Day 16 of the Advent Season, First Snowfall and The End of An Experiment

Handmade Paper Dolls

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The kids received paper dolls today from their Advent Calender, I made them with jointed arms using paper fasteners to create the joints and made simple clothes for them to start off with. My eldest made me proud by immediately making boots for hers and her sister's doll, which slips on and off quite well. Why did I feel proud? Well I wanted to make shoes for them but couldn't quite figure out how to do so without using a tab fold over edge (and she did) and I was also happy because my main reason for making them these type of dolls was to encourage them to use their imagination to make new outfits for the dolls which I hope will help to stretch their creative juices in relation to the materials they may use, etc. So I was really pleased that its purpose worked so quickly. (Golly just reread this and what a lot of waffle to explain something so simple, sorry about that).

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The bible story they heard is pictured on the right.

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Woke to an even more frosty morning today, with mini ice crystals designs on the conservatory window, frozen shed locks and completely frozen to the bottom bird baths. In the greenhouse the water in the watering can also had a frozen surface, these two very icy nights I'm afraid have lead to the end of the 'extend the season tomato experiment' and put paid to the hope of picking homegrown tomatoes on Christmas day. But there has been enough benefits for me to repeat this next year, I mean how great is it to pick ripe tomatoes right up into December :) The picture on the right shows how many more full tomatoes I had slowly ripening on the plants. I cooked some this evening for dinner, chopped up with onions and sauteed in a little olive oil, salt and black pepper.

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The yukon plants have also been completely killed off from the frost and so I'll be harvesting some roots soon to try.

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Well the frost doesn't only mean doom and gloom and to prove it, below are some pictures of beauty frozen in time for you to enjoy.

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Calendula

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Annual Salvia

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Heartease

These although they were pretty droopy with the heavy frost, once it was melted by the sun they perked right up.
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Sweetpeas - I couldn't choose between them so I decided to show you all both pics.

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Now the sun did come out really bright and warm today and was much more efficient at melting the frost today than yesterday, it go so much warmer that I was sure the promised light snow forecasted would not have materialised, hmm? How wrong was I? Here is a short video this winter's first snowfall all be it a light one. It did settle enough to let you leave foot prints but during the night it was washed away by a light drizzly period.

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Today's Trini christmas song is another parang tune originally written and sung by Daisy Voisin who I told you about here. This time the singer is another lady who is making a name for herself in the parang feild of music.

Sharlene Flores - Sereno, Sereno.