Hello, Autumn!

It definitely feels as though Autumn has arrived to our little home. The past few days have been rainy with a little chill in the air. We have been collecting leaves and pinecones on our nature walks to add to our Autumn nature nook on the homeschool hutch.

The orange pumpkin is ours from our garden and the other one is from the market. Forest also had his own little pumpkin from the market, but threw it a few times like a ball in our kitchen. Sunshine ended up retrieving it and chewed it up a bit.

Yesterday afternoon a surprise arrived in the mail for Sienna! It was a Little House in the Big Woods paper doll book. There has been so much paper doll play at the table. It was such a sweet little book I thought I'd share.

And, while Sienna played with her paper dolls, Forest played with the barns and animals in the living room for a bit. It is a wonderful thing to have littles completely engaged in their play. He didn't even notice when I took the photos of him.

We moved some furniture around in the living room, because Forest kept diving off this little table onto the sofa. Now, it's found a perfect place below the windows in the play area for displaying our seasonal book basket.

Happy Autumn!

On This Eve of Easter

This morning we took Sienna to her very first Easter egg hunt with other children. She was a little nervous at first, but once she started running to look for eggs, she was off! After she found her 6 eggs, she turned with a look of worry, because there was so many other little ones around her and she had gone pretty far into the field. Luckily, I followed behind her at a close distance and she saw me right away. The eggs were, of course, filled with unpleasant candy, so we told her that she could leave the candy for the Easter Bunny tonight and she (yes, Sienna believes the Easter bunny must be a girl) may bring her some tastier candy. 

Before the Easter egg hunt began!

Sienna and her Daddy 

 Sienna turned around to see us!

Me, keeping a safe distance behind Sienna.

 Checking to see how many eggs she found!

While we were in town, we also visited the Flea Market Shop. Daddy found a Miles Davis CD for $3.00 (it's in the car) and some salmon lures for $1.50.

Mama found these three books. I thought the first two books would be a wonderful addition to our homeschool library when we study Pioneers. And, the last book, we are adding to our collection of cat themed books. They were a very good price and all hardback, too! There were also a few books on the Dust Bowl that I may go back for... 

$1.00 

$1.00 

$1.00

When we came home, Daddy went out to tend our garden pea patch. Me and the little ones stayed in and tended to the garden apartment to get it ready for the Easter Bunny's visit tonight.

 

Our Spring nature shelf.

And, inside the nature shelf... some of our recent finds on our nature walks. 

We set up the little table for the Easter Bunny, too! Sienna's basket is on the pink play silk and Forest's basket is on the blue play silk. Sienna chose the colors for the play silks, since she is sure Forest's favorite color will be blue.

We also set up this Easter playscape on our bookshelf. Sienna loves to play with all the bunnies. This Easter basket is for Mama and Daddy.

After we finished tidying up our nest, Daddy took Sienna over to the Pea Patch to see the work he did and to take a few photos.

 

Today, Daddy planted red onions, sweet onions, green kale, red romaine and green leaf lettuce. All of these plants were from the Skagit Valley Food Co-op.

Sienna on a balance beam next to our patch.

This year's pea patch. 

And, another view.

Here are some of the seeds that we are going to be planting very soon!

We also will be planting these seeds my Aunt Carol (Thank you!) sent to Sienna very soon, too.

We hope that you are having a happy day on this Easter Eve!

Ah, Spring!

Today on the first day of Spring, we watched the weather from our cozy, little home change from lion to lamb and back again. There was wind and hail with sun breaks between. Chai Guy watched from his window perch and then ran away down the hall when a loud gust of wind swept by. 

We put our Spring books in a basket, prepared our Spring nature nook, baked two loaves of whole wheat bread, painted with watercolors, created some meal blessing cards (I will share these vey soon!) and played lots. 

Our Spring books in a basket. One of our thrifted Easter place mats is peeking out in the corner.

 A Spring centerpiece on our harvest table.

 

Our Spring nature nook. We will be adding our nature finds. Maybe even a nest! I am hoping to expand our nature nook into a nature table very soon.

Today, I tried a new recipe for my bread. I used whole wheat flour and honey.

The yeast getting all foamy. 

Dough, ready to rise. I kneaded the dough all by hand today.

My two whole wheat loaves. Can't wait to try them! (I am still using a Pyrex container for one of the loaves. Hence, the wider and flatter shape of one.)

 Sienna painting with watercolors. Chai Guy likes the movement of the brush strokes when we paint. (Yes, she is wearing the same dress from my Saint Patrick's Day post. It is her new favorite dress and looks very Spring-like!)

 Happy Spring! (You can see my scarf waiting for me to knit...) 

On this late Winter day...

This morning, Sienna and I set up our late winter nature table on our new to us heart bookshelf. We will be using this little bookshelf for homeschool, too. The first shelf and the top will be for our nature table and the bottom three shelves for homeschool/crafting supplies.

On our seasonal display, we included the Winter book by Gerda Muller. We love these books! They are filled with beautiful illustrations depicting the seasons without words. Inside we put up a Winter postcard and a few rocks from her collection.

Today, we also decided to start on some of our Valentine's Day crafts. We needed a new wreath for the door, since we put away the green Christmas one. So, I cut out a wreath from cardboard and a bunch of hearts in different sizes. Sienna designed and glued the wreath the way she wanted. It was just a simple paper project to get us started on some of the upcoming ones we have planned for next month. 

Happy late Winter! 

It will be fun to see how our nature table evolves over the seasons.