fall craftiness

Some kids love to color, some kids love paint. Our kid loves tape. Really, any kind of tape--masking, scotch, duct, electrical, painting. I have to ration him, if I'm to make sure that we have tape in the house when it's actually needed for something. And the truth is, he does pretty cool things with tape, and has actually gained some good taping skills, something I didn't even know existed until I watched one of his otherwise-coordinated friends really struggle to work with tape. Clearly she hasn't had the practice he has.
But lately a new material has taken over, and that's the hot glue gun. I know it sounds crazy to let a four-year-old use the hot glue gun, but he does it with supervision and he's really careful. It's a great material, really, because it's so easy and precise and it hardens quickly. But boy, can that kid go through the hot glue sticks!

Thus inspired by my son, I had myself a nice little date the other night with the hot glue gun and some of the outdoor treasures that have been filling up pockets and baskets of late. It was nice to put these items to use, and truly, they are so beautiful--all these ways that trees have to reproduce. I was happy to walk by these decorations every day, until we found out that half of the buckeye trees we collect from have really precious buckeyes that the campus arborist wants to collect and propagate into gifts for graduating seniors. But the other half are just rubbish. And here I have them all happily mixed together, hanging on my wall.