Merry Christmas!
By mom4life | Category: Activities with Kids, Creating a Home, Family Focus, Home Crafts, Kids Crafts, The Journey of Motherhood | Posted Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Our two oldest kids are home from school and we have been really loving the lazy days that provides us. Thanks to Pinterest, I have been inspired with some fun new ideas, crafts and traditions. I will share some of my favorites below and encourage you to see all of the ideas I saved here.
In order to spend the most time with my family, I will be taking a blogging break for the remainder of the year (my assistant may write up a post or two if we decide to have any product sales). Until I write again in 2012, Merry Christmas!
Psssst: if you missed it earlier this year, you can see the digital Christmas card that I created here. Then I linked that card to our family slideshow video (also shown below).
Activities and Crafts:
-Recycling socks with holes into the most adorable sock snowmen you have ever seen! I now have a special place to put all our socks with holes for making more snowmen 
.
-Gathering up past photo Christmas cards, hole punching them and connecting them with two book rings. Each night the goal is to pray for one family using these cards as prompts. This is a great way to continue to enjoy photo cards from year to year!
-Making peanut snowmen tree ornaments.
-Making snow globes out of baby food jars, glitter and small plastic toys.
-Making a new Christmas Card holder using a wooden embroidery hoop, wood glue and clothes pins.
-Curling Ashlyn’s hair using strips of cloth.
-Teaching Hunter how to play Monopoly (and finding out he LOVES it)!
New traditions:
-Using the free Jesse Tree advent devotional from A Holy Experience.
-I wrapped up 24 Christmas and/or winter themed books and from December 1-24 the kids took turns opening one to be read.
Purchases:
-A $12 oil pan at WalMart to make a great magnetic surface for fridge letters as well as a drawing surface for dry erase markers.
Baked goods:
-These oreo truffle balls were unfortunately VERY GOOD .
-I am wanting to make these healthy peppermint patties!
If you have not read it year’s past I will leave you with one final Christmas reflection. Wishing you peace, joy and hope this Christmas!
((hugs))
Do Together Craft: Easy Wreath Ornaments
By kristinabjornbak | Category: Activities with Kids, Home Crafts, Kids Crafts | Posted Monday, November 28, 2011
Christmas is rapidly approaching. Usually, this is the time of year that I bust out the paper crafts with my kids, but this year I thought we could make some ornaments. Enter these adorable, easy, and super cheap wreaths. This is truly a do-together craft, as some steps the kids can do, and some steps the adults or older kids have to do, such as the hot glueing. Even better, these little wreaths are fully customizable. If you have four kids doing this craft, you will have four completely different wreaths. Even better, if you are a sewer or crafter, I can nearly guarantee you have the materials needed around your house. Can you say, “Scrap busting time!” If you aren’t a crafter don’t worry! The materials for this craft are very inexpensive.
Hunger (hands response)
By mom4life | Category: Family Focus, North Idaho Residents, The Journey of Motherhood | Posted Thursday, November 10, 2011
If your heart has been stirred by this topic of hunger than I hope that the ideas on how to help the hunger (both locally and internationally) mentioned below will help motivate your family into action. I realize this list is limited so I would encourage and ask you to leave a comment if you know of other great resources or opportunities.
Hunger (heart response)
By mom4life | Category: Family Focus, The Journey of Motherhood | Posted Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Yesterday’s post was pretty heavy. The statistics of the hunger needs are very discouraging and can leave us feeling overwhelmed. However, I don’t believe we are expect to solve the problem. We are told in the Bible that the poor will always be with us (Matthew 26:11). What we are told to do however is to stand up for the poor (Psalm 146:7) and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30). I realize that if ANY of us had neighbors dying at the rate of 4 kids a minute we would be overwhelmed with urgency to help. This week I realized that if these foreign families lived here in the United States under the same conditions they are in now (no clean water, no healthy food, sleeping on the ground. . .) CPS woud swiftly come in and take the children away. These families may live far away, but they are still our neighbors. I urge us to respond in love rather than to walk away in dispair. Below I have outlined some starting points for your heart.
Hunger (head knowledge)
By mom4life | Category: Family Focus, The Journey of Motherhood | Posted Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Yesterday I shared my experience in Costco that almost brought me to tears and my heart on the topic of hunger. Today I want to share with you the first of three posts that will give you a starting point for how to begin to understand the hunger need (Head), some ideas on ways to guide your family to an internal response (Heart) and practical suggestions on how to respond outwardly (Hands).
Because I believe that you cannot fully address a situation until you understand it, lets begin by immersing ourselves in some facts/statistics and videos that will help us get a better understanding of the Hunger needs both domestically as well as internationally.
