Welcome Giuliana!

Waldorf Table: Winter

Finished today... finally. Our winter scene! The table had been empty ever since Baby Jesus disappeared after Christmas. The current scene is after Elsa Beskow's "Olle's Reise zu König Winter". We love it! Even though spring time will be here soon already...

Felt Flower

 This one above I made myself! (about 1 hr)

Find the tutorial here: http://mysocalledgreenlife.com/2011/07/felt-flowers-my-favorite-project-of.html

It's Fall - check out our fall table!

We also have chicken!

I just saved 35 Euros buying wood animals at the Ostheimer Outlet near us. A real treat. The shop experience was wonderful - being surrounded by soooo many handcrafted wood animals. The best impression was looking at about 50 baby Jesus' in one row. We had a hard time choosing. Originally we only wanted to get a gift for a friend's 4th birthday. L had also already gotten some for christmas. Then she fell in love with a tree! Which I am so happy about, bc my Mom used to have such a tree when I was a kid (I'm still mad at her for throwing it out or whatever happened with it). So it was a good "excuse" for getting our own. Since most of the items were half price off, I found myself also buying some really small animals for the tree - a squirrel, a bird, an owl and a little mouse. Most of them were about 5 Euros each. Still a lot, but so worth it, considering they're all handmade and everlasting.

Since L has about all the toys she "needs" until she's 10, I'd recommend everyone to add to the animal farm (preferrably animals from our real life experience), if anyone wants to get her a little gift (hello Grandparents, Daddy & Co!).

Hello Baby Juna

matching card...

Mother Earth joined us (Root children III)

Spring Table (part 2)

Story of the Root Children (Etwas von den Wurzelkindern)

This book by Sibylle von Olfers (amazon.com, amazon.de) is a classic.

While I was doing a bit of research on the season's table, I realized that especially the spring sceneries often are based on this story - the root children being awakened by Mother Earth and then they turn into flower children in spring with new colorful dresses and each of them representing one kind of flower. Until after summer and fall they return to Mother Earth and sleep through the winter.

Today was a really mild almost spring type of day. I took down all our winter decoration and cleaned my living room window (I don't clean any other windows as this is the only window we actually look through, the others are not worth it... hehe). And then Lenara and I got all excited about creating our own little root children. I made one today. And once again it felt soooo good creating something with my hands. While I was making it, Lenara took out her finger colors and colored her entire table - no, she didn't want a sheet of paper to paint on. I knew it was going to be a mess eventually, but I could tell she was enjoying it a lot - as much as I was enjoying my work. So I let her do what she had to do. And after all, I did what I had to do... clean. ;)

Since Lenara enjoyed the Christmas play on our winter table so much, our spring one will be the root children. We'll collect natural things like little flowers, stones, etc. outside during our walks and I will continue making more children, mother earth and the spring and summer dresses. We already collected little oval stones to paint them and use them as ladybugs and all type of bugs that appear in the book. I can't wait! A project in progress. And one we definitely both enjoy as much.

And these as well

I had them in my mind all night... think I'm going to make some like that.
(found on ebay, not possible to link).

The little star (continued)

Both Lenara and I really enjoy our new little tradition. She wants to read the book about the little star about every night. We light up the room only with candles and I read it to her. A magical atmosphere. Last night Lenara surprised me. After I had read the book one time, she asked to look through it again. She recited every (EVERY!) line of the book - correctly. And it's not an easy language - but rhymes. Children remember rhymes so quickly. Amazing!!! It was so fascinating to watch her. And she was proud of herself indeed.

This is what our scene looks like right now:

1st Sunday in Advent = Scenery
2nd Sunday in Advent = Stars, Sheep & Cock
3rd Sunday in Advent = Ox & Donkey






to come:

4th Sunday in Advent = Flower (Christmas Rose)
Christmas Eve = Baby Jesus with Maria & Joseph

How to knit a Farm OR our own little Christmas Story

Our day nanny encouraged us parents to think about our own Christmas and Advent traditions. Once again I realized that so far most traditions stem from my own parents. I'm really willing to find some own and implement something meaningful into our own little family (it's really interesting, now that we have a male part added to our mini-family, I start feeling more like a separate family - seperate from my parents' family and aware of our own unit).

One idea was to realise a little story into a Waldorf season's table kind of scene. I bought this book for Advent. It tells about two stars leading a cock, a sheep, a donkey and a cow to the house of baby jesus. It's very simple and perfect for 2-3 year olds.



So for the first advent Sunday I set up a natural scene. Lenara is so proud of her own little christmas tree. ;) We don't have room for a real christmas tree, so I thought this was a really cute idea.



I will make a star and we'll add it to the scene tonight (I meant to do that yesterday, but I only got the book from Amazon today). The following Sundays until Christmas I'm planning to add the animals and eventually the scene with baby Jesus. And I'm hoping we'll read the book every once in a while, so the scene becomes meaningful.

The only problem: I don't have any of the animals/figures... except for a sheep and baby Jesus (in a nutshell). So I looked up how to make them. I don't have a lot of time, so I'm happy this story just includes 4 animals. And I just found some really awesome free instructions for knitting a farm in Waldorf style.

I'm not sure, if it's easy enough for me and the little time I have. But I really want to do it. Besides it's an awesome idea to make more animals at one point.

I'm really excited about this new TRADITION becoming alive. Fingers crossed...

More fairies

Some new baby arrivals. Some more fairies. May they watch the newborns well.





p.s. Kaya and Mirja are twins. Hope they'll like their fairies. ;)

Felting Ideas

We had our summer fest at the nanny's today. I got so inspired by all the felt work she has for the kids to play with. And since there's so much on my list, I decided to try wet felting today (instead of all the useful things I should have been doing tonight). And I had two really cool ideas - I'm so excited, can you tell? My camera is out of batteries right now, so I can only post my work tomorrow. Here's a clue:


Stay tuned!





Simple: Purple-ish felt ball in the middle on a stick with some green wool wrapped around and a bright red tissue paper wrapped around (not even glued). I hate to say it, but I loved the process how this project came together so quickly, could be realized easily, I learned something about wet felting (my original intention) and I love the result. Feel free to copy, if you like it too. ;)

Wohoo, I felted a tiny ball! Go me!