211: evening crafts

I spent the evening making things out of random stuff I could find in the craft closet. At some point I need to take pictures of my baby before she's not sleepy and newbornish anymore.

Most of the day we spent cleaning up the house and yard, but the truck full of garbage headed to the dump or the clean bathroom sinks and floors are probably not at pretty to look at as flowery/ girly  headbands. (Well actually those cleaning accomplishments make me quite a lot happier than the pile of headbands & things, but that's probably a little weird.)                                                                                                                                        

Easter Egg Candles

This is one of my favorite simple Easter crafts we've done this year: eggshell candles.  I  ran across this idea  and had to try it.  It's really easy and I like how they turned out.

Each time I used eggs in the last week, I just broke one end off to pour out the egg and saved the shells. While the kids were dyeing eggs Azia & Addison dyed the collection of empty shells, too. Then we just used some of soy wax chips from Michael's, microwaved them about 3 minutes, poured the wax into the eggshells we had resting in the cartoon and stuck wicks in each one before the wax hardened again.

We put these particular ones in some of them in these little silver egg cups we got from Amazon.

Now I feel like I should have an Easter breakfast or something so I have a reason to light them!

valentines

flowers on their way to classroom delivery for Mom's birthday

We once again put our Valentine making off till the night before, though the kids had fun perusing Pintrest looking for good ideas about a week ago.

We've been thinking of trying these for a few years, so Azia decided to do them for this year. It was especially fun since we took apart her brother's closet to steal his rod, which we spray painted white to look like a giant sucker stick.

Her and a giant Valentines sucker:

Zoran needed specific cards for different groups. He did a sucker version for his cousins. Then he made these "blowing you kisses" cards (with bubbles and hershey kisses) for the girls in his class:

He mainly chose these because he though Kristy would really like them. I asked him if Kristy was his girlfriend and he told me not really, but she sure really, really liked him. Then he pulled a picture from Kristy filled with hearts and addressed to Zoran.

He told me every time they have free choice she makes him things like this.  So he was pretty sure she'd like these cards.


The boys got the superhero suckers like we made for Lex's superhero party.

Lex's may be my favorite ones this year, even though he made me crazy when we were trying to put them together.

We were going to make angry birds ones (out of craft paper) but then he saw Azia's and wanted ones like that with a sucker. But he also still wanted angry birds. I made him a version of this, but I was missing the green birds initially, so I had to go find those images. Unfortunately first I found a pig, which I guess is clearly totally different than a bird, but for some reason I assumed the same colored characters would be interchangeable. Once we had all the right birds I didn't have them in the right places so Lex showed me what needed to happen there. He was a little disappointed I couldn't make them crash into each other (and him) like he wanted and I didn't have a bomb blowing up right by his head, but eventually he decided this version was okay.

By the next morning he'd decided they were pretty cool and was excited to bring them to all his friends.

25 Days of Presence and Presents

As I was just sorting through my phone photos from the last month and finding all these blurry and random images the kids and I took, I felt a little better about just not ever really getting to so many of the Christmas activities I wanted to do. 

Even though I didn't really photograph it well or completely (or even with my real camera) this is my favorite Christmas project from this year. This is something, in some form, that we'll definitely figure out how to do again.

The idea was simple. The kids and I decided that we'd give someone a gift every day in December leading up to Christmas.

Then we did.




What we did was very random and a little different for each day. We did a lot of baking: cookies of all kinds, brownies, rice crispie treats, banana bread, a few meals for families with moms who had jobs and kids and classes and surely a lot of other things going on during finals week. Some were really small gifts; others more substantial. "Instant movie nights" (a DVD and a few packages of microwave popcorn) were a favorite as were rootbeer floats. We collected a few favorite books and the kids made some stuffed toys, baby blankets, a few little tutus, and a couple of kid-sized aprons. We also gave gift certificates for the handful of local restaurants and coffee shops in town. One afternoon we went around to all our local businesses and got about $30-40 worth of gift certificates from each one. Some days or for some families we combined a few of these different things.

I tried to keep much of our spending local, but our town is so small we did buy a few books, movies, games and fabric for some of the projects in Missoula since none of that is available here. 

How we chose people was random, too. Sometimes kids were excited about a specific person or an idea of something they wanted to make and planned ahead and worked on it for a few days. Other days they'd come home from school and something they saw or heard earlier in the day made them want to do something for someone who they thought could use a reminder someone was thinking about them.  We did big families, young couples, grandparents of some of the kids' friends, and young single people. Some people we knew really well, some we were even related to, and some we only knew a little. Some were fairly close neighbors, some lived a few miles out of town, and we even mailed a couple anonymous packages. The only consistent piece was that we do something nice for someone else every day without expecting anything in return. 

