Today my little lady and I headed down to Stanley Park for our second year at Bright Nights. Last year, Miss G was just a tiny little thing still riding around in the Ergo, but this year was a whole new ballgame. She rode the train and pointed out things with one hand while holding my hand with the other, she cruised around the displays taking in the lights, she made friends with the Frosty the Snowman mascots that were strolling around the park, and enjoyed a warm milk and a bag of popcorn as a special treat.
Here’s our evening in photos…
All aboard!
Beautiful light displays.
Through the tunnel.
Chillin’ with Frosty.
Firefighter Grae.
The happiest little girl.
Taking it all in.
Magical.
“Mama, take Grae Grae’s picture!”
Warm milk to end a lovely {and chilly} night.♥
Not too long ago, Miss G ‘s 
This time, we started with an ‘O’ shaped cardboard base. Gracen glued her puzzle pieces (this time using just regular white glue) onto the cardboard doughnut, overlapping them as she went along.
When the ‘O’ was covered to her liking, we set it aside to dry for a while.
Later in the day, she came back and painted the puzzle piece wreath all green. She quickly discovered that dabbing the paint on gave much better coverage than brushing it on, so she went with that method.
When she was done painting, we let the wreath dry again.
Next came the really fun part – decorations! She chose magenta sequins as holly berries, but you could easily use buttons, mini pompoms, foam circles, or dot stickers too. Just add some dots of glue to the wreath and pop your decorations on.
The last step was adding a little ribbon bow I’d quickly made for her… Regular white glue worked just fine for this job too.
For the last few days, Miss G has really been enjoying the new set-up she has happening at her creative table (for a little bit of background info on the whole idea behind her creative table, click 
The sewing station consists of things we mainly already had on hand… Two types of beads (pony beads and meltable beads like 
And some homemade lacing cards (simply made by cutting shapes out of card stock and cardboard, and punching holes around the edges).
When Grae originally discovered her new sewing materials, she was by far most excited about the needles and thread, and got to beading right away…
After a couple of days, she had completed not only a bracelet for herself (I helped with the tying of course), but one for her Mama too!
After that, she begun working on the lacing cards. Right now she’s working on a lacing circle that has beads woven throughout. She works on it a little each day, moving onto something else when she feels like it and returning when the urge returns.
Something that often happens when it comes to her creative table {and sensory play} is that Grae adds to the materials as she goes. These mini cupcake liners were all her idea. 
This is her most recently completed project… A bracelet for Papa! He couldn’t be left out, now could he?
Story time with Mrs. Claus.
A visit to Santa.
Lovely horses in the post office.
Santa’s toy workshop.
Elf school in the barn.
Goofy Gracen and Papa.
Whew. Today Gracen and I spent over 2.5 hours driving, an addition 1.5 hours sitting at border crossings, and 3 hours bopping around Bellingham running errands and getting some shopping done. We powered straight through lunchtime and nap time, and through it all, Miss G was an absolute pleasure.
For the last few days, Gracen’s been working on these sweet little nature wreaths at her 
It started out as a very simple painting station with a few cardboard o’s and some paint in different shades of green.
When the paint was dry, I added a few other things into the mix… Glue, mini pinecones, bits of evergreen tree, and dried out red berries from her 
Though this creative table set-up didn’t take off quite like the 
This morning, after walking past the wreath on our door, she asked if she could have some bows for her wreaths, so I brought out my glue gun, cut up some ribbon, and added a few to the table.
After adding her bow, she put on the finishing touches…
And voila! A beautiful little Christmas wreath made of things {mostly} found outdoors.
While we don’t have a Santa photo for Gracen’s very first Christmas (we were living in Kuwait and didn’t really have the opportunity there, so we planned on getting one taken in Paris while we were on vacation, but ended up spending 3 and a half days in the Frankfurt airport and never making it to France due to weather conditions…), here’s a comparison of Grae’s santa photos for this year and last. It’s amazing what a year does, isn’t it? In the first one she still looks like such a baby, and in the second, she’s clearly a little girl (*sob*). 
I love how the first one starts out very seriously, in the second you can see a cautious smile sneaking out, and in the third she looks like she’s having a good time. 
In the end, the photographer asked if she’d like to sit with both Mama and Santa, and she agreed {although she doesn’t look overly thrilled}. 
What I wash’t prepared for however, was the fact that as soon as her toy box top was cleared off and wiped down, she said “Mama tells Grae Grae ’bout da NEW toy box prajet (project)!” Uhhhh… I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Oops. I explained to Gracen that I wasn’t sure what would replace her beloved building station, but I would think of something FUN, get it ready during her nap time, and surprise her with it when she woke up. No pressure.
Since I had about a gazillion other things I had planned to get done during my baby girl’s nap time, I knew the new station had to be something quick and easy to put together. I dug through our little living room toy box in search of inspiration, came across her bar magnet, and that was that…. A magnet station it was. I gathered up all kinds of small things from around the house – some magnetic and some not – and placed them on a tray along with the magnet. At first, I thought I’d just leave it at that, but then I decided it would be fun to add a sorting element since Miss G loves sorting/matching games so much. I remembered coming across 
When Gracen woke up, she asked about her new project immediately (this girl doesn’t forget a thing). I brought it in, explained that it was a magnet station, and let her jump in.
After a couple of minutes of exploration, I explained the jar drawings to her. Without hesitation, she started placing things in the appropriate jars.
She was so into it that it didn’t feel like too much at all.
Before long, she’d sorted every last item into the jars and announced, “All done! Dump ’em and do it again!” (A sure sign of success, I’d say. ☺)
Today Gracen’s 
Gone are the crunchy leaves, dried out sunflowers, mini pumpkins, new apples, and shedding cattails…
And in are the bare branches, pinecones, evergreen limbs, and dried red berries.
If we’re striving for accuracy, the title ‘Christmas shelf’ would probably be more appropriate at this point, but we’re sticking with ‘nature shelf’ because soon enough all of the little Christmas extras (many of which were mine when I was little) Miss G carefully selected and added will be tucked away until next year and we’ll be back to having shelves filled with plain ol’ nature things.
And because we don’t have quite as many wintery things as we did autumn-y things, we decided to use the bottom shelves for seasonal books, which Gracen loves having on display.