weekend fun and holiday thoughts

Sometimes I don't post anything because I don't have any good pictures to accompany my words. Then again, sometimes I feel I'm not sharing any words that are all that significant. But I shall write anyhow...

Our weekend was very nice. We have been blessed with absolutely perfect autumn weather. Sun, warmth, blue Colorado sky! We are taking advantage of it by getting as much outside work done as we can. Jason is working on a stone wall and a small fire circle. The girls are busy with mud and clay, and lots of running through the tall golden grasses. We are also trying to complete some additional garden beds. We should have about twice as much growing space next spring!

I tried to get some sewing done, but really much more time was spent in the kitchen. Bread baking this morning, and we had homemade pizza for dinner tonight.

I did do lots of thinking about sewing though... made a list of gift ideas to make for the girls... New dresses of course, something I have done since Chloe's first Christmas. They want long sleeve dresses, and I'm thinking of using some beautiful printed flannels that I have, I'm just trying to figure out a style that won't come out looking like a nightgown. Kind of challenging, but I have some ideas.

I am also going to make them new aprons. Their favorite game to play lately is "Waldorf kindergarten" and Chloe keeps going on and on about her need for a new apron. I have some special embroideries in mind that may find their way onto the aprons.

I would love to knit them some warm wool mittens but I have never knitted mittens before. Would anyone like to recommend a very simple, very easy beginner mitten pattern? I actually spent some time on Ravelry last night looking for one but didn't find anything very appealing. (And speaking of Ravelry, oh my, it's pretty neat. And did you know that you can have "friends" on Ravelry? I had no clue until someone mentioned that she had added me as a friend. Maybe after I'm done here I will have to go find some of you over there...)

I will probably also make new doll dresses and maybe doll quilts and pillows too. (Kind of cheating here cause I already have one little doll quilt from this summer, so I just have to make one more. There, now I have already gotten started on gifts. Yea.)

I may also make them pin cushions or little needle books as stocking stuffers. Felt headbands are another idea. I'm not sure if this is a too big, too ambitious list. Hopefully I can get it all done. We usually do not buy any gifts other than a few special books. Anyone else want to share some of their gift making ideas??

One last thing before I go... did you all see these beautiful crowns? Chloe is so looking forward to St. Lucia day! She has many plans for it, and is very concerned over what she will do for a crown. I haven't mentioned it to her yet, but I thought we could make a felted one, wool candles and everything. Of course I wasn't entirely sure how I intended to go about making them, so I was very excited when I saw these one. And Cadi was kind enough to explain much of the process to me. (Thank you!) If you look in the comments of my last post, or in the comments on her blog, you can get more details.

See you later this week!

p.s I just remembered... I might make knitted sweaters for the dolls. And maybe some felted bowls. I don't know how to make felted bowls, but I would probably just crochet some a little extra big and then put them in a pillowcase in the washing machine. Or maybe that is a totally bad idea and very wrong way. These are just ideas anyways, I would say nothing is definite except for the dresses and aprons. Maybe Jason wants to make them some little baskets....

WIP Wednesday

(Again on Tuesday evening. I tried to schedule it for Wednesday morning, but for some reason it is insisting on publishing now.)

I finally finished my needle felted autumn woman! This is the first felted figure I have done besides my little gnome, and I am pretty happy with her. She was so much fun to create, and as I went along I kept imagining more and more possibilities.

I kept her pretty simple, adding just one tiny orange flower in the back of her hair.

And although she wasn't yet on our nature table on November 1st, she was sitting there before midnight. She greeted the girls the next morning... they are in love with her.

I also got some more knitting done this past week. I still hadn't finished my wool hat, it sat on the needles for two months, but when I saw a forecasted low of 9 degrees last week I quickly finished it up!

And I am happy to say that I did meet my goal of finishing the two Waldorf dolls by November 1st. Unless you count their clothes, which I am not. I did start their dresses though. I will wait until next week to share some pictures of them.

