Home Made Gift Tags

Okay, remember the wiki stix that we made? Well, now is the time to make them into little cute gifts. I got some little bags at the dollar store to put them in and I made some tags that I think turned out kinda cute. I got out the pack of scrapbooking Christmas paper that I got a year or two ago and never used, my cutting mat that's quilting size (as opposed to scrapbooking size), and these little round cutting thingers that you've probably seen at Creative Memory get togethers. I haven't gone to any of those things for several years and I can't recall if they have a name (did you not catch my previous entry about my memory?!) but they're great for cutting nice smooth circles. The other option would be tracing various cups but the cutting part is tedious that way.

So, a little paper and a little glue and here are a few of our wiki stix gifts.

The Reason for Christmas

The reason my family celebrates Christmas is to celebrate Christ's birth. It seems that everyone agrees that it's not about presents but I've heard people say that the season is about family, friends, our blessings and such. No, it's not about family, not friends, not our many blessings but the ONE Supreme Gift; our God coming to earth to pay for our sins.

Everyone seems to have plenty of Christmas traditions but often a majority of those traditions really don't have a whole lot to do with Jesus Christ. It's easy to celebrate the Christmas without thinking much about Christ. Just think! The one question that children get asked this time of year is "Are you ready for Santa?" People assume you'll be celebrating with gifts and Santa but don't even think about asking if you're excited to celebrate Jesus!

With so many traditions that aren't specifically about Christ, it takes a little extra effort to make sure you pass on the true meaning of Christmas to your children. There's one Christ-focused thing we've been doing the last two years that my children really enjoy. It's an "interactive" nativity set. It has several boxes, each with a character from the story of Christ's birth. The kids take turns opening each one and setting their person in place and we read about that character (Gabriel, Mary, Jospeh, Jesus...) and talk about them and what the story means to us, etc. You can see this nativity set and read more about it here: http://www2.familylife.com/wgwfc/

A brief tidbit on how poor my memory is. Since we got the Christmas stuff down from the attic several weeks ago, I'd been thinking how I'd really like a hands on thing that I could do with the kids and I was thinking maybe there was a nativity set or something I could get from the Christian book store. Finally, last week I went to the bookstore and asked for something that fit this description and the little gal showed me our exact set which we had used a number of times last year. She looked at me like I was a bit nuts when I exclaimed "I have that!!" Sigh. Yeah.
We did it several times last year. Part of my problem is that I didn't put it away with the Christmas stuff. I'll try to remember to do that this year so it'll be there when we start getting stuff down for Christmas.

Cookie Cutter Ornaments

We had bakers clay left over from the bears (which dried but now need super glue to stick them back together because they've been handled and dropped a few times in the drying process) so we made cookie cutter ornaments out of it. Little Chef got a few cookie cutters for his birthday and we used those. A hole for hanging the ornaments was made with a drinking straw. we put them in the oven on 300 degrees for about an hour We've not done this before so we tried a variety of thicknesses. The star in the upper left was VERY thin. The ones in the shape of the blown glass ornaments were a little thick and got a bit fat in the oven. Here they are just baked.


Here are a few in the beginning stages of being painted. Obviously we have plenty more to paint.


And here are just a few finished ornaments. We used acrylic paints we had on hand as well as some shiny fabric paint.

Christmas Triathalon...er...Party

Generally speaking, I don't overly load our schedule. I don't have a problem saying no (I practice it continually at home, for goodness sake) and I know well that children can survive without doing something outside of the home 3 plus times a week. This week however, has been a busy one.



Today was a bit crazy. It started off yesterday. Yesterday we did a gingerbread contest (our house won 3rd place!) where I was reminded that, for the party today, we had to bring a dessert of some sort and found out that we were also supposed to bring along some sort of finger food or something. After lunch (at Chick-fil-a where the gingerbread contest was held) we went to pick up stuff to make the necessary food went home and put kids down for a nap and tried to catch up on a little stuff at home and before I knew it, we had to leave for "Bethlehem". A church about an hour away has a wonderful live town of Bethlehem including the nativity which SOMETIMES has a live baby for Jesus. This year they did not. For goodness sake, Jesus is the main character and in this LIVE nativity, they couldn't get a LIVE baby?! I digress. We did that last night, got home pretty late, flopped into bed. I made some spinach dip with the bag of fresh spinach before we left so that was taken care of and I figured that I would bake brownies as soon as I got up in the morning so they'd be ready for the party at 9.



