I just down loaded all the photos from the last several days and am a bit over whelmed…
1: by trying to decide what to share.
2: by my sheer frustration of how many photos are far less than perfect (I’m still fighting with my fairly nice camera for decent low light shots… especially with speedy kiddos).
3: by the thought that another Christmas has gone from anticipation to memory. I just can’t believe how quickly that happens.
4: how blessed I feel for such a wonderful time we have had with family.
Rather than a full on montage of holiday photos I’m going to leave you with a little Rolly, Polly Homemade, Puppy Love! This little fellow (which some of you may remember) has already gotten lots of love.
Ahh, Bug and I just cleared the driveway of 7 inches of snow and it is still falling fast. At least now my dear hubby will be able to pull into the driveway after work… but the rest is up to him 😉 .
Family is starting to gather tomorrow (weather permitting) so I am signing off for the holidays. I wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas. I may pop in with some photos but if not I will be back with the New Year.
Here is just a quiet moment in the midst of all our holiday prep. Our Nature Table… or maybe I should be calling it our Seasonal Table… is currently hosting hours of play. The kids each have their own Nativity set as Gammy gets them a new Fontanini figure for Christmas every year. It is interesting how they get played with almost as action figures. Bug’s personal favorite is the Angel Michael… it has a very cool sword 😉 . Three sets of the Holy Family does make for a slightly silly looking display but none of their other figures overlap. It is a great little nook for them… made even better by the evening lighting of the advent wreath.
Here is a fun little craft I tried with the kids this week… God’s Eye Ornaments. Bug got the hang of it but I ended up making the girls’ with them just picking out the colors they wanted. Fairy gave it an earnest try but it was just a bit too tricky for her yet… so I would classify this as a kindergarten and up sorta project.
All you need are two sticks and scraps of yarn. For the kids’ ornaments I glued the popsicle sticks together in a cross shape before we started. For my own, using twigs from the backyard, I just held the sticks in place while I started wrapping. After a couple rounds the sticks become fairy secure. BTW – I would recommend using narrower popsicle sticks than we used… it was just what I had on hand.
I took a few photos trying to illustrate how to wrap the yarn. I hope it makes sense. This is one of those things that I never really remember how to do it until I sit down and just start playing with it. After a couple clumsy attempts it came back to me.
When I switch colors, I hold the loose ends of the yarn down along one of the sticks and wrap over it as if the tail is part of the stick. That seems to work well for hiding the ends and holding everything in place.
Ahh, I’m just sitting down to dust off my keyboard this morning. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We really enjoyed our time with family and had a bustling houseful here for dinner. Fairy set the kids’ table for Thanksgiving Dinner. She chose to use the beeswax candles we made and had a lovely little table. Then on Friday we put up our tree. Grandma and Grandpa helped us and afterward we celebrated our Christmas with them.
It may be a little bit quiet on Nature’s Way Learning for a couple weeks. We are not doing formal schooling this month. Our activities are going to be centered around preparing for Christmas. I will be getting my term two book list finalized and up for those of you who like to look it over for ideas. I may also take some time this month to talk curriculum since I’ve recently done a lot of research for next year… we’ll see.
We have been working on something special to share with all of our readers at Wee Folk Art (the crafting blog my mom and I run) for this holiday season. We have an adorable pair of Holiday Gnomes who will be celebrating the holidays with one of our lucky readers. Enter to win Holly and Noel.
I invite all my Nature’s Way Learning readers to stop by Wee Folk Art and check out the contest… and some of the fun free patterns we have listed there. Good luck!
This week we used a broad interpretation of the Unplugged Challenge theme FLAG… and went more Stars and Stripes as inspiration for these Star Ornaments. We had so much fun that even Gammy joined in and made her own. You can visit WeeFolkArt.com for her pattern.
Kids’ – Mom’s – Gammy’s
Kids’ Stars
For the kids’ version, I made up a quick star template with rounded corners (here is my pdf). Or large cookie cutters work well for making ornament templates. I cut out two piece of felt at the same time to make sure they completely matched. Then the kids went to town decorating the right sides with glitter glue and sequins.
Once dry, I blanket stitched the edges wrong sides together, leaving about a 1″ hole to stuff. The kids stuffed their own stars (I helped get it in the points) and then I finished the blanket stitch and added a loop of embroidery floss for hanging.
Mom’s Stars
For my version, I used the same template to cut out stars from red and white ticking fabric… using an extra 1/2″ seam allowance. I placed the pieces right sides together and pinned.
I cut out about a 7″ piece of grosgrain ribbon and folded it in half. I slid the loop side down in between the right sides of fabric and pinned it so that about 1/2″ of ribbon stuck out the end of one star point. I machine stitched around the whole star leaving a 1″ hole to stuff (I back stitched once over the ribbon). I made a snip from the edge of the fabric to the seam in the concave points of the star (so it would lay smooth when flipped). I flipped the star right side out and pushed out the points all the way.
Then the kids and I stuffed the star. Once stuffed, I hand stitched the opening closed.