School

I've been getting ready for school all summer.  Finding uniforms and the long list of very specific supplies Jonah needs, sewing away at lunch accessories and an art smock, and talking about school now and then with my anxious Mr. 7.  Preparing myself and him for the day school would begin.

And now it has come.  So far, it has been smoother than I expected, but it is hard for Jonah to be away so long.  We miss him and he misses us.  But, we love his teacher and are confident he will be receiving a wonderful education in a loving community.  It is a really good thing in our lives right now.

I'm enjoying more intentional time with the younger two and Rowan is determined to learn his letters so he can go to school too (I didn't encourage this, but am enjoying long workbook sessions totally led by the little man).  I'm also hoping that these fall days will provide the space to get ourselves organized into the church year and the daily liturgies that have faded somewhat in the past year.  I have such dreams and ideas...

Hopefully those will be filling posts soon, but for now I thought I'd share a glimpse of our getting ready for school.
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:: I'm determined to keep Jonah's lunches trash free.  So making a snack bag and cloth napkins was one important task on my get-ready-for-school list.  This was followed by freezing muffins, homemade toaster pastries, and protein packed cookies for lunches.  I loved the ideas on this blog and an adapted version of these protein balls have been a big hit around here.

:: And then there was the art smock... the list said to send an old shirt in, but when you've moved through three countries and two states in the past year, anything you didn't need was given away quite promptly.  So, I went back to the pattern for an art smock in Little Things to Sew (minus french seams and pockets) which I used a couple years ago.  I made a large this time (my how he has grown in the past year!) out of some old sheets that came out of storage.  I thought the plain color was nice and not so "my mom made my art smock" since the other kids will have old shirts.  But upon seeing it Jonah was really sad it didn't have dinos like the last one.  So daddy was asked to draw a dinosaur found in the The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs to size on freezer paper.  Mom did the rest and Jonah is quite happy with his dino art smock.

:: And then a glimpse of the day we had all been waiting for, the first day of school.  Convocation was beautiful.  The seniors placing laurel leaves on the heads of the kindergartners, all those young voices singing Psalm 115:1 in latin (their school song), and Jonah's smile as he walked past after convocation (he was a bit too nervous for smiles before school) are all moments I'm holding close right now.

Nature Prints on Clay

The boys and I used clay to make some nature prints last week.  Rowan and I were doing some gardening (he is really quite helpful and such a hard worker!)  I trimmed and he made a huge stack across the yard of all the clippings.  We had a basket and saved some of our favorite clippings to make prints in clay.  

I made holes in them and hung them by the nature table.

Sneaky Art

We found the book Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight on the new-book shelf at the library recently.  It was a fun book to page through and would be really fun for older kids who can craft more independently.  Rowan loved the ideas, but they were a bit beyond him (Mr. 7 doesn't generally have very much interest in crafting.)  But I did make some sneaky banners from the book yesterday and both older boys had a really fun time finding them around the house!

Oh, and while I'm on crafty books from the library, we recently discovered Crafty Chloe.  Rowan, my crafting buddy, had me read it over and over.  I'm all about boys reading books with girl protagonists, but this book did make me long for an equivalent boy book where they made space shuttles and robots!  Does anyone know of one?  Or want to write one?

Candlemas

Candlemas is traditionally the day when the church blesses the candles that will be used through the year.  So, this year our candlemas project was to roll some beeswax candles (we used this kit).  It was a wonderful project for the boys; it wasn't difficult and the candles were pretty and functional.  The boys loved it.  As we rolled the sweet smelling wax sheets we thought of occasions through the year where we will need special candles (birthdays, Valentine's Day, Christmas...) and tried to make them accordingly.  

Today, we blessed the candles, praying that our little pile of candles might remind us of Christ's light through the year.

This is not some special technique.  Rowan loved 'hiding' them in the tissue after he made them :o)

A Late Birthday Shirt. And a Couple More.

Jonah's birthday was very simple this year.  It was still special and he felt celebrated, but many of the things I would normally do, just didn't get done.  I knew that we weren't going to have a complicated theme party as we are traveling, but I did think that things like his birthday shirt, which I make every year, would appear.  Throughout the time Jim was away for surgery I kept prompting myself to practice the discipline of letting go.  It is a good discipline and one that I'm still working on keeping, I am so much calmer and more content when I succeed.  And, in the spirit of letting go, no birthday shirt appeared the morning of June sixteenth.

But last weekend I saw the freezer paper on a shelf and invited a couple friends over Saturday evening for a little freezer paper party.  After all, he's still quite excited about being six and the dino daddy drew for his shirt was just the thing for our future paleontologist.  

