The cold, dark, rainy days of fall must be affecting me or something because I've made 2 candle-related projects this week. First, a simple paper lantern.

Our homeschool group is having a lantern walk next week and all the kids and moms in the group are coming over to our house today to make lanterns to hang from sticks that we will take with us on our walk. This is the prototype I made, following the directions in All Year Round. I still need to add a wire handle. It's very sturdy for just being made from paper. I look forward to seeing what the kids make, Julian is planning to put snakes on his lantern- that's a lot of tricky cutting! 

Another prototype, this one not yet finished, that's been on my mind for a while, a Christmas Pyramid.

Our family has a little dime-store version that my sister Abby thrifted for me, but it's still magical and the boys and I love watching it spin as we eat our dinner during the Advent season. I wanted to see if I could make one myself so we could add our own figures to the rotating disc. I scoured the internet and could only find complicated scroll-saw plans so I just studied ours and looked at some pictures of ones for sale and winged it. I must say, I am pretty pleased with how it's going so far. It's not perfect but it does spin and I like its simplicity. I am going to make a more polished, finished one this weekend. 

I can't believe we will be moving into November next week. How is your family preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas?