Storybook Christmas Tree

This year the boys and I decorated a tree for our local county historical museum's Festival of Trees. Last year for Advent, we read several Christmas story books and made ornaments to go with them. You can see the posts about the books and links to the ornament directions by clicking on "Christmas book activities 2009" on the sidebar of the blog. Since we already had the ornaments made, it was pretty easy to decorate the tree. I bought a white tree at Dollar General for $20, which I thought was a great price. I had also bought some red and tree ornaments from my favorite local thrift store. I made a chain garland with alternating red and green pipe cleaner circles. And I sewed some little Christmas bunting garland too. I used green tulle and red pipe cleaners for the topper. To illustrate the fact that our ornaments correlate with stories, I scanned the covers of all the books and made laminated ornaments out of the scanned images. Then I hung the "book" ornaments next to the ones we made to go with each book.

The full-length tree is shown below.

Close-up of the topper............

Cinnamon gingerbread ornaments............


Green pinecone trees.............

Pipe-cleaner trees...........

Popsicle stick snowmen (these are my favorite ornaments)............

Craft foam Rudolphs............

Felt poinsettias on juice can lids.............

Craft foam "J" is for Jesus candy canes.........

Felt Santa hats............

Glittery gold popsicle stars..........

Clear "snowflake" ornaments..........

We placed the actual storybooks around the bottom of the tree.

I'm not sure if we'll decorate a tree every year, but it sure was fun this year. I already have an idea for next year's tree brewing though! I need to start working on ornaments now because the ones I have in mind are hand-sewn from felt. They are REALLY cute!

We have been to the museum twice to see all the other trees and to vote for our favorites. You can vote for your favorite in the Youth and Adult categories. It cracked me up that my sons picked other favorite trees in the Youth category instead of voting for their own tree! (I totally voted for our tree both times, in case you were wondering!)

Turkey Handprint Trivets

Today I decided to try an idea that was brewing in my head. I cleaned my craft room yesterday because there has been some craftiness taking place in that space and it was a mess. When I was cleaning I discovered two white ceramic tiles that I had bought a few months back. I originally had a hand-print Christmas tree trivet in mind. However, when I tried it with acrylic paint on the ceramic tile (from Home Depot) the paint didn't adhere well. So I washed the tile clean and it ended up piled under a bunch of other stuff until yesterday. I needed an idea for my MOPS group blog post, so I decided to do hand-print turkeys using scrapbook paper and Mod Podge. I think they turned out really, really cute.



Below you can see most of the supplies used. I traced the boys' hands on the wrong side of some scrapbook paper and cut them out. Instead of doing each "feather" in a different paper, I decided to use a brown plaid paper I really liked for the whole tail. I used my star punch to make feet and a beak (I cut off a star point for the beak) and my heart punch (cut in half) for the wattle. I used a regular size hole punch to punch out an eye. The photo shows everything laid out on the tile before I Mod-Podged it. That's why it looks kind of crooked.







The first step was to spread a thin layer of Mod Podge all over the clean, dry tile with a foam brush. Then I laid out the paper pieces and brushed another layer of Mod Podge over the top. After that coat was dry I added stickers to spell each boy's name and the year. Then I put another 2 coats of Mod Podge over the top again to really adhere the stickers. The photo below shows one tile which is mostly dry and the other one still wet. If you try this and have never used Mod Podge, don't worry, it dries clear.

I think these turned out SOOOOO cute. I am so happy with them. I will add little felt circles (like the kind you put under furniture) to the back corners. I think I'll also pick up some little plate easels at Hobby Lobby and display these on a shelf in an upright position. They will be fun to pull out each year. I was barely able to fit my 9 year olds' hand on one, so I'm glad I did it this year. He might be too big next year to do this!

The photo below shows last year's Thanksgiving hand-print craft. I used fabric paint to do "hand turkeys" of each boy and freezer paper stencilled the words in the middle. The pillow is made out of burlap. CLICK HERE for a link to the post describing this project.

Cute Turkey Candleholders

Hello! If any of you are still reading this blog, I apologize for being AWOL for so long. This has been a really hectic fall for our family and for me especially. I took on some extra commitments that are filling a lot of my time. I was just thinking recently that I miss making stuff and posting about it. Today I am sharing a turkey craft that I did with my youngest son on Sunday. I found the idea for this craft on the Family Fun website. CLICK HERE for a link to the actual craft. I changed a few things from the one on FF. I did not have wooden beads so I used brown pom-poms for the head of the turkey. I used yellow cardstock for the beaks and red felt for the wattles and googly eyes for the eyes.

