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.

 

Herb Harvest

Brought in some of the herbs to dry! Harvested at least half of the rosemary, thyme, oregano, and savory, and bit of the basil. Took in a cabbage, too, and another musk melon. Ohhh they are so juicy good! Brought in a little kale, too, but our kale has been plagued. :(

Aside from those herbs, cabbages and muskmelon, this bed also has broccoli, kale, peppers, onions, parsley, sage, dill, and some of the tomato plants.

Here's the basket we brought in today! Minus the melon because we ate that already, it was so good... : )

 

Speaking of harvest, we went to the DeGraaf Nature Center's Heritage Harvest Day, too. Kaia's dipped a candle and made a corn husk doll. We saw a hammered dulcimers band, (so cool! Katalin loved them, too,) a bench built (which Kaia tested,) watched some dying, spinning, and weaving, made a little friend, made a big friend, ran through some giant mud puddles, and got to have some apple cider and even some vegan chocolate chip cookies!

It's almost Fall! Leaf Banner

To celebrate Fall's arrival, we started with a leaf rubbing banner to put up. We took a little hike and collected as many different kinds of leaves as we could find... except the poison ivy. We found lots, but we let it be. :) Then we took them all home a laid them out on the kitchen floor.

We taped a long piece of paper over top of them, and got down to business rubbing them with crayons. It took Kaia awhile to get the hang of using the crayons sideways, but once she understood the result she got from it, she went to town. She wanted it took, "look like a rainbow," so we used lots of colour.

 I thought the lines from the tile gaps would be pretty subtle, but when Kaia discovered the texture difference she started scribbling in them. Ah, well :)

Then we got out the watercolours and painted over the entire thing. The crayon wax, resists the paint. Kaia doesn't use a whole lot of discretion when it comes to how much water a piece of paper can handle, so I just kept a paper towel handy and half an eye on what she was doing, soaking up pools as they appeared.

Finished banner, it was hard to get a very good picture of the long banner, but here's what I got.

I think it looks great, although it could probably do with a pass from the iron ;) I'll get around to that some day, I'm sure. lol.

(Thank you Filth Wizardry for the idea)