New play-doh

I've been banging on and on about how great it is that spring is here and summer is coming and meanwhile it turns out that Auggie's favourite season is the autumn. His main reasons are the leaves and our autumn birdfeeder. 

We did spend a lot of time this past fall looking at leaves and one windy afternoon we watched hundreds of  bright yellow leaves blow off the trees outside our living room window in big gusts. It made more of an impression than I realized. So we used some leaf-shaped cookie cutters to make autumn leaves and we're also up to page 87 of Moominvalley in November — to be honest I am surprised, it's a pretty low-key storyline, but he requests it every few days. 

This is a good feeling!

Update: I am just using store-bought play-doh — there are only so many hours in a day sometimes —but if you want to make your own, here is a whole web site devoted just to play dough recipes, so whatever you have handy in your kitchen, I expect you can find a recipe there to suit you.

November: Winter birds (Birdseed part 2)

November is the time when birds' nests begin to show themselves, as the trees lose their leaves. You can read all about our homemade birdhouse and our birdseed here. We also bought a birdhouse that would attach to the outside of a window (as we don't have an easy way to attach a hanging birdhouse). It's become popular with many little birds in our neighbourhood and we have a steady stream of visitors outside our window.

Birdseed

A few weeks ago we discovered birdhouses in some of the large trees around our neighbourhood. As the leaves fall from the trees, they have begun to show themselves. This has really captured the imagination of one of our junior members, and birdhouses are now on the charts (just behind trucks, snow and slightly ahead of fish).

So this week, we visited our local Wildbirds Unlimited shop to find out more about feeding wild birds in our neighbourhood. We got an enormous tub of birdseed and a bird feeder (more on that another time). The tub was the smallest amount available, but at $5, it's been giving us a lot of entertainment. This week, we make a simple 5-minute birdfeeder and hang it on some trees).

One thing we've done is to make little bird feeders out of peanut butter, empty paper towel rolls — cut into pieces — and our birdseed. We found the idea through our pinterest (originally from The Moffatt Girls) and set to work. We used a butter knife to spread peanut butter around the roll, then we rolled it in a plateful of birdseed.

It took us about 15 minutes, and we had a lot of fun vacuuming afterwards (we actually did really have fun with that bit, but that may be just us).

Then we set out to place our feeders on some low branches. We slipped them over some branches near the birdhouses. We used a path we cross at least once a day, so we can keep an eye on them and throw them away when they're empty.

Lastly, we scattered big handfuls of birdseed under the trees on our way home. Probably that was the most fun part of all.