Our field

Our new front door has a hook for hanging wreaths, so I've wanted to make a holiday wreath to hang on our door.  Yesterday, when we were walking past our huge field to get to church, we saw extremely tall grass, five or six feet tall.  I decided to try to make a homemade wreath using the straw from the field - a very rustic one.  I didn't have a round wire frame, so I googled, "how to make a straw wreath."  Joann's website was the least helpful:

How To Make A Fall Straw Wreath

...DIRECTIONS:
Trim flowers and secure to wreath using hot glue. Style as desired.
Adhere wood discs for unique detailing.

It appeared there were no online instructions for making a wreath without the wire frame, so I winged it.  I decided to use sticks, tied together with twisty ties, for the frame.  I ran into some obstacles.  The sticks I found to make a frame were too brittle and broke when I bent them too far.  Also, getting the frame to be round was virtually impossible.  I eventually found some living twigs and sawed those free with my scissors, and they were flexible enough to bend together into a circular fashion.  I wrapped the straw around my completed triangle frame, and then used a green ribbon I had on hand to secure the straw.  It proved to be too short, so I tied it to a red ribbon, which also proved to be too short, so I tied that to a golden ribbon.  I guess this is why I save all those pretty ribbons that come on gifts!  There were some dead wildflowers, which I used to ornament the wreath.  My fingers were so cold by the end!

Not the prettiest wreath, but I'd rather a free homemade wreath than one that costs $15 by Joann's.

My first attempt

Cleaned up a little

The super long straw we used for the wreath.

Just some pictures

From Sunday

From today

Reading buddies

Nicole reading to Allison the other night

Cutie

Nicole's adorable:

When she was four or five, she was interested in what day of the week it was.  She likes to know the season, the month, and what to expect.  Now, she keeps this little calendar.

Allison updates

For family who aren't around Allison every day, I wanted to update how she is doing on her talking.  She talks all day (though she still has a strong toddler accent).  To give you an idea of the complexity of her sentences, something she said today was, "I pinch my duck's nose."  I think she's a pretty good talker because she's always been a very willing parrot.  We ask her to say something, and she will usually say it.

She also loves the flashcards that her aunt gave her for her birthday.  I finally bought flashcard rings for them a few weeks ago, so we started going through them with her, and she caught on very quickly.  After going through the colored shapes with her 1-2 times, she was already repeating them back to me.  It helps that she is very interested in them - she LOVES her flashcards, and quickly formed an attachment to them, haha.  The shapes each are different colors, so Allison has apparently been trained to pair objects with their color.  "Purple hippo."  "White sheep."  Shapes that she's learned are octagon, pentagon (she gets those two mixed up), oval, rectangle, triangle, crescent, rhombus, square, circle, semi-circle, star, heart.  As I've trained Allison to hone in on shapes, she notices them when I don't (as I've mentioned before).  Walking back from a park today, she says, "triangle."  I'm like, "What did she say?"  And then I see a tiny yield sign next to the walkway.

When Grandma was here a month ago, she commented that Allison is in the early stages of reading, because she'll sit and "read" herself books - sometimes with loosely accurate words.  She loves books.

Allison sings...all day long.  A song Nicole taught her was (to the tune of Frere Jacques), "Bones are rattling, bones are rattling.  I am scared.  I am scared."  Since that's one of her favorite tunes, she sings that a lot.  Her daycare teacher also taught her the ABCs last week.  (She's done daycare for three days/week for four weeks now.)  She used to just sing the first few letters, but now she things the whole song.  She can also be very sensitive to noise sometimes.  Sometimes she complains that it's "too loud."  But that could just be her being two.

Balloons and a big zigzag

Allison loves to draw.  Today, she asked for a crayon, and she got busy drawing on the paper I left out.  She says, "I color balloons!"  ("I dower bawoons!")  This is exciting to me, because this is the first time she's drawn an actual picture!  I've shown her how to draw circles and zigzags, and tried to show her how to draw triangles, but this was her own creation.  (The balloons, of course, were drawn upside down, as if they were filled with lead and the strings floated to the ceiling.)

Allison drawing the long string of a balloon

Allison got to work on her next creation.  When she was done, she declared, "I color a big zigzag!"

The balloons and the big zigzag.  Sorry, I took the picture sideways.

Crazy hair day

It was crazy hair day at school day today.  Last year, I braided three (messy) braids in her hair, and apparently that wasn't crazy enough because she claims some older kids said her hair wasn't crazy.  So this time, I gave her an upside down braid, and that was apparently good enough.

After we took out her braids.

Her hair looks blonder in this picture.