Painting

A good friend gave us a pack of canvases for Christmas - nice, square ones that we could paint.  There was one for each of us.

So the other day we broke out the acrylic paints and went to town.  I showed the kids some "inspiration" beforehand, but each came up with their own ideas.


Bennet did this one.  I think he was inspired a bit by Kandinsky

Lisel did this one, she was going for something like Kandinsky too.

Josephine did this one, she painted exactly what she wanted - no inspiration necessary.

Matthias did this one.  He was inspired by Josephine's.

And Tommy's was really neat looking, but then he kept painting over and over with new colors of wet paint.  We like it just the same.

And I did this one.  It was sort of inspired by Georgia Okeefe - but I didn't manage to get the flower huge enough.  The background was the most fun to paint.  Now I just want to paint abstract repeating patterns all over :)

I think this the first time painting canvas for us all -- and we had a blast!

Isn't that a terrific gift?!

Oh, and I started a new blog.  It's over here.  Each week I challenge myself to set aside a bit of time to create something with a theme, and invite others to join it.   This week's theme is to create something inspired by an Artist or a work of art.  So I'm entering this on my other blog. 

My $40 Christmas

Christmas 2009 was an especially lean season for us, in the financial sense. And not terribly fattening in the physical sense either, since we had the stomach flu.

Because of the lean funds, though, and because I wanted to, I made most of our Christmas presents. I was really proud of how almost everything turned out. I wish I had gotten pictures of them all.

But I thought I'd share what I made:

For the grandparents, photo rubik's cubes and marble magnets made from the kids art (I just cut circles for the backs of the marbles, and then let them draw tiny pictures on them). Both turned out really cute, but didn't get photographed. I got the cubes and the marbles for the magnets at the dollar store, printed my own photos for the cubes, and ordered 100 magnets for the back of the marbles from ebay, for about $4.60. Total was $7.60, which I'll round up to $8.00

For my side of the family the adults drew names and have a suggestion that we spend $15 on each other. (Which, in my opinion, is a LOT). For one sister,

I drew and framed a picture of her dog


made her sesame street characters out of yarn pom-poms



I think Oscar is my favorite.

and gave her a cute vintage mug and a large jar of homemade instant chai mix.

For the other, I painted a stencil portrait of my brother and his wife. It was my first time painting, and I wasn't very happy with my skills, so Chester fixed it for me, and it looks much better. (I got the canvas and paints on amazing sales at Michaels, so the painting cost under $5).


She also got a jar of chai mix, and a half-dozen marble magnets, printed with star-trek icons.

Total cost for my side was about $8. I felt guilty spending so little, especially when my sister spent $30 on me. I'm not sure how to deal with that. I stopped feeling guilty when I realized that the sister who spent $30 on me makes about double what I do, and supports one, not seven, person on that wage. Still, I hope they didn't find my gifts cheap. I worked pretty hard on them. Not everyone considers time expensive.

Chester's side drew names too, and the kids were included in that gift draw -- so it was seven gifts total. On that side, it's okay (even cool) to give gifts that you got an a garage sale or thrift store, and the limit is $5. Most of what I gave were indeed garage sale finds from last summer: A cereal dispenser, filled with cereal from food net was $5, a gumball machine, filled with cereal from food net, was $2.50. A brand new swiffer mop was from food net (yeah, they give away amazing stuff that doesn't sell), a set of walkie-talkies that had been given to us a few years ago, a set of doll paraphernalia from garage sales totalling about $3, a set of exacto knives in various shapes, that we bought from a going-out-of-business sale for $3, and a home-made apron (which was a lot of work and turned out really cute, and I wish I'd gotten a picture of) that the recipient had requested. And family gifts of home-made Keva blocks (Chester cut them from some maple wood flooring pieces that were too short to be used well, and they turned out really neat), and a game of Bongo from a garage sale for $2. Total $20.50.

We gave each of the kids gifts that we'd gotten from garage sales, or that were re-gifts. Bennet got some books of paper airplanes to make (free), Matt got a set of car props (buildings and roads and such for cars to drive on, free) Josephine got a set of wooden dolls with "clothes" to dress them ($1 at a garage sale), and Lisel got a tea set in a wicker basket (free).

In the kids stockings were the "useful" gifts - tights and belts, and a pair of homemade mittens. As well as apples and oranges that had been given to us. The total there was under $2.

I used swagbucks to get Chester a book that he requested. It was $20 on Amazon, so I also ordered a book for homeschooling next year to bring the total over $25 and take advantage of the free shipping.

