Rainy Days

We have had a lot of rainy days lately...seriously, a lot! By this time of year I have exhausted my limited creativity and meager supply of indoor activity ideas. But this week was yet another rainy one, so I had to come up with something. Friday I looked into my magic box and found a wood kit for Ryan to paint and assemble (I've got to remember to stock up on more of these for the next rainy season!), which kept him busy for over an hour.



Abby is easier: I pulled out some fancy scissors (normally off limits to her), some construction paper and a glue stick. She was happy as a clam cutting and pasting and making a huge mess for almost an hour.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Our homeschool group had our Valentine's Day party yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. Each child was supposed to bring a mailbox to hold their Valentines, and all the boxes were judged as well. Everyone got a certificate so it wasn't a "real" contest, but it was fun to see all the creative things the kids came up with. Abby wanted to make a flower garden and Ryan, a robot. I gathered the supplies and let them get to work. Ryan pretty much did his by himself. Though I helped some with implementation, he came up with the design and ideas himself.


Abby won the prize for the Lovliest Mailbox, and Ryan won for Best Use of Art Supplies!

Daddy took Ryan to work with him yesterday, so it was just Abby and me at home. I had considered doing our taxes, but Daddy encouraged me to go do something fun with Abigail instead. I'm glad he did. We had a fun day together! We went to Starbucks and to Walmart for some coffee, hot chocolate and donuts for breakfast. Then we drove over to our paint-your-own ceramics place. We went last year to make some Christmas presents for the grandparents, but Abby (and Ryan!) has been wanting to come back and paint something for themselves, so that's what we did. Abby picked out a cute little horse and got to work. She did an excellent job, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!


After painting her horse, she wanted to go to Subway for lunch, but I managed to talk her into Quizno's instead (tastes better and I had a coupon!). After lunch we came home and played with her elephants for a while before putting a movie on to watch. It was a nice girls day out for both of us!

Shhhhhh

Some little elves have busily at work making Christmas presents for grandparents....





I can't wait to see them when they are fired and finished!

Advent 2008

I truly desire my children to grasp the real meaning of Christmas, but every year it is a struggle to bring all our festivities and bustlings to the foot of the cross. We don't pretend there's a Santa Claus, though our kids know other people do and we do fill stockings with small gifts for the fun of it. We don't focus on gifts, though we do give gifts. We try to reach out to our neighbors with a small homemade gift and some sort of book or poem or tract about Christ. But I can't help but wonder if the preciousness of God becoming man and dwelling among us is lost on them? Is it drowned out by the glitz and noise of everything else? I hope and pray not.

This is our very non-traditional Advent wreath.
Try to ignore the messy homeschool corner!
One of the ways we attempt to focus on Jesus is to try to celebrate Advent every year, and some years we're more successful at it than others. For the last couple years, I have been wanting to lay out the scripture readings, crafts, recipes, songs and such so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel every year, so to speak, but that hasn't happened yet.


Hubby laid out the daily scripture reading this year, and last night the kids and I made a paper chain to not only count down the days till we celebrate the birth of Christ but also to focus each night's prayers on a specific family, friend or neighbor. Before we glued the strips together to form the chain, we wrote on each strip the names of people to pray for. So each evening when we tear off a link, we will pray for that person or persons.


Do you celebrate Advent? If so, do you have any special books or activities you do for it? I'm always open to new ideas!

Tissue Paper Crafts

I have become the tissue paper craft queen lately. There are tons of things you can do with tissue paper! We have made some other things I didn't bother to blog about, but remember earlier this year we made some cute votives and last week we made those fun autumn trees? Well, our latest tissue paper project was these fun cards. They made great thank you cards and note cards to send to the grandmas, which is just what we did with some of them!


Though this is pretty much no-brainer, if you want to see instructions, I ran across the idea on this cute crafty blog, and since then I have also found more ideas that I may use on this website.

Celebrating Autumn

I don't know why, but this time of year I always seem to do more crafts with the kids, but then after about Valentine's Day, it all just ends. Maybe it's because school is in full swing and the newness of the fresh year hasn't worn off or maybe it's because fall is my favorite time of year and I see lots of fun projects I'd like to do. Then of course Thanksgiving and Christmas are always full of crafts and things to do and make, but by the end of winter, I am done with being creative and just want to go outside and play in the sunshine.

Abby is having a humid-weather hair day!
At any rate, a friend (Thanks, Wendy!) sent me a link to some fun fall crafts, and this was the one we chose to do yesterday. It's simple and fun (what kid wouldn't like having their hand and forearm painted?!) and pretty to look at too!

Happy Birthday, Gramie!

It's my mom's birthday today, and last week the kids made her some cards and small gifts. They are getting old enough, that they are actually able to do most of the craft themselves which makes doing them so much fun.

I uploaded this picture three times, and Blogger keeps rotating it! I didn't even take the picture vertically, so I am stumped. Anyone have any ideas?.