Ostara Flower Dolls

Today's story was about Ostara, the goddess of the dawn and the Spring. Spring came late in the story, but it came early here in Oregon! Flowers are everywhere. If you can, take a little walk with your family and see what flowers you can find to make your own little Ostara dolls out of flowers.

Note: Please don't cut flowers from other people's yards without permission! There are lots of flowers around growing on the side of the road, in empty lots, and in the verge between the sidewalk and the smaller streets. Maybe you have some in your own yard!

-scissors

-flowers

-toothpicks (you could also use straight pins)

Explore the neighborhood or your yard and see what flowers you can find! Make sure to stay safe and practice social distancing, though.

You'll want to use a pair of scissors to take flowers. It causes less damage to the plant if you snip the stems instead of yanking them, and you're less likely to mess up the flowers themselves. Larger flowers are easier to work with. You'll also want to snip some buds, because those will make the best heads for the dolls.

Once you get home, check out your haul. Pick out a larger flower to be a body.

Cut off the stem. Break a toothpick in half and insert it where the stem used to be.

Trim the stem off one of your buds, and stick it onto the toothpick. Now your doll has a head!

Here's where you can get really creative and add all kinds of things to your doll. I broke another toothpick in half, stuck the halves into the top of the flower as arms, and gave my doll a little parasol.

After trimming the stems off this flower, I realized that it already had a bud growing in a perfect place to be the head! And the leaves looked kind of like arms. So I added a hat!

For this little doll, I put two flowers on top of each other for her skirt, because I thought the white daffodil looked like a little petticoat. Then I gave her a jaunty little bonnet.

I made a face with this flower! What other things can you make? Can you make an animal? Or a car?

I put the flowers I didn't use into a jar with some water, and set my dolls and the flowers around my chalice. Maybe you could do the same!

Happy Easter!