At church, we gave away about 40 jars of home-made jam and jellies. Those cost about $.65 each to make (most of which is the jar. Not many people return them when they're finished).

So, about $39 on gifts and $26 on jams and jellies. Chester got me a gift too (a nice vegetable peeler). I haven't looked to see what he spent. This post is about what I spent. I really was hoping to spend under $50 total, but when I consider what I spent on jelly, I'm pretty happy with under seventy.

I felt like it was a really special Christmas to give people things that I had put a lot of heart and effort into, and I was pleased to also not go broke in the process. Handmade is really great! (So are garage sales!)

Decorating Pumpkins

I was too much a scaredy cat to actually get out paints to decorate pumpkins.

It was just easier to use sharpies. (That was scary too).

Everyone got their own to decorate (they gave them out at church last Sunday, yipee!)


Orange didn't show up very well on the pumpkins.


Red did though.


Yellow didn't show up well either. Jo was innovative, and colored her stem purple.


Paper under the pumpkins was intended to protect the table. It sortof worked.

Unplugged Cheese

I have wanted to, for a long time, join in the unplugged weekly projects. I just never seem to get on the ball within the week. But I love that site. Pretty much everything about it jives with me -- reducing "screen" time, no TV, hands-on activity with kids, what's not to love?

So tonight, I go to check out the weekly project, and notice that just the other day, We Chester and the kids did the perfect project to write up and join in. So, here's to what I hope is a future of joining in this carnival. It's totally cool.

We get our milk through a government program for low-income folks like us, called WIC. On WIC, we get a LOT of milk -- more than we could ever hope to drink, since we're not big milk-drinkers. So we often have to get creative to use up our milk before it goes bad. This month we were caught a bit off-guard and ended up with eleven gallons in a week. And we had colds, and were drinking even less milk than usual.

So, I pulled out my normal tricks, making a gallon into cottage cheese, a gallon into yogurt (some of that into yogurt cheese and then cheesecake), a half-gallon into cream-of-mushroom soup for the freezer..... But there's still a lot of milk left.

So Chester, in his brilliance, decides to attempt a more advanced milk-usage project: mozzarella cheese. Last Thursday, he and the kids got everything set up and gave it a try, using a modification of this recipe. (For the record, our milk is homogenized, and pasteurized, and didn't cause any problems. He also omitted the called-for lipase powder and calcium chloride, because he noticed that not all mozzarella recipes include them. We didn't have flaked salt, so he ground some salt in our coffee grinder to make it really fine. It worked great.)


Isn't it beautiful?

It ended up not stringy, though. According to this site, it's probably that the acidity was under-developed.

But it's sure yummy. It's more dry feeling than store-bought mozzarella, but tastes almost exactly like it (which I found impressive). We'll be making it again. And the nice part is that it used an entire gallon of milk to make those logs there (about 8 oz. of cheese, we think)!

The kids talked for days about how much fun it was to make cheese with Dad.

Made it Myself Monday: Easter kid crafts

With all the heavy posts lately (dare I even call it lately, when it was probably a month ago? Maybe I should say, "with all the heavy thinking I've been doing lately, that will at some point turn into posts that may even be thought-through....") -- I thought I'd just post a quick couple of pictures of our Easter crafts. We had a blast doing them, and I need a bit of something from the lighter side right now.

We stayed home from church on palm Sunday -- I had just returned from a business trip (at 4:00 am!) to very very sick kids. The kids were not only way too sick to go to church, we were just wiped out in general. (Poor Chester had sick kids by himself while I was gone -- what a hero!) The kids don't mind staying home, because they get to do extra cool crafts when they have a whole Sunday morning at home with Mom and Dad. Dad does the lesson, and Mom scrambles to find an appropriate, somewhat related craft.

On Palm Sunday, Chester chose to do a lesson on "Jesus is the good shepherd". He told a story illustrating the differences between a good shepherd and a bad shepherd, then read a short passage from John on Jesus being The Good Shepherd. Naturally, I thought of making sheep for a craft. So we took an old CD, covered it with white felt, added a black face, legs and tail, and some cotton wool and called it a sheep. Of course, the kids then proceeded to decide they wanted different animals than just sheep. So here's what we made. They ended up surprisingly cute. (We added a pink tongue to the yellow dog after taking this picture, he looked much better with it until Matt ripped his eyes off).




On Easter, I had the lesson for the preschool class at our church. They're a rowdy group that likes to make things, and it didn't take me long to settle on making "eggimals" (from Family Fun magazine). I thought it would go well with a "new creatures in Christ" theme, and tied it in with the resurrection by noting that if Christ hadn't risen from the dead, He couldn't give us new life.

