paint cut paste

creating garland out of the natural beauty of autumn leaves is always a favorite activity of ours. this time, we made it even more vibrant!

we have gone on many leaf collecting walks around our neighborhood these past few week, and brought home some beauties. we pressed them for about 24 hours or so to flatten them out.

the opportunity to mod podge our autumn leaves passed us by last year somehow, but this year we were able to do so. after the leaves were pressed, i applied a coat of mod podge to each side of each leaf (in the evening – thus the dark photo – sorry.) this preserves the color and returns some suppleness to the leaves — like magic!

notice it doesn't say "modge podge" on the bottle, folks.

once they were dry, N and i got out our wooden beads and some wire to string the garland.

we wrapped each bead through twice, to hold it in place.

we had fun interspersing beads with the leaves, and it looked pretty when finished.

now we have it hanging over our balcony for thanksgiving time… (but secretly, i’m sooo ready for christmas decorations instead!)

while we can choose to include expressions of gratitude in our every day lives, this time of year reminds us to give thanks for all of the blessings we’ve harvested. acknowledging gratitude on a daily basis can help us all to feel more balanced, joyful, and peaceful. it can also aid us attracting the energy of abundance into our lives.

often, in the busy-ness of thanksgiving, the true meaning of the holiday can get lost somewhere between parades of oversized floats and the cranberry sauce. here are a few reminders for expressing gratitude during this season, and carrying it into your every day life.

• gratitude journal: keep a simple book beside your bed where you can jot down three things you are thankful for at the end of each day. (or begin each day with gratitude instead.)

• gratitude blessing at mealtime: before eating dinner on thanksgiving night (or every night, like we do in my house) encourage each family member to share at least one thing they are thankful for from their day.

• gratitude garland: this is a sweet art project N and i made last year (inspired by the artful parent) that uses the beautiful natural materials the earth provides for us. go on a nature walk and collect vibrant fallen leaves. ask each person to write one thing they are thankful for on each leaf (using glittery pens or markers) and string them together by poking wire through them or hot gluing their stems to a lovely ribbon.

• thankfulness jar: start by decorating a jar (a simple ribbon holding an autumn leaf against the jar can be a nice touch) or finding a container you love. count your blessings all month long by writing them on little notes each day and placing them in the jar. spend some time around the thanksgiving table reading the notes of thanks aloud to each other. (from tip junkie)

photo from tip junkie

• gratitude mobile: collect leaves, acorns, pinecones, and string them across a stick or from an embroidery hoop along with lovely papers where you and your children write down the things for which you are thankful. (from rhythm of the home)

photo from rhythm of the home

• expressing thanks: send a handwritten letter or make a phone call to a person for whom you are thankful, expressing the gratitude you feel for them. it will surely brighten their day, and in turn, yours.

i’ll leave you with a quote i enjoy about gratitude by thornton wilder: “we can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

i’m a grateful for you all, my wonderful readers and blogging community. thank you.

we are definitely feeling the fall spirit over here! where we live, the leaves are slow to change, but now that it’s november, we are seeing more reds, oranges, and yellows brightening up the landscape. N and i went for a little leaf-hunting walk around the neighborhood the other day, and found a bounty of beauty!

what would you make with these fiery treasures?

also, we recently had a great time creating acorn cap jewels and blogged about them over on kiwi crate. go check out our process… it’s super easy. you can turn this:

into this:

happy fall!!!

now, what to make with those gorgeous leaves…???

i hope everyone had a happy halloweeeeen! thought i’d share with you a little mother-daughter creation: N’s halloween costume!

by “mother-daughter,” this time i actually mean myself and my mom (N’s gwee!) N expressed that she wanted to be an owl this year for halloween… and that they are her new favorite animal now, trumping the fox?!? whaaa? of course, she does have owls all over her bedroom and her shower curtain and bathroom is covered in them, so this isn’t outta no where.

N's felt owl mask

i remembered how awesome all of my halloween costumes were as a kid because my mom made them all! i feel like such a loser that i usually go the pottery barn kids route each year, so when i realized that my mom was visiting us in cali a few weeks before halloween, i jumped on the opportunity to enlist her help with making this costume (and learning more about this sewing machine thing-a-ma-jig collecting dust in my guest room closet.) i was inspired by the artful parent’s post on making bird wings (which was inspired by ones she’d seen on prudent baby.) i figured these would work well for a little owlie girl on halloween night, right? so first, a trip to joann’s fabrics was in order so we could choose fabrics and a color scheme, based around N’s fav color (which is still purple, to my knowledge.)

then we measured N’s wingspan arm length, and i cut a pattern for the wings and “feathers.”

next my mom and i got down to business with a whole lot of tedious (but easy) tracing and cutting. (sorry for dark photos. most of this work was done at night after the little one was asleep.)

the sewing began. (and my mom showed me again how to wind my bobbin and thread my machine. somehow i do not retain this information, no matter how many times i’m told. probably because once it’s done, i don’t touch the machine for a year or more in between lessons.)