The kids actually initially wanted to stop and tell everyone Merry Christmas each time we delivered something (which is another option we might try next year) but this time around we ended up doing everything anonymously. The kids were on board because they liked the challenge of trying to make it through the whole month without getting caught. I liked the idea of people having no way to feel like they needed to do something in return. We've also had such an awful wave of crime and theft in town lately, I wanted people to have good things to say about what was happening in our community to balance out all the negative, even if just a little.

Lex really wanted to cut the onions for one of the meals we were making. He was really annoyed that it made his eyes burn once I let him. And he also was really annoyed that I kept telling him not to touch his eyes with the onion hands. And then he was annoyed when I suggested he stop cutting the onions. A viscous cycle.

I initially underestimated how much time this would take. (I underestimate the amount of time required for every single thing I do, so this wasn't surprising.) Even on the nights we didn't cook or sew, there was still putting together whatever else we were going to drop off and the driving around and sneakily figuring out how to leave our packages without getting caught by quick door answerers or loud dogs or bright motion lights. We ended up spending at least a half an hour together every day, some times four or five times that. The time it took made it harder to fit it in every day, but also even more worthwhile than I was expecting because we did build giving, and talking about giving, and thinking about how to do nice things for others into every day. (We did miss two days because of our over totally over-scheduled days--which really bothered the kids!-- but then we just did two or three people the next day. A few other days we did extras as well. I think we did about 30 people/ families by the time we finished.)

Convincing Dad to help with the blanket knots. . . too many make your hands tired!

I loved the way it influenced the kids' thoughts and actions throughout the entire month. There were those days when they'd come home with ideas for what they wanted to do. Other days they'd come home ready to come up with plan because it became an important part of their day. They talked all the time about who they want to give things to and what they wanted to give, but very little about what they hoped to get for Christmas themselves.

I realized in the middle of the month that Azia had even started doing a little mini-giving project with her little brother. She was sitting at the table on evening and asked me, "What can I do for Lex's seventh day of Christmas?" I asked her what she meant and she explained that she made him something every day and then wrapped it so he could have a little present every day leading up to Christmas.

Lex fabric shopping (with homemade Captian America shield in hand). He went right to the zebra print and wanted to make something for his sister.

We did spend a few hundred dollars on this which is a pretty big chunk of money for us– more than we often spend on the kids' Christmas presents. This fall right before school started I convinced the kids to get on board with cleaning and clearing out their things and doing a yard sale. They never like to get rid of their stuff, so the deal was they'd get some of the money from the things they sold. I also sold some furniture and baby equipment and computer things and we ended up making much, much  more than I ever expected. We had enough to get each of the kids a new outfit for school with nearly three hundred dollars left. Once we had that unexpected money, we changed the plan of giving the money to the kids and they decided they'd all put in their share and we'd put it away for names off the giving tree once Christmas came around. Each year my kids want to take a name off the tree, but we never really have the money for a very nice gift.

Around Thanksgiving we changed the plan one more time. We did buy one big gift: an American girl doll for a girl we knew wanted one and probably wouldn't otherwise be getting one this year. 

Azia ready to wrap. I used to think these things were ridiculously expensive (which they are) but then my daughter who spends any money she gets immediately and who hates work so much she still has a breakdown every time she needs to clean and who never even played with dolls when she was younger, worked extra jobs for relatives and saved her own money for more than six months to buy one. (She has done nothing like this before or since.) That was two years ago and she still plays with it all the time and is constantly designing clothes for it. The things sure seem to make girls happy.

The rest of the money we used on the gift certificates, so the only real direct increase in normal December expenses was a few games and books and all the meals and baking we did. 

Even though we did spend a lot of money, I think we could do something nearly as cool without spending much at all.  (Though, if I was going to overspend on Christmas, I'm glad this is where we did it.) It was good for my kids to give away things of monetary value. A few times they suggested maybe we could keep a certain movie because they love it and just make that person more cookies instead? Or how about we use that certificate for us for dinner because we never eat out? But as soon as we talked about how cool it was to give those things to some other people who might not have them either, they were even more excited to drop them off.

