exploring autumn

It's Autumn. It's one of the most beautiful times of the year. The days are getting shorter, the temperature is dropping and the trees are losing their leaves. There's something magical about the change of seasons. After living further up north - which is beautiful too, I realised how much I love the obvious seasonal change down here.

The seasonal change can be a great thing to explore with your children. We can teach them about nature, the changes it goes through and how that might influence us. There are lots of Autumny things that we can explore like plants, colours, foods and weather.

Here's a few ways that you can explore Autumn with your children...

 Go on a walk with your children. Take a basket and collect fallen leaves, flowers or nuts. Look at what flowers are growing. Maybe some trees have lost their leaves or maybe the leaves have changed colour?

 Go to your local community garden, farmers market or through your veggie patch and look at what foods are in season at the moment. Maybe you could make some yummy apple muffins or pumpkin scones!

Journal the season by sticking leaves and flowers into a scrapbook or you could pop them into a flower press. You might like to draw some pictures of the things you've seen on your Autumn adventures or make a collage with your Autumn treasures.

Do you love the change in seasons? Are you ready for the cooler months, or warmer ones depending on where you might live? xx

autumn pace

We're getting into the Autumn pace. Warm sunshiny days and cool nights. We had a bit of an Autumn heatwave earlier this week but already the temperature has cooled right down again. It was nice to savor those few hot nights with gin and outside picnic dinners. 

We're baking with apples, pears and figs, while cinnamon is creeping into all of our baked treats again. Lola loves to munch on the apples from the apple tree at the school gate, a sweet little routine after each school day.

The weeks have been busy. So busy. There have been lots of lovely bits in between the busy bits though. Birthday gatherings in the tea tree, bike adventures, horse riding and crafting. All the lovely bits keeping us sane, calming the nerves and bringing joy.

Our Autumn festival at school marked the end of term one. The Autumn break - one we're all looking forward to. Slower days and some well needed rest and family time.

Are you welcoming the seasonal change with open arms? xx

beeswax bowl

We go through alot of candles in this house. A candle is lit at meal time, sometimes when I have a bath or when it's quiet time.

We use beeswax candle sticks or beeswax candles in little clay pots. The honey scented beeswax is so peaceful and yummy! We get alot of left over beeswax that we collect to reuse.

Today's craft adventure was to make a beeswax bowl out of some of the left over wax that we have collected.

Collect your wax. You might have a collection of old candles or maybe you have bought some new wax. Either is fine.

Melt your wax. You can do this in the microwave or in a bowl placed in a saucepan of hot water on the stove - just as though you were melting chocolate!

Take a bowl to use as a mould and cover it in cling-wrap. Pour some of your melted wax into the bowl, roll the bowl around in your hands to get a nice even coverage. You will need to add multiple layers, letting the wax harden before adding more wax.

You can add some flower petals between to layers if you like!

Let the wax harden - we popped ours into the fridge for 30 minutes - then gently remove your wax from the bowl and peel off the cling-wrap.

There you go - you have yourself a beautiful beeswax bowl! Pop a tealight candle in your new beeswax bowl and enjoy! xx

happy spring

It's officially Spring, hooray! What an exciting time of year it is. Blossoms, butterflies, baby lambs. Oh my. It really is a dreamy time of year!

Spring kicked off with a super warm day.... unseasonably warm but who could complain?!

As if the first day of Spring wasn't exciting enough, father's day was thrown into the mix too! In our house, with two little girls, the excitement was pretty nuts.

A morning of gift giving, bacon and eggs, singing and dancing to records. We marked Spring by planting some sunflower seeds in the garden.

We made our Spring nature table together and arranged it in Lola and Sadie's bedroom. They're super proud of their little arrangement!

 It was the perfect day to pop on a vintage frock and bake a pie while the little ones ran around nude in the sunshine trying the catch butterflies and making mud pies.

A playful bath, a fresh dress and we all set off to my parents for a Sunday roast. There was a sunset adventure spying cherry blossoms, roses and horses before we filled our bellies and settled in for some family time.

How was your weekend? Did you celebrate Spring, Autumn or Father's Day? xx