My little 5 year old took the photo below of me cutting some tissue paper into squares. I thought he did a great job, so I wanted to include it.




Here are the supplies needed. I bought the clear glass votive holders at Dollar Tree for $1 each. We made five turkeys so we can give them to a few people at our family Thanksgiving dinner. We will keep one for our family, of course! You also need Mod Podge, a foam brush, and tissue paper in fall colors. If you are a local reader of the blog, I found a package of fall-colored tissue paper at Kally's General Store. LOVE that store!

I spread a layer of Mod Podge onto the sides and bottom of the votive holder using the foam brush and then my little guy adhered the tissue squares all over it.

Then I covered the whole thing with another layer of Mod Podge and let it dry.

The final step was adding a pom-pom head, cardstock beak, googly eyes, and a felt wattle using a hot glue gun. Tissue paper strips folded in half and twisted at the bottom were then hot-glued to the back of the votive holder to make a tail. It is hard to tell in the photo, but I put a battery-operated candle inside. It looks really pretty when it's glowing. These are so fun and easy to make. Wouldn't Grandma love to receive one of these on Thanksgiving day........especially if it was handmade by her precious grandchidlren? Of course she would! So go do it!

Fall Craft Idea: String a Leaf Garland

I can't believe I haven't posted here for over a month. Needless to say, the beginning of the new school year has been VERY busy for me. Today I wanted to write a quick post to share an idea to do with your children this fall.

First, go to Dollar General (or your local dollar store) and buy a package or two of fall silk leaves. Unless you are planning to make a HUGE garland, one package should be plenty.



Now get some pretty fall ribbon and cut it to the length you want for your garland. If you are doing this with young children, I would recommend using only a 2-3 foot length. If you are making a garland that you will hang up you can skip the next step. However, I wanted to make one as a stringing activity to put in my Montessori classroom. Since it would be used over and over by many children, I folded over the ends of my ribbon and sewed a button over the fold. This will make it sturdier for little hands to string and will prevent the end of the ribbon from fraying.



Next, fold your leaves in half and cut a slit in the middle as shown below.

Give your child the ribbon and a pile of leaves and let them string the leaves onto the ribbon. This is great for developing their fine motor skills.

My five-year-old loved stringing the leaves onto the ribbon. He wanted to hang it up right away. The one in the photos is the one I'll use in my preschool classroom. However, we have a TON of leaves left over so I will have him make another one that we can hang up to decorate our home for fall.

This gives you an idea of what the garland looks like with the leaves on it. So pretty for fall!

Happy Fall, Y'all! (I know it isn't officially fall yet, but fall is in the air here in the Midwest and I LOVE IT!!)

I'll try to drop in here again soon and update everyone on what we've been up to.

Buzzin' About Bees

This past Saturday the boys and I went to a local nature center that we belong to for a special program all about honeybees. We were able to take a little hike in the prairie and one of the bee-keepers came out to show us a frame from one of the hives. It was covered with bees! I have long wanted to convince DH to let us get a hive for our property so we could harvest the honey. So far he has not given me the thumbs up. One cool thing is that the nature center has started a bee conservation program where people can call them up if they have honeybees in their wall or in a tree on their property and the bee conservation guy (like the guy below.....in fact it probably IS the guy below!) will come and rescue the bees. Then they are taken back to the hives at the nature center and (hopefully) they will start up a new hive. Isn't that cool? We learned a lot about honeybees and how important they are and how their numbers are declining. I do think our family is pretty busy this fall, but maybe I can learn more over the winter and talk DH into adding bees to the "farmstead" next summer. After all, they can't be more work than chickens and we added chickens last year.







Here's a close-up of the honey frame. The bees had been "smoked" before he took the frame out so they were calm and not being aggressive.






Here are some pretty black-eyed Susan flowers that were in the prairie.

If any of you reading this raise honeybees, I would LOVE to hear from you about your experience so leave me a comment, 'kay?

County Fair 2010

This year the boys made some projects to take to our county fair. The fair, like most fairs, is a 4-H fair but also has an Open Class division where anyone can enter exhibits. I was a 4-Her from 8th grade through 12th grade and I can honestly say that of all the things I participated in as a young person, 4-H was the most life-changing and positive. I cannot say enough about how awesome 4-H is. And it's not just for kids on farms or kids who have livestock. There is SO much more. Anyway..........I definitely hope my two boys want to be involved in 4-H. You can't join until 4th grade and my oldest son is just starting third this fall. I wanted the boys to get a feel for what the fair is all about and entering projects in Open Class was a great introduction.

