almanac – Giants & Pilgrims

January 2019 Free Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

January 1, 2019/1 Comment/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads, Monthly Themes /by Betony Coons

Happy New Year!! Can you believe it is 2019 already!? Thanks for sticking with me, friends. Seeing these desktops on your screens is what keeps me going 🙂 By the way I am planning on keeping the format of these post about the same this year, but please tell me if you have any requests or changes! I make them and then send them off into the void, so I would love your feedback.

This desktop wallpaper is a little tribute to 2018 while at the same time celebrating fresh starts and new beginnings. There is one element from each of my calendar pages from 2018 hidden in the black and white images to the left all leading into a fresh blank canvas. Can you find all 12?! Enjoy!!

For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.

For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both. I make a couple different ones so that you can use what works best for your device.

iphone wallpapers:

October 2017 Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

October 2, 2017/2 Comments/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads, Monthly Themes, Online /by Betony Coons

Happy October friends! Goodbye summer!

I been enjoying reading this Mary Oliver Poem called Song for Autumn

In the deep fall

don’t you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep

inside their bodies? And don’t you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow? The pond

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially,

the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

Much love,

Betony

For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.

For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both.

iphone wallpapers:

A Food Fight Party, Playing Planets, and Video Games Come to Life…. June’s Adventures in Homeschooling

July 24, 2017/0 Comments/in Abacus, Almanac Adventure Days, Creative Process, Family, Homeschooling, Lists, Monthly Themes, Writing /by Betony Coons

This year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (5), Beatrice (2), and Arlo (8 months). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.

Ahhhh. Summertime. We aren’t doing anything structured for homeschooling over the summer, but it is wonderful to see how unschooling (or chasing the spark) can play out on these long summer days.

Parties and Outdoor Play:

Lucy planned an Epic food fight battle for her 8 year old party. She decided to use party table linen for her party.
So fun! We did three rounds – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each round had a specific food and challenge. Thanks to some other mom tips online, it went off with out a hitch.

So silly and fun.

A letter Lucy wrote to her future self, with instructions to mom to give it to her on her 8th B-day.

Trying out her new penny board with some pro tips from friend Calvin.

June backyard pool party vibes…

And garden sketching and reading (also notice the Hidden Valley Ranch because they made themselves a salad from the garden as a snack – ha ha ha)

Rolling down the hills races at the University

Exploring the new city “stained glass” park!

First swing ride for Arlo-man (and the photo that motivated mama to give him his first haircut ha ha!)

Robots Galore:

Lucy got several Robot kits for her birthday. She LOVES robots. Her current obsession is trying to figure out how to get all her robots to do her chores for her. Hmmmm…..

Audio Books/Read Alouds:

We have recently “discovered” audio books (thank you read aloud revival audio deals!). Here are a couple we enjoyed this month – (Tim read Harry Potter book two out loud – so wonderful to get to relive these with our kids – and we have loved these Jim Kay illustrated versions)

Lucy dressed up at Mary Poppins

Outer Space:

The only “theme” we played with this month was planets and outer space. We used some Pinay Homeschool handouts and made polymer clay planets.

Lucy drew some stellar rocket ships

We enjoyed lots of space/aeronautic books from the library. I particularly LOVED the Armstrong and Lindbergh mouse adventures. Wonderful illustrations and stories – great sneaky histories for kids.

We also read Magic school bus in space

Did some planet play at the Windsor park

Circus Circus:

For Christmas this last year, Tim got the girls and me tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s “Luzia”. The whole show was about Mexico. It was utterly breathtaking. And so neat to be able to share with the girls after our Mexico study last October. I have seen a lot of their shows (and loved all of them) but this was by far my favorite.

I mean, they made it rain on stage – utterly magical.

Some Papel Picado inspired backdrop.

And then some fun circus books from the library

Lone Valley School:

Greeley has a historic park called Centennial Village that is run by the greeley museums. The two older girls participated in a day camp there at the beginning of June called Lone Valley School. They loved it. Lots of old fashioned activities and fun.

They were so into it that the second day they insisted on wearing period specific costumes.

Here is a photo of the old fashioned school house and some of the drills from their primers.

Morning breaks consisted of time playing old fashioned games like stilt walking and ring toss.

Making and Baking:

Fort building around the dining room table.

Marionette dragon making activity at the library

Lucy really wanted to invent a recipe and bake it. So, with a little help/suggestions from mama, here is her recipe she came up with “Lucy’s Mini Cupcaks”. They turned out surprisingly delicious!!

Dino Days:

Tim took the girls to Dinosaur days at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum

Art:

Lucy has really been honing her portrait/drawing from life skills. This is a drawing she did of Tim while he was reading Harry Potter out loud.

