Michaelmas

Hazel dressed at St. George ready to slay the dragon

September 29th is Michaelmas. If you haven't been following I posted some information about our preparations with dragons and harvest. Last year was the first time we celebrated this holiday, but it is a traditional holiday in the Waldorf education as well as the Catholic Church (though my Catholic husband didn't know about it).

To celebrate we dressed Hazel as St. George with her yellow cape, crown and sword. Traditionally it would be a wooden sword, but we have inflatable ones from a birthday party so we used one of those. I dressed up as the dragon using Hazel's dinosaur costume mask. It was definitely more dinosaur than dragon than I remembered so next year we will make a mask. I also held up the dragon I made her. Steve wanted nothing to do with our re-enactment, but I did get him to take a picture.

We also read the short story of St. George and the dragon from A Book of Dragons by Hosie and Leonard Baskin (Steve did listen to this). Then at bed time I read Sunflower Swords by Mark Sperring and Miriam Latimer and Dragon Tooth by Cathryn Falwell.

Our other big activity was making salt dough dragons and fall decorations. We made three colors of salt dough: green, red, and orange. Then we went outside to get some things to make texture on our ornaments. We used cookie cutters (leaves, acorn, Halloween, and dinosaurs--to be dragons and circle for the textured ornaments). Then in the circle ones we pressed leaves, branches, flowers, acorns, pine cones, etc. to leave texture. Hazel used her own rolling pin and really had a blast doing this. They are still in the oven or should I say the first two trays are, but will come out soon. Oh, and we poked holes in all of them with a straw.

Then we had a lovely dinner. We made huckabuck bread using the recipe from our Parent/Child Waldorf class last year. I shaped it into a dragon bread and sword rolls. This was our favorite part of dinner. We also had Harvest Apple Soup, but I changed the recipe slightly. Then for dessert we had a raspberry tarte from Trader Joe's. It should have been defrosted a bit more, but we enjoyed it. I will share more details about our family dinner on Tuesday for Happy Family Times!

As for today, I am thinking about what inner dragons I can slay. Enjoy!! Happy Michaelmas!

Sharing Saturday #39

Wow, I had a very hard time choosing features this week. There were so many wonderful ideas shared last week!! If you have not had a chance to check them all out, please go do so and leave some comment love (you know we all love getting comments)!

Ok, I loved these toadstools over at Happy Whimsical Hearts. Apparently I wasn't the only one!!

These week themes seemed to come in pairs, so here are some pairs I saw.

Banana Theme

Top From Making Memories...One Fun Thing After Another: Magic Banana Trick

Bottom From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: Monkey Loves Bananas (Lots of neat ideas!)

Lavender Theme

Top From Little Wonders' Days: Friendship Lavender Hearts

Bottom From Adventures at Home with Mum: Lavender Rice Mini Zen Garden (A chill out area instead of a time-out--Love it!!)

Play Dough Theme

Top From Like Mama~Like Daughter: It's Raining...It's Pouring...Make Play Dough

Bottom From Play Through The Day: Cinnamon Spice Play Dough (Oh, how we love scented play dough!)

Pirate Theme (in honor of talk like a pirate day)

Top From We-Made-That: Pirate Flag (I love the bow on the skull!!)

Bottom From Life with Moore Babies: Pirate Treasure Hunt

A Very Hungry Caterpillar Theme

Top From Adventures at Home with Mum: A Very Hungry Caterpillar (Act it out and more!)

Bottom From Like Mama~Like Daughter: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Unit (So many great ideas!)

1) From Ziezo - Crafting and Living in Kenya: Jacaranda Seed Gnomes

2) From ArtClubBlog: Textured Salt Dough

3) From De Gulle Aarde (or The Bounty Earth): Pine Cone Flowers (I love these!!)

4) From Art Mama Says: Duck Puppet (Ok, how could I not feature this one for Hazel?)

5) From Creative Connections for Kids: Melting Crayons (Ok, I know we have seen this many times, but she adds a fun twist!!)

6) From Happiest Mom on the Blog: Dancing Raisins (Such a neat experiment!)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess: Preparing for Michaelmas: Inner Dragons (including an original story) and Harvest

 

Now for This Week's Party   

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Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. A reminder: Mia is taking a blogging break. Hopefully she will be back soon to host again!!

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All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!

