Family Time
Sixteen ways to celebrate the arrival of spring
Lu Garner shares her love of Spring and takes a look at the Spring Equinox, a festival of balance and potential. Ever find yourself swamped by the minutiae of daily life and wishing you were lighter, angelic even? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to skip this phase and just become an angel right now? I have always fancied floating around in the ether lending a helping hand here and there. But then I have long been obsessed with the concept of angels. So many of the books and films I have seen about angels seem to suggest that they might actually envy us; specifically, the human ability to feel. We are sensual beings – we would do well to remember the enormous gift that embodiment is. What better time to honour the joy of our senses than at spring time, as the world around us is overtly shifting from...
Sixteen ways to celebrate the arrival of spring
Lu Garner shares her love of Spring and takes a look at the Spring Equinox, a festival of balance and potential. Ever find yourself swamped by the minutiae of daily...
How to naturally dye eggs
A nice alternative to the brightly wrapped plastic boxes filling the supermarket shelves, and an activity that children of many ages can get involved in. Jess Hazel and Rosalind Howard show us how to make a natural and beautiful addition to an Easter table. Your kitchen is full of natural dyes. Common food items such as red cabbage, turmeric and coffee can be used to transform plain eggs into colourful Easter gems. Children will especially love discovering all the different colours they can create – let them experiment using cooled hard-boiled eggs and bowls of cold dye. You can also try boiling the eggs in the dye for different results. Natural dyes can sometimes produce unexpected results, so don’t be surprised if, for example, your red cabbage dye yields blue eggs. YOU WILL NEED Natural dyeing agents – we used red cabbage, turmeric, beetroot, spinach and coffee Large pan Fine-mesh...
How to naturally dye eggs
A nice alternative to the brightly wrapped plastic boxes filling the supermarket shelves, and an activity that children of many ages can get involved in. Jess Hazel and Rosalind Howard...
Family Festival Stories: tales from the JUNO co...
Glastonbury It doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch to say that Glastonbury is my spiritual home. I didn’t grow up on Glastonbury but first went when I was 19. In return for a ticket, I worked as a steward outside the main festival perimeter through the Oasis Carnival Club, headed up by Dick Goodenough. My family were convinced it was a scam as I sent off my cheque for the £100 deposit we’d been asked to pay. It wasn’t. Experiencing my first Glastonbury, my mind was blown and my heart was opened, and I’ve been to every festival since. Back then, I was intoxicated by the hedonism, but it was never just a party. It was the most inspiring place to be as an emerging adult. The heart and soul of Glastonbury is social and environmental justice, peace and love, and I experienced this full force. Its power...
Family Festival Stories: tales from the JUNO community
Glastonbury It doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch to say that Glastonbury is my spiritual home. I didn’t grow up on Glastonbury but first went when I was...
Walking with children: how to enjoy family days...
“Young children don’t appreciate scenery,” my wise stepfather informed me. My children beg to differ. This year we took our first family holiday in the Lake District. As we entered the Lakes, the scenery was so breathtaking I couldn’t speak. The children, on the other hand, couldn’t stop! They did all the ooh-ing and ahh-ing for me, as if they were watching a fireworks display. Then we knew we had made the right holiday choice. Our children, aged 4 and 8, are big walkers. We first started doing published walks with them a few years back, albeit a bit shorter and centred round a castle or somewhere good to lunch. Last Boxing Day we ended up doing a five and-a-half-mile walk along the river to a pub and having a lovely chip butty and a pint, but had not considered how we would get home. So we walked and played...
Walking with children: how to enjoy family days out for free
“Young children don’t appreciate scenery,” my wise stepfather informed me. My children beg to differ. This year we took our first family holiday in the Lake District. As we entered...
Simple projects to try with children in an urba...
The lady at Eden farms that supplied our vegetable box told me she felt so passionately that children should experience growing their own food that she would put some organic seed potatoes in our box, despite the fact that growing our own meant we would no longer need to buy her produce. Unfortunately for the business her enthusiasm rubbed off, and now I too am feeling evangelical about giving children opportunities to grow something they can eat. Here are a couple of the projects that even quite little children can get started at this time of year. March and April are perfect months to plant salad leaves; we keep a container growing by the back door and by May my daughter will be plucking a few tasty leaves for her sandwiches each morning. Before I grew it myself I had no idea that rocket has such a hot, peppery taste,...
Simple projects to try with children in an urban garden
The lady at Eden farms that supplied our vegetable box told me she felt so passionately that children should experience growing their own food that she would put some organic...