Cool weather signals fall

By By Michelle Blaylock, Mom’s Corner
The recent weather just screams “fall!” Although, I will admit my favorite holiday is Christmas, I still enjoy autumn. There’s pumpkin carving, decorating, cooking, campfires, camping, hiking, Halloween, crafts, history, etc.
There are some things that we typically wait and do right before Halloween like pumpkin carving. Although I’m not real big into the Halloween decorations, I am going to have to do some this year simply because five of my kids have talked me into a Halloween Party. (I know my brain temporarily went into neutral!) Therefore, I have been searching the internet for inexpensive Halloween decoration ideas.
I have found several internet sites that I like. DLTK.com is very good and so is robinsfyi.com. These sites have everything from crafts and decorations to food and games. One craft that I love that I have adapted from Christmas, are balloon decorations. For Christmas, I take balloons and blow them up to the size I want and then wrap them in string that has been dipped in liquid starch. I hang them from a shower rod over my bathtub. (Make sure you clean your bathtub before using! Liquid starch can be very slippery!) This craft is easily adapted to Halloween. Follow the same technique just use orange string to make pumpkins. Another idea is to use paper mache to make pumpkins, ghosts, or pinatas.
Of course you cannot have Halloween without costumes. If we’re going to be doing new costumes, then I like to start early. I love to make (as in sew) Halloween costumes. This is especially wonderful if you’re just beginning to learn to sew. If you mess it up who cares, it’s a Halloween costume! Some of the costumes I’ve sewn have been a clown, a pumpkin, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a step-dancer, a dinosaur, a princess, a southern belle, and several others. I think all of these have been used more than once, we now pull out the “Halloween” boxes and go through them to see what we can come up with from what we’ve already got. If you don’t like to sew, there are many internet sites that have great “no-sew” costumes. There are some really cute ones using just sweat shirts, sweat pants, felt and various other materials.
I also enjoy the cooking that comes along with Fall. There are some dishes that just belong with the cooler Fall weather — well, when it gets cooler anyway. Things like chili, stews, soups, chicken and dumplings, caramel apples, and spiced apple cider just belong with Fall. Speaking of apples, here’s a couple of tips for you. If you mix sour cream in with your melted caramel it won’t harden. You have to keep your caramel refrigerated because of the sour cream, but you can pull it straight out of the refrigerator and it’s still “dip-able.” A trick my Mom taught me was to add Red Hots candy to apple pie. It really gives it a spicy kick.
There are also many fun Fall crafts to share with your kids. Consider making placemats for Thanksgiving using a combination of family Fall pictures and pressed leaves. The first thing you need is some pictures of your family and friends doing fun fall activities such as leaf jumping, hiking, camping, or whatever else your family enjoys. While you’re taking these fun fall pictures gather some colorful leaves and press them. I usually put the leaves between sheets of parchment paper or wax paper and then set heavy books on top for several days. Using sheets of construction paper glue on your pictures and leaves in a creative way, then cover with clear contact paper. Speaking of pictures, this is a good time to start working on family pictures for (cringe) Christmas cards.
Fall also has some great opportunities for education. Of course, there are the traditional pilgrims, but there’s also the history of other settlers and what they did to prepare for winter. This opens up a wonderful discussion about how things are so different today as opposed to 150-200 years ago.
Science is a also a huge part of Fall. Websites such as easyfunschool.com and life123.com have great activities and discussions. However, if you have little ones I always think it is fun to ask them why they think the weather changes and leaves changes colors. I have had some interesting answers over the last 15 years or so. I had a child in a class one time that said it was because all the green was washed away with the Fall rains. I also had a child tell me she thought it was because the leaves were old. When I asked her to explain, she told me that her grandmother’s hair had turned gray, because she was old and that’s why leaves change colors because they’re old, too. I just had to ask why she thought the leaves didn’t turn gray like her grandmother’s hair. She thought about it for a minute and said, “Because gray is pretty on my “Granny,” but it’d be ugly on a tree.”
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