Word for Wednesday #5

Isa 9:6  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

With all the Christmas lights that have been turned on, I've been thinking a lot about Christmas.  Not just what I'm going to buy or make as gifts, but the real reason we celebrate.  This is a very powerful and hopeful scripture.  Look at the promise that Jesus is to us!  He's Wonderful, our Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, and The Prince of Peace!  Wow!  He's our Savior, and that is amazing!

I want my children to understand that Christmas is more than materialism.  We've always put up a manger scene, and read the Christmas story to them, but I want to have more depth this Christmas, more spiritual experiences.  I want to read the bible stories, pray together, and sing Christmas carols together.  I will be making ornaments as our advent calendar this year.  Each one will have a name of Jesus, such as Savior or Prince of Peace.  Every day as we open one, we'll talk about what it means before we hang it on our tree.  This way, every day we'll be thinking about Jesus and taking a few minutes to worship Him!  (I'll have pictures for you after I make them...)  (And I got the idea from Family Life Today, where you can buy ornaments.)

Word for Wednesday #4

Psalm 100: A Psalm of praise.

Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.  

Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.  

Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.  

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. 

For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

This is one of my favorite psalms.  Don’t you just want to take a minute to praise Him right now?  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day that we set aside to give thanks.  And not just to anyone, but to God!  Make sure you take some time this Thanksgiving to thank the One that gave you every good thing in your life! 

Enjoy your family and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Crafting with the Cousins!

I've been babysitting my niece and nephew this weekend.  We did some Thanksgiving crafts to pass the time.  Here they are making hand print turkeys.  We traced their hands and then glued feathers and googly eyes on them!  I also found some Thanksgiving coloring pages for them.  Below, Joshua and his cousin are having fun together!

A Word for Wednesday #3

Philippians 3:12  I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep on running and struggling to take hold of the prize.

I heard a term recently called snapshot living.  A great example of this is seen by looking at Pinterest.  Oh, wonderful Pinterest!  We can spend hours pinning ideas, crafts, great recipes, home decorating tips, and the list goes on.  We see what other's are doing, and then we think, "Wow, I'm not a very good mom because I don't make my kids smiley face pancakes and smoothies for breakfast every day".  That picture of a wonderful breakfast (on a perfectly decorated kitchen table) is only a snapshot of one moment in that mom's life.  It doesn't tell us anything about her, her family, or what she believes in.  Maybe for dinner, that family only had peanut butter and jelly on paper plates.  Maybe the bathroom is dirty.  Maybe there is a mountain of laundry that hasn't been done.  Maybe her husband had to work late and missed dinner.

We need to stop comparing ourselves to the snapshots that we see on the internet.  As a blogger, I'm only going to show you pictures of the best parts of my life (usually).  My sewing projects don't always turn out.  Sometimes, I miss the boat on a teaching moment with my kids.  Sometimes they scream and have fits.  There are almost always dishes in my sink.  And my husband cooks half the time.  I am not perfect, and neither are you.  But we're going to keep on running towards the prize of making our home in heaven with Jesus!

Scrapbook Pages

I spent some time scrapbooking with the kids this week.  Here are my pages from our vacation.  They both finished their books, I'll have to take a few pictures to share with you.  They did a good job, but got a little crazy with the stickers!

Days 54-63, MFW 1st Grade

Above, Caleb and Rebekah were building their 3D map of the bible lands, made out of play dough and paint.  We have been having a wonderful time learning about bible history!  Below is a picture of our Sabbath dinner.  I posted about our dinner last week, which you can see here.  We also learned Proverbs 19:17 and Proverbs 13:13, which starts "He who scorns instruction will pay for it".  Caleb learned this one first hand!  I told him he needed to settle down during lunch and sit in his chair.  Well, he kept bouncing around and being a little crazy, and he knocked over his cup of juice.  We didn't have any more, so he paid the price of not getting any juice.  I love when God provides moments of instruction at just the right time!

We also started learning about Noah, so we made tin foil boats and floated them in the bath tub.  Joshua wanted them so bad!  Silly boy!

Reading has been going very well too!  Below is a completed page in his work book.  He illustrated three sentences without my help.  I thought he did a good job!

In math, we finished up place value and then spent a week on measurement.  In the picture below, the kids are using measuring cups to fill different containers with water.  They each had a 1 cup and a 1/4 cup.  They like to play with water!

On day 55 we spent some time learning about volcanoes.  We learned how the ground moves because of the magma underneath it.  To demonstrate this, I used a K-cup and had Caleb fill it half way with dirt.  Then I squeezed toothpaste (magma) through the hole in the bottom.  We were able to watch the dirt swell up before the magma broke through.   (This was an activity recommended in the curriculum).

