changes

i love change. in fact, i crave it! today i started painting the 3 doors in our kitchen with chalkboard paint. so fun! jaden and sage helped as well. they are fairly good with a paint brush for their ages. these chalkboards will see much use...kids drawings and writing, practicing spelling, math, etc., creating drawings for main lessons, a place for communicating between family members: items we need from the store, things needing to get done, activities and appointments we have coming up, to do lists, list of items to take with me when running errands, etc. it's going to be very useful i think! jaden is in awe that she will actually be able to color on the walls, lol!

painting the doors changed the entire look of the kitchen. the previous people had painted the inner panels a hideous red (they had a coca-cola theme going on so everything was white, black and red). the retreat of the red was a pleasing sight! i think the black is a definite improvement. once i'm finished painting them, i'll try to remember to post some pictures. for now, you'll just have to take my word for it!


this week, we created a gratitude tree. i saw this on a homeschooling blog and thought it was lovely. on our daily walk, we found a cherry tree sapling that had died for the tree and then gathered fallen leaves to string up on the tree. then, each day, we wrote on a leaf what we were grateful for and used thread to hang the leaves. it made a nice centerpiece for our untraditional thanksgiving meal.

yesterday we started working on our advent wreath and candles. i thought it would be fun to make the candles so i broke out the beeswax, crayons and candle wicking string. after the wax melted, i dipped the wicks into the wax and let them dry. then i wrapped the centers around pencils so we could dip 2 at a time then we all dipped...greg even joined in for a bit of the fun.the last candle i dipped in melted crayons to make an orange candle to represent the sun on solstice. here they are in their lumpy glory, before i trimmed up the ends. i must confess the orange candles looked very phallic and reminded me of the orange stinkhorns that visit us in our yard on occasion.

today, we cleared off our nature table. boy, was it a mess! we settled on a dark greeny-gold walnut hull dyed playsilk as our cloth and clipped some spruce branches for the wreath. i dug out some old candle holders and viola! our table is ready to start the advent celebration tomorrow. we'll be using the traditional waldorf poem along with a pagan twist to set the advent tone each sunday morning. jaden had a blast helping me set the table up.

i haven't done an advent since childhood. i think it will be a fun way to count down to solstice!