Saint Nicholas' Day

Nicholas, St. Nicholas, come to us today, Ride upon your white horse from far, far away. Bring us golden treasure, Fill our hearts with love, Ready for the Christ Child coming from above. Nicholas, St. Nicholas, come to us today, Ride upon your white horse from far, far away.

Good Day Friends! 

Saint Nicholas just finished visiting our house today. Addy, our advent gnome, has been helping us the past 2 days to get ready for him. On the 2nd day of advent we made cookies for him and his white horse. On the 3rd day we made letters for him as well as prepared our shoes for him and set them outside. 

I know that the 6th is traditionally Saint Nicholas' feast day, but the children will be with their father on the 6th and they were worried he would miss their house since they weren't home. I informed them to fear not, that he'd come a few days early this year. 

This year Saint Nicholas brought them all their oranges, gold coins, and sweets. They also got a small wooden pet toy set- a kitty, a rabbit, and a dog. Each pet came with a little food dish and house. Their pets are going to live in their farm house. 

Here are our celebrations from years past:

2011

2012:

I did not blog it but here are our photos of it! 

2013

So here are some photos of our past few days and advent fun. Most of our fun times are had at night after I get off work, so apologize for the poor photos. But that is the reality for the full time working mom gig I suppose. I don't mind however. Life is good. It is calm and seeped in love. Now more than ever I get to focus on quality versus quantity. And the few hours we have work and school free each day are definitely quality ridden. I just cannot get over how amazing keeping our Waldorf rhythm has been through this life transition. I am just a blessed lady. 

As we adjust and slow down more and more, I am able to add back in things into our lives that we had to set to the side. One of those things being more planned craft time. Most of our craft time has been free form based around our artelier using loose parts. I'd like to bring back our water color day, our wax day, and our bread day- after work. I also have more time with the children on the weekends, so I want to plan more day trips. 

But for now, this is beautiful and bright. 

May the patron saint of sailors and children shine God's love and light upon you! 

Day 2

Cookie baking! Sometimes I don't have time to change our of my colonial clothes before we do craft and dinner time! 

Day 3

Writing letters

Finding their shoes filled!

They we're so excited!! 

Creating Our Waldorf & Reggio Inspired Atelier

From time to time, I pick up a book that really really resonates with me. Playful Learning by Mariah Bruel is one of those books. I read it cover to cover in a day. I was so inspired by it that I decided to re-do our dining room so that the kids would have a better learning and creating space apart from their playroom. 

I used to have all of their art supplies out in the playroom but we kept having accidents with them. The dining room is more central and therefore it is easy for them to be more self directed yet closer to me, when they want to create and do while I am about my mommy work- ie chasing Brynna.

The dining room is now I bit more cluttered but I like it. It's more colorful and fun. It was like Christmas day at our house when I unveiled the atelier. Both kids, 3 and 5, sat for house coloring, painting, stamping, cutting, gluing...

Everything has its own place too so when crafting is done, they themselves put it up and clean up. It really is true that if you buy them nice things and show them respect, they will reflect it back to you and treat their toys and art supplies with respect too. 

There are still more little tweaks that I'd like to make to the room. I'd love to replace the plastic shelves with nicer ones. I'd like to add more field guides and binoculars to our nature area. But it will come to us when it is supposed to. Bit by bit. 

Until then, I am happy with our atelier. The kids are ecstatic. And we are learning so much together and having lots of fun too. 

Linking up with Nicole at Frontier Dreams this week as well as Crafty Moms Share and Natural Suburbia! 

Until next time, 

xoxo