Flower Child & Falling for More Craftivities

By Chris Dunmire

Fall foliage in the midwest is just sublime. It's been raining this week and growing colder and usually by Halloween the best of the vibrant colors and sunny warm days are behind us. Today though, is bright with sunshine — possibly one of the last good days to take in the autumn beauty before we turn the corner into November.

Earlier this summer I planted a set of five mum plants next to my house and watched them grow, bud, and finally bloom into these beautiful orange-ish flowers in September. I have so enjoyed their presence outside my kitchen window and plan to add a contrasting color (white or yellow) to the mix next year.

Incidentally, after watering the mums one day, I noticed how easy they'd be to snip into little mini-mum bouquets to share with friends. So on Tuesday I clipped away at one entire mum bush and filled a paper grocery bag with bunches of flowery treats to gift away, including a few of those nipping fake-ladybug asian beetles which happened to be enjoying the mums too. (True story: a couple weeks ago my husband and I were pelted by hordes of those fake ladybug beetles during a prairie nature walk. Those things bite and are quite unpleasant.)

I emptied my entire bag o' mums at an office filled with grateful friends and received twice the amount of joy from these flourishing flowers simply by sharing my abundance. See how the universe works?

Expanded Printable Fall Craftivities

To further prolong this fall season (my favorite), I've added more leaf types and colors to my Printable Fall Leaf Cutout Templates, and noting Thanksgiving on the horizon, updated my Thanksgiving Turkey Hand Tracing & Writing Activity into an expanded multi-paged kit for parents, teachers, and, well, you too. Yes, leaf making, hand-tracing, turkey-faking, creative fun! •

© 2008 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com. All rights reserved.