Advent: Day 5

This is one of our two Advent seasonal tables. The beautiful cascading silk was hand-dyed with natural dyes by Syrendell. If you are looking for soft and artistically dyed silks, they have an amazing selection and do beautiful custom orders. I have a few silks I bought elsewhere, but they are nowhere near as soft or as beautiful as the ones from this creative family.

I needle felted a large, Old World Father Christmas with beautiful wool from Peace Fleece.

And on our other Advent seasonal table, we made a lovely Star Ladder inspired by a craft in the amazing book, All Year Round. Instead of using a blue ribbon, though, we cut strips of felt and sewed them together. And instead of star stickers, we cut star shapes out of felt and stitched them on as such.

Each day, the little angel travels down a star until she reaches the last one on Christmas Eve when we will then light our star candle at the bottom. We decorated the table with moss, evergreens, our Christmas gnomes and some beautiful crystals and rocks.

The angel is made out of tissue paper and wool. Needle felt a small ball and place it inside of a piece of tissue paper with rounded corners (see tutorial below). Tie string around the neck and twist the sides to make hands. Then attach the wings and you can either use a pin to move her down the star ladder or tape.

I also wanted to share our enchanting eco-twig house, beautifully hand made by the artist Rick Tan at Syrendell. It is made out of twigs from his yard, along with reclaimed fencing. We added the moss and the straw and it awaits our weary travelers on Christmas Eve. We will be adding to our nature table each Sunday in Advent.

Our quartz crystal was added here to represent the minerals on the 1st Sunday in Advent.

Last night, our special book pulled from our Christmas book basket was "Room for a Little One", purchased by the girls Gramy, which is a very sweet tale about the animals making room for each other and the Christ child on that special eve.

And for our Advent reading today, we shared another amazing story from "Christmas Roses: Legends for Advent". The story was entitled "The Old Woman Who Wanted a Gnome in Her Home" by the gifted story teller Jeanna Oterdahl. In the story, the old woman learns that only through giving of herself to someone else in need, would her house become a real home, complete with that special gnome.

Finally, for our December 3rd St. Nicholas Story, we enjoyed yet another fantastic tale by Christine Natale called, "Bishop Nicholas and the Family". I absolutely love the focus of the stories in this series, which is on the act of giving, rather than receiving. It is befitting and so needed in this season.

Our little St. Nicholas has found a nice home in the Advent wreath by the rose quartz crystal. He seems to be enjoying the stories about him. Elena and I finished our verse which I took from Wynstone's Winter book. Charley still has to finish hers, but I thought I would post pictures of them to sign us off for today!

It is absolutely amazing to me to see how in such a short time, the girls have learned to use the block crayons with such comfort and today, Elena decided to draw her own vision of St. Nicholas. I think it turned out much better than mine :D

Kind old man, St. Nicholas dear,

Come to our house this year.

Here's some straw and here's some hay

For your little donkey grey.

Pray put something in my shoe,

I've been good the whole year through,

Kind old man, St. Nicholas dear,

Come to our house this year.

~From Germany: Wynstone's Winter book