Zoran and Israel off for some sneaky night operations across the field. Israel did much of the delivery work since he was a bit faster and not opposed to running a quarter mile or so back to the car in some cases. Teenagers sure come in handy.

But even if we had zero money to spend, which could very well be the case next year, I think it would be just as cool to do something as simple as just have all of us leave someone different a note every day telling them something as basic as we're thinking of them and we think they're sort of awesome. That was pretty much the unstated message with each thing we delivered this month, and I think as much as the gifts, people just appreciated that someone was thinking about them. Or maybe we'll do a family challenge that each one of us will do one small act of service for someone else each day.
(There are a lot of us, so with either of these approaches we'd hit a few hundred people over the course of the month!)

Lex trying to make his quick get away. He was upset a few times when the older kids wouldn't let him do some of the treat drops with them (he isn't quite up to their level of either speed or distance). But on one of the last days we had him do the drop off at one of our accomplice's... they let us use their driveway to as a shortcut for some of our early missions so they knew what we were up to. I thought he could just bring it to them and tell them Merry Christmas, but he wanted to be sneaky like the older kids!

All and all, it was a great way to spend more time with the kids really enjoying what the Christmas season should be about. Now we have eleven more months to think of what we'll do next year.

from a few buckets of cinnamon . . .

The only thing I got accomplished yesterday besides hours of cleaning (with no clear visible results) was turning about seven bottles of cinnamon into ornaments.

A chunk of them are going into little gift bags for the school teachers from our parent teacher organization. The other half was going to go on our tree which is still only partially decorated. It's all gold and neutral sorts of colors, so I thought these would fit in nicely. (Along with the half strung popcorn garland sitting in a bowl on the counter for about a week now.)

After many hours of cooking them last night and more drying this afternoon, the kids and I started painting them tonight. Then when I went upstairs to get the ribbon, my kids switched to fluorescent pink and vibrant blue "icing" colors. So we have a few that look like this and a lot that are much brighter and more specifically themed: superman, Mission cheerleader, Captain America. . .

They like to make sure I don't get too uptight about this decor thing.

Rolled Paper Christmas Tree Ornaments

I'm taking a break from work to figure out what sort of Christmas decorations to make this year. And then sometime I need to figure out when to make them all!

I got a bunch of cool paper really cheap a few weeks ago. I had a plan to use that, but I'm not creative enough to think of any unique things to make. So, I think we're going to make a few dozen Christmas trees.  We started by cutting little strips of paper about two inches long and in all different widths (about a half inch difference in each size) 

As I started rolling the paper, Azia reminded me that it was the same process as she used when making magazine beads. You could actually make these ornaments with old magazines or wrapping paper, too, and I think they'd look pretty cute. They'd also be easier to roll and glue. 

Since I picked out some really thick (almost cardstock-like) paper, I dunked each piece under water before we started rolling them, just long enough to get the whole think covered. Then I rolled up each, using a pen or pencil to keep it tightly wound and a glue gun to stick them in place.

In this first version I just used dental floss (reinforced with glue) to tie it all together and added another little paper circle for the trunk. The star is a brad and the name is just done with stamps.

I tried another version where instead of stringing the pieces together with floss, I used a wire  and slid them all onto that. I bent the white wire at the top into a star. After everything was on it, I bent the remaining wire on the other end into a trunk. I stamped the name and date onto little metal plates in that one.

Though I liked the second version better. I think we're going with the first just because it's a little faster and easier to make, especially when I have no time to figure out where all out my wire bending jewelry supplies are. Or all my hammers. I've not been too successful at trying to stamp things in the metal with the makeshift supplies I could find. The lettering looks a little rough. 

At least I have a plan. Now to just find the time to get them all done in the next couple days!

2010: Sled Ornaments 


2009: Reindeer Ornaments

Gingerbread (inspired) Houses

So, there is actually no gingerbread involved here.

These may be more like Hanzel and Gretal Christmas-themed houses. This year we went with Gwen's idea of just using hot glue rather than scalding melted carmalized sugar to build them (awesome idea it turns out),  so I think they are also becoming increasingly less edible as the years go on.

Oh well though, since the kids' building skills are increasing, so the houses are getting taller and more uniquely shaped and the kids are finding more and more ways to attach insane amounts of candy to their structures.

Really, I'm not so sure a few pieces of hot glue are any worse for you than approximately 45 pounds of straight sugar anyway.

Christmas Elf Ornaments

The kids spent the evening making little elf ornaments (though some ornaments looked more elfish than others).

