Monday, December 6, 2010

Winter Lovliness

We are lucky enough to live where snow is around for most of the winter.  Of course, it does come with one major drawback - it can be so cold!  If you look very closely at the picture to right you can see that the thermometer says -30 degrees Celsius!  Very cold!  But, winter lasts a long time in this part of Canada so we try to make the best of it.  Of course, the kids are much better at this than the adults.  They can play outside for hours with nothing more than a few old sand toys (for snow fort building) and some toboggans.  But I am really trying this year to see winter through new eyes and learn to appreciate the beauty that winter offers.  So here are a few pictures of my winter garden...

First some seed heads -goldenrod, my favorite allium, my sunflowers covered in snow, and a clematis seed head (so fluffy).
Then my favorite trees - our green ash, our old little crabapple, a cotoneaster with the cool black berries and then a mountain ash with the awesome red leaves - this one still hasn't lost all its leaves.

 

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

December is here!

I absolutely love this time of year!  I am positively bursting with Christmas spirit.  And what's the best way to put all this energy to use, when my lovely garden is covered with a foot of snow safely sleeping for the winter...why crafting of course!  I thought that I would share this project with you.  I have made an Advent Calendar for Family Fun!  I got the idea from Andrea Tomkins here.  It looked like so much fun that I had to try it out for myself.  An additional challenge that I gave myself was that I wouldn't buy anything new to make this, instead I'd try to use up some of the mounds of crafting supplies that I have lying around the house.  So, since I was a little short on paper, instead of making envelopes, I made little tags.  One for each day in December leading up to Christmas.





The family fun idea for the day is hidden behind the tag.  Then I hooked then on to some yarn and taped it to the wall.  Doesn't it look cute!  I am very excited about all of the things I have planned to do with the kids over the next 24 days.  I will share some of our activities along the way...