Spring - it is finally here!!

September (March) bustles in on windy feet

And sweeps my doorstep and my street.

She washes and cleans with pounding rains,

Scrubbing the earth of winter stains.

She shakes the grime from carpet green

Till naught but fresh new blades are seen.

Then, house in order, all neat as a pin,

She ushers gentle springtime in."

- Susan Reiner, Spring Cleaning

And of course one of our favourite composers Vivaldi's Spring

Blessings to you and your homes,

 

Preparing for Winter in our Home

Preparing for Winter usually means getting firewood, checking clothes and other real life preparations.

In our home all these things occur but we also prepare our home learning environment as well.

I am a great believer in creating a beautiful atmosphere and using that as a learning tool to enrich not only our children but for myself and other people who come into our home.

So on the second of June, the day after our Myffwyn's birthday I started getting out our Winter themed decorations.

I love this little print of a boy with lantern light and put a couple of cardboard blue stars with gold glitter on them beside it on the little card holder Stephen made me some time ago.

As Winter has truly arrived and we are using the fire I have moved our display off the top of the fire and over onto the buffet and hutch. Each day Arwen changes the day of the week and our little 'elements: fire, water, air and earth, sit nicely here as well.

Behind them  is our liturgical Father Pine with a Green Chasuble for the 'growing season' of our Liturgical season.

Here is another part of our display, on the following  day with the new perpetual calendar we made. Seriously I just love looking at it.

Putting out the Winter Gerda Muller book that gets the pages turned regularly for inspiration especially at art time is always refreshing for me

Naturally the Tasha Tudor book, A time to Keep, changes too. Of course we have to ignore the actual month of the year as depicted in these seasonal books as all these lovely books are set in the  Northern Hemisphere.

Next to be changed is the Seasons table and we placed out our Winter collection which is looking quite sad at the moment.

I realise now I haven't set out King Winter or Jack Frost and his family and will have to get them out tomorrow.

The next thing is of course the Winter book basket with all the Winter books placed in ready to read.

It's hard to see what is in the basket it so I took photos of the books to share :)

These are probably what I call our real Winter books.

I separated these ones because I am going to be doing a wool dying, spinning, weaving and knitting project with the children using the wool form our own sheep that we had from last season.

More lovely books to read....

and our last selection to share with you.

I know I haven't got them all listed but here is a link to my Winter book list, and as I link to it I see I missed some from our book shelves, which I will need to find and put in our basket.

This is our display that sits right near our dining table and so is very visual for us throughout most of the day.

How do you like to prepare your home for Winter enjoyment?

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Autumn Harvest Apple Tasting Day

Some years ago our children had a wonderful day with tasting the various types of apples that we were able to source. They still have fond memories of this day.

For the last year or two I keep trying to remember to be organised enough to have this again for the pure pleasure of it.

While out shopping last I remembered that we wanted to do this, before the Holy Week rush and so I bought 4 of each kind of apple they had at our local supermarket and a couple of  hybrid Nashi as the children did not remember every having these before.

First I made up a little table to rate our tastings. Each of us had  a sheet each and we marked it as we went along.

Next up I cut up slices of each apple and put on a plate so we were ready to start all at once.
Often preparation is key to the success of these type of activities for us.

Even then I had a little helper who could not wait to get started and was waiting for a 'little taste please?'

 I only cut up part of an apple so we had a few left overs, well to start with anyway.
The cores were added to the continual Apple scrap bucket I have for making Apple Cider vinegar (oops just realised I haven't done the blog post on that one yet)

 Then we all sat down and started on our tasting of the goodies!!

It was interesting to see the differences in the apples and we had some surprises about which were long established favourites and how different they tasted now.

And our results for all to see.
I wasn't sure I prepared the check off sheet off well enough but it certainly was an experience that the children enjoyed and want to do again.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 
Linked to The Art of Home Making Mondays
Linked to  Wise Woman Linkup

Autumn Seasons Table

It's Autumn again and so that means we are enjoying the cooler weather and in our hearts preparing for all the loveliness of the Autumn season and then the comfort of Winter.

Naturally this means the changing of the seasons table and associated other areas.
I love changing to Autumn as it is the most colourful of all the seasons and brings a warmth to the house with all those rich colours.

