Christmas

I am not a crafty person, although I do wish I was. But I do have a hankering to do some crafting around this time of year. Pinterest is a great place to find ideas along with your favorite blogs. Here are a few things I am contemplating...

 

This one is from my favorite blogger, Joy at artfulhomemaking. You can go HERE if you would like to see how she made this beautiful plate for next to nothing. She also has some other great printables as well. I used THIS printable on some brown paper colored cardstock and put it in a black frame. Such an easy and beautiful way to add Scripture to your home.

 

For our Advent calendar this year I am making THIS. I will modify it though and just use posterboard for the backing instead of fabric. I don't mind if it isn't reusable since I enjoy finding something different each year.

 

I also picked up three fake silver platters from the Dollar Tree to make THIS. I just love anything that is chalkboard. I got a can of chalkboard paint for my birthday that I have been trying to find projects for.

 

Anyway, those are a few projects I am hoping to work on and that is about all that baby is going to let me write.

 

Happy Christmas Crafting!

 

 

 

 

 

Before Five in a Row

Yes, the school year has been in full swing for quite some time and yes I did buy a whole new curriculum for my Kindergartener at the beginning of the year and yes I started something else in the middle of the school year. I think I drive my husband crazy but hopefully for the rest of this year I am set on one thing. As I was "schooling" with him I just felt that we were just doing things for the sake of doing things and he didn't seem to be retaining much of it. I really just wanted to be sitting on the floor reading to all of my little ones.

Then I read a post at one of my favorite blogs, Artful Homemaking. She had a post on the fun they were having using "Before Five in a Row". It had all of the elements that I wanted to do with the children...reading, art, and fun. Then I remembered, "I have the teacher book for that".  So we are now using a fun curriculum, if you want to call it that.

Basically we read the same children's book for five days in a row and do some fun, learning activities to reinforce our reading. Our first book was "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?"

 

Our first activity was dressing Jesse Bear.

 

B#8 wasn't really he wanted anything to do with it all but once he saw the book he was excited to read it. Then when I told him we were going to the table to do an activity he politely declined. Once he saw the activity he jumped on board and wanted to keep dressing more bears.

 

 

We are having fun with it and I love how flexible it is. I just find activities on the internet that I want to do and print them out or prepare them.

Two Book Reviews

Let me just start out by saying that I am not a gifted writer who can write enthralling book reviews but I do love books and reading and I also would love to help myself and my children to better memorize God's Word. So when Jenn at The Purposeful Mom offered to let readers have a free ebook in exchange for a book review on their blog, I jumped at the chance. Her ebook is called "Hiding God's Word in My Heart". Her book is an easy read, only 20 pages, not too overwhelming, with no incrimination if you aren't memorizing God's word with your children but with encouragement and help to jump in and get memorizing. Included in her book are instructions for using the book, ideas for teaching Scripture to baby on up, list of songs and other go-alongs for learning Scripture, specific songs for verses in "God's Word in My Heart" and printable memory verses. I like the ABC verses as that is where I am at with my Preschooler and soon-to-be Kindergartener. We also enjoyed starting the memory verse caterpillar that she mentions making, although we didn't get very far with it because a certain small person in our house tore some body parts off of it. Maybe we will try again once we start back to school. I also have older children at home and while this book didn't provide what I need to really help my older children, I do think it had some fun ideas for little guys and it is helpful that she has done the leg work for you in providing the verses and printables to make getting started very easy. Jenn has graciously offered to let me do a giveaway of a free copy of her book in which ever Bible version you prefer. Now I am not a big-time blogger so I don't really know much about doing a give-away but if you are interested, just leave me a comment and in a week or so I will do the old fashioned "pull the name out of a hat" version of a drawing. If you don't have little ones at home, feel free to enter so you can give your copy to a friend with littles or maybe grandchildren.

The second book I want to "review" isn't necessarily a review and I am not even finished reading it yet, but I am loving what I am reading so I wanted to let you all know about it. It is called " Three Decades of Fertility". It is written by 10 ( I believe) different ladies on how they chose to allow the Lord to be in control of their fertility and the struggles and blessings that have come with that. I have found it to be a very encouraging book in many ways. I have only read from three of the ladies so far but my favorite for now is Natalie Klejwa's testimony.  I love this bit from her:

                "The key to a healthy family and healthy relationships, I'm convinced, is humility . It is the willingness to admit sin, repent of it and ask for forgiveness. The families I know that practice this are just like every other family in that they sin against one another.  But they maintain emotional and relational health because the individual members grieve over their sin, saying they are sorry and asking for forgiveness.
                "The families that struggle are the ones that have difficulty admitting sin.  IF the parents are prideful and refuse to admit wrongdoing, blaming other family members or making excuses for the ways they hurt others, the family as a whole will suffer untold ways.  So let me be clear. Healthy families are not sinless.  All families sin and they do it everyday in numerous ways. We can make a difference for eternity by simply humbling ourselves before our family members and learning the art of saying sorry and asking forgiveness."

Anyway, I am far from being finished with the book but wanted to put in a plug for it if you are interested. You can find it HERE at the Visionary Womanhood website.

Just Staying Busy

We are still here. Just staying busy with new baby, not getting much sleep, preparing for Mamaw and my sweet daughter-in-law to come for a visit tomorrow. No son visiting with her though:(. Hopefully next time. Enjoying summer but getting ready for school to start back up. Spending my free time (what little there is) researching curriculum choices for two of my little guys. How about you? What occupies your summer days?

Oh, Ouch!

I read THIS  post just now and knew I had to blog about it in case someone else struggles with this like I do... I printed it out and will add it to my "mommy" binder where I keep all the articles that I want to keep and reread.

Lavender and a Sweet Baby!

I love lavender! Is there any better smell than lavender? Well ok, coffee and a sweet new baby rank up there as well. But I do love the smell of lavender. I have quite a few lavender plants and it was time to harvest them if we wanted to dry them and use the buds for anything so B#2 set out to harvest them and then she painstakingly bunched, tied and hung them for me.

 And here is the sweet baby...I think he is about a week old in this picture. I would post more pictures of him but I have to be careful about posting pictures that I want to keep as sometimes they disappear from my camera card after I have used them in a blog post.

The Plans of a man's heart

I was scrolling through the blog just now and saw the verse at the bottom that I have had there forever, thinking I would change it pretty often. As I read it again it got me to thinking about B#11's birth. I spent a good portion of my pregnancy reading about natural childbirth and birth after a C-section. DH and I read about birthing without pain meds. But in the end things didn't go as I had planned. Am I disappointed??? I am not sure I can answer that. We both said all along that the most important thing was a healthy baby and healthy mama. We have both. Was my birth experience what I had hoped it would be? Nope. But there are little things that came up during the baby's C-section delivery that made me think that this way was the better way. The Lord is in control and many are the plan's of a man's heart but it is the counsel of the Lord that will stand.