Merry Christmas with Christmas Carols!

The children all wanted to sing Chrismtas carols as their present to our family and friends this year.

Gabriella and Isabella:


Gabriella:


Isabella:


Isabella:


Connor (with a song he spontaneously made up for the occasion):


Kayla & Connor (Connor didn't think he culd remember the words without Kayla's help.):


Cameron (He insisted on joining in even though he doesn't really know any songs by heart yet.):


Cameron:



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Make Your own Faux Fireplace

When our family moved into this new house of ours, we were pleased to have more space, but one thing we didn't have anymore was a fireplace. With Christmas coming, the children were very concerned about their not being a fireplace for hanging the stockings onto or for Santa to magically appear through.

He rolled the sides of the cardboard to give it edging and to help it stand upright.

He cut the A4 paper in half and glued it on as "bricks" for the fireplace. He used the yellow and orange tissue paper to create the flames of the "fire."

He even created some logs for the fire by rolling up some shorter pieces of cardboard.

He rolled and then flattened the roll of some cardboard to make the mantle above the fireplace.

He says it would have been even better if he had painted it and added a vine-styled garland across the top of it, but I think it turned out pretty great as it is!

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Make your Own Popsicle Stick Butterfly Ornament

These butterflies can be made in a wide range of styles depending on the talent of the person painting them. The above photo was of a butterfly painted by a seven year old child.

This is really easy to do and all you need is some acrylic paint, popsicle sticks, gitter and a small piece of yarn.

First, you lay four popsicle sticks side by side. You can put a tiny bit of glue between the sticks (on their sides) to help them stay together.

Then you glue four more popsicle sticks, side by side, across the previous four at an angel (forming the two wings of the butterfly).

Next you glue one popsicle stick across both layers down the middle for the body of the butterfly.

When the glue dries, you paint the butterfly, adding colors and glitter to create the look you want. Allow it to dry.

Once your butterfly is dry, add two posts of glue on the backside at the tops of the wings. Affix one end of the yarn to each side and keep in place until the yarn feels firmly glued in place.

Wait a while to give it time to set even further. And then you are finished!

These butterflies make pretty Christmas tree ornaments and also make pretty Spring decorations for hanging around the house. They can also be affixed to gifts as an added personal touch to gifts.




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Make Your Own Christmas Tree Ornaments

Some of our most cherished ornaments that we hang on our Christmas tree each year are the ones that the children made themselves. It makes our tree unique and adds a bit of sentimentality to our decorating of it each year. I thought I'd share a couple of the methods we used for the children to make their own Christmas tree ornaments so that you could do the same.








Make your own ornaments out of homemade clay using cookie cutters and acrylic paints. You can make homemade clay using flour, salt and water.

-Roll it out until it is about ½ inch thick. Get out cookie cutters, preferably Christmas-themed, and your child can cut make as many as they can fit onto the surface.

-Using a sharp pencil, poke a small hole through the top of each one.

-Once these are done baking until they are hardened, paint them all white on both sides using white acrylic paint.

-When the paint dries, your child can use different colors of acrylic paints to make each ornament colorful and unique.

-When the ornaments are dried, put a tiny ribbon or string through the holes in the top of each one and tie it into a loop.

Now the ornaments are ready to either be hung on the tree or to be wrapped as presents.

Note, when not hanging on the Christmas tree, these ornaments need to be stored in an airtight and dry environment or the clay can become very crumbly.

Salt Clay

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
1 cup salt
1 to 1 ½ cups cold water
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Directions
-Stir ingredients together. Knead it together well until it forms a soft ball.
-Cut out the cookie shapes.
-Bake in the oven at 300F for an hour or until hard.





You can also make tiny bell ornaments out of egg cartons, pipe cleaners, paint and bells.

-Cut the bumps out of the egg cartons.

-Poke a hole through the top of each one.

-Using pipe cleaners, create loops through the “bells” to hang them from your Christmas tree, sliding jingle bells through the loops on the inside of the egg carton “bells.”

-Let your child paint and decorate them.

Now they are ready to hang on your Christmas tree!

This post is part of Get Your Craft On Tuesday at Today's Creative Blog.

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Happy Thanksgiving 2011!

While we are a Christian family, we celebrate Thanksgiving as a time to say what we are thankful for in our lives and to share it with the people around us. We always ask our children to tell us one or two things that they are thankful for. This time, most of our children decided to state their thanks as a prayer. Some of them weren't really too aware of the concept (Cameron), and some of them were a little superficial-sounding (Connor), but they were honest (as children tend to be).

