Lucas and I have been working on this Halloween wreath for our door for a couple of weeks, felting one item at a time. We used a generic fall wreath of preserved leaves and pinecones that I bought, oh, two or three years ago, and started adding hand-made decorations to it. We were so casual about it that we haven’t even permanently fixed the ghosties and jack-o’-lanterns to it. We’re just letting the leaves and sticks kind of catch the wool fibers and hold our little fellows in place. Lucas made some creepy black spiders out of chenille wires and they finished the whole thing off beautifully.

I must credit Jen at Ancient Hearth for the ghost idea; she created a great tutorial to make these. Give it a try! They’re easy!

I will have more precious autumn picture books to share and recommend in the coming weeks, but since Halloween is fast approaching, I thought I’d do a roundup of some of our favorite Halloween stories. Beware when shopping for Halloween books. There’s a lot of junk out there. Seriously, if it’s a TV or movie character starring in a Halloween book, skip it.

I promise none of these books are scary. My older son is too sensitive (thus far) for scary Halloween stories. And Asher really doesn’t like “keepy guys.”

Clockwise:

Julia Donaldson’s Room on the Broom — This comical story, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, about a friendly witch who drops one thing after another off her broom while she’s flying is full of fun rhymes and cutsey animals. Each time she drops an item, such as her wand or hat, a friendly creature finds it and returns it, and thereafter becomes a traveling companion. The group does finally meet a scary dragon, but through their adventures, broom-riding friends become fearsome enough themselves to frighten that dragon away. As this book is fairly wordy for a picture book, I’d say it’s perfect for 4- to 8-year-olds. This is a Nice Witch Book, of which I am in favor, speaking as a grown woman who had many, many nightmares about witches when I was a small girl.

Kevin Lewis’s The Runaway Pumpkin — This Halloween picture book illustrated by S. D. Schindler is an all-time favorite in our house. Lewis has a gift for rhythm, and his refrain robustly beats off the page predictably and dramatically. I challenge you to read this book to your kids without slapping your thigh or tapping your toe in time. After finding the most giant pumpkin ever grown and rolling it homeward, the three children of this extended family get more than they bargained for! It’s all good in the end, because grandma cooks up delicious pumpkin goodies—just in time for Halloween.

Mary Serfozo’s Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin — Illustrated by Valerie Petrone, this book is great book for toddlers. It’s simple and sweet, and full of yumpcious, made-up words. The tiger goes looking for the perfect pumpkin for his jack-o’-lantern, and finds it, of course.

Norman Bridwell’s The Witch Next Door and Other Stories — This collection of four Witch Next Door stories by the creator of Clifford the Big Red Dog is a classic. It must be, right?—because I read these stories when I was a kid. A good witch moves into a “normal” neighborhood and quickly teaches everyone a thing or two about being good and neighborly. It gets my approval because it’s another Nice Witch Book and always has my boys (3 and 8 ) laughing.

Peter Glassman’s My Working Mom — OK, I admit I bought this one on lark when Lucas was less than a year old. Yes, it’s another Nice Witch Book. The little girl in the story explains how it can sometimes be challenging when you have a mom who works, especially when Mom’s busy and her job is kinda weird. Yes, it appeals to me on so many levels. Eventually, the little girl in the story comes to realize it’s kinda cool to have such an interesting mom, who has her hands in so many … cauldrons. Cute and funny. Not scary, although Mom’s cooking is … adventurous, and Career Day at school has never been so fun.

Two more favorites:

Tasha Tudor’s Pumpkin Moonshine — First copyrighted in 1938, this is a sweet story about a Sylvie Ann who picks a fine pumpkin to make a pumpkin moonshine, but it rolls out of control down the hill! Perhaps this book was Lewis’s inspiration for The Runaway Pumpkin. If you’re fond of books set in “simpler times,” this is a lovely addition to any young child’s library.

Lauren Thompson’s Mouse’s First Halloween — A great first Halloween book for babies and preschoolers. Illustrated by Buket Erdogan, this book explores all kinds of things Mouse thinks are spooky, only to find that they are really “Not so scary after all.” We have the board book edition and it has served us well.

