Advent Festival

On Saturday afternoon the boys and I went to our church's annual Advent Festival. This has become a special tradition for us. There is a wonderful angel at our church named Carol H. who organizes this every year. She is assisted by a team of fantastic volunteers. She basically transforms our whole Sunday school wing. There is a cookie decorating station, a room set up with actors playing Mary and Joseph who read the Nativity story, many rooms with crafts to make and take and (my sons' favorite part) a "store" where children only are allowed to go in without parents to buy gifts for their family. All the items in the store are donated by church members and none are priced higher than $2. There are volunteers who help them shop and wrap their gifts. They are SO excited to come out with armloads of gifts that they have personally chosen for their loved ones. My little boy wanted to "keep shopping". Carol amazes me every year with the great crafts she comes up with. Our Christmas tree has many ornaments made at past Advent festivals and they are truly family treasures.

This year my children made snowglobes. Carol had it all set up with the lids ready to go. The children chose the figure they wanted from the ones available...............



Then they went to the next table where little jars of water waited for a scoop of snowy glitter. An assistant helped glue the lids on and decorate them with a ribbon.



What a cute little snowglobe!!




I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVED this next project. It was a pinecone wreath. Again, Carol was so organized and had the pinecones already glued together in a wreath shape.




The children used paintbrushes to cover one side of the wreath with glue. Then they shook green glitter on top as shown.

Next, red sequins, a ribbon, and a hanging hook were added to complete the little wreaths. I really love these so much!! And now there are two hanging on our tree at home. Some of these photos did not turn out very well! :-(

I also completely loved this little Baby Jesus craft. There were little tiny babies to wrap in "swaddling clothes". These were then placed into a walnut shell manger. The gold ribbon was already glued on ahead of time.

I tried to take a picture of these on our tree but couldn't get a good shot. Here are the ones my boys made. This photo does not even come close to showing how adorable they are.

I am so thankful that Carol does this every year for the children in our church. We will look forward to attending for many years to come and will always treasure the memories and the ornaments we made.

Advent Book Activity: The Legend of the Poinsettia & Poinsettia ornaments

For our sixth advent book activity we read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola. Who doesn't love Tomie? Seriously. He's a genius. This is a great story, set in Mexico. Of course we had to make poinsettia ornaments to go with it. I got the pattern here, but revised it somewhat. We used juice can lids (from frozen orange juice) as a base. I cut a green felt circle to glue inside the metal lid. Then I cut the petals using the pattern from two shades of red and also from pink felt. We layered the petals together to make the flower. Then I pulled out my stash of buttons and let the boys each pick one. I sewed them through the center of all the petals and then glued the whole flower onto the green felt. The final step was to glue a loop of ribbon on the back so they could be hung on the tree.





These look sweet hanging on our tree.

On an interesting side note: I accidentally knocked over our other Christmas tree on Friday. One of the legs snapped off and we had to lean it against the wall. On Saturday I went to my favorite thrift store to see if Terri had any trees for sale. She didn't, but told me to go to the Episcopal church in town where they were having a cookie walk and rummage sale. She had been there earlier in the morning and saw two trees. I headed right over and found a tree nearly identical to the one I broke for only $10. So yesterday I took all the ornaments and lights off the broken tree and took it apart and put up the new one. When I was getting ready to put the lights back on I got a HUGE shock from the lights which were plugged in as I was untangling them. So I had to throw that strand of lights out. I was pretty tired of the whole ordeal by Saturday night so I waited until today after church to put the ornaments up on the new tree. Hopefully this one will survive until Christmas Day. I would not relish putting up a Christmas tree for the third time even though I love to decorate for Christmas.

Advent Book Activity: The Christmas Hat & Santa hat ornaments

On Wednesday the boys and I read The Christmas Hat by A.J. Wood for our fifth Advent book. To go with this book we made little Santa hat ornaments. They were basically the ones shown here, but instead of gluing the ribbon and felt I sewed them on my sewing machine. I folded the triangle with right sides together and placed the ribbon INSIDE the fold, sewed up the side seam and then turned it right side out. The final step was gluing the cotton balls on. These were SO cute, but I think they would have been much harder and more frustrating to make had we glued them.