And here is Harriet’s wonderful “portrait” of her imaginary friend “Twinklebell”

Clay can get pretty messy, so summer is the perfect time to play with ceramics since we can do it outside.

Dance Recital:

Lucy and Harriet both danced in their studios annual dance recital.

Celebrating with ice cream in the park afterwards.

Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild:

Our best friends lent us their Nintendo switch at our house for the month. We are not really a gaming family, but we have loved all of the Zelda games since the very beginning. These days, the League of Legends is the most popular game, and it has millions of fans. If you have decided to buy smurfs on unrankedsmurfs.com, you will not be disappointed or bored. It has been so fun to play this incredible game as a family. It is breathtakingly beautiful and so fun – rock climbing, cooking, and so so much world to explore. So, we had to have a real life Zelda adventure as well… Everyone will be a little sad to return the switch next month.

June 2017 Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

June 1, 2017/1 Comment/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads, Monthly Themes, Online /by Betony Coons

I cannot believe it is June already. Our family has all sorts of fun planned for this month – a dance recital, camping trip, a special birthday, summer camp, and more. Oh what a wonderful month June is. I hope you enjoy this new bright time and artwork for your screens. Happy summer!

For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.
High Resolution Desktop Wallpaper:

For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the iphone images. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen.

NEW ALBUM! Haystacks: A Collection of Favorite Songs (2008-2016)

October 6, 2016/0 Comments/in Downloads, Haystacks, Music, Online /by Betony Coons

Today I turn 38. When reflecting on life this I realized something:

Over the past 8 years I’ve released 8 albums!
frailty_album_after_party

Before that, when I had turned 30 I had crisis of profession. I wasn’t sure if being a musician/singer-songwriter was going to be good for my family. Our first baby was on the way and I had always treated this part of my life as a hobby. I wrote songs and shared them locally but I never went beyond our pocket of friends with any intention. Yet I had this strong pull that I needed to be giving more room for this in my life.

Then I had a transformative conversation with a friend.

He let me know, “Tim, this is the year of the baby. You’re going to have your first child. And then you’re going to let this other child known as your ‘creative career’ out of the closet you’ve locked it up in.”

Really, someone’s respected opinion that I could DO IT was all I needed.

I created a website.

I shared my music online.

I played shows and gathered emails.

I went on my first tour (to Kansas! because it was home!)

It was a turning point for me where I stopped talking about what I wanted to do as singer/songwriter and started actually doing it.

So collected here are songs that are favorites of mine and the people who have listened in over the last 8 years. In the fields of everything I’ve released these are songs that rise a little bit higher in their season.

Hence the name, Haystacks.

August “Newspaper” Round Up

August 31, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus, Family, Lists /by Betony Coons

Rather than posting pictures of all the activities we have done this month around the “Newspaper” theme, I thought I would instead share this simple photo journal of our tiny home newspaper we created. We will definitely be doing this again, it was such a fun project. Watch for a second edition of Coons Delivery! Almost everything was done by the girls – from naming the paper, to choosing the stories, telling the stories (they dictated as I typed), to the layout and page design (with a little technical help from mama), the photographs, and the illustrations. Enjoy!

Here is a pdf of the finished paper so you can read their adorable stories:
The Coons Delivery

Giants and Pilgrims’ “Abacus” is a creative home curriculum centered on a monthly theme. Click here to check out the original list of Newspaper ideas.

Midwest Road Adventures and “Maps” – a round up of the month of July

July 30, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus, Almanac Adventure Days, Family, Travel /by Betony Coons

Most of our July was spent exploring the midwest. What better way to incorporate the theme “Maps” then getting out and living on one. Eight states in two weeks (that includes Tim’s whirlwind trip to North Carolina for the Wild Goose Festival)!

While road tripping, we did several fun pages out of the Maps Activity book –

We weren’t able to stop a lot (seeing as we were in the car for too long already) but, we did make two really wonderful detours on our way to Lake Geneva, WI. Since we were going through two state capitals, we stopped at both the Nebraska State Capital building and the Iowa State Capital Building. And WOW were they wonderful. Why is “Visiting Every State Capital” not something everyone does?!? These two building were filled with incredible history, art, incredible architecture, and craftsmanship that you just don’t see that often in our ‘slap it together and sell it cheap’ culture we live in. We all felt like we were exploring old castles of old. And both the Iowa building and the Nebraska buildings were so different! Here are a few picture from both.
Nebraska First –

Amazing Castle-like building, beautiful mosaics, and, best of all, an old wood paneled elevator that took you to the top of the tower to an open air walkway with panoramic views of the whole city.

