I've been wanting to wax some autumn leaves with E for a few weeks now. We finally had a day to ourselves at home and some time on our hands so, after spending the morning reading together, out came the craft supplies.
First we painted backgrounds for an autumn tree watercolour that we wanted to do. While those dried we did some leaf rubbings. We've always loved to do these but this year I saw on Mom in Madison's blog a new twist on this old favourite. We cut out and then painted our rubbings with watercolour washes (or splodges depending on what floats your boat).
Not sure if this was pumpkin innards smeared on the wall or just paint. In our house crafts = mess. Actually, in our house life = mess.
We melted some wax and poured it into a pie pan. I put the pie pan on the top of a pot with simmering water in to keep the pie pan warm so the wax wouldn't harden. The boys had already gathered some leaves. We gave each one a quick dip in the melted wax and then let it dry on a piece of wax paper.
When W brought his leaves in I looked twice and said that they looked like they were mouldy but he really liked the colours of them. Once he pointed them out to me I took another look and had to agree that they were quite beautiful. They had a really interesting speckle pattern going on and these two below were very different in colour.
Hard to tell from the photos but they're lovely. Somehow this started a talk about how different people see things differently...how beauty can mean different things to all of us. Then we talked about how some things or people might be considered physically "beautiful" on the outside (to our society's notion of what beauty is) but may not be what we would consider "beautiful" (loving, happy, kind) on the inside. E thought that people who care about the earth would be beautiful to him. ;-) 
Then he scored bonus mama points by telling me (in a completely serious manner) that to him I was beautiful inside and out. (Well, at least it gave my husband something to laugh about when I told him about it over dinner) ;-)
Anyway, we got some of the leaves dipped and dried and we think they are lovely - dried, waxed, speckled, rotting, composted, we love leaves anyway at all. 
We've collected many bags of them from our neighbours too. (big plans for even more front yard edible gardens. ssssh, don't tell my neighbours...or my husband)
Everbearing strawberries
Pumpkins...great huge pumpkins. One of them so big that I can't even get it out of the garage by myself to takea photo of it.
Purple, yes, purple Autumn leaves.
Organic oats cooked up with Rancho Vignola organic raisins and then topped off with great spoonfuls of 
The other day he decided he would make gnocchi (since I wouldn't buy the pre-made kind for him as I know how easy it is to make). We found a new recipe online that used baked potatoes instead of boiled (how I usually make it) and away he went. Potatoes were baked in the toaster oven while he played outside then he came in and we scooped out the baked flesh. A bonus about baking them instead of boiling is that we are left with all these potatoes skins to make another meal with.
He added some beaten egg, salt and flour and that was it. (although next time he wants to add garlic and more spices). I rolled out the dough into logs, he cut into pieces and pressed it with a fork. 
We decided to have them with sage butter so he ran out to pick some sage. He pressed sage leaves between two big slices of butter and then melted it all in a pot. The gnocchi went into a big pot of boiling salted water until they floated to the top. We scooped them out, drowned them in the sage butter and served them with pepper and Romano cheese. We had it with a side of tomato salad - what else? we've got a whole lot of tomatoes to eat up. 
This was seriously plate-licking good. Sage butter is a new favourite. All in all I think he was very pleased with his efforts...although I don't hold out any hope that "slop in a pan" won't be gracing our dinner table again soon. I did try to tell him that Jamie Oliver likely wouldn't name any of his dishes "slop in a pan" but I don't think he is overly concerned. ;-)
The abundance of our yard right now is leaving me with little time to write but I would like to share some photos. We had a frost and I lost a few green tomatoes so we spent yesterday picking everything that was left in the garden. I had helpers.
We now have hundreds of pounds of tomatoes to put by and...my loving husband, knowing how much I love tomatoes, went to a friend's field and picked two more big boxes of ripe ones just for me. Wasn't that sweet? More tomatoes. When I already have hundreds of pounds. Hee hee hee....ha ha, aha, aa haa, sob, sob, sob. ;-) (Where's the I heart tomatoes now, heh?)
Last zucchini of the year - it happens to be off the same plant that I forced (under a milk jug cloche) which also gave us our first zucchini of the year.
Tomatoes ready for roasting for sauce - sprinkled with some chunks of peppers and some garlic
E found this leaf and brought it in to show me. He was thrilled with how "gorgeous" it was and later on I found it tucked in a vase of cosmos that I had picked and put in my room. The picture is up top. I love that my boys take time to appreciate the natural beauty around them.
Another thing that I love about this time of year is the way that plants show us so clearly their abundance - not only do they provide us this year (whether in flower, fruit, or veg) but once the frosted bits are pushed aside
we can see that they have also provided us for next year - in the form of seeds. I love that cycle.
it really seems to important to take time to enjoy the beauty of this season too.
We are inside a bit more at this time of year and it is cool enough that we enjoy baking again. Baking more again made me think I should get going on finishing the kitchen. (Rather like If You Give a Pig a Pancake) I finally, finally got to work on finishing the last bits of our kitchen reno...the one that we did most of two years ago. We are DIYers and we laugh at ourselves because we often complete a job almost fully but then leave the last tiny bit of it undone. It is like we get it to the point of good function and then leave the little details 'til we have more time...but then there is always something else to do. I plan on finishing the grouting around the rocks and some more patching, sanding and painting today and hopefully only having one more coat of paint (on the patched bits) to do tomorrow morning. I think I listened to the Mamma Mia soundtrack (from the play not the movie) at least three times yesterday while I did this. While making dinner I was humming more ABBA when my poor long-suffering husband asked me if that was ABBA that I was humming. I think his ABBA limit had been reached...to say the least. ;-)We have also been settling into more indoor activities and E decided once again that he would like to knit. I found an excellent book on simple knitted toys at the library. He decided that he would knit a horse to start with. We knit together with him on my lap and after only a few knitted rows on one leg of the horse he decided that he would knit a "whole farm" of animals, will my lap take it? We'll see. 
I knit a lamb while we were all sitting out on a blanket soaking up the sunshine. They're fun little things to knit and I can see E enjoying this process more than he would a dishcloth or scarf because at the end of his work he will have something he can play with.
