Handmade Christmas: Handprint Calendars

If you haven't guessed by now, I like to make some of the presents that we give out for Christmas.  I truly enjoy making things for others, and it usually saves us some money as well.  Plus, I like to think that the recipients enjoy these gifts as well!  

I saw the idea for a handprint/footprint calendar awhile ago, and we ended up making two of them this year, for Jesse's mom and for my parents.

I involved all of the kids, and we set to painting.  The first time around we did the painting over three days, and the second time we just powered through and did the whole thing all at once.  I don't know if either method is better, but I know from a painting-is-chaos-at-my-house perspective, it was easier for me to have one crazy time and then be done as opposed to getting the mess out a few days in a row.

I went with mostly seasonally appropriate items, although we did a bunny for Easter because I couldn't come up with a Jesus-y one that wasn't weird.

My favorite is probably these footprint tulips, if only because it has all four kids' feet on it.

Helpful Links:

• 2016 Calendar Template
• Various Handprint/Footprint Ideas with pictures

I made sure to label what each picture is, and whose hand or foot made it.  This was a really fun project, and the kids liked it too!

Teaching Gratitude To Little Kids

Every night before bed, we say a family prayer, and then each of the kids gets a chance to pray for something they're thankful for.  It is sometimes cute, sometimes silly, and sometimes, it's really difficult for them to think of even one thing.

I try to guide them with questions, like "What did you eat today?"  "What did we do today?"  But even then, they can't always put it into words.  I've talked previously about how I try to pray specifically for something I'm thankful for about my husband and each kid before bed at night.  Some days it's hard.  Some days I fall back on things I've already mentioned, which is okay, but it also serves as a reminder to look for different things as well.

So even though we didn't have any actual school time this week (it's one of our pre-scheduled break weeks), I wanted to do a few projects and activities to remind them of how blessed we are, and to have fun with a few turkey themed things as well.

We made turkey hats, tracing their hands and cutting them out.  Jonah did most of his on his own.  Matthew needed help cutting out his hands, and I did pretty much all of Hannah's.  But this was a good project for a wide age range.

Tuesday we made a thankful tree.  I used painters' tape to put this right on the wall next to our calendar.  There were a few repeats, but we had a good variety of things that the boys thought of that they were thankful for.  Again, this took a bit of prodding at first, but eventually they started coming up with their own ideas.

They each chose one of their thankful items to draw a picture.  In case you can't tell, Matthew drew a Lego book with a police car on it (left), and Jonah drew a turkey (right).

Yesterday, we finished off with a few more fun worksheets.  My kids love color-by-number (or letter) sheets and word searches, so I knew they'd enjoy these.

Worksheets can be found here:

• I Am Thankful For... worksheet
• Turkey Color By Letter worksheet
• Pilgrim Lady Color By Number worksheet

Happy Thanksgiving from our family!

Extra Fun Homeschool Activities for Jonah's Birthday

Even though it was Jonah's birthday on Wednesday, we still had school.  But instead of all of our normal things, we did some extra fun activities.

We did a Dinosaur Dig!  We've been learning a bit about archaeology in history, and this week was Letter D for letter of the week.  So I printed off and laminated the dinosaur silhouettes in this post, and made the clay recipe linked there as well.  I should have made my clay dinosaurs thicker, because they kind of broke into more pieces than the three to four I had cut them into.  It was still a fun activity for the boys though!

We played Kitchen. I got the idea from this list of A-Z Sensory Play Ideas, and we did this for the first time last year for our Letter K letter of the week.  Ever since, Jonah asks to do this all the time.  I usually say no, because I don't want to use up all of my food supplies, but every now and then I let the boys go crazy, and it usually ends up that they "cook" for 40 minutes or so.

These are obviously not everyday activities, because they took extra prep work and made extra messes, but every once in awhile, it's fun to have a day like that.

Organizing Trouble Spots: Craft Cupboard

Yesterday I posted about paper clutter.  Today it's all about the craft cupboard!  This was another area I wanted to tackle for I Heart Organizing's Wait-No-More Challenge.

Let's start with the before and after shot:

It's still crowded, but more things are contained, and pretty much everything has a spot of its own, which is super important for kids ages 5, 4, and 2 to be putting things away.

So before.  Big problems were the bottom two shelves.  That third shelf is actually not a true "before" picture, since I added the boxes before I took the photo.  Just picture a really messy pile there instead...

One thing that works is that the top shelf is "Mom's shelf" and they know they can't have anything up there without asking.  It's still a cluttered mess, unfortunately, but I wanted to post anyways.  I need some sort of bins for holding the different art supplies up there, and I haven't gotten them yet.

The second shelf now has a white baby wipes bin on the left for smaller notepads that were getting lost with all the bigger ones.  The glue is all in one green container now, the crayons and markers each have a bin, and the pens are all back in the pen cup.

