October is absolutely one of my favorite months – apples, pumpkins, crisp fall air, hiking, the promise of the holidays coming, fall clothes, leaves turning colors and crunching under my feet, days spent outside playing!  October is a wonderful month.

We are celebrating this month:

• October 1- The Blessings of the Animals at our local parish. We get to bring our new puppy to meet our priests!
• October 4- The Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi.  If you are looking for books about St. Francis, try this post by Elizabeth Foss.  There are so, so many St. Francis books listed there!
• October 9 – Our littlest one’s birthday!
• October 18- The Feast of St. Luke
• October 31 – Halloween  – Halloween actually is not my favorite holiday, but we do usually go out in our neighborhood with our dog and go house to house.  Usually everyone is out in the street or in their driveways and it can be fun in a community sense. If you want some ideas about celebrating Halloween in a Waldorf home, try this back post.
• Of course, we are also getting ready for All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day as well.

Celebrating October with small children:

• Fall Tales and Activities
• Favorite Fall Tales
• Fall Puppetry
• Make Cinnamon Play Dough
• Bake and cook with apples and pumpkin
• Focus on bodily care and rest
• Healthy warming meals

Celebrating October with grades-aged children:

• Pumpkin Picking
• Gathering acorns and leaves and making nature mandalas
• Painting little rocks and leaving them as treasures to be found in the garden or park – so many resources for this!
• Fall Handwork – knitting, crochet for those in third grade and up, cross stitch, embroidery
• More fall crafts here
• Work on making holiday gifts; more ideas here
• Hiking, camping, backpacking, kayaking

Celebrating October with teenagers:

• Star-gazing – October is one of the most clear months to star watch in the Southeastern United States
• Work on making holiday gifts
• Hiking, camping, backpacking, rock climbing – adventures of the heart!
• Celebrate National Teen Read Week

Homemaking:  I am very excited to be a part of Whole Foods Freezer Cooking , which starts October 17.  It always feels good to be re-vitalized in the kitchen.

I am in the midst of going through winter clothing and winter outerwear for the children to make sure we have what it needs, since I am the strange Southerner who is always wanting snow in the winter!  Come on snow!  This winter, we hope to take the children to a neighboring state and ski/snowboard a few times, and I am very excited about this!

We celebrated Michaelmas at home and then the next day with friends, and I am hoping we can do the same for Martinmas, so I have a little bit of time this month to work on that!

Homeschooling: Let’s see….  Most importantly, we have some field trips planned to our local museum to see a new exhibit, a trip planned to a neighboring state, some camping planned, and plans to be outside every day in the fall weather with a new puppy!

Other things in the works:  First Grade – we finished two blocks of first grade (Form Drawing and Qualities of Numbers), and we will be moving into our first letter block. In sixth grade, we completed astronomy and are in mineralogy right now.  I hope to move into a little introduction of European Geography by the end of this month and then into Rome.  In ninth grade, we are doing Algebra I, Spanish II,  Living Biology, and finishing a block on Native American/Colonial American history. Our next block will be Comedy and Tragedy, which will be fun.

Self-Care:  (No affiliation with any of the links below, they are just products and consultants that I use, and I love to support small mom-owned businesses.  Don’t you?)

• One thing I like to think about with fall and winter coming is making my skin more radiant and nourished.  I am a big skin care fan.  What I like now includes Beautycounter’s Nourishing Cream Exfoliator – none of those little beads that are bad for wildlife down the road!  I like to moisturize, so have been playing with a number of body and facial moisturizers.  And, I like soothing charcoal/clay masks –  again, Beautycounter has one (no affiliation, I just like their products!  You can try this Facebook page for deals) and I have found clay masks from Earth Kiss at markets such as Sprouts.  I also have been looking at fall makeup.   I like the makeup from Beautycounter as well, and I also love the glam looks from Younique by Fallyn.
• I am also looking forward to re-vamping my wardrobe.  Somehow, I have ended up with sweaters, a pair of jeans, a pair of pants….and not much else.  It is obviously past time to invest in some fall/winter clothes!   I am headed to my friend’s LuLaRoe business to pick up some leggings and dresses.  Their leggings are so soft, most of the people who have them seem to love them and live in them, so I am looking forward to trying on and finding some of my own!
• And, with the colder weather, time to pick up hiking and even foray into more walking and running.  One thing I would love to do this year is backpacking on the trail (when I camp, I usually get a tent campsite), so backpacking would be a new adventure.  We also have some tent camping planned as well.
• I have been also planning some time with the mom’s that I love – mom’s night out! 🙂

Hope your October is full of magical surprises and fun!

Blessings and love,
Carrie