february – Giants & Pilgrims

February 2019 Desktop Wallpaper

February 1, 2019/1 Comment/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Monthly Themes, Online /by Betony Coons

Some days you need a sunrise. Or sunset? You decide.

And warm lighted windows welcoming you home from the cold.

Love you friends! 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:

February 2018 Free Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

January 30, 2018/1 Comment/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads /by Betony Coons

This year I am following the theme “Migration” for my desktop backgrounds and sharing a piece of writing or poetry that inspired the image.

This months wallpaper speaks of blankets piled high, snuggling in for the night under layers of stitches, and of tiny footsteps migrating in the dark hours, coming in to find warmth and safety in your arms. The arrow patterned quilt is called “Migration” or “flying geese.”

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

The Hundred Names of Love by Annie Lightheart

The children have gone to bed. We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet, the forgiveness of that sleep. Then the one small cry: one strike of the match-head of sound: one child’s voice: and the hundred names of love are lit as we rise and walk down the hall. One hundred nights we wake like this, wake out of our nowhere to kneel by small beds in darkness. One hundred flowers open in our hands, a name for love written in each one.

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:

February’s Adventures in Homeschooling

March 10, 2017/0 Comments/in Abacus, Bellwether, Creative Process, Family, Homeschooling, Monthly Themes, Online, Poetry, Writing /by Betony Coons

This year we began homeschooling Lucy (7), Hattie (5), and Beatrice (2). 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.

February has been a month filled with lots of preparations and travel. We went to KS to wrap up some projects and visit family. As for our homeschool activities, they all had this wonderful literary bent to them. Colorado (and KS) are mostly very unpleasant in February – not much snow, just wind and cold. So it has been a perfect month to get lost in stories. Here is our homeschool photo journal for February.

Valentines Celebrations:

We had a wonderful Valentines tea party in Kansas with grandmas and cousins. Pretty wonderful. Lots of Valentines makings…

Lucy’s valentines – little origami boxes, with Washi tape ribbons, filled with heart garlands she made.

Harriet’s wonderful gigantic heart.

Woodworking:

Early in the month, we all drove out to Kansas to spend some time with family and for me to do a book signing for the Bravest Adventure and to build frames for my new series of paintings with my dad. We started Arlo out young on his woodworking skills.

Since we had access to my dad’s wonderful workshop and tools, we slipped another tiny project into the mix – making a toy tabletop theater! Here is Lucy helping with the construction (learning from the best!).

Fables & Theater:

Thanks to the inspiration from Read Aloud Revival, one of our themes for February was Fables. Here are some of the books we enjoyed. I hadn’t realized what an illustrative force Paul Galdone was until now!

The girls picked “The Teeny Tiny Woman” as our first fable to perform. Here we are working on the backdrops.

And here is a photo of our debut show in our newly dubbed “Fable Theater”.

My little theater painter helper…

And the ever dramatic Lucy presenting the newly painted facade! Pretty cool, right!?

Later in the month, we also put on a show of Peter Pan! More on that in a moment….

Story Telling:

Alongside exploring the wonderful worlds of fables and poetry this month, I wanted to jump into crafting more of our own stories. So we invested in a few fun new story telling games. Story cubes – (which I will be honest, I was a little skeptical about, but the girls LOVE. So simple, with endless creative possibilities.)

And this really charming fairytale story telling puzzle I found on Amazon. The pieces can be rearranged in any order to tell different stories. The illustrations are lovely and the story possibilities surprisingly diverse.

Nature Study:

We really haven’t done much Nature study this month (February… blech). But, I couldn’t not mention how much we are LOVING the new Planet Earth II series. Takes my breath away every time.

Robotics:

The fun little surprise exploration this month was into robotics. Lucy desperately wants to build a real robot, so we are digging into the worlds of electronics and computer programming. Giving this artsy mama a run for her money….

Deconstructing an old VCR for parts…

Building “Brush Bots” (like hexbugs) thanks to YouTube… (we also made straw light sabers, but forgot to photograph)

Poetry:

February being the cold blustery month it is, and as an ode to love poems everywhere 🙂 we did a little focus on Poetry this month. I put together this basket near our breakfast table of all of our favorite poetry books and a few new ones from the library (we fell in love with this one in particular). Each morning we took turns picking poems to read out loud as a family.