So we gave our Easter eggs "new life" as other animals. It didn't go super smoothly (mostly due to the glue setting up more slowly than I had hoped), but they were popular anyway. Here's a smattering of a few animals (we made about 18 as a class of 10 kids). Shown is a green dog, a purple and red skunk, a blue dog, a pink pig and a yellow dog. There were also cats in the mix -- which looked about like the skunk with a more dog-like tail and no white stripe. Once the glue set up, they're really quite sturdy, and the kids like to play with them. I was surprised that the skunk was by far the most desirable animal for the preschool SS class!

How to have a Graham Cracker house building party

I'll admit, we're not a family with a lot of holiday traditions. Sure, we meet up with extended family and exchange gifts and eat too much. But that's really about it.

Except for this one, which is very near and dear to our hearts. We simply must include this one every year. It doesn't always happen before Christmas, but it always happens.

It is, of course, the Graham cracker house party.

It starts off with us finding a location to meet (for some reason, it's not always easy), and inviting several families. Because it's holiday season, most that we invite don't come -- and it's really better that way, because this party seems to be a space-hog. We almost always end up with about 4 families, and we have a blast.

To start off the evening, we make a big pot of soup. We don't have an "official" meal, but anyone that didn't get supper before coming out can have soup and bread. It also helps offset all the sugar.

Then we set aside one table for decorating, and load it up with all kinds of candy and breakfast cereals. Coconut for grass, Shredded wheat for thatched roofs, pretzels for structural details, gum drops, gummy bears for characters, and so on.... We ask guests to bring a small bag of candy and/or a box of graham crackers as their contribution, so the candy possibilities are endless.

In a different room, (or at least a ways away), we make the structural glue. It's easy

1. Put candy canes (or any other hard peppermint candy) on a pancake griddle.
2. Turn it on high
3. Wait

You can start using this "glue" when it starts melting. Eventually it'll look like this.



While it's melting, cut up cardboard boxes into "bases" -- ours are about 8x12 inches, and cover them with tin foil. Makes them pretty.

When the candy canes have melted, we can use it: dip the edge of a graham cracker in it to coat with "glue", then stick that edge to another cracker, and hold still until it's "set" (about 15 seconds).

For most parties like this, we'll make-ahead a few small houses. Our pre-fab houses are merely three graham crackers, broken into six squares. Each square has one side dipped, and stuck to another one at a right angle. After this, we have three "v"s. Dip the sides of two "v"s and stick them together to make a standing square -- these are the four walls of the house. Set the third "v" on top, it's the roof.

A word on buying graham crackers for this project: The cheap ones are generally more sturdy. Aldi or Walmart brand are the best we've found.

Of course you don't have to make little houses like the above -- those are really just for toddlers or people who don't want to build. The real fun (for us) is in the other types of structures we can make. Anything from a "Berean Addition" (it's a local joke), to an outhouse, to mine this year - a table-top water fall. In the past, people I know have built train engines, taj-mahals, 5-foot-tall sky scrapers and the like. Now, doesn't that make us seem less out-there?

After your structure is made, it's time to decorate. For this, you want glue frosting (or, if you don't have a kitchen aid or want to eat the frosting, cement frosting). It's best to make both of these as people are still hanging around talking and eating soup, since they take a while.

Glue Frosting
6 egg whites
1 lb powdered sugar
1 tsp cream of tartar

Mix in a kitchen aid (nothing less will work -- it'll burn up the motor. Don't ask how we know), with a wire whisk for 10 minutes.

Cement frosting (for those without a kitchen aid, or who want to eat their frosting)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar or 1 tablespoon white corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup water
2 egg whites
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (optional, unless you want it to taste good)

Place sugar, cream of tartar or corn syrup, salt, water, and egg whites in the top of a double boiler. Beat with a handheld electric mixer (it doesn't have to be anything special, a normal mixer will cut it) for 1 minute. Place pan over boiling water, being sure that boiling water does not touch the bottom of the top pan. (If this happens, it could cause your frosting to become grainy). Beat constantly on high speed with electric mixer for 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla, if desired.

We use the glue frosting, because we don't particularly care if we ingest a few raw egg whites. If you care and think your littles will eat it, then use the cement frosting. It's not as strong, and doesn't dry as hard, but it's certainly suitable for the task of holding candy to your house. Which is really all the frosting does. When it's done, scoop the (very stiff) frosting into bowls and dye with food coloring. I use the paste food coloring made by Wilton for frosting - the colors are really bright. But anything will work.

