Celebrations–Advent spiral with peg doll candles

I recently read about the advent spiral and saw a sewed one on In these hills blog that I decided to copy.

I drew around the outside of a birthday ring and drew the spiral inside.  I did this on the reverse of my material.

I did a quick running stitch along the spiral to check that it looked Ok.

I turned the material right side out and followed the stitch line, using backstitch.  I then removed the white running stitch thread.  I measured the length of the spiral by following it with thread.  I wanted to have 21 stars as a countdown to the winter solstice, so I divided the length by 20 to work out how far apart each star would be. Starting in the centre I did a cross-stitch star every 3 1/2 cms along the spiral.

We will use our small summer solstice peg doll to move along the spiral.

Instead of candles I made four peg doll candles.  I painted some mummy peg dolls white and made each of them a flame hat, inspired by Margret Bloom’s Hanukah matching peg doll game in the book “Making Peg dolls”. We will light each candle by placing the hat on their head as we say:

Advent, Advent, a candle burns.
I light the night, my candle burns.
First one, then two, then three, then four.
My heart is shining like a star.


We will be adding to the ring each week inline with Rudolph Steiner's poem:
The first light of Advent is the light of stones.
Stones that live in crystals, seashells, and bones.

The second light of Advent is the light of plants.
Roots, stem, leaf, flower and fruit by whom we live and grow.

The third light of Advent is the light of beasts.
Animals of farm, field, forest, air and sea.
All await the birth in greatest and in least.

The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind.
The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand.”
~Rudolf Steiner
(Luath is 34 months)

celebrations–Thanksgiving pumpkin muffins and a thanks tree

I have very happy memories of Thanksgivings from when I worked in the USA. Sharing food, memories and time with friends and their families.  And hoping the Packers would win.

We celebrated by making some pumpkin muffins.  No cans of puree here, so peel, deseed and chop pumpkin, then  heat in some water for 20 minutes.  Drain well and mash/puree.  Luath loves trying to crack the eggs open and succeed today to do a neat job.

We decorated one of the muffins with a turkey – toddler rather than perfected hostess style.

We took a branch home from our morning walk to use as a thanks tree.  Luath decided we should have pink heart shapes and she loved punching the holes so we could hang them as we said what we were thankful for.  It does look more like a Valentine’s Day tree.

The only themed book we have is “Twas the night before Thanksgiving”, which is fun to read but doesn’t really tell you why Thanksgiving is celebrated.
(Luath is 34 months)