Here is the little basket graphic I made. Feel free to use it if you want to make your own poetry basket…

We also enjoyed this kids illustrated biography of the poet e.e.cummings. Look how beautiful that sky poem is…

Tried our hand at writing some typewriter poems…

As well as rhyming poems, shape poems, and acrostic poems!

Physical Eduction:

Along with our normal dance classes and as many park trips as we could manage,

we practiced a little circus arts… 🙂

Gymnastics at Grandmama and Grandpapa’s house…

Ice skating…

and Arlo and Dad watching the superbowl… Does this really count as Physical Education?

Literature:

Our classic we read this month was J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (beautifully illustrated/interactive version by Minalima). The girls LOVED it. Lucy bawled at the end and Harriet right away wanted to read the entire book again (we did not, ha).

As a finale to finishing the book, the girls and I put together our own production of Peter Pan performed on our tiny theater.

Paris:

Attempting to build Eiffel towers out of toothpicks and marshmallows while learning about all sorts of 3D structures.

Coloring France on our world map

Eiffel tower drawings

Homemade crepes and french pastries for French food sampling…so….yummy….

So many fun Paris books. We really loved all of these.

But especially Paris Up Up and Away. It is filled with intricate silhouette papercuts!

Speaking of papercuts, we also made one more of these FREE printable paper structures to add to our growing collection of famous monuments.

Art:

One of the Paris books we read – Painting Pepette – is about a little girl who takes her stuffed bunny to several different famous artists to have his portrait painted (Picasso, Dali, Matisse, and Chagall). Each artist paints Pepette in his unique style. We took inspiration from the book and did our own series of bunny portraits inspired by the greats.

Speaking of bunnies… Lucy also (probably inspired by the Butter sculptures at the Kansas State Fair) made her own butter, and sculpted it into this fierce bunny.

That’s all for now folks! March is going to be all about Egypt, Passover, St. Patricks Day, Colors, and Coding… I am excited already….

February Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

February 1, 2017/0 Comments/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Monthly Themes, Travel /by Betony Coons

This February wallpaper is inspired by thoughts of togetherness and finding beauty across cultural divides. Tim called this desktop “Rooftops of the World”. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much Mary Poppins alongside reading too much news. 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 iphone images. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen.

High Resolution Desktop Wallpaper:

iPhone Wallpaper:

“There is a Balm in Gilead” Song and Silkscreen Print

February 29, 2016/4 Comments/in Art, Bellwether, Monthly Themes, Music /by Betony Coons

For February we’ve explored the theme of “balm”, asking what does it look like to be a healing balm within the world and serve places as a family.

We thought this would be the perfect month to release one of our favorite new songs. Here is the fully produced, beautiful “There is a Balm in Gilead”. You can listen below (and feel free to share it with folks!):

Using the lyrics from the song, Betony has designed a limited edition of 50 silk-screened posters. With metallic-gold ink on heavyweight, navy-blue paper, it will be an incredible and framable 12×16 print.

Because of the silk-screen process we are only taking orders until March 7th! If you’d like one you can order it now by clicking right here (it’ll take you to our store).

About Bellwether and Our February Theme

At the beginning of the year Betony and I announced we’re working on a new project. Titled Bellwether, it will be an album and art series that explores belief (to be released November 2016).

Instead of just keeping the creative process to ourselves, we’re making it a bit more open; hoping to explore belief each month in ways that contribute and form the project being released.

So every month we’re doing a Practice & Process, choosing a spiritual practice and, in response, sharing the creative process.

For February our theme is Balm and we wrote all about the Practice we took on

Our plan is to continue releasing songs and posters throughout the calendar year- an ongoing process to these practices. Keep watching for more as the months progress!

February Balm: Practice and Process Part 2

February 27, 2016/0 Comments/in Art, Bellwether, Family, Music /by Betony Coons

PRACTICE:

As we are making our way through February, Betony and I have been staying true to practicing the two things we put forward at the beginning of the month:
Praying for people each night as a family
and
Exploring where our family can do service work (especially looking in to “Turn Around Bikes” in Greeley).

Volunteering

So we met with Liz Young and her intern of Turn Around Bikes last week just asking, “What all do you guys need this year?” Since Betony and I have experience with putting on big events and art shows we volunteered for the “Turn Around Bikes” fundraiser committee. Be looking for a that event come July! It should be an incredible time of biking, live music, food, and Weldwerks Brewing Company will hopefully be involved.