And then, because everything was out, I just had to make a couple more.  Isaac's is based on a Charlie Harper drawing (oh, I love his work!) and the alphabet is perfect for my currently letter loving two-year-old.

*in case you are wondering the red letters are the letters in his name

A Fire Gnome for Pentecost

We had such a happy day of celebrating yesterday.  We waved pentecost wands and shared cupcakes at chapel.  I went for an amazing hike (straight up for 2 hours and then 1.5 hours down - whew, I am sore today!)  And we had a house full of L'abri students to play games and chat in the evening.  It was a really good day.  I love celebrating the church feasts.  It was such fun for the boys and, very naturally, we talked about the Holy Spirit and God's presence with us.

One thing I'm trying to focus on as we travel the circle of the church year is making things or traditions that are easy to repeat the following year with little or no work.  So this year a fire gnome joined us.  (I have a wind gnome drawn up too, but that might be what we add next year.)  He is funny, but will be a fun addition to our center piece or nature table for Pentecosts to come.  Above him hung a felt dove I made way back here.  The candle has wind, 50, a flame and a dove painted on it. 

Pentecost Sticks

I really meant to get on this project earlier in the week so I could share it with time to spare, but it is really simple.  So if you have what you need, some pentecost sticks can come to be very quickly.  

To make a pentecost stick you need:

several long pieces of ribbon (I used mostly red with a bit of gold and orange to look like flame)

A short piece of ribbon (4-5 inches)

A stick (you can use a dowel rod, but I just used sticks I found in our garden)

To make the stick you just glue the long ribbon on the end of the stick and use the small piece to wrap around the glued ends so everything looks tidy.

I love that this combines the images of flame and wind and can't wait to surprise the boys with them tomorrow!

Snow Day! In May!

Well, I was all ready to write a post on the little green shoots in our garden today when I woke up to this...

SNOW!

And now, I'm just hoping that my little green shoots survive the day!  We had a fun snow day with some embroidery by wee hands, some painting, some Heidi reading, some cookie eating, and of course, some running around in the snow!

While the boys embroidered I finished off this snow child that I started back in winter and then was set aside while preparing for the move.  She wasn't supposed to be coming to Switzerland, but somehow missed the shipment to the states, so I tucked her in with my craft supplies and was glad today that I had a snow child to celebrate this unexpected snow.

Unexpected indeed!  Yes, yesterday, my baby had no trousers and I was lathering sunscreen on my wee men (proof below) and now I'm watching flakes fall outside my window.

In Advent...

Well, the waiting is getting harder as the days pass by, but we're still doing fine - waiting for whatever is to come.  Advent means to come and my thoughts have been on the advent season the past few days, as well as, our own little one who is coming.   And, these comings have inspired a couple crafts over the past week.

Friday, while the boys went on a fun adventure to the castle and cathedral with Gammy and Papa, I used decorating wax to make a candles for advent.  One is for the Christ Candle for our godly play at church and the other will be our dinner candle through advent.

And for our own 'coming' Jim and I painted our boys symbols onto canvases (sorry, this picture isn't very clear).  Jonah means 'dove' and Rowan is named for the rowan tree.  And yes, we painted a third, but you will have to wait as it is tucked safely away to appear when our third little guy arrives.

Spring Friends

Oh, it is really feeling like spring around here.  I keep thinking about lambing season.  When I was little I loved seeing the new lambs, helping to feed and warm the littlest ones who needed help and as I grew older I helped to deliver those sweet babies (though the process wasn't exactly 'sweet', but it was always quite amazing).  I think that it was because of all these lambing thoughts that my hands reached for my wool roving basket the other day and this little bunny was felted for a friends birthday.  And then the next night I had to make one for our nature table.  There may be some more to come... they really are so fun to make!

A Belated Birthday

Hmmm, Christmas holidays seem so long ago and I have one more batch of projects to share that were made over that wonderful stretch of time (have I mentioned before that it would be great if Jim never worked?)  The following are for my sister's birthday gift, now sent (though only just this morning).  My new years resolution was to write birthday letters and send gifts to all our family and if possible on time.  Well, her birthday was the third of January and I'm just getting this sent off, but I really am trying to get the birthday thing organized (more on that soon).  So Laura, if you are reading this, consider this a sneak preview of your belated birthday gift - it will be there soon :o)

 These little gnomes were inspired by these on peasandcarrots.  So fun to make.  I added pipe cleaners in the hats so you can make them bend.  Jonah made the little boy (though I sewed his hat and scarf) and another one that is on our window sill showing off beautiful splotches of color.

This little snail is from the book Feltcraft, which I've been stitching from quite a bit lately, and I made a second one for our nature table, because I love snails.

 This headband is from Weekend Sewing (one of my favorite sewing books) and I again made two because I love it and wanted a bit of this unicorn fabric (by Heather Ross) to wear.

