Autumn beauty, persimmons and puppets

Today was yet another absolutely gorgeous day, fresh morning and warm afternoon. We headed for the country and enjoyed the crisp red and orange colors that seem to permeate everything these days.

The other day we read a story, cannot remember now which it was (might have been Tiptoes), but it mentioned how the persimmons tree was empty of leaves yet full of ripe fruit. Kaleena reminded me that perhaps the big persimmons tree at the farm would now be bearing the sweet persimmons fruit, and today we checked, and there was indeed loads of little orange sweet persimmons fruits ready for eating. Kaleena and Keenan spent the morning coaxing the fruit down from the tree as the branches were quite high. We gathered a nice little pile, besides what they ate on the spot.

We enjoyed the beauty of the country lanes before we headed for our weekly homeschooling class.

The little ones made puppets today.

We used socks and paper plates and bags and an assortment of random nature finds as well as buttons, yarns, glitter, feathers and wool, and the children then were asked to create a forrest creature from these parts.

Next week there will be a puppet show using these lovely little puppets.

here is a rainbow trout in the making

Keenan made a bear

 we had an owl

 a rabbit

 also a squirrel,  a couple of fairies and other wood creatures.

~may you have a lovely evening~

More mandalas

Kaleena has been creating a lot of mandalas these past few days. She brings out her box of treasures each morning when she awakes and makes one, this morning she brought out her crystals( I did not get a picture) but I love the endless possibilities of the mandalas.

I felt inspired by her creativity and brought out our woodland finds and glued them on to a piece of cardboard. Kaleena made little creatures which she quickly whisked away wrapping them up for her brothers birthday. I sprinkled my finished mandala with glitter and hung it outside in a sunny spot where it sparkles when the sun catches it. I tried to get a picture of the sparkle but did not succeed. It does look very pretty, an earthy sun catcher.

~Blessings~

The beauty that surrounds us

Today was a true autumn day, rainy, windy and temperatures in the 60ties, it was delicious.

These are a few images from our day

~a good evening to you~

An autumn wreath and roasted chestnuts

In celebration of the formal arrival of autumn

The past few days the chestnuts have been dropping from the big tree in the back yard, Keenan and Kaleena have been very excited about gathering these treasures, it is the first thing they do when they wake up and the last thing before going to bed. They have become master tool users in their efforts to free these treasures from their spiky shells

Today we roasted them in the oven, as they do not keep very long unless refrigerated or frozen.

We examined the difference between the chestnut and the buck eye, as the buck eyes are poisonous to eat. When they are in the shell it is easy to tell them apart as the edible chestnuts have very unfriendly shells. The one on the left is the buck eye, they are smooth all around and shinier, the edible chestnuts have a matte finish and comes to a point with a little "tail" on them.
As we are very familiar with these nuts, the children could tell them apart without problem.

To roast them I cut an X with a sharp knife on the flattest side, piercing the shell completely

then I put them all on a stainless steel pan, set them in the oven on 425 for about 30 minutes

then sprinkled with sea salt

the children both really enjoyed de-shelling them and loved the sweet potato taste of the chestnuts

While sitting outside eating our roasted chestnuts I got started with a wreath I have had in mind for a while now. We have been gathering treasures from nature for weeks now, and the piles are growing, so I decided to make a wreath that will serve as the center piece on our dining table. Inside the wreath I will place bees wax candles which I plan to make later this week.

To make the wreath I used a grapevine base and a glue gun, then I simply added any and all the things we had found. I even used the skin of the roasted chestnuts as we were pealing them. I realize that the buck eyes that I added will shrivel up some, but  think they will still look lovely.

I had a general idea of how I wanted the finished wreath to look, but really just allowed the natural flow of creativity to guide me more than anything, and so it actually turned out very different than I had initially imagined.

I  love how it turned out, and look forward to adding it to out table with a candle and a simple cloth under.

~Thanks for stopping over, and may you have a wonderful autumn season~