Valentine Sweeties...

Valentine's Day is coming up and I am having so much fun making little gnome & toadstool tot sweeties. 

Little Valentine bears are in theme too.  Come and visit my shop, MamaWestWind, to see all the Valentine pretties.

Until next time...

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

I am in love with making these pretty heart ornaments.  They are made out of cashmere sweaters & wool stuffing.  I love cashmere but it doesn't make good, sturdy doll making material. Through the years I've amassed a small collection of it and I'm so glad I now have a project to use it all up.  I embroidered a pretty snowflake design with shiny glass beads to sparkle on the tree.  We stamped these cute little containers with the teachers last name initial and filled it with candy & a "heart felt" thank you note.

I think I'll have to make a ton of these for my handmade tree.  I can't decide which I like better, the red cashmere with white embroidery or taupe with red embroidery.  Which is your favorite?  

Until next time...

9 years round the sun...

On your Birthday, the 24th of December. (I'm a little late in finishing this post)

Dear Michael,

You arrived on Christmas eve nine years ago and you were and always will be the best Christmas present we could have ever hoped for. Today you are a strong, tall beautiful boy with soulful chocolate eyes. You are sweet and sensitive and loving.  I love that you tell our life long friends that you love them and give them hugs and extra hugs when you see they are upset.  Though when boys your age are around I have to remember to not brush your face affectionately or reach out and hug you.  This is a new revelation, this needing to be a little separate from Mom. I so celebrate all these little milestones that you are growing up good and strong. 

You love playing Legos, dressing up in play clothes and being imaginative with your brother.  You won't admit it but your brother is your best friend and buddy.

You are smart and love to learn anything about nature, animals and science. This year you found swimming as a new passion.  You were terrified of pools at the beginning of summer, you wouldn't let me teach you. We had many conversations about facing fears in life and by the end of the summer and a swimming camp you were swimming like a fish and learning all the strokes.  How proud I was to see you boldly swimming back and forth across the pool, knowing that it wasn't just a new skill learned but one of your first fears met and faced down.

You met a soul friend.  You met him at a museum, began talking about Legos and never stopped.  His father and I looked at each other and said "I guess we need to get them together".  You also experienced him moving away and the sadness that comes with that.  Now you keep in touch with him through letters, email & phone calls.  Calling friends, what a new revelation!  I love overhearing your short conversations, mostly about your newest Lego creations.

A few days before your birthday you had some best buddies over and a birthday sleep over.  You asked for lavender cake and said it is your favorite.  You boys actually fell asleep quickly and woke up way too early, exhausted but so happy.

It's such a privilege to be your Mom.  I love you with all my heart!

Trimming the Tree...

We brought home our tree last night and stayed up late drinking cocoa and eggnog and decorating it.  I forget how exciting that is for children.  It's so beautiful experiencing it all over again with them.  Though, I am paying for that late night today though with a couple of cranky boys.  Ah well, we'll chock it up to making Christmas memories. 

Christmas decorating is forever a work in progress at our house.  Crafting our decorations is half the fun!  We like simple and handmade. We have very few stored decorations actually.  Most of it is made from natural materials and composted when we're done with it.  Things like pine greenery and pine cones are brought inside.  Last year we dipped pine cones in beeswax and made a garland.  This year we hung them on the Christmas tree. 

I bought a straw wreath base to make a Christmas wreath for our door this year.  Months ago I found burlap ribbon for 50% off and snapped it up.  Wrapping it was so easy. I added some pretty fabric lace ribbon too. I found pine cones outside to hot glue to the base.  Easy and beautiful.  It made me want to paint our anemic looking door to show it off.  Perhaps brick red?

Our sweet baby Jesus, the center of it all.  Click, here, for that tutorial.

  
I also found this wool for 50% off.  I want to make a garland for our dining room.  Beeswax pine cones and more toadstool ornaments maybe?  I never need much of an excuse to make toadstools or play with beeswax.

I have to make another plug for this beautiful little book.  We finished Mary's Little Donkey last night.  A special night to end it on, after decorating our tree.  If you're looking for ways to keep the spirit and meaning of Christmas at the forefront of thought with your kids, this is a great one.  There is one illustration per chapter and they are lovely, lovely pictures.  I adore this book.  I think reading it will become a Christmas time tradition for us. 

What are you crafting or reading this Holiday season?

Until next time...

Baby Jesus, Tutorial...

Gosh it's been so long since I've done any crafting for myself!  Now that my shop is slowing down I
can focus on crafting for my family and all the important things like making Christmas cookies!

I've been wanting a special baby Jesus for years. One that fits our nativity stable. Here's a simple baby I came up with.

I began by needle felting the bedding.  I used a rough wool in neutral with speckled blue & orange in it.  Then needle felted white on top of that.  They look like little oval nests.  You can use whatever colors you like of course.  I wanted neutrals and light blue. 

I used the baby pegs I often use for my shop. If you don't have these on hand you could easily use a wooden bead and a bit of stuffing for his body.  Or even needle felt his body. 