Below you can see the little hats on the tree. I think they look so cute. I wish we had made more of them.

Advent Book Activity: The Little Fir Tree & Pinecone tree ornaments

Over the last few days we've been working on our ornaments to go with our fourth advent book, The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown. This book is SO beautifully illustrated it's almost breath-taking. It is a really sweet story as well. I love pretty much everything written by Margaret Wise Brown and it seems that every year or so I discover something else she's written. We have owned this book for a few years. The first time I read it to my oldest son he was quite teary and touched by it. I won't spoil it by telling you why........you'll have to read it yourself. We made pinecone Christmas trees to go with this book. I was loosely basing them on something I'd seen online, but we kind of did our own thing too.



During the snowstorm on Tuesday I gathered some pinecones from one of the trees on our property. Then the boys helped me paint them green. I only had lime green paint and kind of wished they were darker, but they will show up well on a darker green tree. Below you can see my oldest son painting a pinecone.



After the paint dried we (I) glued sequins on to make little ornaments on the teeny tree. It is pretty hard to handle such tiny sequins. I ended up putting a dab of glue on the pinecone and then picking up the sequin with the glue. The boys were both excited to find some snowflake sequins (there were only 2) and we used those for the "stars" on two of the pinecone trees.




I tied some very thin gold cord around the pinecones to hang them. We made glittered pinecones last year and the hangers fell off some of them. This time I tied the cord around the pinecone and put a dab of glue on the knot. Then I used the long ends to tie another knot to make a hanging loop. I also put a dab of glue on that knot.

Advent Book Activity: Snowmen At Night & Snowman Ornaments

This is my third post for today. I really wanted to post this now since we started another Advent book project today that I want to post tomorrow. Please keep scrolling down to catch up on what we've been doing. The other two posts I wrote are below this one. :-)

For our third advent book activity we read Snowmen at Night by Caralyn & Mark Buehner. We already owned this book and while it's not exactly a Christmas story, it seems to fit the season quite well. When I was looking up the Amazon link to embed in this post I noticed that Caralyn & Mark have written a book called Snowmen at Christmas. We may have to add that our stash next year.









Our ornaments this time were snowmen (of course) inspired by these. We didn't add stick arms, although we could go back and do that. We used stiff black felt for the hats and orange craft foam for the noses. The boys added face details with a black Sharpie marker. I think they turned out so cute. The first photo below shows the two my oldest son made and the next one shows my little boy's ornaments.

And here they are on the tree. So simple and cute!!

What we've been up to

I realize that I haven't posted here for a few days so I thought I'd pop in with an update. On Friday night the boys (little ones, not DH) and I went to an Ethnic Holiday Festival that we go to every year. We always look forward to seeing the booths from the different countries and my oldest son particularly loves to pick out a few new tree ornaments from other countries. Sadly, this year there really weren't any ornaments for sale that we could find. So.........my boys each got a flask (I know........I told them it was a canteen for water) from the Croatia booth. They are actually pretty cool and decorative. My oldest boy hung his on the tree when we got home. The little one has been periodically swigging water from his. :-)



On Saturday aside from my little guy having a YMCA basketball game in the morning we pretty much stayed home. I got my hair cut and colored. That afternoon DH worked outside putting up some lights and decorations. We let our chickens go out into a big dog pen we have so they could have "chicken recess". Our smallest and friendliest chicken, Sarah, is light enough that she can fly over the top (it's 6 feet high......or maybe higher). So.........when I opened the back door to get them back into the coop there was a porch chicken. Below you can see a photo of her. Also that afternoon as my husband and I had a brief moment of rest on the couch (we were just watching TV, not actually sleeping) my youngest son came into the living room and said, "Mom, Dad! Look!" He was carrying Sarah. So we had a chicken in the house for a short time. Not something we'll be doing on a regular basis, be assured. I have enough trouble cleaning up after the four 4-legged creatures who live inside without adding chickens to the menagerie.