Now, finally, I can turn my attention to the girls gifts for the holidays. My head is full of ideas!

Orange - part 2

More orange! The back cover of the Wynstones Autumn book...

the last vase of calendula, still brightening our kitchen table...

not quite ripe tomato, so it is orange rather than red. This makes me especially happy. We have three tomato plants in containers which have now been indoors for more than a month. Our tomato plants in the garden froze on the first day of autumn, so this has really extended the harvest for us. The plants are just covered in tomatoes, which I'm sure we will still be eating at Thanksgiving, and maybe even on the first day of winter!!

Pretty pot holder that my sister gave me, which usually sits in my sewing space with pin cushion or scissors on it...

and orange fabric, just a few which happened to be out, I could have gone digging for more...

little wall hanging that I made about 7 years ago... in my mind the orange plaid fabric represents the sunset, cause in my mind plaid is good for everything!

Orange flowers on one of my most treasured possessions, a vintage Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt... you will see and hear more about this another time...

Orange wool braiding made by Chloe...

basket full of yarn...

and a corner of our nature table, so orange and golden it seems to be nearly radiating light!

Orange! (part 1)

Sara posted a color game, passing along the color orange, so I have been taking pictures of some of the orangeness around our home. Very easy to do, because orange is definitely one of my favorite colors! As a matter of fact, I think this will have to be a two part post, I ended up with so many pictures!

Obviously the fact that it was Halloween contributed a lot to the orange.

Chloe is looking quite orange herself. (But if I was doing the color brown I would post this one for those big brown eyes!)


The day after Halloween seemed to revolve around pumpkin seeds. Sorting seeds, rinsing, seeds, toasting seeds, eating seeds, stringing seeds on thread for decorations... more wonderful gifts from those big beautiful pumpkins!

A favorite Halloween story...

And our own pumpkin moonshines. The basket belongs to Little Red Cap (Chloe). She included some pumpkin cookies to be eaten up on the little mountain across the road... we took an evening forest walk as the sky was becoming dark...

Chessa was Little Pink Cap! (Thank goodness the girls are very easy to please as far as costumes go. I made these hooded cloaks several years ago.)

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. Ours ended up feeling rather festive, though simple, and really made me excited for this upcoming season of celebration.

I will be back soon with part two...

WIP Wednesday (on Tuesday evening)

I am very happy to say that I have finished my little pumpkin. Once I had all the various pieces knitted I abandoned the pattern, and things got especially amusing when I attempted the stem, but it's done, and I think it does look like a pumpkin, so I will consider it a success.

One doll is finished too, though still naked. I have grand plans to have the dolls completed by November 1st, but I also want that little needle felted doll to be finished for our nature table, and I have not worked on her at all. She may have to take priority over the dolls. We'll see what happens...

Hope you are all having a nice cozy autumn week. I think we are about to get some snow here!

this past week...

Beautiful autumn days, some with lots of warmth from the sun, others getting very, very cold... reminding us of what is soon to come... I think I need to start mentally preparing, I do not always do well with the cold and snow... but there is certainly lots to look forward to with the upcoming holiday season.


One of our days was spent gathering cattail leaves and enjoying a walk around our small neighborhood lake.

Perhaps the baby ducks from a few months ago, now all grown...

And I am happy to say there has been quite a lot of handwork happening here lately. I missed WIP Wednesday, but next week I should have two completed dolls to show. One is finished, the second is on it's way. And Chloe has been doing a lot of knitting and needle felting. We went to visit Sara a couple days ago and Chloe spent the morning making these gifts to bring for her and Ila. The larger one is Sara with Ila in her arms. Very sweet I think. My girls have so much love for that wonderful farm family.

I have a feeling I will not return here until next week, so I will now wish you all a wonderful weekend filled with lots of autumn happiness!

first WIP Wednesday

I have been wanting to start participating in the WIP Wednesday for a while now. There is so much great creating happening there, it is so very inspiring, and by joining I hope to keep myself motivated. (Of course the real problem isn't motivation, it's time!)