Both boys worked on an embroidery project which I turned into pillows. My youngest son embroidered a football on a square of burlap. I just drew a football shape with a pencil and he followed the line, going up and down with his needle and thread. He just turned 5 a few months ago and I didn't think he would be ready yet for a traditional backstitch. Below you can see two photos of his pillow.





Up close............he did a really good job considering I didn't help him at all and it was his first sewing project ever.






My older son embroidered a monkey. I showed him an Ed Emberly drawing book and had him choose an animal to draw on paper. I then transferred his drawing onto a piece of burlap and taught him to embroider on the lines. I helped a little bit on the corners and tight curves, but he did most of it independently. His pillow received a Purple Ribbon in its class which was a fun surprise.

He also did an art project...........a crayon drawing of a hen and chicks. I got the idea for this project from a blog I have grown to LOVE so much...........Art Projects for Kids. Be sure to go check out this blog. It is written by an art teacher and has great projects that you could do with your children at home. I am thinking about choosing a few projects to do with the boys for them to give as Christmas gifts. Truly great stuff over there.

In addition to these projects the boys entered their fireworks t-shirts that we made for Fourth of July. They also each entered a plate of 10 green beans from our garden and a marigold flower from our gardens. AND..........they each entered a dozen eggs from our chickens........blue ribbon eggs I might add. :0) They were so excited to see their ribbons and to bring them home on the last day of the fair. Each ribbon also has a premium associated with it so they each got a check to cash as well. We will definitely be doing this again next year. If you think your child would love doing this, consider saving some of their art projects from school this year and contact your local county extension office to find out about the Open Class division in your county. In our fair the Open Class division has classes for collections and even Lego constructions, something that my little guy was TOTALLY into looking at this year. He is already talking about what lego sculpture he wants to take next year. All good country fun!

Fourth of July fun

To make up for the absence of any fun mommy-inspired creativity in June I tried to make up for it by pulling together a few projects for the Fourth of July. We invited a few friends over on Friday, July 2nd for a little swimming party. Before the kids swam they made firecracker crowns. I forgot to take a finished photo but below you can see how they are made. The directions and idea were from Family Fun. CLICK HERE. Basically you just need tape, straws and pipe-cleaners. They turned out so cute!





I also got creative in the kitchen and made red, white and blue cupcakes. I found the flag picks at my fave thrift store, of course! To do the cupcakes you just divide your white cake batter into 3 bowls and color one bowl blue and one red. Then you glop the batter into the cupcake liners, color on top of color. Once they are baked they are red, white and blue inside. Totally easy and also fun to bite into! Again, I forgot to take a picture of one cut apart, but in the photo below you can see the layers of color pretty well. We also had strawberries dipped in white candy melts on the bottom with the ends dipped in blue sugar. You can just barely see them in the bottom right corner of the photo.







The most visually stunning part of our feast, however, was the layered Jell-O I made. These turned out SO awesome. I didn't know if I could actually make something that looks this fancy but it was very easy. It takes several hours since you have to let the layers set before adding the next layer. But if you have time and plan ahead it's very easy to do. CLICK HERE for the recipe I used.







Each year for the past few years I have helped the boys make special Fourth of July t-shirts. This year we made fireworks shirts. The idea and directions can be found on the Family Fun website. CLICK HERE. Again..........so easy with a great result.





Our friend, Bob, visited us for the Fourth of July. DH grilled out burgers and brats and my parents came over. Grandma brought a pump-action rocket set which was a real hit with everyone. It was especially exciting when Bob launched a rocket across our lawn with a lit sparkler stuck into the end of it! We won't forget that anytime soon. Luckily we did not have reason to call the fire department. We also had our annual baseball game on the front lawn. It was a good way to spend a special day.

Big Ol' Bugs

Earlier this summer the boys and I took advantage of a special event at a local Nature Center. My parents had bought us a membership this year and we have enjoyed attending some special members-only events. This event was all about insects. There is a temporary exhibit of huge wooden insect sculptures in the woods. On the day we went the boys each got a map and we hiked out and found all the insects. They also got backpacks and were able to fill them with tons of buggy goodies. There was also a great spread of catered food, much of it "bug"-themed. It was wonderful to spend some time together outside. We are excited for another members-only event in August about bees.