If you have read all this way, you might be asking yourself why we have so many Halloween books. (My husband might be asking that also.) Here’s part of the reason: In our home, after Halloween, the Candy Fairy visits in the night. If we leave out candy for the Candy Fairy to feed to her children, she leaves a little gift in its place.

Happy reading!

There are many, many benefits of preschool. I know not everyone will agree with me about this; some parents just love having their little ones at home until they reach Kindergarten age, and more power to them. But as Ian and I both work, we have almost always needed some day care. Preschool has always brought enriching experiences to our children.

In addition to all the great friendships preschoolers build and socialization they acquire by being with small groups of children for some portion of their week, preschool also offers us parents a new perspective on our kids. You know how sometimes it’s hard to see something that you’re around day after day? Well, sometimes it’s hard to notice when kids are ready for something new, something more challenging. Over the years, our kids’ teachers have gently pointed out to us many important growth spurts we might not otherwise have noticed, for example, “Your child is so cooperative when it’s time to clean up the toys.” Really? Sometimes our sons tell us themselves that they’ve grown up a bit more, thanks to the influence of their teachers: “Lucas, it’s not polite to have your elbows on the table.” Manners 102.

The other day I picked up Asher from preschool and saw him swinging on the tree swing in the yard. Imagine that! I had no idea he was ready for the big-boy swing yet because I had stopped noticing the baby swing on our backyard swing set. I didn’t notice him not fitting in it so well anymore. I didn’t notice that he had stopped asking to be pushed on the swing.

Perspective. I got to see Asher in a new light away from home, to see that he can do something altogether new and with gusto.

So we took down the baby swing and put up a low-to-the ground big-boy swing. Wow.

With a Twist …

“We thank you for our day,
We thank you for our friends and family,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“Yes. We thank you for each other,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“We thank you for our good health,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“We thank you for our big, beautiful earth,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“And we thank you for our rest.”

“Especially Daddy!”

“Especially Daddy. Blessed be.”

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

I promise this is my last post about Michaelmas. Maybe I got carried away a bit, but I already mentioned that this festival kind of spoke to me a lot this year.

We had a special dinner on Friday night after the school’s Michaelmas festival. (We have lots of special dinners, but usually Ian cooks them. This one was a joint effort.) As far as I’m concerned, any dinner featuring homemade bread and a first course is special. Anyway, my parents joined us and it was kind of both Michaelmas and a celebration of Ian’s birthday.

I couldn’t get Asher to join in this activity, but Lucas, Daddy and I all enjoyed shaping dragon breads. The bread recipe I used ended up being so wet and sticky I had to keep adding more and more cups of flour. It turned out yummy, but we ended up with far more bread dough than we needed!

We shaped three handsome dragon loaves and were able to send an unbaked loaf home with Grandma and Papa. Here are our dragons before they were baked. They are embellished with almond slices, dried cranberries, and dried mango, which we snipped into pointy plates and scales.

Our Michaelmas table set for dinner outside in the warm autumn evening. That’s Lucas’s sword he made for Michaelmas last year in second grade.

Lucas picked my dragon bread to eat first. He was dumbstruck when I handed him the good bread knife and asked if he would do us the honor of slaying the dragon for us. He did a great job slicing the bread for everyone.

I didn’t take a picture of my red lentil soup, but here’s the main course: dragon (grilled chicken thighs, sauteed spinach scales, sour cream, almond slices for toes, and a carved red bell pepper head.) I have to admit, carving and arranging this was super fun. Seeing the kids’ faces when I brought this out was the best! Thanks for grilling the chicken, Ian!

Okay. That’s it. Now I can start thinking about Halloween.

Sometimes ordinary things reveal extraordinary beauty if you look at them just so.

I knew we were destined for a pizza dinner; Ian was sick and he does most of the cooking around here. The kids love pizza and it’s really easy at the end of a long week to slip into a take-out meal, but who wants to spend $30 on pizza?