Some Zelda scenes “may” have been re-enacted in these stone passageways

Tried to take a family “Selfie” here. Aw… so cute. And then you notice what Lucy does with her bubble gum….

Some things you didn’t want to know… thanks a lot iPhones…

And Iowa’s Capital Building:

They sure knew what they were doing when they designed the gold domes….

Looking up into the ceiling of the main dome. They took guided tours to the top, which we sadly didn’t do because we had to get back on the road, but next time!

A security guard at the entrance told us to be sure not to miss the Library as it was his favorite room. And boy was he not kidding. It was like stepping into Harry Potter land.

As part of our midwest road trip, we stayed in KS for a few days at my parents farm. They live on 180 acres of wild prairie and orchards. My dad mows these lovely ever-shifting paths through the prairie that have become one of the things we look forward to most when visiting home.

Onto modes of transportation! Also while in KS, the girls had their first encounter with bumper cars (hover crafts more like…) and can’t wait for more…

Picnics are always a good idea.

As are hotel swimming pools.

Once we got back home, we mostly have been playing catch-up – especially with all the art shows and whatnot we have had going on. But here are a few highlights from the end of July.
This is one of the books we picked up from the library on maps. It is called “The Once Upon a Time Map Book” – you can get it here. I can’t recommend it enough. My kids LOVED it. And it teaches so many cool map reading skills – directions, scale, keys, distance, etc. The book gives you a quest of sorts and then have to follow the directions to get through the map, while looking for hidden treasures. So fun.

We definitely drew a treasure map of our backyard and hid treasure. Burning the edges and tea staining it is half the fun.

Some afternoons when mom is trying, ahem, to get ready for an art show she is not ready for yet, you google “kids map games” and let em loose.

The church we are part of, called Atlas, does this amazing kids camp where they make a movie. The kids do almost everything – the acting, costumes, songs, etc. One of the days was all about outer space. Each kid was assigned a role as either a planet, the sun, moon, stars, etc. They physically acted out our solar system as part of our movie. It was so cool. I didn’t get any photos of the kids, but here are a bunch of the parent volunteers pricking holes in a black paper wall that was lit from behind to make constellation star maps. The twinkly black wall was the backdrop in the film for the little kid moons and planets swirling around.

We hung a nice big world map at kid level on the wall and have been having lots of fun conversations about where things like panda bears and cousins live.

“Collection” Theme Round Up (from Abacus: our creative home curriculum!)

July 23, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus, Family /by Betony Coons

The end of June was spent on the road on the way to Wisconsin, so I missed getting this round up of our June “Collection” theme posted. Still lots of good memories here with hopefully some ideas you can carry over to your own stories.

Click here to see the original June post with the complete list of Collection ideas (which is where these came from)

Outside:

On our road trip through Nebraska and Iowa, every time we stopped for gas, the girls and I collected wildflowers from the side of the road and pressed them in a little flower press I brought with us. We forgot to bring a flower book, so most remained un-identified, but it was a lovely way to make a boring stop more fun.

Thanks to our dear friend Lindsay, we had our second annual “Sleep in the backyard” night. It was made extra beautiful by the singing campfire songs out of a book collection of classic song lyrics.

I used some old letterpress trays I had laying around to make our “Collection” themed wall. My plan was to fill up the wall with all sorts of found treasures over the course of the month, it still has a lot of empty spots, but it has been the perfect place to stash tiny treasures. I think I will keep it up for a bit longer. I’m enjoying having somewhere to put those tiniest of tidbits.

Its hard to see from the photo, but we found several insect skeletons, lots of cool rocks, little figurines, an old brass button, a key, a more. You can also see the beginning of my silhouettes collection.

History:

We visited the Build Frontiers exhibit at the Greeley History Museum where the girls and Tim had a great afternoon playing with legos. The best two take aways from the day were these cool passports that the city of Greeley History museum is doing, and also a great lego app called Lego Movie that is pretty great.

(Rattlesnake Kate is a Greeley history celebrity – seen here immortalized as a lego mini figure)

Art:

In celebration of Flag day, Lucy designed this flag – hopefully we can sew a version of it and hang it on the treehouse. (The page came out of this Maps companion book)

We spent a whole lot of time this month working on all sorts of tiny drawings – all of which are getting compiled into our first ever wall calendar called “Collection”! I will have the calendars up for sale on this site soon! I picked up the proofs this week and they look pretty great if I do say so myself. It helps that there are some fabulous illustrations done by these two cuties.

We had a tea party with using my teacup collection for Lucy’s 6 year old woodland fairy party. Here are some photos from the magic filled afternoon:

And in the spirit of fairies, we had several fun days using bits and pieces to make fairy houses.

