen/pencil holder, my Mall Money piggy bank, and a little container of note cards (used regularly!) Next, I have a mailing station...this has in it stamps, envelopes, any current OUTgoing mail, and our return address labels (I have my own, plus ones for our whole family). Moving on to the letter tray. In here I am holding anything VERY current...such as something I am currently working on with the kids (right now that is our Serbian Easter carol)...my planner, and any mail that I need to take care of ASAP. That's about it. Everything else is either thrown away as soon as I have taken care of it/looked at it, or is upstairs being filed away in my little filing cabinet. 

I decided to use the magazine file to store current catalogs to clothing or home stores that I may need to refer back to, plus coupons that are current. I hate digging for coupons, so this is really a great way for me to keep them within reach. I need to find a better way to keep them together, but currently they are all clipped together using a ginormous paper clip, and neatly placed next to the catalogs. 

I love my new, tidy area! I should mention that the beautiful desktop organization items are from the Container Store. I thought very wisely before choosing my items...I easily could have bought the entire collection! 

Update on our icon corner....

I finally found the beautiful icon cloth that I have been looking for for our icon corner. I think it makes the little corner stand out so much more, and looks so beautiful (though now I see I need to pull the cloth down to the right a bit ;-)).

4th Saturday of Great Lent...

Here we are, more than half way through Great Lent already! It's true that Great Lent really goes by faster with each year.

Today, my husband was away all day visiting parishioners, and amidst the craziness with the kids, I tried to do a little reflection in my head of how Great Lent is going for me this year. One of the things that immediately came into my head was that I feel like I have spent every waking hour of this lent on my feet in the kitchen. There's nothing wrong with that, but I feel like cooking and washing pans/loading the dishwasher, and tidying up the kitchen is what I am doing most of my day, every day(this happens outside of Lent, too, but for some reason lately it feels like more time). It's a big frustration to me when I think that I could be spending my time reading, cleaning other parts of the house (like following along with my cleaning plan) and trying to grow in some way before Pascha. So I made a little plan to help myself for the rest of this Great Lent. I whipped out the paper plates, and decided that I am going to use only paper plates from now on until Pascha (but maybe Sundays will be an exception). I started out with this new system for lunch today, and my clean-up was so much easier! I was wiping down the counter within minutes, instead of spending almost 40 minutes cleaning up after a meal (which includes checking that the kids aren't tearing down the house every few minutes, running to break up fights, etc). I'm really hoping that the time I save on cleaning up will add on to my reading and quiet reflection time until Pascha.

In other news, this was a busy week! Yesterday was the first day of spring at last! My family in NY was getting snowed in, but we had a springy temperature of 50 yesterday and today. It has been so nice to wear lighter jackets outside for the last 2 weeks! In accordance with the first day of spring, and tomorrow's feast of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, I made zhavaronki (lark buns) yesterday. I look forward to this every year so much! (next to my pan of birdies is split pea soup). Russian tradition has it that as a welcome to spring (which always falls right around the feast of the 40 Martyrs), we make little buns in the shape of lark birds.

Today, I embarked on a new adventure: making piroshki for the first time in my life!!! I am almost embarrassed to admit that I have never made them before, but I have an excuse: my grandmother made hundreds of piroshki at once when we were growing up, and she'd freeze them so we always had them at our fingertips when they were wanted or needed. I did help her make them, though, if that counts! Once I got married and moved away, I was busy with school and Babushka always supplied me with frozen piroshki, so again, I never even thought about making my own. Times have changed a bit now and I am a little more independent in the kitchen than I was back when we first got married. I decided today that it was going to be the big day that I first made piroshki. I had a great time with the recipe (which one of my best friends gave me), and the kids did, too! It was a perfect thing for them to help with, because they loved cutting the circles out of the dough!

As you can see, my filling of choice for this first try was mushrooms and onions. YUM!