Acorn Garlands

Okay, I admit it. We did these back in October, when acorns were plentiful. But, we still have ours hanging for the Christmas season, and I still think they are beautiful. I have been thinking of adding a couple strands of cranberry garlands to hang with them. And, if you're anything like me, you very well may have a stash of acorns hanging around still that you collected in the Fall.

I first saw acorn garlands on The Magic Onions, and while I love theirs, we made ours a wee bit differently, for a couple reasons. For one thing, they were making theirs to hang on a tree, and ours we hung free, I wanted the acorns to hang upright and in the same direction. I didn't want big gaps between the acorns, because there would be nothing, like foliage, filling them in. The other reason I went with this method was that we had a lot of acorns, and I did not really fancy gluing all their caps on. In addition to that, many of the acorns were very fresh, and so their little hats were still very secure, but I knew as they dried out they wouldn't be. We made some to give as Christmas gifts, and I didn't want them shedding their fruit on unfortunate giftees. 

And so I drilled my holes through the caps, where they punctured through both the cap, and the nut itself. This way, once strung, the twine holds the acorns together. I can even say now that this actually works, since it is a couple months down the line and many of the acorns are loose in their hats now, but they are held fast. This also places most the weight of the acorn below the twine, so that they stay upright.

I set Kaia to work with a big, blunt embroidery needle, threading acorns with wooden beads between them. Make sure you have a good sturdy yarn if you want to use yarn, the acorns get awful heavy and our first garland snapped in the middle the night after we hung it up. After that, we used kitchen twine, and it has held fine.

At 3 years old, Kaia absolutely loved this activity. She liked that she was "sewing", and she really seemed to enjoy the challenge of getting the needle through the little holes. She put three beads between each of her acorns, and concentrated very hard on getting the right number in the right order each time.

She was so very proud of her work!

Katalin gave it the taste test, (not very good,) and of course the chickens had to come see what we were doing and if we would feed it to them.

Kaia even kept on going, threading away, all through me getting Katalin changed, nursed, and down for her nap. I am thinking that I may need to order some wooden acorns that I can drill holes through. A nice bucket of acorns, big wooden beads, yarn, and "needle" would probably go over very well. :)

We put some strands away for Christmas gifting, and hung one up over my kitchen window. I think they are so lovely!

Glue and Paper Painted Fall Leaves

Kaia loves painting with some kind of resist, like watercolour over crayon, so I thought we'd try something slightly different. I used white craft glue to make leaf outlines on a variety of colours of construction paper. Since the glue dries clear, the colour of the paper will show through where glue has been applied.

The girls painted the leaves with watercolours. Because we would be cutting the leaves out, this was an opportunity to use up some odd shaped scraps of paper.

They used so much water that on the porous construction paper, some of the paint bled under the glue. It had a neat effect, though, and you can still make out the glue lines. On the bright red paper, they almost seemed to glow.

This was the longest Katalin ever painted without trying to eat the art supplies, and she had so much fun. I loved watching her really get into every step of the process, and just completely experience the medium. She spent quite awhile simply dipping her brush in the paint and swishing it clean again in the water. She got paint everywhere, it was great!

They each had a piece of paper towel for dabbing their brushes dry on, and when Katalin noticed the way hers picked up colour, she began stamping it in the paint and then on her paper, she was so thrilled with the results! ...And then she decided it would be a fun thing to do to her face, too.

When the leaves were dry, I cut them out around the outside glue edge, and Kaia helped me hang them up on the glass door. I had a very hard time taking a picture of them because of all the light behind the door when I decided to do my photographing, (I'm not always very patient...) but you get the idea, anyway. They are so colourful and pretty cascading down the door!

(Vegan) Pumpkin Muffins

Well, they are only pumpkin in shape, and they may lean a bit closer to cupcake than truly muffin, but "Vegan, Pumpkin Shaped, Apple Spiced, Cupcake Muffins" seemed a bit lengthy of a title. We sort of made this recipe up as we went along... It's not a big, crazy stretch on your basic muffin / cupcake, but they came out sooo tasty, so I wanted to share. We used a a silicone pumpkin shaped baking mold that Kaia picked out at a thrift store, and Kaia of course added and mixed all the ingredients.This recipe made roughly 24 muffins.

Ingredients:

•2 C Soy Milk

•2 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar

•1 C Sugar

•¼ C Brown Sugar

•4 tsp Vanilla Extract

 •⅔ C Canola / Vegetable Oil

•1 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon

•Pinch Nutmeg

•¼ C Applesauce 

•2 ½ C White Wheat Flour

•1 ½ tsp Baking Powder

•1 tsp Baking Soda

•½ tsp Salt

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 350° F
2. Mix the soy milk and apple cider vinegar, then give it a few minutes to curdle.
3. Into the soy milk and apple cider vinegar mixture, beat in you sugar, vanilla, oil, cinnamon, applesauce, and nutmeg.
4. While mixing, add in slowly (or sift,) the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir until relatively full.
5. Grease up molds, (or use cupcake liners,) and fill to about ⅔ full.
6. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until done.
7. Let cool before icing.

I went light on icing, only adding faces and stems. They passed the kid test with flying colours, and disappeared far faster than I expected. We're going to make another batch or two for our upcoming Halloween party. :)

Autumn