So as you can see my sister's gift had a bit of a fairy tale theme, and as last year I made her the princess and the pea set - it may just be a tradition.  Hooray for a sister who loves fairy tales as much as I do (or maybe even more).

A Holiday Recap

It was a very mellow Christmas season and at moments I found myself wishing for home and the excitement of the five grandchildren under five on my side.  Jim and I have decided that we don't want to be traveling every Christmas as we want to build traditions for our own little family based on the church year.  This year was the first year that I felt like we really succeeded in fully holding the space of Advent, the 12 days and Epiphany.  It definitely is a process adding in these traditions.  I was particularly pleased with Advent this year; once I gave up most of the slew of the gifts I had planned to make I was able to really focus on creating the advent space meaningfully.

As for the twelve days of Christmas and Epiphany here are some things I was thankful for...

:Cinnamon Rolls shaped as a Christmas tree are my family's Christmas morning tradition, but this year I opted out of that tradition and made a very simple breakfast cake (the Blueberry Buttermilk cake from Apples for Jam - Yum!)  I've made rolls the past few years, but it has always been late on Christmas Eve and it has felt rushed and I haven't enjoyed it.  So this year I decided that this is one of the joys of celebrating all 12 days - we had Cinnamon Rolls a couple times, just not on Christmas morning.  I also opted to make turkey dinner for Epiphany so I wasn't roasting a Turkey on Christmas day.

 : Our 12 days of giving quests went well.  The best days were the simplest and most tangible.  At four, giving tinned food to a box in the store isn't overly meaningful.  But, mixing icing for cinnamon rolls and making coffee to surprise daddy was incredibly exciting.   We also particularly enjoyed sharing food with the birds.

: December's 'One Small Change' - We had a paperless Christmas for the first time.  Some things came from family wrapped, but I made bags for our gifts (just sewed on three sides, pinked the top edge and used loose ribbon to tie around the bag - very simple).  The boys loved opening the bags and maybe some year I'll hem the edges and I would love to collect red, black and white folksy fabrics to make more from.

 :Games, Games and more Games - fortunately for us Jonah loves games as much as we do and we played lots of them through the holidays.  Jonah is particularly into chess right now (not Mum's favorite game, but oh well) and spent hours going through his new chess book setting up scenarios and doing chess puzzles.

:Some holiday crafting: I made Jonah a felt beaver for all the Narnia play he's been doing with his tree house.  He is requesting a Mrs. Beaver now... we'll see when I get to that.  

Jonah learned how to knit with a knitting fork - you can see his knitted necklace peaking out from beneath his shirt in the picture below.

:Epiphany - We had a lovely Epiphany to end our holidaying.  Making crowns is always a highlight for us and this year Jonah made the star for us to follow as well.  We have a tradition of following a star on a string through the house singing 'We Three Kings' and then sharing the story of the Magi.

Jesse Tree: Part 2

Here are the rest of our Jesse tree ornaments for the year and a picture of the tree with three weeks worth on it.  The tree looks nice and I'm pleased with how this project turned out.  You can see Jesse Tree: Part 1 here (where I explain the concept).  Again, I used these devotionals and symbols as general guidelines.  We began on the first of December instead of the first day of advent (simply because I didn't get myself organized in time) so we didn't use a couple of the days listed and I rolled the days on Zachariah and Elizabeth Story and John the Baptist into one (somewhat long) devotional and used the baptismal shell to represent both these stories.   

Overall I've been very happy with the devotional and Jonah has enjoyed this each night after dinner.   In the future I would love to work on the prayers and questions to draw out more discussion, but for our young family the simplicity has been fine.

Note: I changed two of the symbols completely.  I used the hand of the prophets instead of the flower the devotional provides to represent the prophets.  The flower had nothing to do with the passage read or the devotional, plus Jonah is familiar with the godly play symbol of the finger pointing to Bethlehem.  I knew this was a good choice when he excitedly exclaimed "Look, it is the hand of the prophets pointing us to Bethlehem" when he drew this leaf out of the calendar.  I also chose to use the godly play symbol of the Road to Bethlehem instead of the sandals to represent their journey.  I like the winding of a path to symbolize a journey and, again, Jonah is already familiar with the symbol.

Top Row: Samuel's horn of oil that anointed David, King David's Crown, The hand of the prophets, Elijah's sacrifice at Mt. carmel
Bottom Row: Jonah's whale, The king's staff from Esther's story, Bethlehem, Daniel and the Lions

Top Row: John the Baptist (a shell has been traditionally used in baptisms),  Mary's Love, Joseph's tools
Bottom Row: the road to Bethlehem, The star of the Christ Child