We also decided to do a special for the next two weeks on our site: 100% of proceeds of sales of this print go to support Turnaround Bikes!

PROCESS

I’ve been performing a new song this year that has really good energy when I sing it for people. I’ve been ending sets with it. “There is a Balm in Gilead” is a song about deep hope and it feels like a proclamation every time I sing it. It felt right that we would record this song in February and release it with this theme being lived out… More to come on that in a couple days!

Betony put up some versions of this incredible poster last week on Facebook. (True to Giants & Pilgrims projects, it coincides with the song.) You all voted and chose this version! It will be up for sale alongside the song in a couple days as well!

Some folks that helped make “There is a Balm in Gilead” happen (Charla Bultman, Brian Claxton, and sound engineer/ producer David Wilton):

My friend Jeff Cook and I released a teaching/song meditation for Lent called Observance.

FURTHER EXPLORING “BALM”

We read “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” out loud as a family this month. There are so many beautiful and interesting spiritual archetypes in this book: baptism, desert, resurrection, etc. The whole of the book explores LOVE as an act of giving and sacrifice that shapes someone for the better.

Betony has also been reading “Home Grown” and “Man’s Search for Meaning”. She is highly recommending them for me as well!

This month I helped friend and Giants & Pilgrims band member Mary Claxton do a songwriting intensive, while Betony designed a set for Frontier Academy Elementary’s performance of Aladdin and volunteered to help with a art show fundraiser at our pre-school (check out those Lorax trees)!

The family took a trip to see the orchids at Denver’s Botanic Gardens.

And we had lots of fun with Valentine’s shenanigans:

And, speaking of “Balm”, I have been batching my newest set of colognes, beard oils, and aftershaves!

That’s all for now! March is going to be all about “Ground” so be watching for that soon!

February Practice and Process: “Balm”

February 4, 2016/2 Comments/in Art, Bellwether, Monthly Themes, Writing /by Betony Coons

(image is from a Chinese cloisonné painting factory we visited in China 2008)

In creating our new project, Bellwether (an art series and album due winter 2016) we’ve decided to share what we’re doing each month before it’s released.
We’re calling these posts “practice and process“.

They will detail the spiritual/life practice we’re doing,
give a look at our in-process art that we’re creating in response,
and then include a whole host of resources and activities! (like the new desktop wallpaper, book/music/movie lists, recipes, explorations for kids, etc. This is so as a entire family we can engage in this year’s exploration of “belief” we’re calling Bellwether.

FEBRUARY Theme: BALM

February is in the heart of winter, close to the edge of a hope for spring. And with Valentine’s Day sitting in the month we’ve often treated February as a time to put into words the way we feel about the ones we deeply love. It’s a way to warm up the cold. We’ve chosen our theme of “balm” with some of these lines drawn.

Practice:

The very definition of balm is “something that has a comforting, soothing, or restorative effect.”

This month we are

exploring what service looks like for our family. We want to start being restorative in an intentional way. For us that looks like partnering with a local charity called “Turn Around Bikes”. They restore donated bikes and give them to people in need. Honestly, since having children we’ve had a hard time being consistent and feeling effective when it comes to giving of ourselves in this kind of way. We’re open to getting better at service. Furthermore, it’s our hope to instill a great sense of compassion in our children. This is at least a first step.
For our second spiritual/life practice we’re setting up a table altar like we did last month. This time before dinner we’ll be praying for people in need of “balm” or some extra love and care. Then on Mondays we’ll be writing and mailing postcards, sending that love out in words.

Here is a really cool free printable postcard designed by our friend Kyle Steed, if you’re needing a great design:

Process:

Tim is working on recording a song called “There is a Balm in Gilead” this month while I’m gathering ideas and paper tidbits for the overall series.

Resources for “Balm”:

FEBRUARY Dates to Take Note of:

February 7th – Superbowl 50 (with the *ahem*, Denver Broncos! Bake these, I promise you won’t regret it.)
February 8th – Chinese New Year (year of the monkey!) – We love to celebrate by ordering Chinese takeout and reliving our China trip 🙂
February 9th – Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday – we love to listen to this sweet mix curated by Starbucks
February 10th – Ash Wednesday
February 14th – Valentine’s Day
February 15th – President’s Day
February 17th – Random Acts of Kindness Day
February 28th – The Oscars

Local: Greeley, CO events:

February 5th (and up through the end of the month) – Soundscape a group art show at the Atlas Theater that pairs music and art (right up our alley don’t you think?)

