Waldorf inspirations Archives ~ Page 82 of 83 ~ Happy Whimsical Hearts

An Advent Calendar

This year we have a new family tradition – a homemade advent calendar. In past years we have done the store bought chocolate advent, and last year Master D was over it in about 4 days (and did I mention, it was chocolate?!).

For our new advent calendar I found some cute lil envelopes and stenciled on the numbers.

Next we drew pictures incorporating the numbers (or tried to anyway!). We were inspired to try this by some of the beautiful Waldorf alphabets we have seen.

Husband of mine drew some lovely pictures, but sort of forgot about the whole – Christmas themed thing??? Well they look lovely anyway!

In each envelope there is a slip of paper, mostly cut from Christmas cards from last year, with an activity.

We’ve included things like writing to Santa, Christmas crafts & baking, making our gingerbread house and many others.

To put it all together I strung up some wool in the shape of a Christmas tree and pegged the envelopes on.

We are so looking forward to our Christmas countdown!

Warm wishes, Kelly

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November 29, 2011 by Kelly

Knitted bunny

In my search for more (and more) information about Waldorf I came across this great book ‘Creative Play for your toddler’ by Christopher Clouder and Janni Nicol at my local library.

And since we’re coming up to Christmas (5 weeks… eek) I thought – great – handmade pressie for my little ones 🙂 Starting with this very sweet knitted bunny for Little Miss Q (23 weeks).

So during a long 9 hour drive to visit family I got knitting. Casting on 40 stitches and knitting stocking stitch (knit a row, purl a row, repeat) until I had a square (around 16 cm each side). I also left a nice long strand of wool on each end (from casting on and off) to help sew bunny up later.

To create bunny’s legs I joined each corner together for about 5 cm. Next I sewed along the cast on edge before gathering it to help make bunny’s head. Then I kept sewing to join bunny up (i.e. from head gathering down to bunny’s hind legs).

Stuffing bunny came next and I started by making a head shape and then tying it off with wool. Then I filled the rest of the body and played around with his shape (he? – who knew!) – this part was the trickiest for me (any hints for next time welcome!). Once I was happy with his shape I joined him up.

For the ears I cast on 6 stitches and knitted until they were around 6 cm, before knitting 2 stitches together each row until casting off. Then I sewed these on (again I’d kept some wool attached from casting on to sew with). For bunny’s tail I wound wool around my finger and tied it up.

I hope she likes him 🙂 Thanks for reading, Kelly

November 19, 2011 by Kelly