Something for Mom, Something for the Kids

Remember that Reverse Works for Me Wednesday? Well I had a dilemma about air freshners that day. I can't stand the chemical after smell of all aerosal air freshners, but sometimes a girl just needs/wants the room to smell nice. A lot of you suggested yummy smelling candles, and I love a really nice smelling candle. Right now I have Yankee Farmhouse Apple in my kitchen. Yummy! But during the day with 6 little ones running around I can't be burning candles. So I still had a bit of a dilemma.

Until last week when I found this:

What is that contraption, you ask? It's a reed diffuser. The jar holds beautiful smelling oil and you place the reeds inside. The reeds do their thing and soak up the oil and as the air moves around the reeds it diffuses a lovely smell that is not overwhelming but there in the background. No chemical smell, no fuss, no muss, just luscious fragrance. It lasts forever and looks cool. I just have to have it out of reach so it doesn't get dumped. This one is grapefruit vanilla. I've also got SweetPea and White Lily. Aaaah. Luscious I tell you.

And I just found out that Shannon will be hosting another Reverse WFMW tomorrow. So get your questions ready!

In keeping with celebrating fall, my favorite time of year, I would be remiss if I didn't do some kind of craft with all those leaves that my back yard collects.

So we made our own picture of fall trees. So easy and fun to do.

You need: a large sheet of construction paper, brown tempra paint, white glue, q-tips or craft paintbrushes, lots of leaves that are not yet crunchy and dry.

To make the trunk and branches of the tree, paint the child's hand, palm side, and arm right up to their elbow with the brown paint.

Have them spread their little fingers as wide as they can and then lay their arm onto the construction paper to make the print. You might have to help the smaller ones so they don't squiggle and smear it on the paper otherwise you get a very smeared tree.

This must now dry before you can go on. So now is when we went out and played in the leaves and collected for the rest of the picture. I took the colored leaves right off the trees because they were still fresh and not dried out and crumbly. Pinch off the stems.

When the paint is dry, give the child the leaves, and a small container with white glue and let them "paint" glue on the back of the leaves and glue on their "tree" and falling on the ground.

This is a great time to talk about fall and what happens to the leaves, colors, back and front. Small children will need to have it explained that the fingers of their hands are the branches of the tree and the arm is the trunk. It's very interesting to note how each child interprets it. Some will just glue leaves all over the place willy, nilly while others will be quite particular about keeping all the leaves on the top of the tree while others will make very particular lines of leaves falling to the bottom.

You can finish it off with some cotton ball clouds.