I saw some version of this somewhere before but can’t find where I saw it. I thought it was Family Fun magazine but it doesn’t seem to be.

Going from the basic idea of building little elves out of pipe cleaners and beads, here’s what we came up with. 

Azia's girl elf. . . she got black hair instead of an elf hat

Here's approximately what we used for each one:
(The kids all did theirs a little differently.)

• 1 1/2 pipe cleaners

• 2-3 large beads (we used wood beads) for face & body
  10-20 small beads (we used plastic pony beads because we had a bunch, but smaller wood beads would look better)
 
• Felt
• Ribbon for hanging hook
  *If you want them to look Christmas-like, use Christmas colored beads, felt, and ribbon. Ours ended up being rainbow colored.
• Scissors 

• Glue gun 
• Small jingle bell are a cute addition, too

First kids picked out their materials and the colors they wanted.

Next kids cut scarfs and hats out of the felt

We didn't use a pattern because they all wanted different shapes. The hats were just half circles (most diameters were about 2 inches) folded in and glued to make a cone shape. Some liked short little pointy hats and others wanted big, tall and skinny hats. The scarves were mostly about four inches long and half an inch wide. We cut a slit lengthwise an inch or so from the end of one side of the scarf so the other end could just be pulled through.

Lex mostly just liked cutting the felt into all sorts of small pieces. Not a whole lot of help.

After you have your felt pieces cut out, fold your pipe cleaner in half and begin stringing beads over that folded pipe cleaner: 1-2 big beads for the body, bead you’ve chosen for the head, the felt cone (hat).

Next begin sliding beads onto each “leg” till you have legs as long as you’d like. Bend the ends to make feet and also keep all the beads from sliding back off.

Take the 1/2 length pipe cleaner and twist it right around the middle of the folded long one (now functioning as the body) and then add beads to each of those sides to function as arms. Twist those ends when done also.

Use a sharpie (or other permanent marker) to color a face on it. 

Wrap the scarf around the elf’s neck.

Loop a ribbon through the pipe cleaner at the elf’s head. Add a few jingle bells if you’d like!

And then they’re done!

Lex, with the 4-year-old version of the project.  He liked stringing the beads on and did have them at one point.  Unfortunately I think he liked taking things apart and throwing them even more. The beads did not last.

Zoran with his elf

This is a snowman rather than an elf. Azia made this in the 2-3 minutes while I was getting out the supplies to make the other ornaments: Rundolph the red-nosed snowman.  She creates things at an bizarre rate.

Azia lined up all her new creations and photographed them!

Counting Down with Christmas Books!

I've seen variations on this idea floating around the last few years and have been wanting to get organized enough to do it. Combining reading and Christmas excitement– how can you lose? I finally got enough books together before December started to do it this year.

The last few years I've pulled all  the Christmas themed books together and put them in a basket near the tree,  so kids could find them easily and we could read them throughout the holiday season. I've liked how that worked out and will probably incorporate it into this activity, too, by leaving the basket there to collect the books we've already opened. Even if kids have seen most of the books before, having them all together and easily accessible makes them exciting again every time we dig all these books out again.

I hate buying wrapping paper since it often costs more than the gifts I'm wrapping (unless I buy it right after Christmas for the next year) so I just used brown packing paper and baker's twine.  I also pulled out some Christmasy patterned paper and tags and labeled each book with a date.

You could completely skip this step and just write numbers on packages or leave them off completely. It'd be fun to just let kids choose one randomly to open each day. I just liked the look of the big tags and some of the books corresponded with other activities we have going on that day, so I thought this time around we'd try numbering. 

I also like the easy visual of knowing whether we actually opened the book for each day. While hopefully we'll read most of these together, I have lots of kids with very diverse and crazy schedules! It's very unrealistic to think we'll all do every day together throughout the whole month. This way, it's clear where we are and if we've opened one for the day. 

I did buy a couple new Christmas books this year, but we had a pretty big collection to begin with. (Mom for 14 years + English teacher + childcare business owner = excessive amounts of books!) Some I like more than others, so I'm still looking for good suggestions for people's favorites. I only really love a few of these.

Since my kids' ages span 4-14 we have quite a variety included. I ended up weeding out the board books since we are a bit beyond those now, but we still have some that have only a handful of sentences throughout the whole book and some that are a few hundred pages.

Here's what's wrapped up this year:

1. Elf on the Shelf.
We've done this tradition the last couple years & the kids really enjoy it so we'll start off reading the story again.

2. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.  Illustrated by Susan Jeffers  ç 2001.
This isn't actually a Christmas book, but I love this poem by Frost and haven't read it to my kids in awhile.  I'm including it!

3. Santa: My Life and Times. An Illustrated Autobiography. Jared F. Green, Marin I. Green and Bill Sienkiewicz. © 1998.
Not a one night read! (128 pages) We'll read a few chapters and then leave it out for older kids to keep looking at throughout the month.

4. Santa’s Favorite Story: Santa Tells the Story of the First Christmas by Hisako Aoki and Ivan Gantschew. © 2007

5. The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado. © 1994

6. The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney. © 1988
Appalachian Christmas story of a family making sure Christmas goes on while a father is at war.

7. The 12 Days of Christmas by Helen Haidle. Illustrated by Laura Knorr. © 2003
Explanation of the history behind each of the 12 days of Christmas.

8. A Star so Bright by M. Christina Butler and Caroline Pedler. © 2007
Simple, rhyming verse about all the animals seeing the guiding star on the first Christmas.

9. The Very First Christmas by Paul Maier. Illustrated by Franciso Ordaz. © 1998.
Story of a child asking questions about the first Christmas, with detailed answers using biblical passages to retell the story

10. The Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup and illustrated by Matt Tavares. © 2009
Fun illustrations help tell the story of a gingerbread pirate’s adventures on Christmas Eve.

11. Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien. 2004 edition
Tolkien started writing & illustrating letters to his children from Santa in 1920 and continued for the next twenty years. This is 110 pages so we’ll just read a few and keep it out so kids can keep looking at it throughout the month.

12. Why Christmas Trees Aren’t Perfect by Richard Schneider. Illustrated by Elizabeth Miles. © 1987.
Story about the beauty in living for the sake of others.

13. Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck and illustrated by Mark Nuehner. © 1955.
A young boy figures out how to give a meaningful Christmas gift without money.

14. The Christmas Candle by Richard Paul Evans. Illustrated by Jacob Collins. © 1998.
A candle shows a young man the true meaning of Christmas.

15. Humphrey’s First Christmas. Written and illustrated by Carol Heyer. © 2007.
The story of the first Christmas from one of the camel’s point of view.

16. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss. ©  1957.

17. The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski. © 1995
*long one! Reserve extra time or a couple nights in a row.

18. One Snowy Night by M. Christina Butler and Tina Macnaughton. © 2004.
A Christmas present makes the rounds of animals one snowy night.

19. Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree by Robert Barry © 1963
Cute illustrations and rhyming story about a whole group of animals finding the perfect Christmas trees.

20. The Spirit of Christmas by Nancy Tillman. © 2009
Emphasizes the most important thing about Christmas is the people you care about.

21. Mortimer’s Christmas Manger by Jane Chapman and Karma Wilson. © 2007
Cute story about a little mouse learning about Christmas. . . except it freaks me out to read about pretend cartoon mice crawling all over the house. I know I’m weird.  The kids like it anyway & it is a sweet story.

22. Christmas in the Barn by Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Diane Goode. © 1952
Simple retelling of the first Christmas. Written as a concise rhyme good for young kids.

23. Legend of the Christmas Stocking by Rick Osborne. Illustrated by Jim Griffin. © 2004

24. The Light of Christmas by Richard Paul Evans. © 2002
A small boy learns it isn’t what you have to give but how much you give of yourself that matters.

I couldn't find our copy of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, but I definitely want to include that one next year!

Day 289: Girl Scout Camp

Azia has Girl Scout camp at the People's Center all this week. She's been doing mostly crafts and a bit of drama and having full days of hanging out with a group of girls her age. It's her sort of thing.

Addison stayed tonight & they've been in project creation mode since they got home at about 4:30 . . .  a good six hours ago. They painted a huge posterboard backdop and created puppets for a puppet show they were creating for tomorrow. After working on this for a few hours they decided their stage wasn't working to their satisfaction so they switched to finding costumes for themselves and turning their puppet show into a live play they'd act out. Then they switched projects again and began altering their camp shirts. For some reason they gave all the girls adult sizes even though the girls are nowhere near adult sized. So we cut at least 6-7 inches off the bottom of each shirt and a few inches off the sleeves and they went to work fringing and bedazzling the whole thing with beads.

It's a very interesting look and I'm pretty sure Azia will try to wear this beautiful creation every time we leave the house for the next couple weeks.