The Domestic Wildflower

Handmade Food & Craft Tutorials for Beginners

Jenny Gomes

Nutella and Coconut Ice Cream: With or Without an Ice Cream Maker

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Nutella and Coconut Ice Cream: With or Without an Ice Cream Maker

Tips for Making Cut Off Shorts

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Yoga With Kids Sequence: Busy Mom Yoga Part 2

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In my last post, I showed you several beginner yoga poses that you can try with your kids following along. You don’t need a mat and you can be indoors or out. Here’s the second half of the sequence of kid-friendly yoga poses to try. You can mix them up, and start or end with this post or the previous, and do as many positions as you have time to as a busy parent. It is probably better to do fewer poses at a slower pace to reap the most benefit.

Here’s the Part 2 sequence!

Chair: Inhale arms up, and sink your lower body down as if you were going to sit in a chair. You can stand up and sit back down in the imaginary chair as many times as you’d like. Bring your hands to center, press your palms together, and twist to the right. You might be able to hook your left elbow on the outside of the right knee. Untwist and try it on the left side.


Arrow: From standing, step your left foot back, letting just your pointed toes touch the ground. Extend your arms up, and let your right leg bend a bit.

Warrior 3: From arrow, tip your upper body forward a bit more, drawing your back leg up off the ground so you look like a capital T from the side. It is okay if you are wobbly here; it is supposed to be challenging and this is an extra fun one for kids to try. If you are feeling stable, continue tipping forward so that your hands are planted on the ground and your leg is extended toward the sky. Bring the extended leg down, and step your right foot back to ready for arrow pose. Move from arrow to warrior 3 on this side.


*Here’s a good stopping spot. Or, keep practicing and try the next 3 poses!

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Squat and twist: Sink down into a squat. You may need to have a wider stance if you can’t get your heels on the ground. Press your palms together and use your elbows to help press your knees farther apart. You can then twist your upper body toward the right knee. Imagine twisting from your hips or your belly button, not your neck. Place your right hand at the small of your back. Sweep your left hand along the floor, wrapping it around your left knee and maybe touching your right hand. Repeat on the other side. Come to all fours.

 

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Pigeon: From all fours, bring your right knee to your right wrist. Swing your angle around toward your left wrist. It doesn’t matter if you get your ankle close to your wrist or not. It shouldn’t hurt. Push your lower body back, keeping your left leg straight. Let gravity bring your pelvis closer to the ground. You can sink down onto your forearms and rest your head on your hands. Come up to all fours and repeat on the left side.

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Butterfly: Come to sitting on your bottom with knees bent and soles of your feet together. Draw tall through the crown of the head and conclude with a few nice deep breaths.

Yoga with Kids Sequence | A Domestic Wildflower

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There we have it Wildflowers I hope you feel a bit more relaxed and ready for the rest of your day. Fire away if you have questions; I’m happy to help. A big thank you to Circle Bar Photography for taking these photos. Share in the comment section below any exercise success or failures or favorite poses to try!

Yoga With Kids Sequence: Busy Parents Yoga Part 1

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As much as I love slipping away for a full hour of yoga by myself, sometimes I have to squeeze a little yoga practice in at home with the kids. These are the poses that any beginner can try, that kids can follow along with if they want, and for the most part, leaves your eyes and ears available to keep an eye on your little darlings wherever you are practicing. You can mix the sequence up, and start and stop again if you have to attend to a mom duty. I broke the sequence into small sections so if you have a few minutes to try it, you can do just that. Part 2 will be a few more poses that you can try later in the week!

You can expect this whole sequence below to take about 20 minutes with some minor child distractions.

Spend as much time as you like in a particular pose, but shoot for three breaths and see how it feels. You know that great feeling you get when you wake up from a good night’s sleep and stretch in bed? That’s the terrific stretching feeling you are going for. Yoga should feel awesome.

For those who are unfamiliar with yoga, fear not. You don’t have to be flexible, strong, fit, or wearing yoga pants to get started. The idea is that as you are stretching and placing your body into these somewhat foreign positions, you try to focus on breathing (so you don’t forget to breathe!) and thus forget those three loads of laundry to fold. For me, yoga slows down the pace of motherhood and working womanhood significantly. There are oodles of research that all say the same thing: Yoga is good for you.

Here’s the sequence: 

Yoga With Kids Sequence: Busy Parents Yoga Part 1Arms Up: Inhale your arms overhead and if it feels good, touch your fingertips together. Lean over to the right, even just a little way, and imagine filling the left lung up with air, stretching the muscles along your side. Try it again on the other side.
Eagle Arms: Inhale your arms out to your side (perhaps cueing kids to make “airplane arms”) and bring them in front of you with the right arm underneath the left. Bend both arms at the elbows so your fingertips are pointing to the sky, and twist your arms up so that your right fingers are touching the inside of your left arm, wrist or palm. Let your shoulders relax down and away from your ears and maybe move your elbows up and down a bit to see if there’s a sweet spot in between your shoulder blades that needs a little love. This is a great pose for those holding heavy babies or after long hours at a desk. Unwind your arms, and try it on the other side, with the left arm underneath this time.
Swan Dive: Extend your arms out, like an airplane or a bird, bend your knees, and hinging at the hips, fold forward. Your knees don’t need to be straight as you hang forward. Focus on the divine feeling of stretch at the back of the legs, and clasp hold of your elbows if you’d like. Plant the hands and sink down to all fours.

