First Week of Advent

 We light one candle shining bright
Upon this Holy Advent night
Fill our hearts with loving might
Lead us to Christmas Day's brilliant light!

 - M. T. Schunemann

I love this time of year as our excitement for the Christmas season grows with each candle that we light :) 

This morning the children and I pulled out the box deep in the back of my closet with our advent candle holder and beeswax candles and brought it to the coffee table. We cleared off the miscellaneous school books that were scattered all over it so that we would have lots of space to set it up in its special spot for the holiday season where it will be joined in the coming weeks by our nativity scene and St. Nicholas.

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

 The first light of Advent is the light of stones,
Light that lives in seashells, in crystals and in bones.

So the kids picked through their stash of favorite stones and shells and I brought out the special hour glass crystals that were gifted to us from a fellow waldorf family earlier this spring and for the bones we thought maybe our dried starfish might qualify since it's just the skeleton of it left *grin*.

Our tradition is that the youngest child gets to light the first candle and then the middle and so on so little M had the honor of holding the match all on his own to light his candle tonight and then we turned out all of the lights and sat under the glow of our star lanterns from Martinmas and watched the light of the candle grow as the wick burned down and the flame grew larger. This went on for a little while until Hubby and I were the last ones left enjoying one anothers quiet company :)

 Over the next couple of days we'll start to pull out all of our favorite Christmas books including  Celebrate with Joy by Sondra Burnett  which is full of inspiration on scriptures to read, craft ideas and ways to make Christmas even more special and our library wish list is overflowing with seasonal favorites. Each trip into town finds us with a few more that are waiting for us to be picked up and brought home. I think I might even grab a few paper whites to plant for next week's light of plants. I can't wait :)

What are your plans for advent and the coming weeks?

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