A Candlelight Night

Putting the clocks forward over the weekend, it was completely dark outside as we sat down to our evening meal.

Lighting some candles we talked about Daylight savings, how we see the sun less during the winter months.

Half way through our meal, The Little Guy commented that we should eat by candlelight more often. And so begins a new family tradition; Sunday evening has become a Candlelight Night!

p.s. We made Latkes for dinner, served with homemade apple sauce and cream cheese - they made the perfect  chilly Autumnal meal. I used this recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Here We Are Together


Do you have a special ritual for your evening meals? Feel free to share in the comments; I'd love to hear from you!

A Nature Shelf! {week 1, November 2012}

My goodness! Can it really be November already?!

I purposely started our Nature Shelf to be a little empty this month, because I am anticipating it will get very crowded by the end of the month.

Speaking of crowded, I just had to share something with you.  The Little Guy loves to play silly jokes and tricks, and just recently has discovered the delights of doing thing, and then blaming it on the gnomes. Well, apparently the "gnomes" decided to do a little extra decorating on the Nature shelf over this past week.

Upcycling Sunday!

Upcycling, def. the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value.

Wikipedia.org

I think this week was 'a first' in a while ... I did not Freecycle or gift away a single thing. Nothing!

But - we did do some at home upcycling; re-purposing items we already, had for a new use.

First, The Little Guy's Halloween costume.

When he told me he wanted to make his costume this year, I thought that sounded like fun, so when the second request to be a bat came in, I took to the internet to find a pattern or a tutorial. I found one that looked simple enough, and which used a black umbrella. So off to Freecycle I went, and found an old broken one! Then I had a rummage through our hand me down bin of clothes and found a long sleeved black t-shirt that would fit The Little Guy - perfect! The black hat was one I had bought on sale at the end of last season (I think I spent $2 on it) and the black felt for the ears was $0.79 from my local craft store!! So, $2.79 on an entire costume ... and we had the fun experience of making it? Priceless! 

Here is the link to the tutorial I used, I just took at all of the umbrella spokes (for safety ... 4 year old boys and spokes are not a good combination).

And staying with our Halloween Upcycling theme, we made these adorable little ghosties from an old net curtain I had in my fabric box and some old batting that had seen better days.

The Little Guy decorating one of the pieces of netting

So simple, we put these together while we were waiting for all our Halloween Treating cookies to bake :-)

Then we hung them around our front porch, to make the house "a little bit more spooky" to quote The Little Guy.


 And what about you? What are you Upcycling this week? Feel free to share in comments; I'd love to hear from you!

Halloween Treating

Finally, the Big Day was here!

We had been counting down to Halloween for a while; the Little Guy was so excited about the whole process. The costume, the candy, the Trick and Treating, the candy ...

Did I mention he was excited about getting candy?!

We really wanted to put a bit of a balance back in to the day, so we decided to do some Halloween Treating!

The Little Guy and I spent the morning of Halloween baking and packaging up cookies for our neighbors. (I don't think I've ever seen that many homemade cookies all at once ... ever; we churned out about 10 dozen cookies. There were cookies on every available surface of our little kitchen!)

Then we got dressed up in our Halloween finest, and went out delivering. We couldn't resist a little Halloween fun, so we would sneak up to our neighbor's doors, leave the package of cookies on their doorstep, then knock on the door, and run away! Of course, once they opened the door, we jumped out to say 'Happy Treating!'

We had a blast, and our neighbors loved the cookies. And as The Little Guy and I commented, it felt really good to do something unexpected and good for someone else.

Now, I know that my telling you all about this now that Halloween has come and gone isn't a huge help; but there's always next year to plan ahead for ;-)

And you may be curious about The Little Guy's costume ... I'll be reporting more about this weekend as part of Upcycling Sunday!


Do you have a special tradition for Halloween? what is your favorite way to do something special for your immediate community? Feel free to share in the comments; I'd love to hear from you!