These Valentine’s day crafts, activities, fun facts, and food will help you and your family celebrate the day of love all day long!
Valentine’s Day Activities For The Whole Family
Holiday Family
Winter Solstice & Yule Crafts
These Winter solstice, Christmas, and Yule crafts are the perfect activity to do with your kids this holiday season.
Here we are in the thick of the Winter Holiday season. I’m happy to report our family has managed to keep our activities to a nice balance of not too much and not too little. This weekend we made the obligatory sugar cookies (does any adult really love rolling those darn things out?), made ton of Christmas crafty-things, and both boys had haircuts by yours truly- so as far as i’m concerned, I crushed it this weekend.
This week we will celebrate Winter solstice with a dinner and a late ride around our town to see the lights, do some more Winter crafts.
Here’s a few of my favorite things that we’ll be doing to celebrate this week.
Making these lovely Wishing Cones from Purple Daisy Alchemy…
To make these, write your wishes for the new year on tiny pieces of paper. roll them up and stick them in between the layers of the pine cone-use a little hot glue if you need to. Then simply tie a ribbon and hang on your tree or in your windows, or from a branch…for extra sparkle brush pine cone with some white craft glue and sprinkle with a bit of glitter.
Making coffee filter snowflakes, like these from The Pink Couch
and stringing popcorn and cranberries for a bird’s feast tree outside our kitchen window…
And an edible craft of sorts, this lovely olive and herb treat. You’ll probably find this Olive Wreath from Chickabug Blog next to our cocktails on Christmas Eve…
Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas, and a Happy Solstice and Yuletide Season,
Rebekah
Sagra: Celebrating Seasonal Foods
In Italy, a Sagra is a local festival that celebrates a certain food coming into season. I was recently introduced to these food festivals near the end of my reading of Under the Tuscan Sun. It sounds like such a lovely concept:
Sagra is a wonderful word to look fro in Tuscany. Foods coming into season often cause a celebration. All over the small towns signs go up announcing a sagra for cherries, chestnuts, wine, vin santo, apricots, frog legs, wild boar, olive oil or lake trout.
I like the idea so much I’m going to create some special meals, and maybe even the occasional small dinner get together, to celebrate our own harvests and seasonal foods as they come into season.
In our home, I credit much of the success of our unschool flow to the fact that we are very connected and in tune with seasonal rhythms. These guide our days, months, and years. Incorporating this idea of a Sagra into our seasonal rituals seems perfectly, and deliciously, fitting.
Today is Summer solstice and we celebrate this as midsummer. On this longest day of the year, with the sun about to burn a hot 94 degrees today, and a full moon waiting for us when the sun does finally set, the garden is exploding with the promise of great bounty. Tomatoes, while still green, are already starting to hang heavy. Cucumbers have sprouted long strands from there blossoms overnight. And the zucchini promise to crawl, sprawl and overtake the whole show.
Soon we will celebrate our very own little harvests and enjoy food so fresh you would’t dare disturb it with a recipe.
I’ll leave you with a little peek of our garden, as she grows, on this midsummer day.
Wishing you a happy Summer Solstice and much bounty as we move towards the dark half of the year.
Spring is Just Around the Corner?
The past week has brought some very lovely and Spring-like weather-eventhough it barely seems like Winter has happened at all. It looks like we are in for one more cold stretch and maybe even one last snow and then it will be full speed ahead for Spring. The clocks move ahead this weekend, I can hardly believe it.
We’ve been loving this friendly weather and have been outside almost al day for most of the past week. We’ve started clearing the yard of debris, O has dug his first construction site of the warmer season and found some of the last piles of witch’s burr to bulldoze.
On the way home from the park with friends he spied this gorgeous patch of purple flowers, sprung up from under cover of dead leaves. He said they made him happy and he now has them on his nightstand.
The warmer weather has me excitedly planning and plotting the garden. It’s all measured out and I am laying plans all high-tech this year with the program from Growveg.com. So far, so good.
I’m also thinking of our daily routine and the changes we will soon be making from Winter to Spring flow (more on that in a week or two). Again, I barely feel like we settled into our Winter routine this year and it’s almost over.
Everything feels like it’s moving so fast. Faster than usual. Maybe it is, or maybe it’s just me. Maybe this is just what happens when you turn 40.
“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono
Fun Ways to Celebrate Spring Equinox with the Family
This past year we have embraced the idea of celebrating the changing of the seasons in addition to and some times in place of religious celebrations that take place at this time. I was raised in a Baptist household but have not been religious since the age of about 13, so finding other ways for my family to celebrate these occasions has been a goal of mine for a while.
I’ve found that celebrating the equinox days and the changing of the seasons feels right for us and fits our belief systems well. By taking pause to reflect on the past season and look ahead into what we hope to accomplish in the upcoming one we honor ourselves, nature, and our family unit.
Here are a few nice ideas I have come across for celebrating the upcoming Spring Equinox, with littles, and a few for grown-ups as well…
This list of Children’s Books to that Welcome Spring comes from Naturally Educational and has some great pics for exploring Spring with littles. A favorite title of mine is
This mud paint activity looks like so much fun and perfect for those puddly, muddy days
A beautiful Spring ornament for adults or the family to make together
Hang this in the home as a reminder of Spring’s purpose…
And of course we can’t forget the eggs…
“Celebrate Spring by painting eggs, an ancient symbol of fertility”
Two men and a little farm share a great natural dye list for eggs…
Another visual list of natural dyes from The Dailybasics.com
Some beautiful ideas for a grown-up Spring dinner party from Brit & Co.
And don’t forget this perfect Lillet Rose Spring Cocktail found on MarthaStewart.com
Do you have any special ways to celebrate Spring? Share them below!
