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

Fall Tree Art Fun

The weather has been absolutely miserable here for the last week so we've been bringing the outdoors in and we tried making some of the fall trees I saw over at the artist woman using watercolors, acrylic paint, straws and pointillism :)

Remember a couple of days ago I had mentioned I was going to let the kids blow paint through straws and cross my fingers that it didn't end up splattered all over the walls? Well it all turned out good and boy was it fun!! If you take some regular acrylic paint and thin it out with tap water to a runny ink like consistency you can actually drop it onto your paper in a blob and blow it all across your page to create tree trunk forms :)It's really cool to watch it streak along and branch off in different directions. The key we found to nice smooth branches was to make sure that we didn't drag our straw along through the paint as we blew. This made the shapes thicker and more blobby. And of course try not to drool through the straw as you blow LOL.

After we let our tree trunks dry we randomly dotted fall colors using q-tips to our branches creating fun fall colors :)

They're going to look great hanging on the wall when they're all dry :)

What fall art projects have you been doing?
Hugs,
Rosina

Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies

We are spending a lot of our days embracing the beauty of fall around here lately as we watch the leaves on the trees transition to their vibrant autumn colors and we happily jump on their crunchy counterparts that litter the lanes :) The children keep bringing in handfuls of stray leaves to that they just couldn't resist because they were 'to pretty' and I keep picking up crumbled bits off of the tile floor beneath our nature table as they fall apart from all of the handling *grin*.

So when I saw a photo of some great fall leaf cookies on the Country Living website I just had to bake some with the kids. The only problem was there was no recipe so I made a batch of my favorite sugar cookie dough that I use all the time and thought I'd share it with you to. It makes a nice sized batch of dough for tons of fun :)

4 eggs
2 cup sugar
2 cup unsalted butter

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add one egg at a time and beat really well until the butter mixture is super light and fluffy.

1 tsp. baking powder
5 cups all purpose flour

Add the flour and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix just until combined. Once you've got it all combined divide your dough into four chunks. Don't worry about being completely accurate, just eyeball it up.

Now color each of your dough balls a different fall color :) I really like to use Wilton Gel colors. They create gorgeous vibrant colors and they are cleaner to work with than the old drip style liquid food coloring. You can find them at most grocery stores and walmart.

After you have finished adding your food coloring, wrap each piece in a bit of saran wrap and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes so that dough firms up and makes it easy for rolling later :) Roll out your dough on a floured counter top and bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 - 12 minutes or until just starting to brown and firm up around the edges and the centers are slightly puffed up.

I set the kitchen up with three work stations so that each of the children had their own rolling pin, cookie cutters and assortment of colors and they had fun ripping off chunks of color and creating their own fall color palette :)

It actually turned into a color blending lesson on top of the baking fun as we watched the colors meld together creating new tones of oranges and greens and the surprise arrival of brown each time we balled up our dough scraps and rolled them out again. Things got quite psychedelic LOL.

So much yummy fall fun. I can see we're going to have a lot of tea parties in the coming days *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Fall Colors

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

~ Emily Dickinson

I love the visual plethora that is fall with it's brightly colored crimsons, oranges and yellows. It's a feast for all of your senses. The sound of crunching leaves, the smell of wood fires, the touch of icy wind upon your cheeks, the flavors of pumpkin pies and harvest squash all molded into one lovely eye popping season of stunning color. Here are some of my fall photos from the last couple of days :)

Hubby just can't seem to get enough of the miniature pumpkins even though I keep insisting that they won't be much fun to carve *grin*.

Marveling in mother natures ability to create something as odd yet enchanting as the Purple Fairy Club mushroom.

Munching on the what's left of the grapes after the bear raided them the other night.

Taking advantage of the dry days that are coming less and less and watching the kids roar around on their bicycles.

This time of year just beckons to be explored. We have been keeping our eyes open for woolly bear caterpillars, orange fairy cup fungi and others and the chance to pick wild mushrooms like chanterelles for soups and stews :) Summer has it's own special moments but the cooler months are much more dear to me.

How about you, what is your favorite part of fall?

Hugs,
Rosina