Waldorf

I have been neglectful of this space lately. Not because of lack of things to say, but simply a lack of words. I have been doing a lot of writing lately. Stories for Mariposa, newsletters, other blog posts, personal writing. So by the time I sit down in this space, I am all tapped out. I have no more words to put to page. It is a strange feeling for someone who has never had a lack of words to write down. I have decided to visit this space first, before my words run dry and see if that helps.

As for what is going on in life, well it is four weeks until Christmas and life is full. Yesterday however, Mother Nature called a timeout. We awoke to pitter patter on our metal roof, which is not a sound one hears usually in Winter in Canada. I looked out to see freezing rain covering everything with a glossy sheen. A problem, yes, but an even bigger problem when you live at the top of not one but two death defying hills. Yes, we bought the place in the summer, so no we didn’t really notice until winter hit. The first hill is a hair pin curve, the second a short and sweet, “floor it and hope you make it” type hill. Needless to say, we didn’t go out. I ventured through the forest to my neighbors to borrow a bag of milk (Canadians buy their milk in bags, yes strange, but space efficient!) and that was it.

So, we declared it a pajama day and stayed in all day. The boys played well, we did a bunch of crafts, I got a few things done. It was lovely.
There was some painting, some hot glue snowflake making, fort/boat/camper van/train building...
 

and some needle felting from the bigger of the small ones...

We prepared for the first week of Advent and made our wreath with some branches from outside.

The first week is crystals, shells, and bones, so we picked some of our favorite stones to add to the wreath. We also stripped the nature table and put our Angel spiral and candle out. We have a small bunch of rocks there for the first week. We will add something every week until it is filled up on Christmas day.

Our Christmas calendar also started this weekend. The boys each got a knitted cat (pattern found here) that were a quick knit and very, very cute when finished. Of course I have no picture because they have been taken and are now somewhere in the house, but when found I will post pictures! Sunday they received little mini rockets that fire using baking soda and vinegar. A huge hit and I must say, very fun. They played with them on and off all day.

Another full weekend, with a very full week ahead. Good news it that our rhythm and flow have improved so overall the days are a bit calmer. Once we get through this week, it will all slow down and we can just relax into the holidays. Lots of crafts to do and cookies to bake and gingerbread houses to build, and with a little Christmas music on, it should all go smoothly!

... we have been out enjoying the unusually warm weather. Really weird warm weather as the rest of the country is getting massive snow dumps (hello Manitoba and your 65 cm of snow!!) and very cold weather (it is a balmy -25 C in Regina). Yikes! The temperatures dropped down back where they should be yesterday and we even had some of the white stuff blowing around a bit. I am not a fan of the in between weather. I am hoping for snow soon.
 

{march of the pumpkins to the compost}

On other fronts, we had a beautiful lantern walk at Julien’s Waldorf program he does. The night was clear and cold and the group of kids and parents this year are just lovely. We went walking through the forest with our lanterns singing songs and looking at the stars and then returned back for stories and songs around the bonfire. We finished it up with some hot apple cider and little treats. It was wonderful and both Hubby and I agree that this is an amazing opportunity for Julien and for us. This is the childhood we want for him and for Noah. We are so very very lucky.

We had a small lantern walk at our house on Sunday with just us going out into the dark with our little lights. It was a really bad day Sunday, with a combination of me being grumpy, bad behaviour and just overall blahs. Julien asked after supper if we could go out for our walk and I almost said no. Yes, the day was that bad. Instead, I said yes, and I am so glad I did. It might have been a hard day but at least when everyone was tucked in that night there were smiles and laughing reminding me once again, that sometimes you have to let go of the day and give in to the moment.

On the schooling front, we have just finished the quality of numbers. For those unfamiliar with Waldorf education, each number is presented and taught to allow the child to fully experience each number. As with the letters, each number has its own quality and its own “personality” if you will. So rather than just learning that one is a line, children learn that one is the sun, the moon, the earth, and most beautifully themselves. Each of these things is one and so the number has a connection with the child, an attribute that they can relate to and remember easier than just this is one, memorize it.

They also learn the Roman numerals with it, which was great fun and I was surprised to see how quickly Julien caught on. He knew “V” was five as he is a rocket junkie and his most beloved Saturn “V” rocket is talked and read about constantly. So when he saw four “IV” he correctly predicted six, seven and eight. He had a blast answering our riddles each day, which are in our year long story that I am telling him. The riddle each day from the old woman in the story was simply “What is... (insert the next number here). We then, as did the characters in the story, had to come up with things that answered the riddle. Some were easy, some were, well, more creative than others. We are reviewing for a day or so and then we will use the roman numerals to unlock the gate to cross into the land across the river in our story. We then head back into letters for a bit. I am planning on doing the vowels over December as they are often taught as the angel’s songs. I thought it would tie in nicely with the holidays.

As you can see it has been busy busy here. I would like to start crafting a bit more now. Julien was off crafting and arts for a while. Apparently this happens with the 6/7 year change and I am hoping the the holiday season will bring it back a bit.  I miss that time with him. For now we just keep active. Lots of leaves to rake and stones to move, plenty of time for painting when the snow starts to fly.

I am, however, feeling a bit stuck on the arts and craft inspiration. Anyone have anything good to share?

