Fall Equinox with a Harvest Moon

So this year's harvest moon (the full moon closest to Fall equinox) falls on the equinox, how neat is that? Because of this, the moon was giving off a spectacular amount of light. Well, we wanted to celebrate both the moon and the fall. We started with a Harvest Moon painting. I cut a hole in a piece of watercolour paper. Kaia really liked the crayon resist technique we used on the leaf banner, so we started with crayon again. Once we had our picture down, we went back in with watercolour.  

Kaia loves adding salt to watercolour paintings. As it dries, the salt absorbs some of the water and paint where it sits, leaving a speckley texture. Once the paintinng is completely dry you can then gently brush it off, or just leave it. It will fall off on its own with time. If Kaia had a full container of salt to shake out, she would happily shake the entire container out, so I put a reasonable amount in a small shaker for her to use. It's so much gentler on both of us than trying to regulate and stop her salt usage. Then, because she's 2 (and shiny is always better, isn't it?) she added some glitter.
 

Our finished painting:

Detail of the grass:

Later on we got the kite down. There wasn't a whole lot of wind, but Kaia was really excited anyway.

After dinner we went outside to enjoy the moon and have a small fire on the back patio. 

It was nice.