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)

Toddler Kitchen – Canadian Animal Cookies for Canada Day – toddler style

Luath has gone through a phase of enjoying to pretend cook but when it comes to real cooking only  tends to stay interested for a short time.  Today she really engaged with making some cookies, perhaps as the process was broken into stages and it was done in a true toddler style.

The recipe was a basic cookie one -  flour, sugar, egg, olive oil spread, vanilla extract.  Once we had creamed the spread there was no mixing the egg in a separate bowl and gradually adding it in, the egg was broken directly in.  The gentle flour sieving was forgone and replaced with a spoon/pour method.

Luath loved making the dough into a ball mainly as we needed to add quite a bit more flour.  The dough was then placed in the fridge for half an hour.  During this time we went through our cookie cutters.  I selected some animals you could find in Canada (from an IKEA set I couldn’t resist).  Luath picked an ice cream cone, Russian dolls and a kangaroo.  We rolled/bashed the dough flat and used the cutters, perhaps with some excess flour used.
 
The washing up of ourselves, the utensils and the kitchen took almost as long as the cookies baked.  We left them to cool and went outside for a dog walk.  We iced the cookies and then added some sugar sprinkles and shapes.  Luath thought almost a full tube was about right.
 
Maybe our decorating wasn’t aesthetically pleasing and messy, but very much done by Luath.

We added some red colouring to the Canadian animals (moose, wolf and bear – Luath took the porcupine to decorate with stars).  I sang “Land of the Silver Birch” , a song I remember from girl guide campfires, to Luath.  We enjoyed the cookies after dinner.

Canadian geographic has animal fact sheets on Canadian animals – they are too old for Luath but we looked at the photos. 
Two of our books, Walk with a Wolf and  Blueberries for Sal worked well with our cookies.
(Luath is 29 months)

Craft – TP tube windsocks for Canada Day and US Independence Day

We are planning to celebrate both Canada Day and US independence day next week.  I thought we would make a decoration for both days.  One of the things I remember from living in the USA is decorated porches including welcome signs and windsocks.  Luath isn’t the biggest craft fan but she enjoys glue so I set up a windsock craft we could do together. 

I pre-cut the toilet paper roll and paper.  We didn’t have the right colour of blue and four stars were enough.  I didn’t quite master a maple leaf but once I do we will add that.

Luath loved all the gluing.

She wanted to try threading the string through the holes.  It was way too tough but she gave it a lot of effort.  I did then help her get it in.

We hung them on Luath’s bookcase as they wouldn’t last long outside.

(Luath is 29 months)

Shared with discover and explore  via fantastic fun and learning

Celebrations – Christmas picnic in June

As Luath now really gets pretending I thought it would be fun to have to do Christmas in the summer.  My family did this one year after finding left over Christmas crackers and it was a giggle.  I selected the 25th June as it was halfway between Christmases and also daddy would be at work (he doesn’t like anything to do with Christmas other than in December).

I had thought we would have an outdoor picnic so we could be like our friends in the Southern Hemisphere but it ended up indoors.  I kept things simple so used a few props -  Christmas headwear, our elves Alfie and Elfie, and some books That's Not My Santa (Thats Not My)   That's Not My Reindeer (Touchy Feely)   Maisy's Christmas Eve   Little Owl and the Star

For food I  went with what we had at home.  I made a Christmas tree shape from a tortilla wrap resting on a pineapple trunk.  It was decorated with tomato candles with red pepper hummus flames.  The star was made from cheese.  I put extra wraps, hummus, cheese and tomato on a separate plate.

We made some strawberry Santa's.  We had them at a party, made with cream, but Luath didn’t like the cream and it isn’t something we buy, so I altered them slightly. Overnight I froze yoghurt in a mini Easter egg mould.  We cut the top off a strawberry and then placed one frozen yoghurt piece on the strawberry and replaced the top.  We gave Santa eyes, a beard and mouth, and his hat a bobble using writing icing.  We sprinkled white glitter sugar as snow.  Luath loved these, but that isn’t surprising as she adores strawberries and likes frozen yoghurt.

Luath loved her picnic.  She kept saying “is this for me” when she saw things, and when I said “yes”, she would say “wahey” and clap her hands.  She did tell me that if it was Christmas we should have a tree.
   
After lunch we read the books, played with the elves and made sure everything was tided away before daddy came home. 
(Luath is 29 months)

Shared with Share it Saturday – Sugar Aunts

Celebrations - Our Summer solstice and midsummer roundup

We didn’t see much of the sun over the past few days but we did enjoy the build up and celebrations.

We don’t have any books specifically about the solstice or midsummer but have some books that mention summer as part of the yearly cycle.  I made some peg dolls (sun child, summer blossom and sunflower).

We made a mini Stonehenge and stone circle.  We later lined a key stone with angle of sunrise on the 21st (I didn’t get out of bed to check it was accurate but it was too cloudy anyway).

Made some sun cakes – orange flavoured fairy cakes with some sunny decoration.

Made a Rhododendron flower crown.

To brighten a dull, damp day we decorated some places with chalk suns and some yellow scribbles (moons, boats, trees and whatever else Luath told me she was drawing).

Enjoyed the puddle that the rain had left – this is as much summer for us as sun.
 
(Luath is 29 months)

Celebrations – St. David’s Day

We did a couple of simple activities to celebrate St. David’s Day. Our closest relation to Wales is that our dog’s mother is Welsh. Daddy and I told Luath any Welsh we knew – very limited, Daddy had to study medieval Welsh at Uni but he doesn’t remember much and it wouldn’t be that useful anyway!

I made a sort of Welsh Rarebit – cheese on toast.  Which I served on a tray with a Welsh dragon and a play leek.

Luath and I made a daffodil from a spice jar lid, yellow paper, a stick and some wool.

We taped the petal pieces to the back of the spice lid.  Wrapped the stick with green wool and then taped this to the back of the lid.  Very simple, but it makes a bright cheerful display.
 
We enjoyed our Welsh centrepiece with dinner.
 
(Luath is 25 months)