Fall colours on your window!

Autumn or Fall, as it is called in the US, is the best season of all. In India, we don’t really get to see autumn or spring, as the climate there is hot almost all through the year. But then, India is a vast country and we also have places with extreme climates – 50 degrees of summer and dropping below freezing points in winter. Our clearly defined seasons are summer, monsoon and winter. There is a post-monsoon period between October and November which literally kills with the humidity levels! Shifting to the UK brought us face to face with a different kind of beauty in nature. The best among them was autumn.

Autumn marks the clear transition from summer to winter and it is beautiful because it is delightfully noticeable. Days get shorter and there is a chill in the air in the evenings. Park picnics start to decline and the jackets and sweaters begin to make their appearances. I guess this also is a little melancholy, what with summer gone and the possibility of a dull, cold and grey winter looming ahead of us. But it also brings beauty of a different kind - the shedding of leaves from deciduous trees as the winds gets cooler. Different hues of yellow, orange, brown are everywhere. It really is a cheerful sight to see and behold.

After moving here, I realised that autumn also gives rise to a lot of craft, home décor, recycling and upcycling ideas. We were pretty new in UK during our first autumn so I couldn’t really do much with my tiny tot. 

A got into the habit of picking up different colours and types of leaves and preserving them in books. After some time, they leaves would dry up completely and become stiff. We coloured a few and stuck them to papers, made prints on paper with water colours and a few other random art. And then we decided to spruce up our window with it.

This is such an easy thing to do, it hardly requires any preparation. I picked up different shaped, stiff and dried leaves and stuck them randomly on the window glass with blue tac. I then made a circular periphery for my daughter to colour in, around those leaves. I took up a plastic place mat and dabbed some green, yellow, orange and red on it and gave A a piece of sponge. I also diluted the colours a wee bit with water before she got started. 

She was at it for about 45 minutes or so and thoroughly enjoyed. I could see it in the way she meticulously covered the ends of the periphery first and then went about dabbing inside. When the same sponge was used for all colours, it ended up in a mish mash of colours which made them totally cheerful and bright! 

When she was done colouring the whole circle, I simply took off the leaves. It turned out so beautiful! Take a look!

It’s almost summer now, but we have yet not washed it away! :-)