February 27th – Tim and Charla are opening for the lead singer of Everclear at the MOXI theater!

Let me know if you have other fun Greeley events I should add to this calendar!

EXPLORATIONS:

Here in Greeley, CO we have had just buckets and buckets of snow. We haven’t seen the ground since December 1st. I don’t even remember what it looks like. During winters like this, I think the best possible plan of action is to find a warm tropical greenhouse to visit. Usually we make a trip to the Butterfly pavilion. This year, I am thinking we are going to visit the Orchid Showcase (Jan. 8-Feb 22) at the Denver Botanical Gardens.

Participate in Turnaround bikes workshops this month and other service related activities.

Make a visit to the Cranford Cove to get a new selection of looseleaf teas to enjoy this month.

Speaking of tea, the girls and I are planning a lovely Valentine’s tea party with lots of tiny delicacies, fancy china, and, of course, hats and dresses.

ART:

Spend some time digging into Picasso’s works and share with the girls.

Their are some really fun art activities in this book.

Make all sorts of homemade valentines

READING lists:

Here are some of the kid’s books I have on reserve at the library this month. I was looking for books that deal with Compassion. I would love to hear your recommendations if you have any.

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson, The Invisible Boy by Patrice Barton, The Lion and the Mouse, and A Sick Day for Amos Mcgee

I am also reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane out loud to Lucy. It is an absolute favorite of ours. The themes are nested in kindness and compassion and the journey of self-discovery. It’s a good one for adults too.

Mary Oliver poetry books – these are ABSOLUTELY balm to my soul.

As a little personal “balm” against the dreariness of February, I love to order my garden seeds. (my favorite is Baker Heirloom Seeds – just reading their catalog is therapeutic)

LISTEN:

Oxygen by Willy Mason. The video is only ok, but the song is so good.

This Great Valentines Mix curated by Personal Practice –

February Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

February 1, 2016/0 Comments/in Art, Bellwether, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads /by Betony Coons

Both my mom and grandmother are wonderful cooks. I grew up eating all foods made “from scratch.” For big meals and special occasions, they would get out the fancy dishes – their collection of transferware china – my mother’s were blue, my grandmother’s brown. It always meant that we were about to celebrate something special. To this day, I love all transferware. The patterns for February’s desktop are inspired by those dishes and the colors they come in. The plant in the middle is Lemon Balm, a nod to our theme this month – “Balm”.

For more inspiration for this month – make these rich chocolaty brownies, read this poem and this one, and dig into everything Letters in this February list from last year.

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 iphone images. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen.

High Resolution Desktop Wallpaper:

Moonwalk Cocktail

February 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Recipes /by Betony Coons

For Christmas, Tim (who knows me a little too well 🙂 got me an awesome new cookbook.

I am only just getting around to trying some of the recipes (it is a pretty gigantic tome). One of the first we tried is a cocktail called “Moonwalk.” It is delicious! It is already a go-to cocktail for us. Here is story they have before the recipe –

In 1969, Joe Gilmore, head barman at Savoy Hotel’s American Bar in London, invented this citrusy champagne cocktail to commemorate the Apollo 11 moon landing. The drink—a lively combination of grapefruit juice, orange liqueur, and a hint of rose water, topped with bubbly—was the first thing astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin sipped upon returning to earth.

With a story like that, how could we not try it?! (That and I just happened to have some rose water that I really wanted to try using)

Moonwalk

MAKES 1 COCKTAIL

INGREDIENTS

1 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
1 oz. orange liqueur, preferably Grand Marnier
3 drops rose water
Champagne or sparkling wine, for topping

INSTRUCTIONS
Combine grapefruit juice, orange liqueur, and rose water in an ice-filled shaker. Shake vigorously and strain into a champagne flute; top with champagne.This recipe appears in the SAVEUR New Classics Cookbook.

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

February 2019 Desktop Wallpaper

February 2018 Free Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

February’s Adventures in Homeschooling

Valentines Celebrations:

Woodworking:

Fables & Theater:

Story Telling:

Nature Study:

Robotics:

Poetry:

Physical Eduction:

Literature:

Paris:

Art:

February Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

“There is a Balm in Gilead” Song and Silkscreen Print

About Bellwether and Our February Theme

February Balm: Practice and Process Part 2

February Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

Moonwalk Cocktail

Moonwalk

ABACUS: “Letters” Project Round UP

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