Preparing for Michaelmas

Yesterday I shared a bit about the story of St. George and the dragon Now Michaelmas is viewed as a celebration of the harvest as well as the slaying of the dragon. Waldorf Schools like to focus on slaying your inner dragon. I will share a few more dragon books with you and also go check the posts at Seasons of Joy on Taming the Inner Dragons, so far she has done Guilt and Responsibility,  Fear of Failure, Fear of Success and Anger.

• Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges is the story of St. George and the dragon. I found it a little above the level for Hazel's understanding and will not read it to her. However for older children it would be great.
• A Book of Dragons by Hosie and Leonard Baskin gives summaries and a picture of various dragons throughout history including St. George and his dragon. I will read this summary to Hazel.
• The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie dePaola is a cute tale about a knight and a dragon who go to fight one another and have a few issues. In the end they open a restaurant together.

I'm still waiting for three more dragon books from the library. Hopefully I will get them by Saturday. I will let you know if they are any good if I do.

I also have Hazel's things ready to reenact fighting the dragon. We have her sword (inflatable, but traditional Waldorf would be wooden), a yellow cape, a crown and of course a dragon. I just told Steve maybe we would make him a dragon costume and have him dress up as the dragon. Hmmm, come to think of it we have a dinosaur/dragon costume in Hazel's dress ups. I wonder if it will fit him. We'll see if he will go along with it.
Michaelmas is also about the harvest and food is very important. Blackberries are often served due to an old Irish folk tale of Satan landing on blackberry brambles when he fell from heaven and he returns each 29th of September to spit on the fruit of the plants he landed on and of course his spit makes the fruit inedible after that date. (Source)

Source

I think I will try this recipe for Harvest Apple Soup. I'm not sure Steve will like it but it sounds like something Hazel and i will love. We will also make dragon bread as I described yesterday. Our plan is to make it with our huckabuck bread recipe from our parent/child class last year. Then since none of us really like blackberries, I think I will serve either a raspberry tart (I have one in my freezer that we need to use up) or an apple pie.

A Simple Fall Craft Hazel Made from Mostly Natural Things from Walks

There are many recipes available on line for bread, stew/soup, goose, and pie. The tradition of goose has to do with paying quarterly rents in England and for Michaelmas you gave a goose with your rent. (Source) Here are a few:

• Michaelmas Harvest Bread on Copywriter's Kitchen
• Michaelmas Pie on Irish Culture and Customs (Michaelmas Pie always involves blackberries)
• Michaelmas Dumplings on The English Kitchen
• Potato Soup on April's Homemaking
• St. Michael's Oatmeal Waffles on Catholic Culture.org
• Curried Vegetable Soup from the Earth Mom on Lancaster Online

I also plan to make some salt dough to make some dragon and autumn decorations.  Last year I shared a pretty good round-up of dragon crafts if you are interested. Depending on how Hazel is feeling, we will see what we get done. You could also do a harvest or fall craft. Above I shared a simple natural (or mostly--we used fake leaves) autumn wreath. Hazel just glued some things onto a paper plate that I had cut out the center. Most of the things were found on nature walks.

Well, I hope that gives you some ideas on celebrating Michaelmas! Enjoy!!

Michaelmas & Fighting Your Inner Dragon

I almost forgot to announce the winner of the Show Me a Story Giveaway! The winner is Rondah. Rondah, you have 48 hours to email me back to claim your prize. Congratulations!! Thank you to everyone who entered!

Source

Last year I learned about Michaelmas. It is a Christian Festival celebrated at the Waldorf Schools. It is on September 29th each year. In the Catholic Church it is known as the Feast of St. Michael or All Angels Day. For more information on the Catholic Feast visit here.

Welcome Autumn Acorn Garland

Ok, so I flipped through the Paper Source catalog this weekend and was inspired by this garland. Now I love Paper Source!! And I love their products, but I cannot always spend the money and some of them are easy enough to figure out how to make on my own.

This was one I thought I definitely could do. First I googled for an acorn image. I found this great coloring page at Free Printable Coloring Pages. I printed it full page. Well actually I copied it into Word because I had trouble printing from their site, but then printed it full page onto cardstock. I printed/copied it onto fall colored cardstock for the tops and cut them out. I took my pattern piece and cut the bottom higher than the squiggle and cut them out of handmade papers that I had on hand. I glued these to the tops. Then I printed out the words "Welcome Autumn" from Word at 250 for size. I really liked 300 but wanted to save on how many of the clear sticker sheets I used. Then I hung them off yarn by our front door. How are you welcoming autumn this year? (And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, how are you welcoming spring?)