dried flower ornaments craft

I found this activity on Pinterest and have been wanting to give it a try for several months.  My mother was visiting and she runs a garden club at a Nursing home where she lives and I showed it to her and it will be an activity she does with the ladies in the Garden club.  It is also super easy for children to do!

There are several blogs out there that has done this craft and I give credit to the blog that I used from Pinterest...I have no idea who the first person was who came up with this idea...this is just what I tried and how I made adjustments for my family!!!

First find some small flowers and press then in a phone book---also press some ferns and small leaves...I found the smaller the flowers and leaves the easier to work with

There is a white clay recipe on the web for this which you can find here, but I found that clay to dry out and crack so I gave up on it and bought some air dry clay from walmart and so far it it holding up much better
First roll out the dough and cut out circles

use a straw to make holes at the top and allow clay to completely dry either on the counter or in the oven according to directions

Once dry they should be harder but otherwise look the same

Add mod podge to the clay

Carefully arrange the dried flowers onto the ornament.

Cover the entire clay and flow with more mod podge and  allow to dry

results after the mode lodge dries

Next we added pretty ribbon and are going to hang them on some twigs once it stops raining for me to go out and find some in the woods I think they look so pretty.  It will also be a simple fun craft for young and old!

Christmas tree contest

While visiting at my parents  there was a contest for decorating Christmas trees at the local library that my Mother's garden club sponsored.  The rules were to decorate a small table top tree using 90% of plant material.  The kids took the challenge and over a week spent time coming up with different ideas for creating a pretty decorative tree!

The kids gathered up so dried flowers, pinecones, wheat, seed pods  to use on their trees, since my mother is a master gardener she had many thing around the house and garden that the kids could use.

We colored some macaroni and strung them on string.  However only one strand made it on a tree because my sisters dog decided to eat the macaroni :( one evening while we were watching t.v.

The kids also strung cheerios and popcorn to place on their trees

Busy at work we spent several afternoons just preparing our decorations

My Mother showed the kids a way of cutting pinecone that results in a flower like appearance

MarioFan added a little glue 

and added a little glitter to the cone flowers for his tree

I helped MarioFan create a Owl pinecone topper for his tree, I saw a felt pine cone owl on pinterest and we just tweek it a little

I thought it turned out great!

Firedrake made a star using a seed and toothpicks

MarioFans Christmas tree

Firedrakes Christmas tree!

The kids had fun creating their trees and they turned out so cute!

Couples get away

My kids left to spend a month with my parents, we have never left the children that long before and I was nervous and worried about being on my own for that long.  Luckily I have an amazing husband who took a few days off work and took me to Memphis for a long couple's only get away.  I have to say it was nice to just have some couple time.  My husband is a huge music fan of every type of music.  We had gone to Memphis many years ago to visit Elvis's Home so this time we skipped that and explored some other famous sites.  Memphis is such a great place for music and history.

We visited the Civil rights museum which is housed in the motel where Martin Luther King was shot

Explored Beale street and listened to music every single night

Visited the Peabody hotel and the famous ducks

Explored the rock and soul museum

The Cotton exchange museum

Visited a home which was part of the underground railroad

toured Gibson's guitar factory

attended a minor league baseball game, Memphis Redbirds:) and caught a baseball to bring home for the kids:)

It was nice to get away just the two of us and it gave me time to adjust to the fact that the children are gone for a month:)  While I know my kids are going to have an amazing time with my parents and I am so happy for them, I am still feeling a bit lost.  Even my husband said the house upon our return was too quiet:)!

If I have time I will do a few longer posts about our trip, but right now I am spending some time in my new stain glass room working on some projects for the house:)

Visiting a Organic Farm

The UK homeschool group was invited to visit a local organic farm to see how it is run

Kids got to ride in this--very bumpy

But they loved it!

Farmer who owns the land which has been in his family for generations

Our first stop was to met the pigs.  We learned these all called English saddle back pigs and they are great meat pigs.  Yes, kids were informed that the pigs are breed and then butchered.  This news did not go over well with some of the children, however mine seemed ok with that (they love BACON to much to ever give it up)

This was the largest pig on the farm and is an American breed called Durac (spelling?)   The farmer likes to breed this pig with his English saddle backs and says the offspring produces a juicer meat:)

Next he took us out to his field and the children and I learned something new.  No pesticides or chemicals are used on this farm.  One of the way to replenish the ground is to rotate crops and plant white clover in the field when harvesting is done.  