Saturday night around 7:20 p.m. I headed to Kohl's to buy myself a new outfit for the Montessori Christmas Program I am directing on Friday. Can I just say something here? What is UP with putting bright fluorescent lighting in dressing rooms? Is there anyone in the world who would find it flattering to look at every little bump, dimple and roll under that kind of lighting? It's a wonder they sell any clothes at all. I was fairly depressed after the whole episode. Seriously. I hate shopping anyway though. I did find a fairly presentable outfit. I bought a new necklace to go with it. It's from the Simply Vera Wang collection for Kohl's. If the local paper did a write-up about my Christmas program they could say something like, "And the directress (that's what you call a Montessori teacher) wore Vera Wang." Ha!! Sounds pretty swanky, eh? Oh, sorry. There won't be a photo of me in the new outfit. Gray pants, fuschia sweater, cool new necklace and shoes. Does that help with your visual image? If not, sorry!!

The boys have enjoyed doing our two Advent calendars since December began. My oldest son is in charge of putting the Nativity figure up on the calendar shown below each day. They decided on their own to each do one instead of taking turns with the two calendars.




This year we added the Playmobil Advent calendar. I saw it at Target and couldn't pass it up. My little boy loves Playmobil. Each day he opens a door and gets out a new figure to put in a winter scene. Below you can see what is up so far.




Other than that...........we're just hanging in there, trying to enjoy this season of waiting and anticipation. We did our second Advent candle last night so there was one for each boy to blow out afterwards. I still have a TON of things to do before the 25th but I'm not getting stressed about it. It is incredibly cold here now and I have to go out a few times a day to break the ice out of the chicken's water. Makes me feel like a real farmer. Haha! We are supposed to get a ton of snow over the next 48 hours so a snow day may be in the schedule this week. We'll see.

We've done another Advent book and activity but the ornaments aren't quite finished. That will be another post. I guess I'll go for now. I'll end with this thought: Wouldn't it be awesome if I could get paid to stay home all day and just make crafts and blog about it? That's what I feel like doing right now. Unfortunately, crafting isn't on the urgent to-do list for today. Other mundane things like.............fold laundry, sweep floor, etc. await, however. So I'm off.......

Advent Book Activity: If You Take a Mouse to the Movies & Popcorn strings

Tonight we did our second advent book activity. It looks like this week and next week our schedules will only allow us to do 2 books during the work week plus 2 on the weekends. That's making me really glad I didn't try to do 25 activities this year. My little boy unwrapped the book If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff. However, he didn't sit and read it with me and his brother. And I didn't force it. I don't want to ruin the spirit of the activities by forcing them on the boys. My oldest boy and I enjoyed the book. It is charming in the spirit of all the "If you give a mouse" books.







Since the mouse in the book makes a popcorn string to put on a Christmas tree that was our activity. My little boy didn't participate (other than eating a lot of the popcorn) but my big boy was able to string several pieces onto a thread and only poked himself once with the needle. No bloodshed, thankfully. He tired of doing it after stringing about 8 inches and I added a little more. Instead of making it a long string I just tied the ends together and made it into a circle which we hung on the tree. If you're interested, go read my original post about this book. I linked to an edible popcorn wreath recipe that looks fun, although we didn't make it.




Here's our popcorn "wreath" on the tree!

Advent Book Activity: Dream Snow & Snowflake ornaments

On Monday evening the boys and I did our first advent book activity. You can read about the concept behind these activities in this post. First we decided which boy would get to open which "paper". We decided my oldest boy will open the books in polka-dot paper and my little boy will open the ones in green striped paper. The boy who doesn't open a book will get to pull the activity description out of the felt stockings (Scroll down in this post to see a photo of the stockings. We are just using 15 this year instead of all 25.) Below is a photo of our advent books all wrapped and ready.







Tonight we opened the book Dream Snow by Eric Carle. This is a brand new book for our family. I bought it after Christmas last year at Barnes and Noble, 50% off. It's a great little story with awesome illustrations. I LOVE Eric Carle!!