VRRROOOM!!! Valentine Race Car cards

This afternoon my little boy and I made his valentines for his preschool valentine exchange next week. I LOVE to make valentines "from scratch" instead of buying them in a box. Don't get me wrong.........I've definitely bought boxed valentines in the past and no children were harmed by it. However, if I have the time and a great idea ("borrowed from another creative person. of course) I love to make homemade ones. A great resource for ideas is Family Fun.....both the magazine and the website. For my race car-lovin' boy, I found THIS IDEA and thought it was perfect. I decided to skip the (very expensive and hard-to-find) chocolate cars...........although they are very cute.............and used some great little race car stickers that I found at a card outlet store. We picked out a little truck from our HUGE stash of toy cars and rolled the wheels in black paint. Then my son rolled the truck back and forth across a piece of red cardstock. He was so proud of himself and kept saying, "I can do this all by myself, Mommy. You don't need to help me." Which was true. I put a piece of waxed paper under the cardstock and he was totally independent.





I used some large (2X3 inch) white shipping labels to print out the message, "You make my heart race!!" I printed 2 messages per label, then cut the labels in half and used my scrapbooking corner rounder to round the cut corners. On the back we attached a little return address label that I had printed with "Happy Valentine's Day!" and my son wrote his name on the back of all the cards. They turned out so cute and I know he will be proud to share them with his friends.

A bit of everything

Be forewarned..........this is a very photo-dense post. I am too lazy to do a bunch of separate posts so I'm playing catch-up and writing one big post to describe all that's been going on here since I posted one week ago. First let me say that the reason I finally found time to blog tonight is because we had to cancel a family get-together that was supposed to be at our house TONIGHT because there is a big ice storm moving into the area. I was really bummed out because the boys and I were really excited to have everyone over here and we had made a bunch of stuff to give out to the guests. But, I would rather have my loved ones be safe, so instead I am catching up on blogging.


I guess I'll start by summarizing what I've done in the past week. OK...........last Wednesday night I went to my MOPS Christmas party which was very fun, as always. We had an ornament exchange. I forgot to take a photo of the one I brought home.........it's a glass snowman with green accents. Love it! On Thursday last week my oldest son had his winter program for school. The theme of his program was "Peace". His role in the program was to read aloud a report he had written about Nelson Mandela. He got up in front of an auditorium filled with people and read his report out loud. He was so poised and read with such expression. I was so proud of him that my eyes welled up with tears as he read. He is such an awesome kid!! On Friday I went out to a local Mexican place with a few friends to celebrate the 40th birthday of my neighbor. On Saturday the boys and I went over to Amber's house. She is our daycare provider. My little boy goes to her house two half-days a week. She always hosts a Christmas get-together for her daycare families and had a breakfast this year. There is always a special guest who appears during her get-togethers----------Santa Claus! And he always has a gift for each child. My boys got two new games from Santa...........Chutes and Ladders and Yahtzee. These are great additions to our games collection. Thank you, Amber! I went shopping Saturday afternoon and Saturday night the boys and I and my mom went to a Christmas pageant at a mega-church in our area. We met my friend Julie and her family there. (DH was home with the dog. We have to keep him on a rigid medication schedule. He has made it almost 6 weeks without a seizure, the longest he's ever gone and we don't want to mess that up!) The pageant is amazing.........almost like (I imagine) a Broadway show. There are live animals (camels walking past us only 1 foot away) and angels who truly fly across the set on zip-lines. There was real snow falling on us during one part and there is always just an amazing and touching reenactment of the first Christmas story along with an inspirational modern storyline. I am so glad we went.


During the past week in my preschool classroom, the children and I were busy making parent gifts. Below you can see the one my little boy made for me!! If you are curious about this project, read this post over at my school blog. These would be great to make if you need to still whip up a last-minute gift. They take only a few minutes and turn out really pretty.







Last Friday I read this post on WhimsyLove and instantly knew I wanted to make some of these to give my female relatives at our get-together that was supposed to be tonight. When I was out and about on Saturday afternoon I stopped by my favorite thrift store and picked up 5 vintage spoons for about 75 cents. They had the half-price colored tag on them!! I typed up the story from Nikki's post and printed it out on cardstock. I used a corner-rounder to decorate the corners and then I adhered them to another color of cardstock and fancied up those corners. I tied a ribbon around the spoon and stuck an ornament hanger through the back so the spoons could be hung on the tree as shown below.






I punched a hole in the corner of the story and tied it to the spoons as shown here.

I love the message behind this story. I truly believe that the best IS yet to come. Hopefully I can still get-together with my family soon and pass out the spoons I've made.

When I went to Hobby Lobby Saturday I picked up supplies so my boys could make an ornament for each person at our family gathering (the one that now ISN'T tonight.........can you tell I'm disappointed?). All the holiday items were at least 50% off, so I got some great deals. I wanted the clear glass ornaments but they only had the frosted ones left. I have seen lots of initial ornaments around the blogosphere lately and wanted to copy those. I wasn't totally thrilled with the sticker letters I found, but they were glittery and Christmasy.

