Pumpkin Painting

This is a classic, easy and fun.

 

 For easy clean up I covered the table with brown paper, put paint on paper plates and let the creativity happen,

 

This took 20/30 min, could take longer depending on how detailed your kiddo is.

 

Eli was so proud of his pumpkin.

 

Have fun crafting ~Laura

Small World - Fall Play

I set up some fun "small world" fall play for the kids.  I will leave it up as long as they are showing  interest.  Sometimes people ask what small world play is, and it is just a term for a pretend world of play that I create for them. 

 

First I covered the table with brown paper.  Then I set up the pumpkins in the center.  I knew I would have four sections of our fall farm.

 

Giant Pumpkin Mountian

 I placed a few guys on the mountain and a little sign that said "pumpkin mountain"

 

The fall leaf tree

I took some of our table scatter and put it around one of our lego trees, I also added a lego man and a rake.

The Pumpkin Patch

Here we have more table scatter (targets dollar bin, also great math counters) lego men, and tractor

 

 Cute little farm

Here is the farm part of the "Fall farm small world"

barn, lego animals and men

 

Around the whole "small world"  I drew a brick road.

 

I love setting these up because the kids add to it.  We started with this & currently we have Batman, green Lantern their cars and an array of super hero's playing on the farm.  Its fun to see imagination at work.

 

Have fun Playing ~ Laura

Fall Bean Leafs

 

I love the fall & I love crafts.  Every day after school we are doing some kind of craft.

 

This was our bean leaf craft.  For this I had the leaf pre-cut out of card board, an assortment of beans, and glue.

 

Then the boys got creative.

Eli's leaf.

Noah's leaf.

 

Super simple and fun. 

 

Have fun crafting.~Laura

Adventures in Homesteading - The Back to Eden Garden

We are putting in our first fall garden & decided to use the "Back to Eden" Method.  We had orginially planned to have the garden area tilled and then the mulch delivered, but the man I found on craigslist appeared to have a drug problem and that did not work out.  So we went to plan B.  The rail road ties (30) were delivered on a Thursday & 75 yards of finely shreddedmulch were delivered on Friday. 

We originally thought we could spread all 75 yards by hand.  We were wrong.  We spread out a paper that helps prevent weeds.  After some further reading and since we were waiting for the man to come and spread the mulch we sprayed the majority of the weeds with vinegar.  This took a lot of time and it 1/2 way worked.  I think it works best on walk way areas, and actual weeds, not grass.

 

The day came and we eagerly watched them spread our mulch.

 

The guys were very nice and worked much faster than we ever could have

 

 

We shortened the garden from the original size we had planned on, we decided this was still a REALLY BIG garden.

 

 

Over the next few days we watered the mulch to get it good and wet.  The back to eden idea is the much holds more water.  And its fine shredded so its a mixture of wood and organic material

Micah is an expert water.



 

I planted beans, squash, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, radishes and turnips.  Everything has sprouted except the carrots.  When it cools a bit more I will plan the lettuces.

 

 

 

So far I am pleased with this method.  I have noticed:

1) The grass that grows up around the sides (that wasn't fully covered with dirt)  is mostly dead at the bottom and pulls out fairly easily, I pull a bit each day.

2) the fresh grass that grows in the mulch pulls up very easy from the root we pull about 5 or so pieces a day when we go out to check the new growth.