Welcoming Fall

We had a simple first-day-of-fall celebration this evening.

First we hung up a new fall banner we made over the weekend, simply by painting fabric paint directly on the back side of leaves and pressing squares of muslin onto the painted leaves.

I just cut the squares with pinking shears (btw--did you know you can sharpen even very dull pinking shears by cutting aluminum foil with them? I hardly believed it myself until I tried it; it was nothing short of miraculous) and sewed them to a length of twill tape. Very simple, very easy.

E decorated our "nature windowsill" with our autumn stuff while I made dinner. The whole nature table concept got kind of pushed aside all summer, while our spring naturey items never got put away, fell off the sill repeatedly, got soaked by rain, got mushed by DVDs and remote controls and ambushed by stray socks. I finally cleaned it up and lined up some shells and driftwood and sea glass along it a couple of weeks ago (I had actually collected a lot of nice shells and rocks and things last time we went to the beach, but someone, ahem, left them all there, along with our bucket, two shoves and a net, so I had to scrounge among our existing shell collection). Z later added a tiny bird nest he found and a perfectly intact (but dead) monarch butterfly he also found (he's my finder). E basically crammed some squirrels and owls and corn dollies in with the existing stuff, but he enjoyed himself. We can tidy it up later. Maybe.

For dinner, I made a simple squash soup, served with grocery store multigrain bread.

And for dessert, this pie, which is the whole wheat apricot apple pie from Apples for Jam, only with a lot of adjustments, as I lacked half the required ingredients. It's basically a whole wheat crust with C's applesauce inside and some brandied plums that I made last summer on top. Everyone went wild about the boozy plums--first they thought they were beets (which made E cry) and then they were appalled that I served alcohol, but I'm sure 40 minutes in a 400 degree would burn off all the alcohol, don't you think?

 Our nice evening went south when we discovered, at 8:00 that E and Z had homework--and two pages of it, which means one page was probably left over from last night, when I never even checked their bags. Of course lots of drama ensued, because they were overtired from staying up 20 minutes late last night and getting up waaay early this a.m. And that Z, he's something else. He will purposely put in a wrong answer if he doesn't feel like doing something--last time it was 18,000 as the answer to 6 + 2; tonight he glued all of the days of the week in the right places, but upside down and sideways, and for a picture of what he likes to do on the weekend, he drew himself shooting a gun. I definitely see myself in him, though not me as a first grader--I was a goody-goody then--but me now; when I'm made to do something I don't want to do, I dig in my heels. It's a trait that gets me into trouble sometimes, but I can't help but admire him (when he's not aggravating me); someday he'll be one to right injustices (or spend his whole life frustrated by injustice he can't write, perhaps, but let's hope not). In the meantime, they'll both spend 15 minutes dramatizing over two minute's worth of work. I think, perhaps, six is a little young for homework, don't you?