Again and again it seems that having the children means they love to take an active interest in the changing of the table.

Maybe this year I will get a chance to make more items for this display........maybe!!

This is one of my favourite places at the moment

I made these Autumn Leave ladies years ago and keep wanting to add to their ranks.

And of course we are learning this poem but changing the  September to March.

So welcome Autumn and we look forward to enjoying this season.
Blessings to you and your homes,
 

This Year's Spring Seasons Displays

As the year cycles on, faster than I can believe, we are certainly enjoying the Spring season that has come around again. 

We have seen lots of new life in the animals around us, not only our own but also in the countryside as well.

The  flowers are blossoming all over and it is such a joy to enjoy the beauty of  God's creation each and every day as we are spending more and more time outdoors.

In our family circle that means it is also an opportunity to continue celebrating Spring inside our home and thus it is time to change our seasonal display areas too.

Mrs Thaw has arrived to usher in Spring and help King Winter on his way back to the Winter castle, and the root children are gradually being replaced by the flower children.

As I enjoy creating new additions to the seasons tableau  I had decided to make a Spring Flower Fairy using one of my peg dolls I had painted earlier in the year and not done anything with as yet.

The obvious first step to me was to paint on some spring flowers and some hair,

then place her with the Spring postcard and candle and she could stay a Spring Lady, but.........

if I add some felt wings and a flower bonnet  you now have a Spring Flower Fairy!!!

Isn't she pretty??

Next put  all the daily Seasonal things together that we use and you have one area complete.

Phase two is to add all our other seasonal bits n pieces to our other seasonal area and we are ready to celebrate the beauty of this season.

Obviously as the season moves on we tend to change and add or subtract from the display to suit our needs and desires, however I must say that I truly love being able to create and have the beauty of this display in our home.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Winter Solstice 2014

So, today is the Winter Solstice and while I had plans to celebrate earlier in the week using our plans as a guide and a few new ones I was planning.

Today suddenly arrived and we had not started to think about it and so our day began and just evolved as such.

The day was overcast and quite 'gloomy' as my dear love would say.
He and Saxon had planned to go firewood cutting if it wasn't raining too much and as it hadn't started raining as such they went off leaving the rest of doing everyday Saturday cleaning jobs.
They did arrive back after the first load and Stephen spent a lot of the afternoon fixing the chainsaw while Saxon proceeded to be an entertainer while we were still finishing off.
After all everyone needs to have some light humour while working and Saxon certainly provides that.

The rain came and went as we did our usual jobs and of course we are seriously behind with the washing as we have had rain a fair bit during the week.

Some of the Saturday plans I have lately involve baking and refreshing my sourdough starter. This usually means a Sourdough Fruit Cobbler gets made with the discard  portion of  the sourdough.

I also made for the first time crumpets with some of it as well. They tasted like store bought crumpets but are much better as they are wholegrain spelt and home made as well.

The children on and off spent a lot of the time reading, leaving the scattered remains of piles of favorite books and to my delight quite a few times today I found our little Trahaearn sitting down with a pile of books.
The other children also spent time playing card games and checkers and watching some family favourite DVDs together... Lady and the Tramp which was turned off in favour of Peter Pan and then later on Bugs Bunny........

The evening really had some stunning scenes which sadly I cannot  get great photos of on my I-phone., which is the only camera I have.
I love this time of day and enjoy spending this time out side, I often do not remember to savor this time as I am usually busy inside as most of us are tending to our families.
I think it really calms my soul and truly makes me very happy.

Fog was rolling in as the last light of day was slowly fading and our son was out chopping a little extra fire wood for our comfort inside.

As we were waiting for  dinner Arwen and I played fish and snap in front of the  fire.
She is so enjoying the fact that she plays games now and  is able to really participate.

After the children are in bed I have every intention of working on my Sun Banner while having a glass of part since I could not find any red wine to make mulled wine like my good friend shared on her FB page.
I only have the embroidery to finish and then make it into the banner. I suppose I need to say that I  started this project only.......um.... two years ago.

So even though we did not do any 'official' Winter Solstice activities I do feel we covered the celebrate this day with in the best way possible- with family, food and thankfulness for the seasons that God has given us.

Blessings to you and your homes,