We also made volcanoes out of play-doh and erupted them with baking soda and vinegar dyed yellow (I was out of red).  We used up all the old dried out, mixed together play-doh.

Then we talked about the stars and planets.  We read a few books from the library, and I found a Magic School Bus Lost in Space DVD for them to watch.  We cut planets out of construction paper to show the relative sizes, but I didn't take a picture.  And lastly, we made a rocket balloon and pretended we were blasting off into outer space.  Boy, did I get tired of blowing up that balloon!

That's what we've been up to.  This next week we'll be covering the Tower of Babel and making our own towers out of tooth picks.  I can't wait!

Cloth Envelope System with Clutch Purse

Have you ever heard of the envelope system?  It's a budgeting tool made popular by Dave Ramsey.  After you figure out your budget for the month, you put cash in different envelopes that match your budget categories.  This helps you to not overspend because once the cash is gone, you're done spending for the month.  Your envelopes can be plain paper business envelopes... or a cute cloth purse with zippered pouches!  This one is already on it's way to my friend Allie, I hope she loves it!

I used this tutorial as a basic guide for my pouches.  The clutch purse that holds the pouches was done flying by the seat of my pants skirt.  I started to build a tutorial for you, but I had to do A LOT of seam ripping and re-configuring.  But I think the end product turned out really cute!  I am planning on making another set for a different friend, so I will try and put a tutorial together then. 

I added some clear vinyl pockets to the front of the envelopes and slipped some yellow paper inside.  My friend can write her budget categories on the papers to label her envelopes (like food and entertainment).

The embellishment on the top is just a fabric yo-yo with two buttons sewn on top of each other.  And I added a ribbon wrist strap.  Cute!  Happy budgeting Allie!

A Word for Wednesday #2

James 4:11-12  My friends, don't say cruel things about others! If you do, or if you condemn others, you are condemning God's Law. And if you condemn the Law, you put yourself above the Law and refuse to obey either it or God who gave it. God is our judge, and he can save or destroy us. What right do you have to condemn anyone? 

We need to be careful not to judge other people, no matter who they are, or what they have or have not done, especially our Christian brothers and sisters.  We're all on the same path, but remember not everyone is at the same point in the journey.  Some of you are just starting out; others are further down the road.  We need to remember that we're all headed in the same direction.  We should be encouraging one another, not tearing each other down.  If you're up front, share the view with us, and let us get excited about what God has coming up for us.

One thing I have learned is that nobody does life exactly like me.  We all have our own style.  Let's take baking cookies with my son Caleb as an example.  We made chocolate roll out cookies on Tuesday!  If I was doing it by myself, I would have quickly rolled out the dough to an even thickness.  Cutting the circles out so that they are close together without wasting any dough, and quickly transferring them to the cookie sheet in even rows.  When Caleb does it, he rolls out the dough like a steam roller, there are lumps and divots   The cookie cutter circles were everywhere on the dough, including on top of each other sometimes.  Half the fun is using a spatula to transfer the cookies to the pan and putting them every which way!  In both cases, the cookies got made, and they both tasted great.  In fact, it was hard to tell who made each one once they were done!  

God chooses to make us differently, and at different rates.  Don't expect people to be exactly like you.  Each of us has our own problems and life situations to deal with.  Don't judge someone else's decisions because you don't know what it's like to be in their shoes.  It's easy to say that we would do things differently, but you never know what you'd do in the same circumstance.  Be encouraging and pray for them!

So, let's show ourselves friendly, and let the judging be up to God.

Celebrating the Sabbath - MFW 1st, Day 57

This has been one of my favorite activities so far!  We had a Jewish Sabbath dinner, just like they did back in bible times (well, not quite like them, since we did it on a Wednesday night, but kinds similar!).  We set the table with cloth place mats and two candles.  See the heart candle stands and the ribbons on the candles?  Yep, they were from our wedding... we don't use candles too often around here.  The kids were excited to use real glasses and the nice big, breakable plates.  I also made homemade challah bread, which was delicious!  I made the dough in my bread machine using the recipe I found in the manual.  Caleb and Rebekah thought is was fun painting the egg yolk on top.

Part of the celebration was daddy praying for each of us, which was really nice.  Then he prayed a blessing over the grape juice and the bread before we dug in.  The bread is not supposed to be cut with a knife, so we just ripped pieces off, fun for the kids!  I was happy that no one spilled the grape juice!  The rest of our menu was chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, and corn.

It was so nice and relaxing to have a candlelight dinner with the kids.  I would never have thought of doing this on my own, I'm so glad that we did this!