Movies:

Not a good movie at all, ha, but we did watch “National Treasure” for it’s contribution to the “Collection” theme 🙂 I suppose my 6 year old now does know what the Declaration of Independence is (sort of…)

Books:

For reading, we started “The Borrowers” and immediately realized it was still a bit old for the girls. Besides that, we have just particularly enjoyed working on our summer library program sheets and picking up lots of good stories from our local library.

We did check out and read a lot of Jan Brett books and then went to her show in Fort Collins at the Contemporary Art Museum. So neat to see her work in person! Her attention to detail is pretty insane. You cannot help but admire her work.

Home:

And finally, in the spirit of “Collection”, we got rid of some of our own collections by having a garage sale 🙂

After clearing out my old frustrating dresser and a chair, our bedroom got a little refresh with this awesome vintage filing cabinet.

That’s all for June and “Collection.” On to “Maps” for the month of July!

April 2015 Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

April 1, 2015/0 Comments/in Almanac, Art, Downloads, Online /by Betony Coons

Last year Tim wrote this about April –

April is a smile
a spark
an epiphany
a new dawn

These days are given to
the pranksters

the believers
the early risers
Bright mornings, bright ideas, bright souls
Because with every rain there’s a clearing
And a new sun to enjoy

Here is a “bright” new desktop for your computer and iphone. A toast to new “Growth.” Click the small thumbnail below to download the large sized file. For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the iphone images. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen. Enjoy!

For iPhones:

Click the thumbnail below to download the large sized desktop wallpaper:

ABACUS: “Letters” Project Round UP

February 17, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus /by Betony Coons

(Above image is from a Greeley mural created by Wes Bruce.)

The theme for this month’s Abacus project is “Letters” (ABACUS is our creative home curriculum centered on a theme). I am excited to share where we have been going with it! To see the whole list of projects we came up with (and resources!) check out our original post, here. It’s been a lovely way to spend February.

The first thing we did was to get out all sorts of lettering sheets and make a poster for the month with all our ideas and plans. We had a fun time experimenting with different fonts and styles. I got pretty into this too and had a great time addressing all our valentine envelopes with different fonts. Ridiculous, I know. But so fun.

Here are a couple of awesome vintage charts I found that you could print out and play with. Ah, the lost art of lovely handwriting.

Lucy wrote a letter to her first pen-pal.

We haven’t had a chance to set up letter writing stations around town yet, but we’re planning on doing it soon! We are also still hoping to take a visit to the local Post Office and have a tour (we did go and pick out some stamps on our last etsy mailing errand).

We started illustrating our own animal alphabet book. Its destined to be a classic.

Tim took a brisk alphabet-photo-walk with Lucy where they found all the letters in the alphabet.

Speaking of photos, I have been loving participating in the annual Atlas photo a day challenge on instagram.

Lots of mail has been made and delivered around here, thanks to these cute little mailboxes we picked up for $3 at target and customized.

Been listening to lots of this album, as well as our ABC playlist (still to come).

We started a little stamp collection by printing out some of these pages – http://stamps.org/userfiles/file/albums/2014-Issues.pdf and putting them in a three ring binder. Any time we got a letter this month with stamps on it we add them to our stamp “album”. Hattie (who’s 3) in particular has loved this.

Lucy has been enjoying playing these typing games on the computer.

Tim spent a morning teaching the girls about addresses. I later received this sweet, sweet letter. Keeping it forever 🙂

A “letters” tie in that I had not anticipated has been my set-design work for Frontier Academy elementary school. One of my close friends asked me to design the set for their show called “Knights of Dawn” (its from one of the Magic Treehouse books). We did a literary theme by constructing the whole thing from oversize pages of the text and old books. Lots of “letters”! 🙂 The girls have loved it.

Finally, we did a whole “Secret Spy” day that was pretty epic. It involved “lasers”, a spy course, and a top secret code. Read about the whole thing here.

Share your projects on our facebook group!

– See more ideas at: https://s28969.p27.sites.pressdns.com/abacus-letters-a-creative-curriculum-list-for-february/#sthash.l90fvSMi.dpuf

If you want more info about this whole Abacus project, start here.

To jump in and connect with other families and share what you are working on, join our Abacus facebook group.

Or, to connect see our whole list of Letters project suggestions and resources list, head over here.

Posts

January 2019 Free Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

October 2017 Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

June 2017 Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

NEW ALBUM! Haystacks: A Collection of Favorite Songs (2008-2016)

Midwest Road Adventures and “Maps” – a round up of the month of July

April 2015 Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

ABACUS: “Letters” Project Round UP

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