One of Me, Three of You

The seasons table is very pared down this month, before the madness of Christmas decorations starts! We take most of our inspiration from The Nature Corner , and the beautiful emails that come from Myriad , but we haven't got very far with ideas for Martinmas. We had a go at the swede lantern last year although not sure it was entirely successful. I did spend a couple of evenings this week sewing two little mice for the table, although probably not the best use of my time given my very long list of Christmas craft still to complete! And T and I finally found some teasels this year for little, very spiky hedgehogs. Now I can turn my attention to December and deciding whether we are going to stick with the understated, natural approach we go with for the rest of the year or throw all sense of taste out the window as it's Christmas! 

Our seasons table was a little unloved over the summer but now we're into autumn it's getting a lot more attention. Autumn is my favourite time of year for craft - I love the colours and being able to bring lots of things in from outside to use inside. And with the nights picking in and the boys less willing to spend time in the garden there is more time to fill after school. It is a mix of things that featured last year, our seasons table staples and a couple of new things for this autumn. As usual, I had plans to do a couple more things that I haven't got around to yet but there are a few more weeks until the brown of November and Martinmas takes over so there is still time. I discovered that my wool stores can cope with the reds, oranges and yellows of autumn but I have very little in the way of brown or any green that isn't bottle green! I made the little felt dragon one evening last year, after admiring some felt animals in a catalogue. I didn't feel ...

We finally got round to adding a bit of colour back onto the seasons table last week. W and I knocked up the bees one Sunday morning with black pipe cleaners (requisitioned from a Halloween spider), some yellow wool and white felt. The bees were easier than finding a branch soft enough to turn into a ring to hang them from, it turns out most branches aren't as bendy as they look! I spotted the butterflies here on Red Ted Art and thought they would look good hung from a tree. The boys like collecting branches for the tree and W made a butterfly as well. The tissue paper flowers have stayed on from the Whitsun table and look really effective considering they took about five minutes to make and were simple enough for both W and T to do their own. And the wonky candles aren't supposed to be wonky but they got broken in my bag on the way home! One day I will get round to trying to melt them back to vertical.

We had a go at a Whitsun season table last week (prompted by a very useful email from Myriad) - I think the boys zoned in on the part about the table being white.

The seasons table has been a bit neglected of late (since autumn if I'm honest as that is the easiest time of year to do!) but I'm keen to persevere before the boys are too old to be interested. Unusually the latest idea came from Mark - last week we cobbled together a maypole from an egg carton, a cheery pencil and some bits of ribbon. The gnomies are a bit lacking in hands so I had to tuck the ribbons under their hats (thought that was more appropriate than tying them round their necks!) but was quite pleased with our efforts.