I had several of these Bob's Red Mill flour boxes from my big box of baking supplies I got a few months ago, so I used those to corral notebooks/drawing pads, coloring books, and sticker books.  This way the kids can grab what they want and put it back.

They weren't the prettiest things to look at though, so I covered them with pretty blue floral shelf liner.  That also brings some uniformity to the bins, and even though it's a busy pattern, it makes the whole thing look less busy to me because it's more streamlined.

And then the bottom shelf.  It's supposed to be paper on the right, projects on the left.  The "projects" were really just everything they didn't want to put away or recycle.  Most of that went into the recycling bin, although they each picked a few things they forgot were in there to save.

Here's after:

(Sorry for the terrible lighting - this is in a corner of the living room without much natural light).  More boxes covered in shelf liner!  Again with the uniformity...Now the box on the right has all the construction paper organized by color, so they can grab what they want instead of telling me we're out of something when we actually aren't.  And the box on the left has scraps for when they don't need a whole piece of paper.  We're going to find a different spot for any projects they want to save, and really limit them.

I also condensed the stickers to one green baby wipes container.  I went through and cut down the big sheets into smaller pieces (and got rid of the ones where all but one sticker were gone).

This is probably my favorite shot of the whole project.  These two shelves just look so awesome now!

This is a project I've been meaning to do for awhile, so I'm glad this challenge motivated me to get it done!  We keep tweaking this corner to find what works, and I think with this we might finally have a system that works.

4th Of July Fun!

Jonah and Matthew love when I get out the paint shirts and the newspaper. They think painting is the best project in the world. It's messy, so it doesn't happen very often, but they love it.

I had a red lid that came with a Christmas cookie container, but the container itself had broken. But the lid was pretty, and I thought I could probably make something with it, so I saved it.  I decided to paint a flag on it.

Since I was painting, I decided to let the boys help, so I pulled two oatmeal canister lids out of the recycling for them, and gave them some red, white, and blue.

Then I put it all together with a little bit of ribbon, and hung it on our front door.  A little bit of festive fun for the season, and they were so proud when they saw their artwork on the door!

Reformation Breakfast and Menu Plan November 4-16

My friend Tricia came up with this idea for her Sunday School activity/treat, and I thought it was awesome, so I borrowed it for our Reformation breakfast.  On Reformation we celebrate Martin Luther's nailing the 95 Theses on the Catholic church's door, thus starting the break from Catholicism to what eventually became the Lutheran church, which we are a part of.  One of the symbols is the Luther seal.

So we made the Luther seal on pancakes.

The pancake for the yellow ring, blueberries for the blue, whipped cream for the white rose, strawberries for the heart, and chocolate chips for the cross.  Pretty and delicious!

One of my November goals is to add more Paleo foods into our diet. It's something that we want to try to see how it affects how we feel, weight loss, and so on. If it helps, and if we can fit it into our budget, we're going to keep it going, at least part of the time.  This does mean, however, that I'm back to planning all the meals, which I don't love doing (although it does make life a whole lot easier in the long run).

Monday, November 4
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: Soups from the Freezer (Chicken Enchilada Chili or Tomato)
Dinner: One Pot Chicken Drumsticks

Tuesday, November 5
Breakfast: Winter Squash Hash & Eggs
Lunch: Chicken Salads (using leftover chicken from last night)
Dinner: Crockpot Italian Sausage with Peppers & Onions (doubled)

Wednesday, November 6
Breakfast: Leftover Hash & Eggs
Lunch: Leftover Italian Sausage
Dinner: Pear & Ground Pork Stuffed Sausage

Thursday, November 7
Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs & Fruit
Lunch: Vegetable Soup
Dinner: Chicken Fajita Mix, Refried Beans

Friday, November 8
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: Tortillas with Refried Beans and Cheese
Dinner: Crockpot Beef & Broccoli for us, hot dogs for the boys

Saturday, November 9
Breakfast: Creamy Breakfast Quiche
Lunch: Vegetable Soup (made on Thursday)
Dinner: Chicken with Mushrooms & Onions (making extra chicken for salads for the next two days)

Sunday, November 10 (Jesse's birthday!)
Breakfast: Leftover Quiche
Lunch: Steak, Steamed Broccoli, Paleo Pumpkin Pie
Dinner: Chicken Salads

Monday, November 11
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: Chicken Salads
Dinner: Turkey Crockpot Chili (doubling the vegetables)

Tuesday, November 12
Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs & Fruit
Lunch: Turkey "Sushi" Rolls
Dinner: Leftover Turkey Chili from last night

Wednesday, November 13
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: Curry Chicken Salad on Cucumber Slices
Dinner: Mexican Beef Skewers, Poblano Sweet Potatoes