Then, decorate to your heart's content. Or don't. Whatever you like. It's a pretty low-key party. Unlike actually constructing the houses, decorating is a toddler-safe activity (just watch the sugar consumption).


Each of the littler ones started with the pre-fab house. Here's some of their work.

Lisel's house.


Josephine's house. (I think?)


Bennet showing off his house. Next year he wants to build his own "not a house".


A Christmas-tree filled yard



And a few of the others:

A truck


A teepee, complete with a campfire


A "candy box" (the lid is removable, but she didn't fill it with candy)


A large blue house. The sides are each eight full graham crackers.

It's fun to tell a bit of a story with your scene:



"A Berean Addition"


My table-top waterfall (you know... like those little wavy fountains)


A super-cute little village


This one uses candy-cane hinges to open and close doors and windows


Nathan built an outhouse, and Toby built a trailer house - complete with a patched roof, since they all have patched roofs. I can't believe I didn't get pictures!


We have fun every year. This year it was almost called off due to complications in weather and transportation, and we were very unprepared. Somehow, it made it all the more fun (because we have understanding friends!).

Afterwards I got two notes:

Thanks again for the party on Sat. We had lots of fun and can safely say this is one of our few Christmas traditions. I hope you don't suffer too badly from the sugar consumption!

Thanks so much for hosting the graham cracker party on Sat. We really enjoyed ourselves, although the kids were on a major sugar high when we came home - thanks A LOT for that! .... Saturday was a great example of how, even though we have kids, or maybe BECAUSE we have kids, we can do fun parties like that. The house doesn't have to look perfect [good thing!], the food doesn't have to be fancy, the activities don't have to be trendy or store-bought. It's the PEOPLE and the MEMORIES that are important. The Xmas parties I remember from my childhood were parties of my dad's lawyer partners where we dressed in our best and were told to be good, then sent down to the basement so the adults could have fun while the kids put up with each other. I much prefer your version. :) Even now that I'm the adult. :)

Notes like these make it even better! Thanks you all for coming and making Christmas special this year! We're grateful to have you to enjoy these Christmas traditions with!

What's your favorite Christmas tradition?

Those of you who were at this party: if you want copies of any of the pictures in a large format, just ask.

Made it myself Monday: Secrets Revealed (part 1)

We have Christmas on my husband's side of the family last night. It was an evening of riotous fun, piles of gifts, and more sweets than I care to recall.

And today is the day after.

Where we struggle to find room for the new toys, work on trying to remember what this thing called sharing is, and generally detox from all that sugar.

We're staying in today -- going no where at all, doing nothing to tax our systems, eating healthy bean soup.

We enjoyed the gifts we gave - some were unfinished, and all of them I forgot to get pictures of after they were received.

But of the gifts that I can show you now (some of them will be repeated -- the other grandmother's gift is remarkably similar to the one given yesterday, for example), this is my favorite.



It was given to my neice, Elissa, who is 8, homeschooled and likes to cook. She received this with a set of mini cake pans and a cake mix. (And a moster hoodie, just for good measure and because I really want to get rid of them!)

Hope you enjoy, Elissa! I wish I was paying more attention with the camera, but alas, one can only do so much, and I had to help four kids with their gifts too :)

More Jesse Tree activities for Preschoolers

We are doing the Jesse tree devotional for the first time this year with our kids. I thought we'd make a little ornament together each day to put on the tree. We didn't. But, most days we have done some sort of an activity to go with the reading. I wrote about November 30-December 10 a while ago ago. Here's part two.

• December 11: Ruth 1:15-2:3 Played "Follow the Leader", since Ruth followed Naomi.
• December 12: 1 Samuel 16:1-13 Talked about ways that kids (David was a kid) can serve other people -- like making cookies to take to neighbors at Christmas time.
• December 13: 2 Samuel 5:1-5 Made crowns from felt (these will be gifts in a dress-up kit for a friend, unless we ruin them by playing with them beforehand).
• December 14: Isaiah 9:2-7 Memorized John 5:24, about God's promise of Eternal life to those who believe Him. (It's a stretch -- the theme was God keeping promises -- any better suggestions?).
• December 15: 1 Kings 19:17-24, 36-39 Stacked stones to build an indoor "altar".
• December 16: Isaiah 11:6-9 Made Lion and Lamb masks from paper plates. Too bad the kids don't lie down peacefully together with their masks on....
• December 17: Micah 5:1-5 Looked up pictures of bethlehem on maps and online.