costume contains lots of love

the sewing continued and messes were made.

i created a mask out of felt while mom diligently sewed.

we also created an oval patch covered with the “feathers” that we tacked onto one of N’s shirts.

in the end, it was all worth it. my little lady was the cutest owl in town on halloween night!

as you have seen on the blog lately, i’ve been trying to spruce up my autumn mantel. i think it’s an ever-evolving process, but i do want to share a little creation i made at the suggestion of one of my readers – thank you anna lucia – felt leaf garland!

after creating the autumn wreath and the BOO halloween pumpkins, i did feel that something was missing in tying it all together. i was anticipating N making our favorite real leaf garland for the mantel or using our paper roll pumpkin garland again this year, but instead it seemed my mantel needed another touch of felt to bring the look together. i cut (freehand, be nice) various leaf-like shapes into the same colors of felt we used in our wreath. (you could trace real leaves for shape accuracy, but i was just freestyling it while watching tv the other night.)

i pinned them together, slightly overlapping, and set out to sew.

the sewing was quick and painless (even for a beginner like myself!) i just had to lift the pedal foot sometimes so as not to have a leaf’s tip get folded onto itself. no biggie.

the garland looks pretty cute on our halloween mantel, and it will likely stay there beyond the halloween decorations and until thanksgiving.

i’m not totally loving the mantel’s fall face, but there’s always next year to try something fresh, like maybe this amazing green autumn mantel. okay, now back to the KID ART, right? (sorry for the mom-tinkering and home decorating as of late – i’m a little preoccupied… and inspired!) do you create seasonal mantels in your home?

admittedly, i got all jazzed about pinterest painted pumpkins this year. i mean, have you seen the options?! it’s intense out there. martha is quaking in her fryes with the sheer amount of pumpkin talent run amok on the interwebs. and lemme tell ya, i am NO  threat to ms. stewart in any way, shape, or form. let’s talk total craft fail right now (and a quasi-recovery?) here are some of the pinterest gems that piqued my pumpkin passion.

you know i don’t use the words “craft” or “fail” much at all, (for totally different reasons) but this is a complete craft fail (do i have to put a hashtag in front of that term? eww, lingo.) and instead of ___fail, i’d rather just call it an art-gone-wrong moment. (but yes, #craftfail!) i was inspired to make some painter’s tape resist pumpkins (like bottom left pic above) and three pumpkins with B O O stenciled onto them. i figured they’d be all beautiful and i’d title the blog “smashing pumpkins” and everything. i bought these super inexpensive beauties at a produce stand.

taped and stickered them where i wanted them to remain orange.

i grabbed some matte spray paint, and went to town.

(the only thing that was cool here was the caravaggesque lighting of these photos, and that was an accident)

after the paint dried, i peeled off the tape and stickers… um, and MOST OF THE SPRAY PAINT! (grrr)

for the B O O pumpkins, i thought i’d use these cool vinyl letter stickers i bought at michael’s, but large stickers do not stick in any sort of flat way to a rounded pumpkin surface, so i knew they would not produce a clean line when painted around. so i thought (sure, just for like two seconds) and grabbed some rubber cement and painted the letters B O O onto the pumpkins instead.

i figured the rubber cement would roll right off after they were painted and show the letters i had carefully designed by hand. perhaps this would have worked (???) if i had NOT USED SPRAY PAINT!

so i dropped this agenda altogether. i purchased three white pumpkins. i stuck the vinyl letters onto them as best i could. i traced around the letters with a pencil. i painted inside my pencil lines with sepia acrylic ink.

and it worked out well enough for this year.

pumpkins drying against sliding glass door - fun effect

and now onto designing the rest of the mantel…

this fall we got to learn about the michaelmas festival at waldorf school. it happens close to the autumn equinox and marks the beginning of the receding light. the parenting passageway has a great post all about it here, so i’ll leave the describing up to carrie because she does it so well, but in keeping with our woodworking theme this week (check out the giveaway – winners will be drawn tomorrow!) i’d love to share what N made at her school’s michaelmas festival.

on this special day, all of the children wore orange and yellow to school. there were many autumnal activities and presentations. N’s kindergarten class worked on sanding pieces of wood and drilling holes into them as candle holders. N was so proud to show me hers after school that day.she wanted to create her own candle to put into her new holder, so we got out our beeswax.

she had a hard time deciding between red and purple wax (her favorite colors,) but loooved examining the honeycomb shapes on it. eventually, she settled on red, and we cut an 8″ x 8″ piece of wax. N put the wick alongside one edge of it and simply rolled it up with even pressure across.

…as even as she could.

she pushed the candle down into the hole in her candleholder, and was psyched that it fit. (we totally didn’t pre-measure any of this, so i was glad, too.) that night we lit it for dinner, and N was “in looooove” with the candle.

before snuffing out the candle (and cutely whispering “thank you candle for your light”) N said (and sang) her meal blessing song from her kindergarten class: