another Christmas wreath...

The other day, I made a Christmas wreath for the front door. I wanted something other than your typical evergreen wreath. So, this is what I came up with. It was made similarly to the one I made for fall. You can check that one out here.






Here is what it cost...
1 yard of fabric $1.29
1 wreath $1.00
5 snowflakes $.35 each
accent beads $1.oo
For just over $5.00 I made a cute wreath!

Sheet Music Wreath...

The cold weather and time of year, means time to be crafty! I made a paper wreath last year and gave it as a gift, so this year I couldn't wait to make myself one! I wanted to make one out of vintage sheet music. While my mom was here, I took her to a couple of my favorite antique stores and I found an old music book that I could tear apart. It happened to be all Christmas music, which makes for a perfect holiday wreath!


I used a piece of cardboard to glue my sheet music to.

All the supplies...a piece of cardboard, glue gun, and sheet music.

Rolling and gluing the paper.



Gluing on the paper to the cardboard.

All done!

I hung it in my living room.

Beautiful, easy and cheap way to decorate! Here is the cost:
Sheet Music Book $6.95 (I didn't use up all the paper, so I can use it for another project.)
Glue $1.00
Total...$8.00

first time to the dentist...

Today, was my little lady's first time to the dentist. No cavities, just a cleaning, which she giggled all the way through!

Attention all crafters....

I'm being featured over at C.R.A.F.T! Go check it out here. She's got some really cute ideas!

Countdown to Christmas...

This is one of my favorite times of the year...yummy food, special traditions, and lots of fun! I've got several things planned as we countdown to Christmas. I found this wonderful red wire Christmas tree at one of my antique stores and will use it as our advent calendar. There are 25 little envelops and each day my little lady will pick one and it will describe the special activity we will do. Here is my list (in no particular order) of some of the things we will do...

Special Days/Activities:
Christmas Tree Day 1-
Go cut our tree down and decorate it. For the first time we get to go into the forest and cut one down!
Christmas Tree Day 2-
Read "Jesus, Me and My Christmas Tree" by Crystal Bowman
Art project- handprint Christmas Tree
Candy Cane Day 1-
Read "The Legend of the Candy Cane" by Lori Walburg
Cooking- make candy cane milkshakes or candy cane ice cream
Candy Cane Day 2-
Read "J is for Jesus" by Crystal Bowman
Art project- make candy cane ornaments
Candy Cane Day 3-
Go tour the candy factory
Candy Cane Day 4-
Do the Candy Cane Science Experiment from the book: "The ADVENTure of Christmas" by Lisa Whelchel
Snow Day-
Go sledding
Art projects- snow painting & snowflake craft
Gingerbread Day-
Read "Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett
Cooking- make gingerbread men cookies and make gingerbread play dough
Make Jesus' Birthday Cake
Begin Jesse Tree (Advent countdown)
Other great books- "What God wants for Christmas" by Amy Gordon, "The 12 Days of Christmas" by Helen Haidle

The Story of Christmas:
Day 1- Angel Gabriel
Read "My First Story of Christmas" by Tim Dowley
art project- angel craft
Day 2- Messenger Angels
Family Time Activity- Lesson 12 from "Wiggles, Giggles and Popcorn"
Day 3- No room in the Inn
Read "The Christmas Story" by Patricia A. Pingry
Activity- Use the nativity set to act out the story, play dress up(Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus)
Day 4- Traveling Nativity
Family Time Activity- Lesson 20 from "Wiggles, Giggles and Popcorn"
Day 5- Shepherds
Cooking-make Lamb cookies
Art project- Staff craft
Day 6- A Shepherd Knows His Sheep
Family Time Activity- Lesson 23 from "Bubbles, Balloons, and Chocolate"
Day 7- Wise Men
Read "Humphrey's First Christmas" by Carol Heyer & "A Star for Jesus" by Crystal Bowman
Game: Follow the Stars

Family Movie Nights:
Sunday, December, 5th- St. Nicholas Day
Watch- Veggietale's Saint Nicholas
Caramel Corn
Sunday, December 12th
Watch- The Polar Express
Hot Cocoa & smores by the fire

I'm hoping to spread out the activities over 25 days. Some of these we did last year and my little lady loved them! I will be blogging about them as we go, so stay tuned! Also, do you have a special tradition that you do with your family? I would love to hear about it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a nice day with my man and my little lady! Since we already had a nice turkey dinner when my parents were here, I made turkey enchiladas...so good!

an early Thanksgiving...

Last night, we celebrate Thanksgiving a little early since my parents left today. I'm beginning to wonder if I should ever make a Thanksgiving meal again. This is the 3rd time in my married life that I've had problems with an oven. The first year we were married, the oven was not heating properly...6 pumpkin pies later, I finally realized it. The last year in our house in California, my oven broke. Luckily, I had a microwave that was a convection oven too. And of course yesterday, my oven was not heating properly. So, we cut up the turkey and used my crock pot and pressure cooker to cook turkey. It actually turned out really good!

Stockin' Up...

Right now is a great time to stock up on some of the things I use often. I try to use a lot of coupons when doing my grocery shopping and my trip today to Target was no different. I like to get things at a really good deal and when I find it, I stock up. My total before coupons was $57.49. I had $32.60 in coupons and only paided $24.89 out of pocket! I know this may not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to me and I always want to be a good steward of the money God has blessed us with!

my parents are here!

My mom brought our little lady a very special gift...a princess Tiana dress. She has been asking for me to make one, but I'm not that great of a seamstress, so I called my mom and she made one. Thanks mom!





Lots of reading and snuggling with Grammie!




We have been busy having fun! One day we took them downtown and toured the US Mint. We also showed them the capitol building.

passing on a spiritual heritage...

This is a special basket of books that I keep in our family room. They are books that I use to teach my little lady about different character traits, bible stories and it is the things we use to grow her spiritually. These are just things I've gathered over the years, and we use them often. We use it for devotions, preschool lessons and also to reinforce acceptable behavior. I was asked by one of my friends to give her a list of the different books we used in teaching our little lady about God, I thought I would post it, so that others may find it useful.
Day By Day Begin to Read Bible by Karyn Henley
The Beginner's Bible by Zonderkidz
The New Bible In Pictures for Little Eyes by Kenneth N. Taylor
The One Year Devotions for Preschoolers by Crystal Bowman
Big Thoughts for Little People: ABC's to help you grow by Kenneth N. Taylor
Cookies: Bite-size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
God, I Need to Talk to You About....(Paying Attention, Bad Manners,Lying, Disrespect, etc.) by Dan Carr or Susan K. Leigh (These are the little paperback books in the pictures.)
The Berenstain Bears and the Truth
The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers
The Berenstain Bears Go to Sunday School
The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners
The Berenstain Bears Count Their Blessings
I've gotten most of the books off of Amazon and some at Christian bookstores. If you have a special book you use with your kiddos, will you please share it here. I would love to here about it!

happy thursday!

It is always a happy day when we go to the library. My little lady is pretty obsessed with books! She loves them and I can't imagine what life will be like for her once she can really read. We pretty much go once a week and I think she could live there if I let her. She reminds me of her auntie Lala...two peas in a pod!

Our Thankful Tree

Since, Thanksgiving is right around the corner, I wanted a way to teach my little lady about being thankful for what God has giving us. I found a branch in my backyard and stuck it in a pot to make a tree. Then to make the leaves, we use white coffee filters and painted them...red, yellow, orange and green. After the filters were dry, I cut out leaf shapes. My little lady told me different things that we are thankful for and I wrote one on each leaf. I used my glue gun to attach the leaves to the branches. The thankful tree will be used each night as we will pick one leaf and pray for the things or people we are thankful for.

Family Time~ Part 2

Family Time Format
Meet weekly
Have a "No Fuss Dinner" (order pizza, make something simple, eat off of paper plates, etc.)
Discuss Last Family Time
Play Family Theme Song
Pray
Present Activity/Object Lesson
Discuss Message/Story
Memorization (either a verse or a sentence that captures the theme of the lesson.)
Close in Prayer

Obviously, depending on your child's age, that will determine how long Family Time is.

Here is a picture of the 2 books I purchased. There are 25 lessons in each book and all the work is done for you. That means you don't have to come up with the lessons on your own! Also, you can go to the Family Time website here for more information. I think we will be starting our first Family Time this week!

fall fun...

This week in preschool we have been reading some books about fall. Since we now live in place that has the 4 seasons, I decide to do some art projects with my little lady this week that used elements from the outdoors. One of the art projects we did was make a leaf mask. We went into our backyard and gathered a bunch of leaves and glued them on a mask I cut out of construction paper.