The Lovely Pear

 Is there anything prettier than Bosc pears? That dusty brown green color...and those elegant long stems. So lovely. Shapes hardly could be more graceful. And to think that they call women who are pudgy on the bottom "pear shaped." as though its some sort of ungainly descriptor.

Heavens! I'll be pear-shaped any day.Which is handy...since that's how I fall on those charts anyhow.

I think I ought to try painting pears. They are some of the most beautiful things I know. And I'm not the only one who thinks so! I love this giant pear sculpture near Boston [sculptor: Laura Baring-Gould] that I hope to visit someday, and this flock of giant pears [sculptor: George Baldessi] that I won't be visiting anytime soon, in New Zealand. I also think this, this and this are stunning examples of  pear beauty but my very favorite is this whimsical piece. *grin grin* Such happy pears!

Got any other favorite art pears that I should know about?

Leaf Garland Construction

So, I mentioned the other day that I was hoping to find wax in order to make a leaf garland with The Littles. Well, I finally located candle wax in the craft store and used that. Maybe nobody uses paraffin for canning anymore (I guess, I don't at all, come to think of it.) or maybe I am looking too late in the year, in any case I never did find any. Candle wax, however did work just fine.

My idea was that I wanted to sort of combine two ideas I'd seen and make them one project. My boys are forever collecting outdoor treasures which is why we have a Nature Shelf on the bottom level of one of my china corner cupboards. I wanted to take those leaves which come in with them in quantity and decorate more than just one shelf with them...somehow make the color stay and incorporate something to remind us of Thanksgiving.

Martha Stewart (who else? Brilliant, brilliant Martha) had great instructions for preserving fall leaves...and showed them hung in a window. And then here's a good example from another blogger of the thankfulness idea I ran into.So, that's what we did...we mixed the two. First we picked up leaves...then we melted our wax (in a cleaned out yogurt tub, using the microwave).

While the wax was melting we wrote (meaning I wrote) down all kinds of things we were thankful, one thing per leaf with Sharpie...right on the leaf itself.

After the wax was melted and the leaves were "inscribed" we held onto the stems and dipped them in until each leaf was fully immersed. Then the wet leaves were laid out on parchment paper to dry and harden.

Once they were hardened I took a needle and a very long thread and stitched my way through the stem end of each leaf, garlanding them all up into one long chain. We were more ambitious than we should have been and found that by the time we'd done 2/3rds of the leaves we were all too squirrely to continue any further so the chain wasn't quite as long as I thought it would be. That's okay. We like short garlands too.

The silky feeling of the finished, wax-coated leaves is a wonderful sensation between the fingers and the effect of the light shining through all your leaves-cum-post-it-notes is awfully pretty. We had a fun, giggly time together and now we have a window decoration that we made with our own six hands. 

Halloween of Yore...

It was a great Halloween. I called it the best one in our memory as a family although A said that he thought we'd had others just as happy and full of cheer. I may be a child of the moment, only really remembering what I just ate or maybe it really was just that fabulous. Who knows.

I was a gardener (I had leaves and sticks in my hair) and Nib was my yard gnome. The big boys were both firemen of course.

There was a wonderful dinnertime open-house costume party at the next door neighbors. The grown-up wore costumes, even if they didn't have little kids, there were lots of homemade get-ups and everyone was very warm and jolly, grinning at each other and swapping stories over the pizza and caramel apple dip. At exactly the right time the party disbanded in a whirl of glitter and feathers and pretend noses....and we all took to the streets to wish each other a happy autumn, make introductions, hand out candy to each other's children and kick our way through the leaves on all the sidewalks.

Here's a neighbor at the costume party who was also a gnome. So funny to see them together!

Dee collected lollipops on his rounds saying when asked what he'd like from a basket or bowl "I like lollipops." and then carried them in bouquets all over town. They didn't go in the bucket...just in the hand.

A said that it was truly surreal trick-or-treating...crowds of people out halloing across the street and parents back slapping each other over their children's costume choices and neighbors passing out glow-in-the-dark bracelets for all the small ones trooping down the street. Such a fabulous sense of community and togetherness and warmth and trust. I am won over, completely.

A is a careful and studious carver and spends a good bit of time on his creation every year. This year he was carving swiss cheese holes in his pumpkin to make a gleeful Sponge Bob.

And here are all of them on the porch: Mommy, Dee, Daddy and Ru...four in a row.

Our pumpkins we carved were wonderful this year too. No botched slips of the knife, very warm and cheery glows and I'm cooking them down today to make them twice useful. Pumpkin pie, here we come!