Fun Fall Project - Moody Pumpkins!

Thanks to Lenka and Asia from Forest Fairy Crafts for this fun family fall craft! Click HERE to download the pdf tutorial.

Decorating for autumn is a favorite activity in our home.  We rush to the cobweb-draped aisles in every store. This bat to hang from the ceiling?  Or that ghost?

 

Our favorite spooky goodies, though, are the ones we made ourselves over the years.  My daughter's felt pet spider. Flower fairy witches.  And now our pumpkins.

 

My Forest Fairy Crafts partner, Asia, created these little charmers.  The pumpkins are fun to make and even more fun for creative play.  Their mouth has a loose stitch so children can switch the pumpkin's mood from happy to sad to confused.  

After we made the pumpkins just for the fun of it, I found another valuable use for our pumpkins.  I teach kindergarten and first grade.  This time of year, I see how children struggle to express themselves when they get upset, sad, or worried.  Words can be hard to find.  The pumpkins will be a great tool for any child who needs a safe way to communicate without saying a word.  I hope to make one with every student in my class that they can keep in a pocket or on their desk so when they are overwhelmed with emotions, the pumpkin can help share how they are feeling.

That's what I call a great pumpkin :)

Happy crafting!

Lenka

Click HERE to download the pdf tutorial! 

Fun and Easy End-of-Summer Craft: Honey Bunny Gnome (Tutorial)

by Lenka Vodicka of Forest Fairy Crafts

Late summer is all about the county fair in our town.  We're in the country, and our fair is under giant pine trees with local charities selling food along Treat Street.  Children enter their paintings, poems, and even Ugly Cakes.  Last year my daughter, Anika, won Best of Show for her Ugliest Cake, but that's another story.  Every year we visit the cows and pigs, goats and rabbits, and every year my daughter wants an animal of her own in the fair. Last summer, we decided that a bunny would be a great family pet. We joined 4H so she could learn about caring for a rabbit and we welcomed a soft mini-rex rabbit to our home.  Anika named him Pumpkin. Pumpkin stayed at the fair this year.  A highlight of his visit was the Rabbit Costume Contest.  Anika sewed a hat and we designed a wizard cape together and he won a Blue Ribbon for Most Enchanting.  I also helped the local yarn store with their knitting demonstrations at the fair. What could I create to remember Pumpkin's debut at the fair?  A bunny gnome, of course. The pattern for the Bunny Gnome is quick and fun.  As an added bonus, the little heart inspired Anika to bring the gnome along to her first day of school.  He stayed in her backpack as a reminder of the fun of summer.  And the memories we made together. Enjoy!  Please email me (Lenka) if you have any questions or get stuck at lenka@forestfairycrafts.com.

Download the Bunny Gnome tutorial by clicking here!

 

3 Tips to Improve Indoor Air Quality

We're happy to have a new guest blogger, Green Cleaning Coach Leslie Reichert. Hailed as the "Martha Stewart Of Green Cleaning", Leslie is a cleaning expert that uses her sparkling personality, great sense of humor and contagious passion to engage her fans and followers. She has learned the hard way what toxic chemicals can do to your body. After years of owning and running a large residential housekeeping service - her body rebelled. She found that her immune system was “broken” and the only way to heal it was to find alternatives to the commercial cleaners she was using every day. Leslie's search for alternatives lead her to her family’s history and launched her into her life’s mission.

3 Tips to Improve Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality has become a new concern for the new millennium. No one in the late 1950’s or earlier ever thought about their indoor air quality. I personally remember going to sleep under a casement window that did not have a storm window on it. During snow storms, I’d watch snow seep into my bedroom and sparkle in the moonlight. This would never be acceptable today with the high cost of energy.  People have worked very hard to make their homes air tight. In making homes energy efficient, another problem has been created – poor air quality. The EPA and other experts say that our indoor air is 100 times more polluted that our outdoor air!  Some of our homes only see fresh air in the early months of spring before the air is thick with pollen and in the late fall before it gets cold enough to turn on the heat. The other ten months of the year the home has the windows closed and the air is being recycled over and over. If your heat and air conditioning are running for ten months of the year, then you are living with recycled air. Everything you are putting into the air is staying in the air and being re-circulated around the house.  Our homes are so energy efficient there may not be any fresh air introduced to our homes except for the occasional open door. You need to know the different ways to keep your air safe and healthy for your family. Here are three tips that are easy and economical.

• Use non-toxic cleaners when cleaning your house. Do your research and learn what is in the cleaners you are using now and switch to a non-toxic version. The best way to know what is in your cleaner is to make them yourself. You can get a free recipe for a green cleaning scrub at www.thejoyofgreencleaning.com along with a video to learn how to use it.