**Editing to ask you to join me over on Olive and Owl today as I am featured in KC's "In Her Shoes" series. A great way to get to know bloggeres a little bit better. She has such a lovley blog filled with great sewing projects, yummy recipes, and of course cute little faces! Stop on by and say Hi!**

So I was supposed to have this done yesterday, but alas things are chaotic here. In a good way, a busy way, a productive way, but chaotic all the same. Martinmas is fast approaching and we have a lantern walk at the house where Julien does his Waldorf program on Thursday night. They made lovely tissue paper covered jar lanterns and I will share more on that next week. Right now I have to decide what to do here at home.

I am pretty sure we can’t top last year’s felted lanterns as we still have them hanging up and they still get used for “Lantern walks” around the house. This year I am thinking maybe either trying the tissue papier mache that we did a few years ago,
 

or trying to make one like a luminary using this amazing picture as inspiration. Unfortunately, this would be a heavily Mama done craft as it would require the scalpel to cut the picture out. However, they could colour in the back with the tissue paper. I hate the fact that I let this get away from me and have waited until last minute to decide. I really must be more mindful of this as we enter into the Holiday/Festival season.

For those not familiar with Martinmas, it is one of my most favorite Waldorf festivals. It tells of St. Martin and how one snowy, bitterly cold night, he left the procession of soldiers he was in, went over to a poor beggar man who was wearing next to nothing , split his regal red cloak, and shared it with the man. We celebrate his act of selflessness and sharing. We do a lantern walk to represent the warmth and light he showed by helping the beggar, and as a reminder for us to always carry the light within ourselves, especially as we enter into this the darkest part of the year. For the younger children, we talk about sharing and helping others when they are in need. The older children usually organize a coat drive or blanket drive or food drive to donate to the shelters on behalf of St. Martin.

It is such a wonderful message to start the holiday season off with I think. To think of others rather than yourself. To share freely with others what you have been blessed with and to feel grateful for the many things in our lives.

What about you? Do you celebrate Martinmas? Anyone out there making lanterns this year? Perhaps you could inspire me a bit and maybe a few others as well!

Happy Monday! I am doing a repost of the felted lanterns we made for Martinmas last year. I have had several requests, so here you go!
I will be back tomorrow to share this year’s lanterns, or at least what we are planning to do. It was another busy weekend and I can’t believe Martinmas is next weekend! That means Advent will soon be upon us and then St.Nicholas Day, then St. Lucia, and then Winter Solstice and then CHRISTMAS! Holy cow that is a lot of festivals. I am tired just thinking about it all.
Enjoy this re-post and I will be back with fresh thoughts tomorrow!
 

*So today was a perfectly fall day, cold, wet, and rainy. A good day to stay inside and get some things done, which for the most part happened. After lunch, my oldest asked for a craft project. I suggested some things but he shrugged them off. I asked him what he wanted to do and he asked if we could make our lanterns for next Friday’s lantern walk. I agreed but it was then revealed that he was actually listening last week when I was talking about different ways we could make our lanterns this year. I had mentioned felting a lantern and this is what he wanted to do. So, taking inspiration from my friend Fiona, we brought out our wool rovings and got to work.
 

I will not pretend to be anything even close to an expert at felting, so I suggest if you are new to wet felting you find help here or just google it and there are tons of sights that come up.
We used a bit of double bubble insulation stuff to use as our pattern/resist. I made it about 2in bigger than the jar we were using for the inside. Then to make it a bit easier for the littles, I used some pre-felt to wrap the resist so that we had a secure base to build on. You can just wrap it in roving or batting but I had some pre-felt kicking around so I used that. Then we set to designing.

Julien did his own and I worked on Noah’s. He was into his cars and didn’t really feel like helping. What is really great about this is nothing is set until you start felting. Julien changed his picture/design about 4 times before getting it just right. It is perfect for kids as they get to play and experiment before anything becomes final. At one point though, I had to remind him that we did in fact have to start felting if we wanted to eat supper that night. So we added a bit of hot water, some soap, some bubble wrap and away we went.

Now, my son has a bit of trouble with patience and this is a wonderful exercise in it. After gently pressing on our creations for about 10 minutes we could finally begin “having fun” as Julien says. This means we rub with the bubble wrap with our hands and really get the soap going. We had so much fun, Noah decided he wanted to help as well. I should mention that this is a fantastic craft for cold and flu season as you spend the whole time with warm soapy hands!

After a while, we cut out the resists and rolled up the shapes into a log of bubble wrap. The little ones wanted to help, but that only lasted about a minute.

Then I took over as you really need to work the last little bit. After 10 minutes or so of hard work I revealed our finished product. They were beautiful. I rinsed them and sewed on a ribbon handle. I made the handles quite long to avoid the heat from the candle while holding them. Then I inserted a glass mason jar and put a tea light candle in the bottom. I think I will put a drop or two of beeswax to fix the candle in for next week.

The boys were really anxious to see them lit so I waited a bit until the sun was setting to light them. It wasn’t really dark enough but dinner was calling so this was the best I could get.

Oh they are so beautiful! I can’t wait to see them in the darkness glowing with their soft light as we walk through our neighborhood next week.

We are also going to be making two lanterns from our watercolour paintings next week. More on those then. What a great day, I think I may just keep these up for the entire holiday season.