Advent week one

The boys put together this bowl of rocks and minerals for the first week of advent. We will have it on the table all week to celebrate the earth.

Advent animals

Last year I started an advent calendar. I made a winter woods scene out of felt with 24 pockets below it. This year I started making the animals for the pockets. Each one is made from wool felt and needle felted. I'll probably only make a few more this year so I can get to other projects. I'll post a picture of them with the calendar when we put it up.

Holiday crafting

K has been busy making gifts for all the family. His favorite project are these tree scented wool felt ornaments. He has been needle felting ornaments on the little trees. He also decorated beeswax candles but I forgot to take a picture before I put them away.

sunb bread

We haven't been making as much homemade bread lately.  Which is too bad because I love homemade bread.  Anyway we made this sun bread on the shortest day of the year to welcome the sun back. 

stockings

 I made our family Christmas stockings this year.  As you might notice they match L's new pants. :)  I used the fronts of the sweaters to make the stockings.  The letters are made from wool felted sweaters that I blanket stitched on.  I love the sweaters that still have the buttons on them. :)

Thanksgiving count down

Ok I know its really early for this but K and I have already started working on our Thanksgiving count down.  We first water colored many sheets of paper with yellow, red, and orange.  I then cut out 28 maple leaves.  I've spent that last few days coming up with random acts of kindness that we could do together.  It sure is hard to think of that many little acts that a three year old can do. :)
My plan is then to laminate them (so we can use them for years to come), punch holes in them, and hang them from a branch in the living room.  We will then take one down each day to do and place it at the bottom of the tree.  It will be our thanks count down to Thanksgiving.

Felted bats

Here is one of the many felted bats I made for a Halloween swap.  I felted old wool sweaters and sewed these together.  I hear the swap items were mailed back today and I'm really excited to see what I've gotten!

Birthday prep

I've been getting things together for K's birthday. He picked the theme, pink teaparty. Since its impossible to find boy's pink shirts I dyed this shirt and sewed a pink three on it. I also made these little garden banners for the kids to decorate and take home.

Naturally Dyed Eggs

We dyed eggs with spices and veggies again this year. We used purple cabbage for the blue, turmeric for the yellow, onion skins and paprika for orange, and beats for red. For some strange reason the beats turned the eggs brown. Not sure what went wrong there.

Anyway as you can see by this post I'm a little behind. :)

Bendy Dolls

I have finally finished the bendy dolls I made for an Easter swap. They were actually a ton of fun to make. I had wanted to use our wood burner to make their faces but the darn thing has disappeared. I look forward to making more bendy people for K to play with as he kept running away with them as I was making them.

Food adventures

For the first day of spring we made a bunny loaf. Boy was that some great bread! K enjoyed eating the bunny's ears.

On another day we also made bear claws. K saw them in a magazine and insisted that we make them. Of course the magazine didn't have a recipe so we had to figure it out for ourselves. They look cool but never did harden. Oh well. K was happy with the result anyway.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This is the first year we have been able to start our tradition of Leprechaun tricks. For the past week K has been waking up to sillyLeprechaun tricks. One morning his eggs were dyed green, another morning there was green confetti all over the table. So the night before St. Patrick's Day we set a trap to catch theLeprechauns. In the morning K found the trap full of green coins and a note that said, "better luck next year, The Leprechauns."

He thought the whole thing was a ton of fun.

Here K and is daddy are making the trap

The Trap is set.

K discovering his coins and note in the morning.

Heart Garland

This is really just a simple garland. I wanted K to be able to help make it so we used felt and just some embrodiery thread. K had a great time sewing all the hearts together. I had a terrible time taking a good picture. Sorry.

Fruit feeders

Every year for Christmas we make fruit slice ornaments for our tree. For awhile after the tree comes down the fruit decorates our home. Eventually though, we turn our ornaments into bird feeders. Here our our feeders from last year: http://seasonalgnome.blogspot.com/2010/01/feed-birds.html

Here they are from this year:

Spreading the peanut butter and seeds on.

Our Big pile of feeders ready to go.

I didn't get any great shots of the feeders on the tree as it was 5 degrees outside and K was in a hurry to get back in the house. :)

Window Stars and stained glass

I pulled out the supplies to make a Valentine window star and K made this really pretty stained glass. He was so pleased with the results.

Christmas Projects

We've been busy over here with holidays and I haven't had any time to get our pictures up here. So here are our projects from over the past month. I've given links for the projects that I found on the internet.

This is a picture Casey's family and the matching PJ bottoms I made for everyone for Christmas.

Homemade wholegrain cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.

Christmas eve we had a little taffy pull.

Every year we cute fruit(lemons, oranges, limes, and grapefruit) and hang it on the tree. After the tree comes down we will cover the fruit in peanut butter and birdseed and hang them on a tree outside.

For this icicle project, K only had to squeeze tin foil, rub it in glue, and put sparkles on it. He had such a great time he made tons:http://belladia.typepad.com/bella_dia/2007/12/advent-day-20-o.html

This is a picture of K's little group of friends. We got together over the holidays to celebrate and exchange handmade gifts. I made the kids matching fish PJ bottoms. Somehow I lucked out and got them all in one picture.

Sorry for the sideways picture. These are k's handprints to form a reindeer. He gave these away to his relatives for Christmas.

We've been busy over here with holidays and I haven't had any time to get our pictures up here. So here are our projects from over the past month. I've given links for the projects that I found on the internet.

K had a great time making these sponge lights:http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2008/12/environmentally-friendly-christmas-lights.html

Homemade gingerbread house (vegan)

We had a spent a wonderful morning making gingerbread houses with out friends. Well to be honest we made the actual houses the day before and decorated them the next day. My friend's children are allergic to milk and eggs so we used a vegan recipe for both the gingerbread and the icing. I think they turned out great! Here is her website that links to the recipes that we used.

http://doodlebugdeb.blogspot.com/2010/12/gingerbread-house.html

Bird feeder cutouts

For advent this year we rotate between activities, crafts, and little presents. Here is one crafts I came up with that actually turned out really cute.

First I cute Christmas shapes out of cardboard. Then we tied strings on to the tops of them.

Next we smeared peanut butter and birdseeds over both sides of the shapes.
Here they are in their finished state. Some of the shapes worked better then others.
Then we hung them outdoors. The birds loved them. We had a titmouse, downy woodpecker, and blackcapped chickadee visit.

Hanukkah Celebration

Last year we bought K a little Hanukkah set for the 1st day of Hanukkah. We aren't Jewish we enjoy exposing K to lots of different religions and holidays. Each year we celebrate by reading stories about Hanukkah, eating Latkes, and putting out K's Menorah.