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

Celebrating Michaelmas

On thursday we celebrated our very first Michaelmas :)
I had found a great pattern and had been secretly cutting and stitching together a little wool dragon each night after the kids were in bed that would be perfect for our little playmobil Sir George to battle. I finished it up just in time and set it up on our nature table for them to find in the morning when they awoke.

Of course they beat me out of bed and I could hear them gathering excitedly around the Michaelmas scene when they got up and then the quiet that followed as they discovered the little coloring pages of a knight fighting a dragon that I had left on their tables for them to color. It was perfect. I had a few minutes to catch up on what I had to do to get the day started and they had fun picking their favorite colors for their dragons :)

After lunch we took some time to read a little story about Sir George and the Dragon. There seem to be a lot of different versions of Michaelmas stories from St. Michael hurling the dragon (lucifer) from heaven to Sir George slaying the dragon and our gentler version that I decided to go with of a dragon that had the hiccups and the gnomes that called on Sir George to help them solve their problem of a pesky fire breathing dragon. You can find a few different versions here:

The Most Beautiful Dragon
A Little Flower Garden's Michaelmas Festival
Our Little Nature Nests Michaelmas Story
In the end our dragon became the bread maker and I thought it was a perfect fit for my 5 year old :) It came from a copy of Before the Journey that I purchased last year.

With our story fresh in our minds and the anticipation of a fire breathing bread maker we went into the kitchen to make some green bread dough together to shape our dragon out of :)

They added gnarly toenails with pumpkin seeds...

poked in spines made of almonds and we cut in scales with a knife that puffed up and gave him a great lumpy body. Oh boy did he taste good with dinner, although there is something very odd about eating green bread. It just feels weird *grin*.

I can't wait until next year so that we can do it again and maybe add in some more fun ideas that I've seen around the web. One great post with lots of links is over at Rockin' Granola but if you google Michaelmas you will find tons of inspiration!

In case you would like to try my bread recipe I thought I would share it with you. It makes awesome soft white buns if you want a non green or dragonish version for another day LOL.

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 egg
a dribble of maple syrup
2 1/2 tsp. yeast
3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
green food coloring optional

Heat your milk and water until it is nice and warm, pour it into your mixing bowl along with your maple syrup, sprinkle your yeast over the water/milk and allow it to proof for about 10 minutes until nice and bubbly. Add your melted butter, egg, and 1 cup of flour and mix. I like to do this to break up my egg nicely before adding the rest of the flour. Now add in your remaining 2 1/2 cups of flour and mix until it forms a ball that you can turn out onto your counter to knead. Knead for about 5-8 minutes until nice and soft and smooth. Cover and allow it to rest until doubled in size. Punch down your dough after it rises and you can now shape it into your dragon, rolls or whatever you would like to use it for :)
Bake at 425 Fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes or until nice and golden and sounds hollow when you tap on it.

If you celebrated Michaelmas and shared photos or stories on your blog I would love to stop by and see how you made your day special :)

Hugs,
Rosina

KidsFest

We had a great day today!
I had been secretly planning on taking the kids to the annual KidsFest here on the island but the weather was looking mighty poorly this morning when I woke up. It was pouring down rain here and the outlook was pretty bleak for down island as well but Hubby and I decided to take a chance and make the drive. I'm so glad we did as the weather held and we got to 'clown' around all afternoon *grin*.

It cost us $5 per person and once we were inside the gates we could do any of the activities for free. Now that's a bargain because those kiddie bouncy houses & rides can add up so quickly but since we didn't have to pay we made quite a few rounds around the ride on train, bouncy houses and face painting tables *grin*.

They had an area set up where there was bowling, ball toss and mini golf. Everyone just LOVES mini golf and M got lots of help from daddy so that he could get a fair advantage over big brother & sister :)

In the same enclosure there was a martial arts demonstration where you could try out a routine with the instructor by kicking, punching, ducking and jumping over his foam baton. This was a big hit with K since he was a tad bit old for the all of the other activities but this was right up his alley!

There was lots of great entertainment to with singing, a puppet show, juggling...

and of course the balloon animal clown :)

I mean who doesn't want a balloon hat or a little pink dog on the end of a balloon that looks like your walking the dog when you hold it out in front of you?! Plus did I mention how much I just love her bright green pom pom socks? So much in fact that I dedicated the first photo slot in this entry just to those green babies LOL.

By the time we were finished going inside and playing with playdough, making bookmarks, running through the cardboard corn maze, building lego structures and exploding paper mache volcanoes we had been there for just under 3 hours and there were big smiles on everyones faces :)

~ Rosina