Wouldn't you know, I got up this morning and La Princess was in her bed yelling/crying "Mom!! I'm poooop!" I went to get her and YIKES! I couldn't tell where the leak was right off so I carried her superman style to my bathroom only to discover that the leak was in front and now my carpet and i both required cleaning. Argh!! So after bathing her, washing the carpet, taking a shower myself and doing a load of laundry I could finally do the brownies. Thoughts of calling it off were dancing through my head (forget the sugarplums, okay?!) but of course I had already told them we were going and I hated to disappoint.



We arrived at the church for the party about 25 minutes late, Little Bit had taken her shoes and one sock off (and it was pretty chilly out so I hated to haul her in like that...) and La Princess was SO not cooperating with anyone. It's okay though, we were there and things were bound to smooth out a bit.



I spent much of the 3.5 hours we were there with one little lady on my back and one in my arms. Both were tired, one would have been best left at home or just about anywhere else in my opinion. All in all, it was one of those things where my arms were given a workout, my patience was given a work out and I was rather looking forward to going home. I felt somewhat frazzled, especially by the time they got around to eating, which was the last activity for the party. At that point Little Bit had been stretched beyond her limit and was way tired. La Princess wanted mom, wanted her carseat, wanted to go home and whatever happened, did NOT want me to do anything but sit and hold her.



Interestingly, I had one lady come up and tell me she saw us in the grocery store and complemented the kids on how well behaved they were and how they all just stepped to the side and got out of the way when other people were coming down the isle without me having to say anything. She also said we all looked so calm, etc. You know what that reminds me of? You know those stories you hear about people smuggling Bibles into other countries and the border guards don't even look in the box with the Bibles or perhaps they do but they don't seem to see the Bibles? That's what this seems like. Like they're missing something that's so obvious I can't believe it's not some sort of trick. Because I don't think there's a time in the grocery store where I don't have to instruct my kids to step aside and watch out for people. And calm!! It's true, I don't yell at my kids in the grocery store. I actually drop my voice and hiss at them! Ha! Not really, but I do drop my voice to correct them in public. I don't much like hearing people chew out their kids, myself. Really though, I'm amazed that it seemed calm to her. I always figure people see us coming and it's like a small tornado coming down the isle, you know?! With little heads flashing out from time to time, a hand shooting out there to grab something off the shelf, and on down the twister goes. Perhaps I had just issued a death threat and they were all contemplating how serious I might be. Or, maybe, like in those missionary stories, she really just didn't see it! I always worry that I'll be a bad testimony to the world as related to having a larger than average family. Maybe that's how God takes care of that!



Back to the party. First they had a craft. Three of the boys made some baseball game, my little engineer chose a more complicated car to do and La Princess and I did a mailbox sort of thing. Here are a few carpenters, busy at work.

They also had a cupcake walk. Sheer numbers worked in our favor there (or worked against us as bringing home cupcakes isn't the best thing in the world) and we won twice, netting us twelve large chcolate/candy coated cupcakes. Here are a couple of pictures of the boys during the cake walk.

New Clay Bears

Yesterday while doing language lessons and then while reading history to the boys, I made these two little bears. Multitasking at it's finest! Okay, I don't know that I would say that. We've been playing with play-dough since we were little, it's not like it takes a lot of concentration! One of these is for the smallest member of our family and one for another one of the kiddos. Our ornamental bear family is now complete! For this year anyway. No, that's not a hidden announcement.



I used bakers clay. You can find the recipe for this all over the internet but here it is:

2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of salt
3/4 to 1 cup of water

Mix the salt and flour and then add in the water. Knead with hands until smooth. Last time I baked the little bear but since these guys are a little chubby, his back cracked in the baking. FYI, I understand that less chunky pieces won't crack. I read that you can also just allow them to air dry over a few days. I'm going to try that this time and see how that goes. I'll paint them in a few days.

The kids really love playing with this stuff, too. I think we may make some ornaments by rolling it out flat and cutting it with cookie cutters, let the kids paint them and give them to adoring grandparents.

Making Clay Christmas Ornaments

Several years and several children ago, a family member gave us this Christmas ornament. It had names across the stockings or hats and our family name and year on the heart there on the left (removed for privacy). Oh, look! Little bear on the left has lost an eye!

Well, two years ago I decided it would be nice to have some matching bears for the rest of our family (since little people always ask where they are). I looked up a recipe for dough that you bake on the internet and took a shot at it. I only made one at the time. I painted it with some paints I had on hand. The white paint I used on the hat was old and ended up peeling so i think I'll redo that, but here's how the bear turned out. Since I have a sick kid today and we won't be doing much, I think we'll look up a recipe again and try to do two more. I'll let you know how it turned out!