Last Days of Fall

Although the official first day of Winter is still a month away, the last of our leaves are falling off the trees, and it is starting to look like Winter outside.  I am sad to see fall go but what a beautiful fall we had:

We will spend the weekend getting our our winter books, and switching out our fall decorations for winter.  Wishing everyone a beautiful Winter season filled with warmth and light and bid farewell to a glorious Fall.

Keep Calm Craft On

Linking with Nicole at Frontier Dream's "Keep Calm Craft On" linkup.  Here is what I am currently working on:

 A few little holiday gnomes to tuck inside little stockings.  I am thinking these will make cute little Saint Nicholas presents to tuck into the children's shoes on December 6th. 

One of the things I really enjoy about handmaking not only gifts but our seasonal decorations, is I tend to feel the spirit of the holiday or season longer, although my days are spent celebrating Fall, my favorite season of the year, and the house is decked out in Fall's beauty. Today we made leaf wands with fallen leaves tied to string on a stick and sang, " The Red Leaves are Falling Down" song Meanwhile my evening has been spent knitting by the fire thinking about decorations and gifts for our Winter Holidays.  

Here a few of the knitting projects I've been working at by the fire: the cream colored square will be added to a patchwork blanket I am making for Eoghan, after this square I only have two more to go, then I am going to whip stitch them all together with a blanket stitched border.  I had planned on making both of the littles a blanket for Yule this year, but I am already feeling the holiday crunch.  Kiera's might be a little late, luckily at 2 years old I doubt she will mind too terribly.

 The grey knitting is the body to a backpack for Madeline, that will match the little felted iPhone case I just finished for her.  At 17 she is less than thrilled about the idea of handmade gifts this year, but I think she will actually like and use these.

Slowly but surely I am marking things off of my list.  I am glad that I have figured out what to give everyone, I just need a few more hours in the day for handwork!  Perhaps next year will be the year I actually start early enough to not feel stressed about getting everything done in time.  Oh well, I do what I can do, and enjoy the process.

Martinmas Lantern Walk 2012

Today was our schools Martinmas Lantern Walk.  Usually the Sprouts class does not walk, but there were a few parents with older children that were going to be there as well as some friends of ours who's children are in the grades so we decided to attend this one too.  We have one with our homeschool group this Sunday as well.

I had the children do some wet on wet water coloring to craft our lanterns from.

Here are our finished lanterns

Off we go!

The Second Grade Class tells the story of Saint Martin

A Roman Soldier who knows the magic of multiplying through division

He divides his cloak in 1/2 to warm this beggar.

We brought a lantern to share

Eoghan playing with his kindergarten friend Eisen

Around the dark path we light the way

Resting after our walk

Bringing light to darkness

Such a beautiful way to light up the night.

Hope everyone had an equally as beautiful Martinmas, may you carry your special light with you into the dark half of the year.

Old Lady in the Woods

We Gathered with some friends this evening to celebrate Halloween and Samhain.  We set up a magical place in the forest part of our land, with candles and jack-o-lanterns lighting the way.

This was an early set up each family brought 6 more Jack-o-lanterns and we added more candles so when night fell it was a warmly lit little patch in the forest.

We told the children the story of the old lady in the woods, so the collected offerings to add to her magic broth to feed the forest creatures during the dark half of the year. In return for their thoughtfulness they were gifted with honey sticks from the bees and beautiful crystals from the ore gnomes.

There was some Fay Folk lurking about 

I was able to snap a picture of this lovely fairy before he darted off into the woods.

and another little fairy spotted!

The Children water colored printer paper which we made into lanterns to light their way into the dark forest.

Water colors drying for our lanterns

A few of the lanterns we made in the daylight, they were just to hard to photograph in the night.  I took the yarn handles off of them and will use them with LED tealights as nightlights in Kiera's room

"Follow, Follow, Follow Me"  Into the woods we go

The Green Man made a special appearance to hand out treats to the children

Investigating our treasures

We shared a great fall feast picnic style with a mixed green salad topped with roasted pumpkin seeds, a warm bowl of pumpkin chili, with a side jalapeno corn fritters and savory pumpkin pancakes, and finished with a delicious pumpkin cake.  It was a magical evening indeed!

Autumn

Autumn is my favorite season and is particularly welcome and beautiful in Virginia.  Our summers are just too hot and humid to really enjoy our time in nature.  Here are some photos of how we marked the changing of the season in our home.

 

Our Nature Table

A little shelf in our hallway

Our dining room table

We also transformed our barn into a haunted house and have been practicing trick or treating with our wooden figures, this will be the littles first year going trick or treating to collect lots of sugar for the sugar fairy of course!

Our ooky spooky haunted barn!

The Squirrel

(From Wynstone Press's "Autumn")

Whisky, frisky, hoppity hop,

Up he goes to the tree top!

Whirly, twirly, round and round,

Down he scampers to the ground.

Furly, curly, what a tail!

Tall as a feather, broad as a sail!

Where's his supper?  In the shell.

Snappity, crackity, out it fell.

The littles have been very interested in the squirrels recently, often asking to look out the window when they first wake, to see what the squirrels are up to, laughing in delight watching them run up and down the trees and bury their acorns in the ground.  Luckily at any given time our yard has squirrels to watch.

We have been telling a simple story at night about father squirrel playing in the woods, when the cold wind blows (I gently blow the children's hair) and he knows Father Winter is coming so he must collect all of his acorns to eat during winter.  I throw up a handful of felted acorns and have the children help collect them and bring them back to Father Squirrel so he will have plenty of food to eat this winter.

We usually repeat this story a few times before bed, they have great fun gathering the nuts and it helps to get the last of their energy out as we settle in for bed time.

A few more photos of Fall in our playroom.

A shelf in the playroom

the bookcase in our playroom

The children's table with their felted fall harvest