Advent and Love

Tonight we lit two candles for advent starting with the one we lit last week and then the lighting of a second one to symbolize love and family. We spent the entire day reading Christmas books, baking and just enjoying one anothers company. I couldn't help but think how blessed I am to have three beautiful children and how homeschooling allows us to spend so much time together :)

Rudolph Steiner incorporates the four kingdoms into the four weeks of advent and for the second week he shares:

“The second light of Advent is the light of plants–
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.”

So this week we will plant our paper whites which I have been sprouting in the dark pantry and we will gather and bring in pinecones along with some fresh cedar boughs from the cedar tree in the back yard. I can't wait. They are going to smell so good!

Our nativity set has made its way to our table as well and the children have been happily arranging and rearranging all of the figures. This week we will have an empty barn and manger and the angels singing but for now I'm letting everyone have a little play time *grin*.

One of the lovely ideas in our Celebrate the Joy holiday book is the filling of an empty manger all month long with bits of straw, string and what not so the kids built a little manger out of popsicle sticks and I found a bunch of natural colored raffia that looks like hay for them to cut and place inside of it. Each morning they pull a little bit out of the top of the mason jar, snip it off and then put it in our manger. By the 24th it should be overflowing and ready for our little baby Jesus to be placed within :)

May you all enjoy joy and love this week.

Hugs,
Rosina

First Candle of Advent

We may not have been home for the first day of advent but that didn't stop us from lighting the first candle :)

Sunday happened to be the day we were stranded at my mom's house during our flooding but she has the very same advent candle holder or Aadventsleuchter as me so during dinnertime we set it on the table and lit the first candle starting our journey of filling our hearts with the joy of the season and getting ready for baby Jesus' birthday :)

Over the past several years I have slowly been moving our family further away from the hub bub of purchasing mass amounts of unnecessary gifts and the focus on santa and what he is going to bring us. Instead of all that we think of all the good deeds we can do for others during the holiday season and what special handmade gifts we can make for one another. One of the books that I love to pull out for inspiration on scriptures to read, craft ideas and ways to make Christmas even more special is Celebrate with Joy by Sondra Burnett. I've had it for a quite a few years and while I've read it over and over many times I always find something new to add to our festivities :)

This year I thought it would be fun to make our own advent countdown calendar since everyone is old enough now to wield a needle and thread *grin*. I've been cutting out little felt hearts, stars, gingerbread men, trees and more and we've been stitching them together and filling them with a bit of wool stuffing every afternoon. I have a few more that I'm going to finish up tomorrow and we'll have them all ready for the first of December.

In the coming days I'm looking forward to sharing stories with the children about St. Nicholas to and how he gave selflessly to others without any expectation of receiving something in return and I have a big baking party in the works. Every December there is a seniors dinner at our community hall that is open for everyone to come down and enjoy and if you are home bound you can also have a meal delivered right to your door. How great is that! So I thought it would be fun for us to bake cookies for the dessert portion of the meal that can be taken home and enjoyed later and it is something that even my 5 year old can do and feel really proud of himself for helping with :)

I just love this time of the year *grin*. I just pulled out my stash of hot cocoa and am looking forward to crafting and sipping it in front of the fire with the children. They don't know it yet but I'm going to set aside a few special nights for each of them to spend some one on one gift making time with me to so that if any of them needs help finishing or making a gift they can do that after the others have gone to bed. What child doesn't love staying up later to work on secret projects :)

What do you have planned for the holiday season? Also hop over to Frontier Dreams to read more lovely entries others have shared about this week's advent.

Hugs,
Rosina

Martinmas Lantern Walk

This was our very first year celebrating Martinmas and had a lot of fun creating special lanterns for our lantern walk :)

We started by heading outdoors during a break in the rain showers we've been having and collected red japanese maple leaves, deep purple leaves from a smoke tree, yellow leaves from some of the phlox in the yard and then started to paper mache our balloons with a drippy mix of flour and water for the glue and strips of crepe paper :)

The first layer was just paper mache and then we placed our leaves on top in patterns and just randomly and then covered them with one more layer of paper mache to help them stay in place without worrying that they would start to lift or fall off. I don't have any photos of us actually doing the paper mache because I was right in there with the kids slopping paste and paper on my own balloon *grin*.

We left them to dry overnight by the fire and in the morning the balloons had started shrinking and were pulling away from the sides of the paper...

leaving us with great big giant bowls that I punched 4 holes into around the top and then tied strings onto them for hanging :)

The children wore their cloaks pretending to be like St. Martin in his cape when he came upon the freezing man outside the city gates and then we headed out into the darkness. I retold them them story of Martin and the poor man that I used from Melisa's blog and we sang the following song from out of my Autumn Wynstone Press booklet :)

The sunlight fast is dwindling,
My little lamp needs kindling.
Its beam shines far in darkest night,
Dear Lantern, guard me with your light.

We had so much fun walking with our lanterns glowing in the dark. Although I think next time we might do it a little earlier as when it gets dark around here it is pitch black and there isn't a street light in sight for a great many miles. I had to keep myself from thinking of bears and other wild animals that love to lurk in the dark around here LOL.

I just love how they glow so brightly showing the silhouettes of their leaves through the paper mache. We've brought them into our family room and hung them by the window so that we can enjoy them in the evenings with the flicker of candle light dancing from within them :)

I hope you had a lovely Martinmas day to and I would love to see photos of your lanterns if you shared some on your blogs!

Hugs,
Rosina

Snow Sculptures & Candle Light

The other day when I was reading Marcia's blog Child in Harmony she had shared a wonderful snow sculpture of a bird that she had made and invited others to join in :) When I mentioned it to the children they were completely gung ho to create something that we could share with her family so we got busy!

I decided to create a snow angel with a crown of Japonica blooms upon her head and her arms folded nicely together in front of her...

to create a little nook for seed to go for the winter birds. I loved how Marcia's had a little hideaway for seed so I just had to do it to *grin*.

Sticking with the bird theme my 7 year old created this fantastic bird sculpture. She was so happy with how it turned out :)

Next she went on to create a little birdie hotel complete with a bird seed cafe on the top surrounded with a little bit of camouflage bush and a cozy little nook in the bottom with a comfy leaf nest :)

This evening we took a candle outside for our snow angel to hold and lit it. She was so pretty glowing in the dark outside of our family room window. So wonderfully peaceful to sit and watch it flicker and dance as it illuminated her face.

Hopefully the snow will stay just a little bit longer so that we can enjoy a few more nights of our glowing angel before she melts away :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Power Outage

Last night just as we were getting ready to start cooking dinner the house went dark. Not just dim but plunged into an inky black darkness as the power went out. There's nothing quite like it as you slowly fumble trying to see but not seeing while searching for the flashlight you know is right there on the counter... somewhere *grin*.

With the oil lantern burning and a few candles lit on the coffee table we enjoyed a gourmet meal of grilled cheese sandwiches fresh off the woodstove cook top :) We had so much fun playing Old Maid, Pictionary and a frustrating game of Sorry *grin*. My poor little guy just couldn't understand why his men had to go back to their home base when someone knocked him off the board LOL.

With the children tucked into their bedrooms Hubby and I had a lovely quiet time just sitting in the glow of the woodstove. It really was a treat to spend quiet time without the interuptions of the computer, blogging, or phones ringing. Just the sound of snow thumping down from the trees onto the rooftop and the crackle of the wood as it burned brightly in the stove :)

The power is back on this morning and of course it is so nice to have flusing toilets and water again but I think I could use a few more evenings of quiet. Maybe we'll turn off all of the lights again tonight and play boardgames by candle light all over again *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina