...in the windy autumn weather
We twirl around
And whirl around
And all float down together

It was the last autumn-themed session of the year at The Little House in the Park last week, so we decorated giant leaves with paint and glitter, and laminated beautiful autumnal collages to put in the window. 

Matthew and I both love the songs we sing with Chrissie and Esther at the start of each session, and are very happy that they've recorded a CD* so we can now listen to them in the car (I would say sing along to them but I am FORBIDDEN to sing in the car). 

The songs are grouped by season - we're looking forward to revisiting the winter ones ('Galloping Across the Snow' - yippee!) at the next session. 

*If anyone's interested in buying a CD they can be ordered online at www.dlbeducation.co.uk.
 
This week the Holburne Museum is organising a Lantern Procession to mark the beginning of the Bath Christmas Market. We are very excited. Especially as we now have our very own homemade lantern, which we made at The Little House in the Park last week. 

We started off by threading willow sticks through a cardboard base with holes round the edge, bending the ends of the sticks underneath the card and taping them down. Then we taped another piece of card over the bottom (to cover all the ends) and taped around the sticks near the top (to stop them waving about and poking small children's eyes out). 

Then came the really fun part - gluing white tissue paper around the sticks (two layers), covering that with lots more glue, and decorating it with bits of coloured tissue paper and glitter. A big old sticky mess. 

We've put a string of LED lights in our lantern (you have to make a hole to get them in) and are now ready for the procession (or recession, as Matthew calls it). 
 
Last week's session at The Little House in the Park was all about hibernation and hunkering down for the winter. 

The spider's web is made from wooden skewers stuck into a conker, then wound round with wool of different colours. It was very therapeutic to make (I was deliberately blocking out Matthew unravelling all the other balls of wool in my peripheral vision). The spider is just four short black pipe cleaners twisted round in the middle, with its legs pushed into the wool. 

The hedgehog is made out of clay, and his little den is a cardboard box painted with shiny autumn colours and then stuffed with kapok and straw. We finished it off by gluing leaves on top. Matthew always likes it when the clay makes an appearance - I think he'd be quite happy just spending the whole session making clay hair with the garlic crusher. 

I fancy hunkering down for the winter. Wonder if the boy would be OK if I just crawled under the duvet for a few months? 
 
Hooray! Got all my pendants ready for display today, in time for the Christmas craft fairs. We're going to be at the Friends Meeting House - right next to Bath Christmas Market - on Sat 24 Nov, Sat 1 Dec and Sat 8 Dec. Hopefully some of the coachloads of people piling into Bath on those days will pile over our way.

There are about another dozen of these pendants, and they are all different - no two the same. Quite proud of that. 
 
A few paintings from The Little House in the Park using autumnal colours. We were supposed to be doing leaf prints, but Matthew was in the mood for swirls and handprints so we went with that. I really like the swirly ones - they look like fireworks.