Gabriella (age 9):


Isabella (age 6):


Connor (age 5):


Cameron (age 2, but turning 3 in 4 days):


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Make Your Own Costume For Halloween - Bat Wings

A couple of years ago, Halloween was fast approaching and money was tight. At the time, one of my daughters did not yet have a costume for Halloween. She did, however, have a black leotard and black tights. She did not want to be a black cat. What was I to do?

I had a small amount of black scrap fabric. I spent a couple of £s on some of the seam webbing. Here is what I came up with (modeled by my 6 year old daughter Isabella while wearing a witch costume dress today).



This is the shape you want to cut out, but in this picture, the top is already folded over, so remember to keep two longer pieces (with an opening for the middle) from almost mid-way to the ends of the wings. Those are the bits you will be folding over for your child's arms to slide through.



Here is a close up of the seam webbing I used (you place it where you want to "glue" the two bits of fabric together, and then iron it).



I did it all by sight, but I have tried to create a sample of the pattern shape I created when I made it. This is close, but actually needs to be deeper where the actual wings are. And I made the points at the bottom larger and less frequent than in my "pattern."


This post is created in collaboration with Creative Costumes.

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Is Your Child Evil?

Do you ever wonder, when your child does something really naughty and doesn't appear to care about the consequences, if your child just has a natural "evil" streak? (Evil is probably too strong of a word.) Maybe you wonder if your child will always be a little bit rebellious.

When I ask this question of you, I am thinking about my own son, the youngest of seven. This little tornado of mine is strong-willed, destructive and rough. He regularly dumped all of his toys out of the two big buckets I kept them in within his room. He didn't dump them out because he was looking for a specific toy; he dumped them out just for the sake of it. He would also take the sheets off of his and his brother's beds and empty all of the clothes out of their dressers into a jumbled pile in the middle of the bedroom floor.

He did this several times a day until I removed all of the toys from his room. That's when he started rearranging his furniture. I would find their dressers situated in the corner of the room as if he'd been trying to build a fort out of them there. Later, I would find his dresser and his bed in the middle of the room where I would catch him in the act of jumping from one to the other.

He has broken several expensive items in the house. He loves electronic gadgets, and, no matter how high up out of his reach we place them, he finds a way to climb up to them. Going to the bathroom and having to take my eyes off of him for that minute is risky business in my house.

Yet despite all of this, he is really very sweet. He loves to cuddle up with me on the couch while watching "Dora the Explorer," "Peppa Pig" or "Tomas the Tank Engine." He gives me kisses often. He tells me he loves me. He beams with pride when I praise the scribbles he lovingly draws for me. When he is in his stroller while we ride on the bus, he leans himself as far over as he can to lay his head on my knee and hug my legs.

His eighteen year old sister jokes about his tendency to take things apart and then smile about it. She says he is amazingly clever. She says he is an evil genius who is on his way to becoming an evil overlord. She's right about him being very clever.

I think his intelligence is part of the problem. He is so clever that he bores easily. His curiousity about things gets him into trouble. And he challenges me regularly because, for him, it's fun and it gets my attention.

There is no such thing as an evil child. Some children require more effort than others, but all children are good at heart and just need a combination of rules to live by and the love of their families. Things can happen in a child's life that lead them away from their better nature, but they all start off pure.

I can still remember a day when I was still in preschool. I was (and still am) a chatterbox. My biggest problem in preschool was that I would talk too much and talk when we were supposed to be quiet. I saw everyone as my friend and wanted to chat away with whomever was nearby. One day, I got in trouble for talking when we were supposed to be listening. I was made to stand in the corner and I felt absolutely miserable and ashamed! I can remember the heartbreak of it even to this day. I had not intentionally done anything bad; I had just forgotten that I was supposed to be quiet. And I adored my teachers and was so upset that I had behaved badly enough to get in trouble with them. I cried my eyes out while I stood in that corner.

And I think that is kind of what happens with my son too. He doesn't do any of the bad things he does with any kind of bad intentions. He just forgets that he is not supposed to be doing certain things. He really does want my approval.

And he has it. I love my son, and I believe he is going to do great and awe-inspiring things with his life.

And the answer to the title question is: No, you're child is not evil. And neither is mine.



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