Autumn Goodbye and Hello Ice Windows!

On the eve of the first day of December, my daughters write their letters to Father Christmas, with their name, their age and what kinds of things they enjoy doing and how they are looking forward to his visit.

In the night, the ‘elves’ come and pick the letter up whilst filling our fabric advent calendar with little ornaments. My daughters take it in turns to hang the ornaments on the bare branches on our Nature table every day.

 

We also have a little gnomes bonfire in the evening in our lounge. My daughters lined the gnomes up in front of our woodburner so they could all get a good view 😉

and they threw all the leaves, conkers and other autumn finds into the fire as a farewell to autumn and to prepare for the lead up to Christmas.

We sang this song:

“Autumn Goodbye
Autumn Goodbye
You may no longer stay,
Winter is on its way.
Autumn Goodbye
Autumn Goodbye.”

It was very sweet and a good moment to reflect on autumn and all that it has given us and to look forward to the winter months and the goodness they bring. We had a stunning sunset yesterday and the frost is crisp and crunchy underfoot.

Infact last night we realised it was the perfect time to make an ice window. We have made these in years gone by in January, but since it is so cold now, I thought we should seize the moment ( it wasn’t particularly cold here in January last year). Some things just need to be done when the opportunity presents itself. And here it is!

My daughters pointed out that the orange segments look like a face! They have already prepared another one for tonight, with a few more items in it.

As you can see, we filled a plastic trug with water (once we used a saucepan, but we couldn’t get the ice window out, so don’t do that!) and then floated our treasures on top. I also floated a piece of string in the water so that we could hang it up. If it doesn’t come out easily, use a knife or spatula to release the sides. Easy and so beautiful!