Happy Halloween!

From: a hobbit, Mario, an alien, and a knight

navigating the corn

Elizabeth attended a birthday party for one of her closest friends (since kindergarten) at a corn maze nearby. The weather had been chilly and rainy on Friday so we were unsure if the corn maze would happen, but the sun came out late Saturday morning and the clear, chilly autumn skies opened up to reveal a beautiful autumn day.

I volunteered to help with the driving since there were more girls than would fit in the birthday girl's car (or maybe it was to get out of the renovation in the library at home, ahem).

The girls (and birthday girl's brother and friend) headed out into the maze, each group determined to solve the puzzle and find each of the 6 stations before the other groups.


Off they go, puzzle book in hand!



But everywhere you looked, there was corn...corn...(beautiful autumn light)


and more corn.


Eventually, and with the help of a worker that we kept running into,


we all found the various stations, solved the puzzle, then navigated our way out of the corn.


To a big giant jumping pillow. (just what you find beside every field of corn, no?)

I'm so glad I was able to attend, walk the maze, take some photos, and celebrate with one of Elizabeth's oldest friends. Happy birthday, Katie!

a week full of acorns

Our week full of acorn learning began with our trek through the forest this weekend. Although we've gathered acorns a few times already this autumn, we gathered a fresh stock and tried to find a variety of sizes this time.

Now that the acorn are easily separating from the caps, we left the acorns behind for our furry friends' nourishment and only brought the caps home with us to use for crafting and other projects.


Finn enjoyed taking a few acorn caps and arranging them in size order from smallest to largest.


We also measured a few of them by seeing how many black beans would fit in each one. Our smallest cap would only hold 3 black beans, whereas our largest could hold 13!


We needle felted some acorns in various colors.


And we glued them into caps to make colored wool acorns. (Finn really got into the smallest-to-largest arrangement.)


After they dried we placed them our nature table with some of the acorns we gathered late this summer.


We did some acorn coloring, drawing and writing.


We even cracked open a few of our older acorns to see the nuts inside. We wondered how our squirrel friends open the nuts to retrieve the edible parts since we use a nutcracker.


Finn wondered what the acorn meat might taste like, but I discourage his sampling since these acorns have been sitting on our nature table for a few months already.


We decided to roast some chestnuts instead and pretend we're squirrels while peeling off the chestnut skin. Our "acorn" substitutes were pretty tasty!


We borrowed several books on acorns and squirrels from the library and read Woody, Hazel and Little Pip many times over the week.


We decided to make our own Woody and Little Pip Acorn out of peg dolls, green material from our scrap basket and some acorn caps.


We even cut a leaf out of a watercolor painting for Woody and Little Pip to fly down from the tree.


And down they flew over and over. I think we read this page about 20 extra times, just for practice. ;)

What a fun week of acorn exploration!

Yarn Along

Well, here we are at another Yarn Along (joining the fabulous Ginny) and I'm sitting here with the same old projects. The scarf and socks are both relatively close to being finished, but I need to just get them DONE already so I can move on to another, hopefully more inspiring, project. I did make a quicky little bookmark out of the red sock yarn, which I finished in a couple of short hours, but when I looked for it to take a picture, *poof* it was gone. I have my suspicious (ahem, Elizabeth) of who might have swiped it so maybe I'll get a picture of it soon.

I just wrapped up reading a few different books, including Come to the Edge, which was better than I expected, but I've returned them to the library so I don't have a photo. Finn and I just finished reading The Children of Noisy Village and we plan to start The Wind In The Willows today. I can't recommend either of those books highly enough. We love them and they have been read numerous times in our home. The Wind In The Willows edition we have is illustrated by Inga Moore, who draws the mostly lovely, ethereal and heart-warming illustrations. I prefer her illustrations in many of our favorite books.


I also have 2 projects waiting in the wings that don't have a good pattern yet. Maybe you can help? The blue worsted Malabrigo is going to be a hat for Elizabeth, but I just haven't found an inspiring hat pattern yet. I'm also looking for a boy-ish hat pattern for the green. They are both soft and gorgeous yarns, and I want to make a hat that really shows off the lovely color and texture of each yarn.

Until next week...

her perspective

Of all of our children, Elizabeth is probably the most aware of composition, balance, and perspective. She attends an art-based elementary school and has dabbled in many mediums, although her least experience is probably in photography. In an effort to give her a little bit of exposure to photography, we are occasionally handing her the camera and sending her outside to find 10-20 interesting shots. "Interesting", of course, being up to interpretation by her.

I plan to expand past our backyard and take her on hikes and other places for the express purpose of seeing the scenery through her lens. She certainly has a perspective that we want to encourage and develop.

Her next question, of course, is when does she get her own camera?!

weekending

enjoying the beautiful autumn

~weather~

and ~color~

together.