All of the following projects were started in early September, and are still unfinished! Hmm, perhaps I have too much going on at once??

Here is Chloe's autumn dress, which I would have had done long ago, except that it was still summer when I started, so I decided I was getting to far ahead of the seasons, and then it sat on the rocking chair for about 6 weeks. The dress is actually finished, it is the apron that goes over it that I still need to complete. I have been saving that oak leaf fabric for many years, I think it will make a perfect autumn apron.

And then of course there are still the dolls. Started in August actually! Fortunately they are for a friend who very well understood that it would take me quite a while to finish them. They are Christmas gifts for her girls, but for my own personal crafting reasons I intend to have them finished way before then. Cause I have about 20 other things I need to get to making, and having these dolls still sitting here is a bit overwhelming. There were recently a few weeks when I wasn't able to work on them at all, but I finally got started on the hair a few days ago. Only one layer so far obviously, with the other doll still completely bald, but I actually love doing the doll hair so hopefully I will be able to work on them much more in the next week or so. And then it will be on to doll clothes. There are a couple dolls of our own eagerly awaiting new dresses too.

And then here is the most disappointing part of my recent creating. My little needle felted woman who was supposed to be on our nature table for the first day of autumn. So sad... I have never before not finished something so special that was to be a part of our seasonal celebration.

Perhaps I can have here finished in the next couple weeks so that she can at least keep us company throughout November.

And it would be nice if I could finish this little pumpkin while it is still October.
Because I'm pretty sure I should be moving on to winter holiday creating very soon!

catching up

Here are some of the pictures that I took over the past month but was unable to get onto the computer until now...

Still cannot get enough of these beautiful calendula!

There are still some blooming in the now mostly faded garden. And today I started gathering some seeds from them, to be sure we will have many more blooms next year!


Since Jason was away I was left to do the first day of autumn chalkboard drawing. Of course I did not remember to do it until late the night before, so was done a bit hastily.


The first weeks of school with Chloe were filled with many days of watercolor painting. So I made sure Chessa got some painting time of her own too. I will try to post pictures of some of their paintings soon.

What... is this not a common site out on the road where you live?


And then daddy came home! And we have been having lots of fun. (Combined with lots of rest... we are all pretty worn out for the long time apart.)

We went out and did some apple harvesting last week. Visited just a few trees and came home with about 50 pounds of apples!

Yesterday we bought ourselves an apples peeler/slicer. Seemed like a good idea. And it's cute and red. We will be baking apple pies soon, some are sliced and frozen in the freezer already, and of course the girls have been eating apples all day long!

Chickens!

I made a typo in my last post.. commented on our strange desire to have chickens.. but I only wrote "chicken"! And that makes it sound like we want to eat them, which we most definitely do not! I just find myself loving all kinds of birds more and more these past few years, and that love has now extended to chickens. But if we were to have chickens we would have to eat the eggs. At least we feel we would need to, or else it would be wasteful. (We wouldn't have a rooster so there wouldn't be unborn baby chicks to consider.) The thought of eating eggs is very strange to us though. But we also have all these great self-sufficiency homesteading desires, and eggs from chickens would add to our producing as much of our own food as possible dreams. So we have these kinds of conversations sometimes now, Jason and I, and while we are having the conversations we are like, "I can't believe we are even talking this way!"

And yes, hooray, Jason is home! But I have one more quiet evening to myself cause he had to go to bed with the girls... so very tired. Me though, I'm gonna stay up much later, maybe all the way to 9:30 or so.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Kreativ Blogger Award

My dear friend Sara at Farmama has passed on this Kreativ Blogger award to me. Recipients are supposed to do the following...

1. Copy the award to your site.

2.Link to the person to whom you received the award.

3. Nominate 7 other bloggers.

4. Link to those sites on your blog.

5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominate.

.....and you are also to list 7 things about yourself.