Thursday, November 14
Breakfast: Family Frittata
Lunch: Tomato Soup
Dinner: Leftover Skewers and Sweet Potatoes

Friday, November 15
Breakfast: Leftover Frittata
Lunch: Leftover Tomato Soup from yesterday
Dinner: Mini Meat Loaves, Carrot Fries

Saturday, November 16
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: TBD
Dinner: Leftover Meat Loaves and Fries

Unless linked otherwise, a lot of these recipes are from the Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook, which we bought a couple weeks ago.  We're not completely Paleo - you can see that we're still having cereal for breakfast, and we do have the occasional non-Paleo item. But overall, it's a good introduction.

Jonah's Lego Party!

I love birthday parties! Maybe even more than the kids do...

Birthday Banner: I printed the letters from here and the little guy from here. The big yellow Lego sign is actually a bag from the Lego store, which we visited a few days before the party.

I also cut out extras of the little guy and hid them around the room for the kids to find.

Coloring Pages: I printed several copies off from the Lego site here.

I saw several versions of the juice boxes on Pinterest...

...as well as the utensil holder, which I built from our larger Duplo blocks.

My favorite part, although it ended up being trickier than I thought, was the Lego cakes, which I made with a combination of loaf pans and mini cupcakes.

We also had lots of Lego building time.  All in all, the birthday boy had a great time!

I saw so many great ideas online for Lego party ideas, but I knew that realistically these few things were what I would be able to accomplish. And we all had fun!

Easy Bead And Pipe Cleaner Busy Bags

Earlier this week, a few friends and I got together to do a busy bag exchange.  I put together this pipe cleaner beading activity, with my trusty helpers, of course.  We used small yogurt containers with lids to store beads, and then hot glued felt flags onto coordinating pipe cleaners.  The child can then practice threading the beads onto the matching pipe cleaners, working on both color recognition and fine motor skills.

Both boys loved helping me sort out and match the colors, and Jonah had a blast threading the beads on.  Matthew isn't quite capable of the threading yet, but he still had fun helping put the bags together.

We're already looking forward to doing another busy bag exchange sometime soon.  I just have to figure out what activity we'll do next!

Homemade Christmas Presents: Fleece Block-y Balls

I tried really hard to think of a way to describe these besides "I made some giant balls."  Pardon my second grade humor.  I found a pattern for these fleece blocks, which looked like fun, but I wanted BIGGER.  

For a size comparison, here are the balls with my 20 ounce water cup.  They're big.

To make these, I cut six 15" squares of fleece per ball.  I measured, kind of, but if you know anything about how I craft, or cook, for that matter, I tend to just guesstimate and it usually works out okay.  My lines were not perfectly straight.  Then I cut strips on the sides, five per side, plus cutting off the corners.  (Go look at the pattern I linked if that doesn't make sense.)

I tied them together and realized that maybe 15" was a bit too large, but 10" as suggested seemed too small.  So find a happy medium...

I put a big jingle bell from the craft store in one.  I took the suggestion I found here to put it in a plastic Easter egg first so the jingle wouldn't get muffled, and I filed the rest of that block with stuffing.  The second one I filled with plastic grocery bags, so it makes a fun crinkling noise.  Yay sensory learning!  If I have time, I may make a third one, but that one will simply have stuffing and be quiet.  

These might be too huge for stacking, but they should be fun for rolling around, leaning on, and hopefully shaking until the jingle bell drives their parents crazy  to enjoy pretty music.

These didn't turn out exactly how I had envisioned them in my head, but I really like them, and I hope the cute little girl who ends up with them enjoys them too!

Water Bottle Jellyfish

I found this fun-looking activity on Pinterest: Make your own jellyfish in a bottle.  All you need is a water bottle, a plastic bag, thread, food coloring, and water, all of which we have.  So we decided to try.

It took me about 15 minutes to do each one, and my kids were more impressed with the color of the water than the "jellyfish" in the bottle.  Next time we'll probably just mix colors, which is what we did after about 2 times of turning the bottle over to see the jellyfish move. 

"Am I supposed to drink this, Mom?"

Jonah was very proud of his yellow color choice.

Matthew tipped his over to watch it move.

Jonah looks a lot more interested in his than he actually was...

Here's a close-up of our jellyfish.  They didn't really look like much.  I'm kind of glad I didn't put more effort into them than I did though, because I don't think it would have mattered.

So then we added colors to see what we would get.  We ended up at brown pretty quickly, but that was okay.

And then they used them as microphones and sang songs.  It works.

At least we tried something fun and easy off of Pinterest.  If I ever remember to get an eye-dropper, I've seen a few other color-mixing activities that I think at least Jonah would have a ball with.