• December 18: Daniel 6 Played with our Lion masks from the other day again.
• December 19: Habbakuk 2:1-4 (probably will change out this scripture next year -- I had a really hard time coming up with an activity) We ended up just talking about waiting -- like for cookies to bake.
• December 20: Luke 1:5-25 Played Charades (because you have to communicate without talking). Also put dollies in our shirts to have a baby in our tummy. But we do that all the time anyway.

We also finally got around to decorating our tree (since we didn't make Jesse tree ornaments). All handmade ornaments that were given us by my grandmother, and (best of all) are unbreakable! The kids are re-decorating the tree all the time, and having a blast!

We tried last night to take the kids to a church that hosts a live nativity every year. It's really neat -- they have a town of Bethlehem that's bustling and busy, then you go through the hallways, are told "no room" at the inn, and eventually get to a live Baby Jesus nativity and a petting zoo. We got there only to find out that it was last week. That's what I get for thinking I remembered when it was an not checking the date. We came home and went sledding in the front yard instead. It was still special.

What are you doing to make Christmas season memorable and meaningful for your family?
This post is participating in Living Simply Saturdays.

Jesse Tree Activities for Preschoolers

This is our first year doing a Jesse Tree in celebration of Advent. When we started, I thought we'd make ornaments each day, and put them on our little tree.

But it's worked out to doing some related activity each day instead. And it's been fun (even though our tree is relatively bare. Here's what we've done. (We're using this devotional as a starting place.)

• November 30th: Isaiah 11:19. Got out the Christmas tree, talked about it being a Jesse tree.
• December 1st: Genesis 1:26-31. Celebrate creation in some way. We made snowflakes out of pipe cleaners and beads, (it was our first snow).
• December 2nd: Got out all of our snake toys and talked about making the right choice when we want to be naughty. Hung a snake on the tree.
• December 3rd: Cut a cereal box in to the shape of an ark and played with animals in it.
• December 4th: Genesis 12:1-7. Made Abraham's traveling tent out of a blanket and chairs in the living room. We played "Abraham and Sarah" all evening.
• December 5th: Genesis 21:1-7. Played with baby dolls, name them all "Isaac".
• December 6th: Genesis 22:1-14. Played "Hide and seek the Ram" with a stuffed lamb. It's currently still hidden behind the computer.
• December 7th: Genesis 28:10-22. Played Tag (the person who was "it" is the problem, others are running from their problem -- a stretch, I know).
• December 8th: Genesis 37: 1-36, 50:15-21. Made a coat of many colors. We used paper bags, cut the front open, made a hole for the neck and two side holes for the arms. Then we turned them inside-out (so they were solid) and colored them. Now the kids are wearing their colorful vests.
• December 9th: Genesis 5:1-22 Wrote messages to each other on rocks. Crayons worked pretty well for this.
• December 10th: Joshua 2:1-21 Hung a piece of red yarn in the window.

What activities have you others been doing for advent? If you've been doing the Jesse Tree, what sorts of things make it memorable for your young ones?

For other Works for me Wednesday, visit Rocks in my Dryer

Made it Myself Monday - Graham Cracker Houses

Last Friday, we observed one of our favorite Christmas Traditions. The making of Graham Cracker houses.

Simply put, we build a structure out of mostly graham crackers. Melted candy canes are the "glue". We melt the candy in an electric griddle, then dip a graham cracker in it, then attach it to another for a nice, strong joint.


This technique for making a strong wall is exceptionally good.




We have a history of going all-out. This year we were a bit more conservative, confining our efforts into about 2 1/2 hours of construction and decorating. Here's the results:

I built each of the kids a tiny little house and let them decorate it. They enjoyed it a lot, and ate way too much candy.

Josephine already has a bit of a tummy ache.


Lisel is quite proud of hers.


Bennet built a really nice yard around his.


I built a nativity,


and Chester built a ship crashing into a bridge.



Some of the others built really nice houses.


Clearly, their decorating sense is better than mine!


They also brought the nice kinds of candy. Yum!



You can always tell a more engineering type. They build such great structures that they run out of time and don't end up decorating them. The structures are so cool, though, that they really don't need decorating, do they?

A double water wheel.


Look at the spiral stairs on the inside of her tower!


And a space ship.


Yep, we had a fabulous time. Thanks to Dan and Hannah for taking the ball and running with it this year. All photos, by the way are by Dan, and can be viewed for real at Tiger Photography.