I do wish I could just pass this back to Sara! Such a creative, hard working, truly good person she is! But there are certainly others...

1. Heather at Shivaya Naturals

Her blog is so full of warmth, as is the home she has created for her family. Her knitting is amazing, and I wish we didn't live at apposite ends of our state so that we could spend some time sewing together!


2. Nicole at Gardenmama

I was just in awe the first time I saw Nicole's blog. The images she captures with her camera, and the images she creates with her words, are absolutely breathtaking. The correspondence we have shared the last couple months has warmed my heart. Thank you Nicole!


3. Suzanne at Down in the Meadow

There is so much prettiness and festivity happening over at Suzanne's. Even the every day moments at her home are filled with beauty. She always has such kind words to share, and brings a smile to my face.


4. Cadi at MaeheGirl

Talented and funny. She makes me laugh! And offers homeschooling encouragement. Inspiring!


5. Sarah at In These Hills

As soon as I read her Michaelmas post this week I knew I would have to include her here! Her words gave me strength when I so very much needed it.


6. Kelly at Free Flowing Ways

Nature goodness, crafting greatness, homeschooling happiness!


7. Well, I am thinking I cannot choose just one more. I'm sure we can all agree that there are just too many amazing women doing wonderful things around here, in their homes, for their families! If I read your blog it is because you are creative, inspiring, loving, a good mother, a wonderful artist... a generous person who is sharing a part of yourself and has inspired me to do the same!



I guess that means it is now time for me to share 7 things about myself...

1. I am originally from California. I was born in the Los Angeles area and lived there when I was very young, but then we moved north to Carmel. I love fog, ferns, trees, the ocean, and fairytale-like cottages. I desperately miss my home town and find it somewhat unfair that I cannot move back home, seeing as how it is one of the most expensive places in the country to live. I can visit though... hopefully soon!

2. I first came to Colorado in 1995. So I guess this is my home now. I love rivers, mountains, spruce and fir trees. And aspens. I love to watch the snow fall, I love to see the forest covered in snow. But I do not always love the snow. And I won't drive in the snow. Fortunately Jason is from Ohio and is an expert winter weather driver.

3. I like to be at home, and I like to be with my family. I really don't feel the need to get out much, except for out into the forest! Jason is the same way, (except for he feels the need to get out and go skateboarding too), and the girls also are happy to live a very home centered life. Therefore we need to make an effort to make sure that we do get out sometimes!

4. Both of our girls were born at home. Homebirth, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, cloth diapering... all of these things are/were a very important part of our life, they are just a bit in the past now and so not something I have really mentioned here before.

5. I love homeschooling. I also believe very passionately in Waldorf education. If there was an established Waldorf school nearby and we had the option of attending it would be a very, very difficult decision.

6. I taught myself to sew when I was about 19 years old. More than 17 years ago! I still have pieces of the fabrics that I first bought all those years ago, but not many of the things I ever made. I had a bad habit of making dresses, wearing them for a while, then deciding I would rather have a skirt and cutting them in half! I have also made and sold many dresses, probably more than 200! This was in the days long before etsy or anything like that, it was very hard to do and I eventually took a break. A very long break. I am still waiting to get started again, cause now there is this thing called etsy you know... (I also make all Chloe's and Chessa's dresses and skirts, and much of their other clothing too.)

7. I have been vegan for 16 years. Jason too, we both already were when we met. Also not something I have mentioned here much yet, not sure why. Maybe I will start sharing some recipes some time, cause after so many years of cooking and baking every meal for my family I seem to have become kind of good at it. I must warn you though, don't be surprised if someday you find me discussing our strange desire to have chickens. (Which for now is not accompanied by a desire to eat eggs.) You know it took us several years to decide to use wool, so maybe in ten years, our own chickens...


Okay, I did it! Now I think I shall take a break here for just a bit. I'll be back next week after spending some days doing nothing but enjoying the love of my reunited family!