We made glass snowflake ornaments to go with this book. In my original post back in July I had a link to a specific project from Michael's that inspired our ornaments. The only adhesive backed snowflakes I could find at Hobby Lobby (much closer for me to shop at than Michael's) were multi-colored. I had envisioned using all white but couldn't find a package like that. I picked up 2 glass ornaments with another bonus ornament at my favorite thrift store for 75 cents. Can't beat that price!! So...........our materials were: glass ornaments, foam adhesive-backed snowflakes, and ribbon for hanging the ornaments. I had some snowflake ribbon in my stash. Perfect!

This was a quick and simple ornament to make. The boys were both successful and were excited to go downstairs and hang them on our $3 garage sale tree which has been reserved especially for our advent book ornaments.

Below you can see our finished ornaments. They look so pretty and definitely spruce up a previously bare tree. Just last night I was thinking I'd like to somehow turn images of the book covers from each book we read into ornaments. My wheels are turning on that one. I think that would look really cool. I'm sure Modge Podge will be involved in this project in some way. If you have any thoughts, let me know!

Advent Wreath

I have very distinct childhood memories of doing an Advent wreath each Sunday night leading up to Christmas. It is one of the only times I can remember my whole family sitting down together to do something (besides our evening meals). It was such a sacred time with the lights off and just candlelight. Because of my strong positive memories of this experience I wanted to be sure my own children have this ritual as part of their childhood. Last year was the first year we started this and my oldest son was very excited to do it again this year. I purchased the candle holder at our local general store (Kally's for you locals). For those of you who are unfamiliar, a candle is lit every Sunday night leading up to Christmas. On Christmas day (or eve) you light the center (Christ) candle. There is special meaning and scripture for each candle. I scoured the internet and found a simple outline for doing this with your family. You can download it by clicking on the link I've provided below the photo. Here you can see our wreath with the first candle lit. My oldest son can now look up the scripture in the Bible and read it out loud. He also read the prayer out loud to us. I am so happy that my boys will remember doing this together as a family. Family traditions are so important and especially those that instill a stronger faith.

Here is a link to a downloadable set of readings to do each week of Advent.

Wrapped and Ready

I know many of you have been following along on my posts about the Christmas Book activities I'm planning to do with my boys during the Advent season this year. If not, read this post to get an idea of what we're doing. You can also click on the category label "Christmas Book Activities 2009" and that will allow you to read the posts about each individual book I've selected.

This afternoon I wrapped all 15 books in Christmas wrapping paper. My two boys were right there in the room with me, so I wasn't trying to keep it a secret. They did ask me what I was doing and I told them I was getting something ready for our Advent activities this Christmas. (I think they thought that was a little weird since it's still summertime.) I had pre-determined the order that I want to do the books this December. Remember that since I found it too difficult last year to do a planned Advent activity every day from December 1st-25th, I only selected 15 books for our project this year. So...........I decided which order we'll read the books in and made a master list. I wrapped all the odd numbered books in red polka dot paper and the even numbered ones in green printed paper. Obviously you could use whatever you have. I happened to have a lot of each of these papers left over from last year. And the little OCD person inside me insisted that they be wrapped so every other day was a different paper. Gotta keep the inner princess happy you know! Then I used some little white stickers I had and labeled each book with a number. We will open them in order, read the book inside and make the corresponding ornament project. My next step is to find and organize all the ornament materials so I'll have them ready. I'll post about that once it happens. I'm hoping that will be SOON!

I placed all the wrapped books in order in a wooden book box my dad made us. We have several of these and they are awesome! Then I stashed it in a closet and smiled to myself that I have planned ahead for ONCE IN MY LIFE and won't be scrambling to pull this together after Thanksgiving.

If you are interested in this project but don't want to tackle it with 15 books, think about a Christmas book you already have. If it's one on my list, you could even use the same ornament idea. If not, do a Google search and you'll probably find a cute idea to go with your chosen book. Just plan ahead to do one book and activity with your child this season. Chances are it will be a very special memory for both of you. And doing just one is just FINE!