We were told the clover roots (seen above) have little worts on them and that they help replenish nitrogen into the ground.  I am sure those of you who are real gardeners already know this, but I didn't:)

They are very big on conservation here in the UK so any area of the farm that is not useable they encourage wildlife.  Here  the soil is just to wet despite draining the land, so the farmer built several ponds and has a dragon fly reserve happening.  After 6 years he already has 12 out of the 18 dragon flies in his pond found in England, which makes him very happy.

Next we met his cows and again told they can end up in his butcher shop.  Here is where I admit to being a hypocrite, I love meat and could never give it up but I really don't want to have an image of the poor animals face in my mind while I am eating.

Another area of conservation is building hedges around the farm which serves several purposes.  One they are natural fences, two they are homes to ground dwelling birds, and three they act as a wind break for the crops.

No sooner then the farmer finished talking than we saw a pheasant  and a few partridges racing across the field as if to emphasize the point.

We had a great day out and learned a few new things about organic farming and raising animals the natural way.

Look what we found:)!!!

We were given some frog spawn from a friend's garden severl years ago and we were able to watch them change into frogs.  We had pretty good success with 14 out the of the 20 eggs hatching.   The kids wanted the frogs to remain in the yard so we decided to build a small frog pond -- go here to see the whole frog story if you like.  You will also see have big my kids have grown, sniff sniff:).

Anyway, much to the children's dismay once the frogs were released they high tailed it out of here (smart frogs, I think as they would never have had any peace) and we never saw one again.  Just this week I was thinking I was going to have to dig up that pond and refill it with soil since we are moving and we are renting this property.  When we went out to examine the pond we saw this.....

We are pretty sure it is a Newt

We only found the one--but more could be hiding...

We spent the morning researching the find on the web and have decided we think it is a female  Palmate Newt based on the coloring on its underside.  The kids read that the reason we ended up with a newt in our small pond was that they prefer smaller water holes with no fish, lots of leaves and stones for hiding places.  Our little pond has all these things and makes for the perfect habit for this little one.

So for now our little pond is staying put.  I will need to see what the landlord wants to do, hopefully he will like the idea of a little pond and allow the newt to stay.  Otherwise I will need to locate a new pond for the thing, as if I don't have enough things to do before we move:)!

Burghley House Gardens

We recently visited a manor house that has been on my list of places to see...Burghley House Manor.  we found out this is one of the oldest continuously owed private home in the area.  This is also the home of Lord Andrew Lindsey of Chariot's Fire fame:)  Unfortunately I can't show you any pictures of the inside of the house but I can show you the magnificent gardens.  Most historical homes in England have wonderful gardens.  This home was no exception.

Burghley Manor House

This home had two gardens. The first one we entered was the Garden of Surprises which had lots of fun, hands on activities for the children to enjoy

What kids doesn't love the water fountains:)

Fun mirror maze to go thru

Interesting sculptures that do something when you push a button.  This one had smoke coming out of it

this one grow green strings which I think represented grass

This one had water

and this one represented wind

Large games to play-- this is one of my kids favorites, 9 Man's Morris

Next we wandered thru the Sculpture Garden

and tried to guess what the sculptures were -- this one looked like a wagon wheel  Sometimes the signs gave us a hint but sometimes that just confused us more.

Princess thought this looked like a snake on a tree

We had no idea what this was suppose to be:)

This old tree was covered in PVC pipes representing a Maze?  Sometimes modern art escapes my understanding

Tall Vase?

One I actually like:)

Horse, but it was made out of steel bands and on closer examination it had feathers in it.  We couldn't figure out why

This was was labeled Fire but was painted blue.  I might have understood it better if it was painted red!

sort of looks like a windmill, maybe

cow but made of fabric but had a ghostly appearance, my kids thought it was scary looking

Can't have a garden without a labyrinth which is very popular in England.  My kids love walking on them

This was a plastic bag recycling sculpture.  Princess thought it look like a snake that had just eaten a meal.  From a distance it looked interesting, up close it looked like plastic bags...really I don't get modern art!

I love walking thru gardens and we enjoy trying to figure out what the sculptures are but I am often perplexed with some of the designs.   Modern art just doesn't do it for me:), but I do try to understand it.    It was a pleasant day out for us all.