• Avoid air fresheners that use chemicals to mask scents. Air fresheners that use synthetic fragrances are just adding chemicals to your air to cover up unsightly smells. Work on finding the source of the smells instead of covering them up.

• Keep your window screen clean and free from pollen and dust. A simple way to cleaning them is to wipe them with a large looped microfiber cloth.  Or you can use a lint roller to collect the dust.

Leslie Reichert is known as a Green Cleaning Coach. She is a national lecturer, contributor to a The Daily Green, which is a Hearst publication, a frequent homekeeping expert on Martha Stewart Living Radio and author of the book: The Joy Of Green Cleaning- a handbook for DIY cleaners.

Straw Bale Gardening

My name is Kelly - I blog at Becoming Crunchy where I talk about the changes my family has been making toward living more sustainably and healthfully as inspired by the birth of our daughter. One thing that's been particularly exciting to me over the past few months has been the success of my gardening efforts - a somewhat unique experiment created by a no-nothing gardener (that would be me) that has blossomed beyond my wildest dreams - and it's all built upon straw. 

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Peaches: Celebrating Summer's Bounty with Urban Farmer Angela Price

by Angela Price

I am sitting on my back patio watching the hens peck around the yard.  Daisy, the alpha hen, lowers herself to the ground and gracefully stretches out a wing to take advantage of the sun near the peach tree I planted a few years back.  Hens understand summer, I think.  We are so lucky to have this weather in Southern California.  Summer is a time for growing and harvesting, for slicing juicy tomatoes and picking the perfect peach.  The squirrels ate most of my peaches this summer, so I am forced to rely on the farmer’s market and the bi-weekly box of produce from the CSA. I am so excited when the box arrives at the front door.  I always wait a few minutes before I open it; it’s like a special gift.  Inside the box, past the lettuce and the cucumbers and an overly fragrant cantaloupe, I see them: 5 peaches!  They have the most beautiful color, orange and red and yellow, like little round sunsets. The cantaloupe wants to compete for the attention.  I am not terribly fond of them, so I exile it to the refrigerator.  Unfortunately, these peaches are not perfect.  The best peaches should be eaten out of hand with the sweet juice running down your chin and forearm. These peaches are a little bit hard with only a faint scent of stone fruit.

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Fatherhood: 100 Ways to be a Better Father

by Derek Markham from Natural Papa

Fatherhood is a tricky proposition. We all want to be great dads, but chances are, our fathers never sat down with us and taught us how to be one.

And we don’t necessarily want to be our fathers. I mean, we want to emulate their positive influence on us, but we also want to do it our own way. And because children tend to spend more of their time with their mother, not being the greatest dad ever isn’t as obvious. No matter who we are, though, we can always  improve our relationship with our kids and our spouse, and we can redefine the meaning of fatherhood each and every day.

There’s not as big of a movement toward better ‘fathering’ as there is toward better mothering. No big fancy fatherhood magazines, no Oprah for dads, no real exchange of fatherhood improvement programs. There’s just Natural Papa. (I’m kidding. There’s a bunch of great dad blogs out there.)

I’m a crappy dad sometimes, yet I hope that I’m always learning how to be a better father, so I felt moved to put some of my thoughts on fatherhood down in words to share with you.

I read a post called ‘Tackle Any Issue With a List of 100′, by Luciano Passuello, a couple of weeks ago, and then later I came across ’100 Ways To Live A Better Life, by Dragos, which was inspired by ’100 Ways to Be a Better Leader’, by Mike King, which was inspired by ’100 Ways To Show Boldness’, by Armen, which was originally inspired by…  You guessed it, Luciano’s post about lists of 100. Whew. Got that straight?

Anyway, after reading those, I thought I would format my ideas on fatherhood into my own list of 100. If you have something to add, I’d love a comment about it.

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Watercolor Bedroom Signs Tutorial

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HypnoBirthing: Effective Techniques to Release Stress, Fear and Pain in Pregnancy & Labor

by Carol Yeh-Garner

HypnoBirthing is gaining popularity with women wanting to birth their babies in a calmer, more gentle way. The classes are intense (usually taught in five 2 ½ hour classes) & cover everything from the physiological reasons for pain in labor, the historical basis for pain in labor, myths about hypnosis (you’re not under someone else’s control), and most importantly, techniques to help you get deeply relaxed so your body can do what it’s naturally capable of doing. HypnoBirthing is more than a chilcbirth education class. It allows you to learn life-skills. It’s also about DE-hypnotizing you about the idea that birth has to be painful & excruciating.

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