nature in the home / / painting with nature

 

Every year I eagerly await the Holiday season. Much as that includes my love and appreciation for Thanksgiving, I just can't help but crave all things Christmas. There is something so comforting about coming home to twinkling lights, warm cookie smells, and evergreen. But I just can't bring myself to decorate until after Thanksgiving. To me, it doesn't feel right to celebrate one holiday when the one prior hasn't even ended. Crazy OCD, perhaps! So we save our decorating for the day after. But I do envy admire fellow bloggers and friends who are already blissfuly decorated. It's a struggle, I swear. Because of that, we have been trying to find little ways to sneak in some Christmas-ness, so that at that very second when Thanksgiving ends, we can (in good conscious) allow Christmas to take over.

Logan loved our new 'paintbrushes.' Sadly though, these were one time use, as they did not rinse well-- but it was worth it. 

We had intended to decorate this tree here with pine needles today, but mother nature decided to rain on our parade...literally. 

We'll have to try something with the pine needles again. 
Such fun to work with-- and only slightly prickly.

nature in the home / / pinecones + paints

Here is another one of our fall finds.

We found these perfect pinecones a few weeks back. 
Heaps of them coated the pine needle blanketed ground. 
I have never seen so many at once. 

We filled a whole grocery store bag of them with plans to get creative with them. I have memories from when I was younger of making pinecone art.

Logan loves combining nature and art. So thats what we did. 

Pinecones + paint. 

They came out lovely. Our plan is to in the next week or so, add some string to ready them for our Christmas tree. They are still sticky with drips of sap. I had plans to bake it off, but I kind of dig the winterish look the sap gives.

Linking up here.

nature in the home / / autumn: my pet rock

Early fall we took a ride down to the beach, and came home with lots of treasures. 
This gem was one of them. 
We've been carrying this rock around since, always thinking it looked more like a seal than a rock. Oddly enough it came from the ocean.

So today we turned it into a seal, officially. 
A circus seal to be exact-- notice that ball on its nose.

Logan loved painting and again getting her hands on the glue gun. 
I loved showing her how we can take one thing and turn it into something else. 

Linking up here.

nature in the home: sensory play

We've been admiring the berries on the tree in our front yard for the past two weeks now. We've also been brainstorming ideas for an autumnal inspired sensory bin for about that long. On Wednesday, these two thoughts collided and it was great. We combined our natural elements: acorns, berries, rocks, leaves, and a pumpkin (for good measure) with a few 'play mobil' staples and we were busy for hours.

In this little world there were concerts, surfs playing fetch with a dog and a frog, and a big strawberry shortcake doll bossing around a little strawberry shortcake doll. Life in this box was interesting and sweet. I'm glad I got to witness it.

Our berries have begun to turn pruney and dry out. We have big plans for the acorns though. Lo wants to find a way to incorporate them into our winter bin. She may be slightly obsessed with them. Especially since we found some with tops! Woohoo! It's the little things, really.

Here is our last sensory bin.


Linking up here.

nature in the home / / a u t u m n

It's no secret that my little girl over here is most happy with art supplies in hand. It's also no secret that this girl is just as happy when carrying around her nature collections: sticks, leaves, rocks, you name it. So when I found these white mini-pumpkins, sold in threes, I knew they would be perfect. And they are.

Linking up with Lou (and many others) here.

nature in the home

We finally found something to do with our recent autumn nature finds that have been sitting either still in the buckets we collected them in or on the shelf. Today was a cold and gray day, even colder as the day went on. Logan has a bit of a cold with a runny, stuffy nose, and a unmanageable mood, so this low key indoor (with a touch out outdoor) activity was perfect for today. We spent a great deal of time  making up different scenes, shapes, and sorted groups.

We spelled out our names too. Since we have been working on letters in our preschool homeschool, Logan was more than ready to attempt to create the letters of our names. 

We made acorn squares, circles, triangles, and swirls.

 

We made a beautiful flower out of the prettiest leaves we could find right outside. Lo loved switching the center of the flower out with acorns, shells, and rocks.

Here's is Lo at the source of our sweet colorful fall leaves.

 Linking up here.

legit flower card: nature in the home

Today, we made a flower card-- with actual hand picked flowers, and boy did it turn out even better than I had envisioned.

Materials: Paper, envelope, tape for decorating, and fresh flowers. 

Our "decorating" didn't consist of much, in attempts to keep the flowers as the main focus. Such great colors, mission accomplished. 

Logan's Grammy was the lucky recipient of this here beaut. Here is the inside of the card, drawn by Lo herself. I'm especially proud of the hair, though I think it was purely coincidental that it turned out to actually look like Grammy's hair.

Happy to be joining in with Lou over at LITTLE GREEN SHED for her Nature in the Home series. 

nature in the home

 

Since before Lo could walk, she has always been our little nature girl. Yes, she was conditioned by her mama and daddy, but nonetheless, she didn't mind it one bit. Except for that short period where she was completely freaked out by grass, and it touching her skin [which provided for excellent entertainment for cousins and uncles...my poor girl!] But aside from that, Lo has always loved all things nature: flowers, dirt, twigs/branches/sticks, rocks, leaves, and grass [eventually.] Some of my favorite photos of her involve her being one with nature. I will have to find them and post, because they are just too cute to not share/document. With all that being said, we really try to implement simple and natural play things for her-- so you can imagine my excitement when I came across these actual legit branch colored pencils in our local Home Goods. They arrived courtesy of the Easter Bunny, and have been a hit ever since. Everyone that sees them just has to try them out. The best and worst part about them is their actual realness. Dirt crumbs are inevitable with use, but we don't mind that real feel.

Linking up [ for the first time] with Lou from little green shed and her nature in the home series.