We will be hanging our "book" ornaments on a separate tree. Just this morning my mom called me from a garage sale to let me know she had found a tree for $3 and should she buy it for me? Um.........YES, please! So she did and it's in my basement now. It's bigger than what I was thinking.............it's actually about 5-6 feet tall. But I think it will work just great..........and you can't argue with the price. If you aren't out there thrifting by now after reading all my thrifting posts, then get going! There are great deals to be had!!

I'm beginning to think a lot about.............

............Christmas. Last year in December I started this blog to keep some of the things we are doing at home separate from the things I document in my school blog. Many of my first posts on this blog were about Advent activities that I did with the boys during December. Even last year, I was thinking ahead to how I wanted to make this year's Advent season special. Last year The Crafty Crow did posts about Christmas books and related activities, one for each day leading up to Christmas. Then on another blog (I can't remember which one) I had read about an idea I really liked where you wrap up a bunch of children's Christmas books and read one together each day during the Advent season. To tweak the idea a little bit, I thought it would be really fun to do an activity to go with each book, kind of like our Advent activities from last year. Then as I thought about it more, I thought it would be REALLY great to make an ornament to go with each book. The boys could each make the same ornament and we could hang all our Advent book ornaments on one special tree.


I know it's still July, but it's really not too early to start planning this so I'm not stressed out at the last minute. So today I decided to go through the Christmas books we have and choose the ones I'll focus on. Then I searched the web for related ornament ideas. Then I looked at the list of books and activities from The Crafty Crow and ordered a few more books from Amazon to round out our selection. For the next few weeks, I'll be doing some short posts about the books I've chosen and will describe the ornaments I'm thinking about making including links to directions, patterns, etc. In addition to (hopefully) giving all of you readers some new ideas for your Christmas season, this process will motivate me to get all my book projects organized WAY early so they are good to go once December rolls around. Wouldn't it be great to just pull out a tub right after Thanksgiving with all the books and activities ready? That's my goal. For my list, I have only chosen 15 books. I learned from our Advent activities last year that it is sometimes really hard to fit in an activity every single day, especially during the very busy month of December. By choosing 15 books, I'm allowing for those days when we really won't have time to do a project. I'm also still contemplating how I'll organize everything. So it's not all figured out yet, but I think I have enough time to get it planned. :0)

Advent Activity--Day 21--Snowy Trail Mix

For our 21st Advent activity, we made Snowy Trail mix for a snack. We've actually been skipping a few activities these last days before Christmas, which is odd since we are all home all day and should have plenty of time, but it hasn't worked out that way. I saw this recipe in a Family Fun magazine, but hadn't tried it until now. It is SOOOOOOO good. I'm already thinking this would be a great gift mix for Christmas next year.



First we put all the dry ingredients in a big bowl: pretzel sticks, Chex cereal, pecan halves, dried cranberries, and cashews.



Then we melted a bag of white chocolate chips in the microwave and poured it over the dry mixture.



My oldest son helped mix it all together. You can see his fingers in the photo as he couldn't resist sampling it right away! Me neither!!



After coating the mix, we spread it out on a waxed paper covered cookie sheet until it cooled slightly. Then it was ready to enjoy. Very easy and VERY VERY good! I can't stop eating it! This is definitely a recipe we'll be making again.

Advent Activity--Day 20--Sugar Cone trees

For our 20th Advent activity we made sugar cone Christmas trees. I just saw that they made these over at Flipflops and Applesauce and posted about it today too! We just bought the sugar ice cream cones and added green food coloring to plain white frosting in a can. The boys were both really careful about spreading the frosting to cover the cones. And we all found out how yummy sugar cones are just plain!

Kind of a blurry photo. I swear some days I hate my digital camera. It is such a clunker. Oh well, this is my older son frosting his cone.

And the little guy working on his cone.

We just used M&Ms to decorate the tree, but red licorice laces would make great "tinsel".

After they were done we put them in the frig for a while to harden them up some as the frosting was very soft and gooey.