I drew eyes on him in pencil.  The blue is a square of cashmere from a re-purposed sweater.  You can use wool felt or whatever you have on hand.  I cut it with pinking shears and then folded it in half to make a triangle. I glued the baby peg in, then glued the first folded layer of cashmere down around baby.  I did this because I wanted as little glue as possible on the top layer of cashmere, so no glue can be seen.  Next I glued the corners of the blanket down.

Here he is all finished. I love the varied textures, he's so soft and snuggled looking.  I will keep him at the center of our table and on Christmas eve we'll add him to our nativity. 

If you use this tutorial please link back here,  I would love to see them. 

Until next time...

Our Advent...

 

I have felt a little crazed this Advent season.  My etsy shop, MamaWestWind, has been buzzing and I have been crafting away, staying up too late & pushing myself perhaps a little too hard.  Ah, but every evening our bed time routine brings me back to peace.  This year we've added a few things to our Advent traditions.  The above paper advent calendar from, A Child's Dream is just beautiful. 

Every evening the boys take turns opening a window.  The drawings are just exquisite.  The boys ooh and ahh over the delicate little pictures.  

The angel descends her star ladder one star every night as we count down the days until Christmas.  

The stable awaits Mary & Joesph. Our little blue advent candle will be lit on Christmas eve.  This year we are reading, "Mary's Little Donkey and the Escape to Egypt", by Gunhild Sehlin.  It's such a beautiful book about Mary & Joesph and their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem and their escape to Egypt.  This book is truly bringing the story alive for us.  It's told so sweetly from the perspective of Mary's donkey and the animals around them.  Each night both the boys listen intently to one chapter.  For Owen this is a major deal as he usually walks around and leaves to play while we're reading anything long or with few pictures.

 

Mary and Joseph are traveling from our kitchen towards the stable.  Each night they move a little closer.

We made this beeswax nativity last year after seeing it on Small Things blog.  I love, love, love this nativity.  So beautiful and smells so wonderful.  It resides on the nature table.

So what are your favorite Advent traditions?  I would love to hear about them.  

Until next time...

Homefire Retreat Getaway

Lately, I've been hard at work preparing for my upcoming toy making workshop. We will be making these leaf sprite bendy dolls.  The work shop will be held this Sunday at the Homefire Retreat, given by Radical Homemakers of New Mexico in Santa Fe.  I'm so happy to be presenting but even more thrilled to be attending the other workshops. Workshops such as The Garden in Winter, Autumn in the Kitchen, & Celebrating the Light with Story, Song, and Verse.  

My husband and I honeymooned in Santa Fe, so we decided to make it a weekend getaway.  The kids will be staying with our good friends and we will have ourselves a weekend away!  We'll have 2 nights, and a day together to explore Santa Fe.  Then while I'm at the retreat my husband will be checking out the famous Canyon Road galleries.  We haven't done anything like this since Michael was born (almost 9 years ago) so we're pretty excited!  The boys are excited too, they have been counting the days until their weekend sleepover.

I can't wait to share toy making with this group and learn more about Radical Homemaking.

Until next time...

Our Halloween

We had a fun Halloween!  It began the day before when we had friends over for dinner.  I wish I had taken pictures.  We had a candlelit dinner with four kids & my dear friend, Monica.  We ate pasta and bone bread, with apple & pumpkin pie for dessert.  Yummy! 

For Halloween we carved our pumpkins, put up spiders and webs and readied the house for trick-or-treaters.  We set up a trick!  We took the screen out of our kitchen window, which is right next to the front door.  We opened the window and when people came to ring the doorbell, we said "Boo", and handed them candy through the window instead.  We only were able to try it twice before we went trick or treating ourselves.  Surprisingly, most of the houses were dark in our neighborhood so when a friend spontaneously texted and said come over, we did.  She had her house lit up with candles and was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood.  She made the boys cocoa and read them her story.  I was suprised at how little my ghouls cared for trick-or-treating and how much they loved going to our friend's house.  I think we went to 10 houses all and all. 

Later that night the Sugar Fairy came and picked up most of our candy.  They boys picked out 15 pieces to keep and put the rest outside on the doorstep for the fairy.  She came and left some little toys and books and a tiny thank you note.  After a busy few days I am ready for a breather. 

How was your Halloween?

Until next time...

Pumpkins, pumpkins on the vine...

"Pumpkins, pumpkins on the vine.  Growing big, taking their time..." This is a line form one of our favorite Autumn poems.  Autumn circle time is my favorite of the year, perhaps because Autumn is my favorite season. 

This year was the first year we've grown pumpkins. 



We planted Sugar Pie pumpkins and so far we have three pumpkins to make in to something yummy!  Now the vines are looking really spent so we may not have too many more to harvest.

We recently found this book and are loving it.  It's a factual book about the life cycle of pumpkins.  I've been busy collecting some yummy, Vegan, pumpkin related recipes on Pinterest.  What to try first?

How are you celebrating the season?