The stars were all aligned:

• It was 4:30 and I had a bit of time.
• I had harvested eight gorgeous tomatoes from our family garden the day before.
• I had fresh, organic veggies from our CSA delivery.
• I had bread dough in the fridge, ready to shape and bake.
• I had assorted cheeses and meats on hand.

I’ve never made pizza sauce from scratch before. It’s really very easy. Fresh tomatoes, red chard, onions, garlic, fresh oregano, dried basil, and about 2T organic tomato paste.

We call this “finger salad” at our house. When we don’t have lettuce or spinach, we just pull out all our other salad veggies and serve them with a dollop of dressing for dipping.

It looks like an all-meat pizza (chicken, salami, and bacon), but the sauce contained lots of fresh veg. Hiding the veggies helps ensure that Asher will eat them. This whole meal was unscripted: The only thing that was hard to guage was how long to bake the pizza for. I had to put it back in for another 12 minutes. Next time I’ll know to bake for about 30 minutes to cook the crust more.

Every slice was eaten up!

You might have gathered that I get kind of excited about seasonal holidays. I love Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, of course, but I especially love them within their context of their seasons. When I look at our cultural holidays from the perspective of how the turning of the wheel influenced/influences people’s lives and consciousness, I’m overjoyed to participate. These things hold great meaning for me, much more so than any store gift.

When we became a Waldorf family (which may have been before our first child was born, depending on how you look at it) we quickly adopted the nature table as a means of expressing our appreciation for nature and the changing seasons. OK, maybe it was me more than Ian. But still. It dovetailed so nicely with my own inclination toward nature religions that it was almost automatic. Now that we have Waldorf, I don’t have to go into the awkward conversations about my unconventional spiritual tendencies, I can just say, “It’s a Waldorf nature table,” and be done with it. Of course, nobody ever asks me.

I’m not entirely sure whether the children even notice this seasonal display. Occasionally they will bring in something from outdoors and we will place it on the nature table.  My mushroom family makes its debut on the table this fall.

Spent seed pods from our day lilies, needle-felted gnomes, a knitted cat, a big black rock from the Black Rock desert, rocks Lucas painted, and a decoupaged candle holder that the children made last for last year’s autumn equinox. In the background, we have Daniela Drescher’s In the Land of Elves picture book opened to the autumn page. (Drescher makes gorgeous books, by the way!)

We have on this side wheat and preserved autumn leaves from a craft store, more gnomes, and a cut geode candle holder. Everything rests on gold and orange play silks.

By the way, this is the ONLY clean and beautiful space in my home at present. Chaos reigns around here most of the time.

Thank goodness today has been Sunday. We’re tired from staying up too late last night. We’re feeling a bit drained from all the … well, small challenges that we’re presently facing: expensive car repairs, viruses, rush projects. Even Ian is working this weekend, which isn’t something he has to do too often.

It’s fine. Everything will be all right.

Housework. Sick boys. Freelance work. These are the things that have occupied our time this weekend instead of what we had planned: our annual trip to Mimi’s cabin in Strawberry in the Tahoe forest, to visit her and grandpa. Feverish children changed our plans.

We’re in a bit of a slump, you might say.

However, there were several sweet highlights. Like unexpected visits from friends, who fill up my heart with love and see deep inside me.

Low-key, take-it-easy play and movies to ease the disappointment, sickness, and crabbies. I think Lucas is well enough to return to school tomorrow, which is great because he’s feeling pretty blue and misses his friends.

The delicious mushroom, spinach, onion omelette Ian made me for breakfast.

A few feverish smiles and the wonderful opportunity to climb on Dad.

Some sewing for mama. I got to complete a small knot doll I started a month or more ago. She’s for Asher and I sewed all her clothing, hat, and hair today, using just leftover bits and bobs.

Ian said she looks a bit like a preschool teacher, and Asher immediately named her after his own teacher. So sweet.

I’m trying my hand at a new bread-making method. We’ll see how that turns out…. I also managed to finish a work project today, so that feels good, too.

And as for the rest of today, I’m thinking of snuggles and food and an early bedtime for all.