WE'VE had so much fun collecting nature items this Autumn and finding different ways to use them. Acorn people, leaf fairies and crowns, doll food from nuts and berries, pinecone animals.
One of our most surprising finds was a gigantic seed pod. We've still not managed to identify it, but it is about 30cm long! It was used in many different ways; I believe it was its role as tractor ramp that caused it to finally give in and beg to be returned to the earth.
AFTER holidaying at the beach, a beach sunset seemed like a good topic for a watercolour painting. Emma wanted to display our paintings on our nature table, so we rounded the table out with a few sunsetty silks, some of our favourite shells and a jar of rugged flowers.
WITH much excitement we finally opened our new package of modelling beeswax that we (well, Emma) received for Christmas. We spent a while warming it in our hands to make it soft enough to manipulate. Then Emma took great delight in making 'families of candles', which did really look like the candle she made by dipping the other day. I'm not sure if she made the connection with wax through the word or the distinctive smell, or if it was simply the shapes she rolled that made her creations into 'candles'.
After a while I was finally able to pry enough red away from her to fashion a little cardinal bird. The black and yellow for the face and beak had to wait until later after we'd put the activity away, so I stuck a little piece of each colour in my - ahem - bra to soften as I made dinner (a tip from a message board, which seemed like a good idea). Naturally I forgot about it, until it later dropped onto a very startled Alexander while nursing. Happily, bird and beak have now been united and the cardinal sits proudly in a tree, watching over our Winter nature table.
WE were patiently waiting. Lighting only one, then two, then three, then finally all four of the small candles in our Advent wreath. Every Sunday in Advent a new candle was lit, and we added a verse to the poem dedicated to the four kingdoms. 
Then, on Christmas Day, the children found baby Jesus lying in a manger in the stable, surrounded by his parents, the animals and some shepherds. And at the table, we lit the centre candle. Happy Birthday! 
THIS Autumn's nature table has - as always - been a work in progress. We like for our table to be a living part of our family life rather than something to be looked at only, and it is played with every day. But as the 'treasures' threatened to turn our living room into a wild, unbridled forest, the nature table gnomes visited more and more frequently at night for a little clean up.
AS summer gives way to early autumn, we set about updating our nature table with an apple theme. The tree was a collection of twigs that we decorated with felt leaves. 
The apples we made by wet-felting small balls of green and red wool. (Alexander found a new method for this - apparently saliva works as well as soap to aid the felting process.)
A painting of an apple orchard and needle-felted rabbit finished the scene, which I'm sure will be added to with various treasures found on walks throughout the month.
We found some great apple books at the library, including The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson, and The Apple King by Francesca Bosca, which I will bring to Emma's pre-school as a puppet story.
I have a whole new appreciation for the homemaking skills of birds. For our spring nature table, we tried to make a birds nest. The operative word being 'tried'. It took three days worth of outside time, and many start-overs before we had something that I could hold in only one hand without falling apart. How in the world do these little birds perform such a feat of engineering without even opposable thumbs? The project turned from a simple 'let's see if we can do this' into an obsession, and as Emma scuttled around the garden bringing me different supplies, I swear I heard a bird laughing. Eventually, we figured out that twigs and grasses have differing levels of suppleness and looked more closely at the materials we collected to find the best kinds. Thin, winding wisteria branches worked out well; Emma hypothesised that because this plant grows round and round trees, it is good at going round and round nests too. We finally got a passable framework together, and Emma found some soft grass to line the nest. It now sits proudly on our nature table, holding three beautiful wooden eggs, hand-made by a friend for last year's Easter egg hunt.
THOUGH we've had touches of Spring creeping into the house for a while, today is the official beginning of Spring. Since it was the bees that first caught our attention and triggered yesterday's lawn investigation, we decided to bring some of the purple henbit indoors for our Spring nature table. Emma told me the real bees wouldn't like being indoors, so instead ran to get the little bee we crafted last year, and balanced it carefully in the vase.
FOR the last few days we've been preparing for Epiphany, or the Coming of the Magi. We've baked star biscuits, made a large star to carry and crowns to wear, made a hanging star for our nature table and learned a new song. Most of all we've practised being Sternsinger to surprise Papa when he came home from work this evening.
YESTERDAY saw my first attempt at needle felting, with the intent to create a squirrel for our nature table. It started with a vague framework made from a pipe cleaner, then I wound wool batting rounded and round, needling it to adhere the strands to one another. From a strange form resembling... not a lot... it gradually metamorphed to an animal, then something maybe like a beaver, and eventually with a little more detailed shaping it looked more and more like a squirrel. Just in the nick of time, as the needle snapped and the project was brought abruptly to a close. Emma came excitedly to breakfast asking if the squirrel was finished, and when she spotted it on the nature table, declared immediately that it needed a nappy. How silly of me not to felt a nappy onto the squirrel!
AFTER days of the house being in disarray following the arrival of our new baby, I decided that if we at least had one beautiful corner, there would be hope for the future. So I revamped our nature table. Though September has begun, it still seems too early for a harvest theme, and I'm not familiar enough to do a Michaelmas table without researching it first, so decided on the nursery rhyme I had a Little Nut Tree. I used yellow beeswax for the golden pear, and took a nut from Emma's collection and painted it silver to make the silver nutmeg. The tree was made from a bare twig to which I added six green felt leaves. The princess's dress was made from a scrap of fabric left over from a dress made by Grandma, wrapped around a cardboard cone, pipecleaner arms and a body stuffed with wool. The head is a another nut, and the hair more wool.