Cat & Cow: On all fours, push the mat away from you and push your spine up to the sky, much like a cat does. You can spend a whole breath or more in cat pose. Then, for cow pose, tip your pelvis forward and let your tummy sag like a hammock. Take your eyes to the sky and look up a bit with your chin. You can move in a fluid fashion from cat to cow and back again as many times as you like.

Child’s Pose: From all fours, sink down with either your knees together or wide apart. Extend your arms out, reaching actively with your fingers. After a few breaths here, walk your fingers over to the right, and then the left, and then back to center. This is the only pose that leaves you with your eyes to the ground rather than on the kids that may or may not be nearby, so don’t forget to peek up.

Downward Dog: From all fours, check to see that your hands are planted shoulder-width apart and your knees are under your hips. Curl your toes under and push up. Imagine pushing the ground away from you and drawing your hips up and back. Draw your shoulders away from your ears. Perhaps bicycle your legs a bit. Marvel at how flexible children are as they do this pose, and every pose with almost no effort.

Three-legged Dog: From downward dog, take your right leg up to the sky. Bend the right knee and let your right heel come closer to your left hip. You should feel a great stretch all along your right side. Slowly bring your foot back down to the ground. Extend the left leg to the sky repeat. End in downward dog.

*Here is a good time for a rest, some water, or child’s pose to give your arms a break. 

Plank: From downward dog, come down into a push-up position known as the plank. Draw your shoulders down and away from your ears and drive your weight through your heels. Bring your knees to the ground if you feel wobbly. Engage your abdominal muscles for stability.
Crocodile: From plank, sink down into the bottom half of a push-up, known as a crocodile. As your upper body strength increases, you will be able to spend more time in crocodile. It is okay if you can spend just a millisecond in crocodile. Next time shoot for two milliseconds. You can rest your lower body on the ground as soon as you need to.
Cobra: From crocodile, place your hands beneath your shoulders. Bring your ankles and big toes together and make your legs active and press into the ground. Engage your back muscles at the same time so your upper body comes up off the ground. Test yourself and see if you can keep your upper body up off the ground and lift your hands up a bit. You can expand on this pose by gently lifting your upper body up higher by pressing your hands into the ground and lifting higher still.

Downward Dog and transition to standing: From Cobra, you can either come to all fours and then into downward dog or push straight into the downward dog from a cobra. Spend as much time here as you’d like. Walk your feet toward your hands, bend the knees, extend arms out like an airplane, and slowly come to standing, bringing your ankles and big toes together.

*Here is a great place to stop if you need to, or you can just continue on to the next pose in my next post!

Share in the comments below if you think you can squeeze a little yoga into your busy day, Wildflowers! If so, which poses did you enjoy the most?

Yoga With Kids Sequence: Busy Parents Yoga Part 1

A big thank you to Circle Bar Photography for taking these photographs of me and my darling. 

How to Create Greeting Cards from Found and Salvaged Papers

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This post is mostly about getting over the mental hump that some of us are hampered by that one has to spend money to extend kind written words in the form of a card. I love snail mail and cards of all kinds, including the kid-created version here, and I long ago got over the worry that a card recipient would judge me or my card negatively because it was homemade. I have created many cute and completely free cards over the years with found or salvaged papers. Here are some examples to get your creativity flowing the next time you need to open your feelings.

I wrote a baby shower card on an orange paint sample card and I’ll never forget how my dear friend laughed at how “me” it was to do that. You can do that too! There is beautiful paper all around us and one only has to think outside the box to see it. The next time you purchase something, examine the packaging that was already paid for, and is likely destined for the trash can, and see if it can be repurposed. This applies for gifting also. A great friend gave me a baby gift in a lime bag- as in the bag the limes came in from the store. It was adorable, matched the stuffed alligator inside, and I reused shortly thereafter for another gift. That, my friends, is the epitome of sensibility.

The photos for this post show a box that a pair of Stella & Dot earrings came in. I fell in love with the box, cut if flat, and saved until I needed a card. I cut the rectangles, wrote in colorful sharpie my salutation on the back, and sent. I didn’t have to remember to search for a card in a store which is clearly a time saver.

I have confessed in other posts that I am no wizard in the paper arts but if you were such a wizard, there is no limit to the darling things that could be created, for free or nearly free, with minimal effort, with found papers. I am limited in artistic ability and am in a state of near constant haste so my cards are often limited to cute paper and a colorful pen. No one has ever sneered at my cute homemade card, at least to my face though perhaps they have worried to themselves what others might think if they did something so unconventional.

Well, Wildflowers here’s to the sensible, the unconventional, and the creative! What cute, brave, and clever ways have you reused paper? Share your ideas in the comments below and next time you have to send a card, be willing to be a little unconventional!