Handmade Holiday and Randomness

*Something is a bit crazy with my format this time around. I can't figure it out so I am posting this as is.*

Over the weekend I volunteered at 'Heart of Advent'. This may be one of my favorite events at our school. It's an adults only gift making/craft fair. Lots of fun to be had, for sure. It finally kick started my holiday crafting ambitions.

One fast and simple project I did was origami evergreen trees. We used the pattern found here.
But as you can see the tree on the left in this photo looks a lot different from the tree on the right. Either I did something wrong or there is a mistake in the pattern. It says to fold the paper 4 times but when I did that I ended up with that funny looking tree. I looked over the project photos again and saw that the paper was really folded 8 times. It's folded almost the same exact way as the star lanterns. So after I figured that out I took that tree apart and folded them all the 8 times, instead.

Now we have a happy little winter wonderland to decorate our home with next month. I don't plan on making any more of these this year but wouldn't they make sweet handmade gifts? I was thinking, too, to make them out of some of my girls' green paintings. For other fun handmade holiday ideas please check out the Handmade Holiday posts over at Plain and Joyful Living.

I thought I would also share a few pics of our nature table before we change it this week. I didn't take a picture of her, but our Autumn fairy is swinging above with her falling leaves, again.




Chinese lanterns and beautiful needle felted art made for me by the ever talented Meg for our Seasons Round exchange last year.





I also wanted to post a couple pics from our Martinmas dinner last week. Having our dining room lit up with lanterns was really magical.





Last, but not least, to add to the randomness of this post, K brought this home from school Halloween week. It's a wet on wet painted jack o lantern. Her class made them over the course of a couple of days. She decided hers looked more like a tomato, though.


I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Handmade Holiday and Randomness

Happy Martinmas!!

Martinmas breakfast

Happy Martinmas everyone! We already had our school lantern walk but still plan on having our family lantern walk tonight. While I planned on posting some lantern tutorials before today, my computer had other plans so they will be coming next week instead. I apologize for that.

Anyways, on to the celebration!



Martinmas celebrates the selfless giving impulse exemplified by St. Martin of Tours, a soldier in the Roman army.

One day in November he rose early in the morning and rode from his simple room into the city of Amiens, Gaul. Frigid rain pelted against his face and it was so dark a lantern barely lit his path. Suddenly, his horse stopped at the city gates. A poorly-clad beggar stood beside the path with his hands stretched out asking for help. But St. Martin had nothing to give the beggar. In spite of his high position in the army, he lived in poverty, only serving the poor, the sick and those in need of consolation. But St. Martin's compassionate heart was inventive. Swinging his warm red soldiers' cloak off his back, he cut it in half and gave one half to the beggar.
That night he had a dream in which Christ appeared dressed in the half cloak and said, "Today you have shared your cloak with me, from now on you are to be called St. Martin."
After leaving the Roman army, St. Martin became a monk and founded several monasteries that served the sick and poor.

In honor of St. Martin people everywhere gather at night and carry candle filled lanterns on a walk, singing lantern songs and sharing light and warmth of the community. The festival calls on us to remember the light within our lives that we can share to light the way for others. Another great way to celebrate is to donate warm clothing to your local homeless shelter.

Here are a few pics from our school lantern walk. It was such a beautiful experience. I was too busy taking it all in to get a lot of pictures but here you go!


Our school Martinmas info


K in her cloak (the made them in class) with her lantern (also made in class)


C with her lantern we made in parent/child class


Lanterns lighting our path


I loved the turnip lantern (middle). K's teachers made it and had it at their table when we walked into class.







C's little lantern (simple and sweet with wool we felted over the jar)


Both girls' lanterns


Our nature table (with St. Martin and the beggar in the background)



C's lantern in daylight


More of our older lanterns from years past (this star lantern was made by my friend danita at Green Bamboon Designs



I go outside with my lantern,
my lantern goes outside with me.
Above the stars shine so brightly,
down here on the earth shine we.
So shine my light,
in the still dark night,
a bim a la ba ma la boom!

Wishing you all warmth and light on this special day!

Happy Martinmas!!

Martinmas Prep & Pumpkin Picking

Glimmer lantern glimmer,
Little stars a shimmer.
Over meadow moor and dale,
flitter, flutter elf in veil.
Pee-witt, pee-witt, tick a tick a tick,
rou-cou, rou-cou.

Glimmer lantern glimmer,
Little stars a shimmer.
Over rock and stock and stone,
Wander, tripping little gnome.
Pee-witt, pee-witt, tick a tick a tick,
rou-cou, rou-cou.
- Traditional Waldorf Martinmas song (C's favorite one)

As I mentioned before lantern season is here. It's one of our favorite times of the year. Making lanterns is a huge part of celebrating Autumn and Winter in Waldorf communities. The sun has left us for these months and so we bring our inward light out.
Since Martinmas is fast approaching (next week!), I thought I'd share some of our lanterns from the past.

First we have the 'traditional' autumn lantern - the Jack O Lantern. This is the one K made at the Harvest Festival at the beginning of October.



Next are the two lanterns we made last year. A wet on wet water color lantern and a paper mache jar lantern.



A few of our star lanterns. We had a couple over the years but I went a bit crazy this year and made a ridiculous amount of them. If I remember correctly, these are traditionally done in eighth grade in the Waldorf schools. Definitely not a project for little ones but you could use their wet on wet paintings to make them. I think they would be even more special and beautiful that way. Our school store owner really showed me the secrets to making these lanterns perfect : a compass and a bone folder (my bone folder is made from wood and belonged to Kevin's Nana). I am debating if I should post a tutorial for these fun Martinmas lanterns or not. I had a couple other lantern tutorials I was hoping to post before next week but haven't had the chance to work on yet...




I thought I would post a few pics from our pumpkin picking adventures last Friday, as well.


A nice, simple pumpkin patch

Holding Daddy's finger on the hay ride to the patch






Pumpkin fun!

I'll be back next week with more lantern fun. Have a great weekend everyone!

Martinmas Prep & Pumpkin Picking

Halloween - WIPs done!

I finished K's dress just in time, although I did the hem really sloppy and fast so I need to re-do it ahem, but we'll just ignore that tid bit for now.I did, indeed, free hand the embroidery. I found two different embroidery patterns for sale that I loved and I just couldn't choose between the two so I combined them together to make my own. K says it's her holding her basket in our back yard. I never did get around to posting info and pics of the finished cape on here, but I have notes on it here. I modified the pattern quite a bit.

I unfortunately don't have any good photos of her in her dress and cape, my camera was acting funny and then my computer crashed yet again so I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Once everything is back to normal we will try and get some better shots of Little Red and her wolf. I should add that K 'styled' her hair for these pics.




The seam is straight, I swear! She just had the hood kind of tilted



We pretty much had a Halloween weekend instead of just celebrating it on Sunday. Kevin had Friday off so we went pumpkin picking then (pics soon). Saturday the girls dressed up and we went to our local Whole Foods for their 'healthy trick or treating'. Their idea of healthy ended up just being organic candy but the girls didn't mind. We just put it all in the Halloween fairy bowl that night. Another local health food store was holding a festival of it's own and we stopped by to see the cutest little witch - Sparky the goat. The girls decided we will need at least 2 goats when we have our farm someday.









My little monkey had fun carrying around her pumpkin bag I made her, and everyone loved it.

We also carved our pumpkin Saturday. K requested a bat so Kevin carved this cute little guy:



He is still lighting up our table nightly, and putting a huge smile on all of our faces.

I hope you all had a fun Halloween!

Halloween - WIPs done!