Thanksgiving

We celebrated our first family Thanksgiving this year, trying to teach our children the value of giving thanks for everything we enjoy without noticing it.

I prepared a turkey with lovely pistachio and cranberry stuffing, along with potatoes, carrots, brussel sprouts, gravy and cranberry sauce.

There was also pumpkin pie with maple syrup whipped cream.

The whole family loved it all, and we have several frozen servings of turkey for the months ahead.

DS2 prepared a Thanksgiving card, gluing feathers on a turkey I had drawn, and we had jolly turkeys on our napkins that day.

A Gingerbread crib

We decided not to display our traditional, fragile Italian-made crib in our home this year, for fear of having to replace most of its figures by the end of the year.

Instead, we opted for an ephemeral version.

I designed patterns for two stables, as well as a manger and a couple of fences. We prepared the gingerbread house dough and cut it following the patterns (the rest was used to make St. Nicholas figures). Assembling the lot was a little testing, but the stables are still holding strong (the fences were discreetly nibbled on, I'm afraid).

The hay in the manger is marzipan coloured with yellow food colouring and pressed in a garlic press. The figure of Mary is also made in marzipan, coloured in blue mainly. I have not had a chance to help make other figures, as the children happily contributed their Schleich animals to the scene (and of course oats and water for more realism!).

Advent, the Steiner way

It's been a long time, and we have been very busy since my last blog.
Fast-forward to the time of Advent.

Here are some of the things we have been doing with the Acorns, a toddler group linked to the Greenwich Steiner school:

folding kite waxed paper to make Christmas stars
decorating a plain candle with crimson and golden wax

pinning cloves into an orange for a lovely Christmas scent