We stuffed red gift shred into the ornaments as shown. This was much harder than you would think as you pretty much had to do it strand by strand. My little boy soon tired of the project after this photo was taken. I can't say I blame him!

After filling them with the shred, we attached the top, added a letter sticker, an ornament hanger and a ribbon. We made 15 ornaments in all and have some left for future crafting.

The photo below shows one finished ornament.

Also this weekend I made a ton of chocolate pretzel rods to give as gifts to Sunday School teachers, school teachers, bus drivers, etc. OOPS! I guess DH needs to get a bag since he is the bus driver for our oldest child who attends a private school!! I think I have an extra one, honey!

Here they are all packaged up and ready to give out!!

We also have exciting news from the chicken coop. On Saturday I went out and found a perfect little brown egg frozen to the ground in the chicken run. I had to pour warm water on it to get it off the ground and the shell broke in the process. I didn't get a photo of the FIRST egg due to this! Below you can see Sarah and Abby hanging out on the roost in the chicken run. I have suspicions that Abby is our egg-layer.

On Sunday there was another perfect little brown egg, this time inside the coop on the floor. It was still warm to the touch when I brought it inside. Since we didn't have a nesting box in the coop yet, DH and I had to scurry to put something in place with the hope that our egg-layer would soon find a proper place to deposit her daily treasures. The next two photos show two little sets of hand holding our first (unbroken) egg!!

We decided (for ease of time and labor in very cold weather) to repurpose an old kitty litter bucket to use as a nesting box. DH just used a screw to attach it to the wall of the coop as shown below. On Backyard Chickens I have read that it helps the chickens know what it's for if you put some fake eggs in it. So you can see two plastic Easter eggs in it in the photos. On Monday there was another perfect little brown egg. It was found below the nesting box, not inside. But the two eggs IN the nesting box, the fake ones, were mysteriously moved to different places so there has definitely been some fowl play involved. haha

Below you can see the nesting box relative to where the roost is in the coop. Today I could find no evidence of an egg anywhere. So we'll have to see what happens next. Very exciting developments in chicken farming I must say. I have yet to cook one of the two eggs we've retrieved. DH seems a bit squeamish about the whole thing but I've just been too busy. It's kind of scary that we have moved so far from our agrarian roots as a society that we are cautious to eat food that comes directly from the animal of origin. When you think about it, there's nothing more natural than eating an egg laid by your own hen, is there?? I'll let you know once I cook it if it's the best egg I've ever had.

On the homemade gift-making front I've been busy. Below is a photo of a little doodad I made for my oldest son's teachers. As I mentioned above, their winter program theme was "peace" so I decided to make these little word-art knick-knacks for his teachers as a gift. I had seen something very similar in a Country Living magazine a few months ago. Luckily I had a thrifted Scrabble game in my crafting stash. I just sawed off the letter-holder pieces to the right size and glued the letter tiles onto them with Elmer's glue. Easy peasy! These would be great to make for Valentine's Day, spelling LOVE or other sentiments.

In keeping with my "give thanks" pillow from Thanksgiving I decided to make up some "believe" pillows. I gave one to each of my classroom assistants who are also my youngest son's teachers. I also gave one to Amber, our daycare provider. And I kept one for myself since I am also my son's teacher and since all his other teacher's got one................. I love how these turned out. I am already thinking of "let it snow" on blue burlap for January, "love" on red for February, "get lucky" on green for March...........OK..........maybe not that one!! :0)

Also for Amber, our daycare gal and my good friend, I made a Christmas apron. I didn't use a pattern, just kind of winged it. I started it Sunday night and finished it yesterday. I gave it to Amber today and to my face she said she liked it. Actually, I know she really did like it because she loves aprons. I loved the really big rick-rack. Aprons are so easy to whip together. I can't believe I don't actually own one. I need to change that!! Maybe a good Christmas break sewing project.

Here's a closeup of the rick-rack trim and fabric.

The only other handmade gift I need to finish (I mean, start and finish) is pajamas for the boys. I made them a set of pajamas last year and wanted to continue the tradition. I already have the shirts and fabric so I'll start those tomorrow. They'll be ready to wear by Christmas Eve. Whew! Now you can see why I haven't posted in a week! In case I don't post again before Christmas, please have a blessed day with your family. And treasure the reason behind the season. There is truly no greater gift than Jesus. My wish is that each of you reading this would know and embrace that truth this year.