On the Mend

Sickness invaded our home last week just a few hours after I posted about all of our upcoming Advent activities. We didn't get to go to BG Lights Up! We opted to keep our sick boys home, pop some popcorn, and watch a movie. If you haven't seen The First Noel, it is adorable. (I found our copy on the $5 Doorbuster table at the Family Christian Store.) It's short and sweet and just what our two year old needed when he wasn't feeling too well. Plus it ended up being a great kick-off to Advent.
We haven't been able to do all of the crafts that I had planned, but we have the rest of the month to enjoy them.

We ended up making our Christmas cards a few days later than I wanted,
but at least they will be delivered to their recipients way earlier than last year.

Seth thought they were super fun to make!

We have also played with nativity magnets.

(This set was bought at Hobby Lobby and was 50% off.)

I found a nativity puzzle book at one of the local consignment stores,
so we read it and worked a couple of the puzzles.
(Next year, I think the puzzles will be easier to do, but I'm still glad we tried them.)

I think Seth enjoyed decorating his own felt tree most of all. He was so proud of it. He couldn't wait to show Bryan when he came home from work. It's on the back of one of his bedroom doors and he takes the "ornaments" off and puts them back on several times throughout the day.

Now that we are on the mend,
we can't wait to do more activities!

Advent 2011

Today is the first day of Advent! Advent is a time of longing and a time of sweet anticipation. It's a time when we can anticipate our Savior's birthday.
I have been working for a few months now (mostly pinning things) on our Advent activities. I have also slightly modified an Advent study I found online for us to use during our family time. (If you would like a copy, I would be more than happy to email it to you. Just leave a comment with your email address.)We will be using this felt Advent calendar in addition to our touchable nativity this year. As we are doing our family study each night we will add one character to the nativity and on some nights there will be another touchable object (for example: a bell, coin, snowflake). We might also incorporate a few ideas from the new ebook Truth in the Tinsel. It came out after I had already planned all of our activities, but hopefully we can use it for future years, too.Throughout the month we will be using our family message board as an activity board. Each of the following activities are on individual tags and as we complete them we will turn the tag over so that they just look like hanging ornaments by the end of the 25 days. (Even though I know which activity corresponds to our advent study each day, the tags are not numbered so that they can be re-usable and added to each year.) Since most of the activities were found on Pinterest, I added links in case you wanted to do some of the activities too. I'm sure we will be adding other things throughout the month, but here is our guide so far:
1- BG Lights Up!
2- Make Handmade Christmas Cards
3- Footprint/handprint angels
4- Play with Nativity Magnets
5- Decorate large felt Christmas tree
6- Use Longest to Shortest Paper Strips to make Christmas Tree
7- Nativity Puzzle Book
8- Gingerbread Nativity
9- Live Nativity/Candy Cane craft
10- Pine Cone Christmas Trees decorated with pom poms
11- Baby Jesus Craft (using two popsicle sticks)
12- Play with Star Stickers
13- Handprint Nativity Animals
14- Wise Men Handprint Craft
15- Practice Wrapping Presents/Read The King's List & Pick out Christmas Donations
16- Play with Nativity Finger Puppets
17- Play with a string of lights
18- Light of the World (lightbulb thumbprint craft)
19- Nativity Stamps
20- Sugar Cone Christmas Trees/Jingle Bell bracelets/Play with bells
21- Sort Bows by Color and Size
22- Nativity Stickers
23- Make Baby Jesus- using envelope
24- Baby Jesus Paper Bag craft
25- Bake Happy Birthday Jesus Cake and decorate the house with streamers

Just as a couple, Bryan and I are going to be reading through the Behold the Lamb of God Advent study. It just came out this year and I am really looking forward to it each evening.

So tonight we'll snuggle up as a family of four and we will begin this month-long journey of retelling the greatest story ever told. We will savor the story and we will long for our Savior.

Thanksgiving 2011

For the last few days we have enjoyed spending time with the ones we love, eating wonderful food, and taking time to reflect on all that we are thankful for. I just love Thanksgiving so much! We took a break from our weekly letter themed Tot School, but we focused a lot on Thanksgiving.

Here's a look at some of our crafts...

We made a turkey using half of a small paper plate and a mini clothespin.

We practiced counting using numbered clothespins and the turkey place mat I made last year.

We made a turkey using a toilet paper roll and another small paper plate.

We did some Thanksgiving themed coloring.

We matched up the letters of Seth's name on turkey feathers to their spot on a turkey.
(Thanks, Beth.)

We played with turkey stickers.

We also used markers to color a turkey before we glued the pieces together.

Of course, we made some messes, too.

We even wore festive hats and...
clothing.

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!

Since we are coming into the Christmas season and we have lots of fun things planned for Advent, we aren't going to resume our letter themed Tot School until the new year. We hope to share lots of fun Christmas related crafts and activities in the coming weeks though so stay tuned.

Tillery Tot School- Letter R

Last week we learned about the letter "R." We focused mostly on rainbows, robots, rockets, and roosters, but we had a few other "R" crafts in there, too. Here's a look at our Tot School Board:

We made rainbow r's for our Tot School Board.

We made a rabbit and

a rooster out of the letter "R."
We also loved reading
Rooster Can't Cock-a-Doodle-Doo
by Karen Rostoker-Gruber.

We made a rainbow out of a paper plate and cotton batting.

We made rainbow pictures using our new Crayola Paint Pens.
(These were 30% off at Hobby Lobby last week.)

We made a rocket ship using Seth's footprint and some shapes.

(You can see the finished rocket on the Tot School board above.)

We also loved reading A Rainbow All Around Me by Sandra Pickney. In the book there is a picture of pieces of ribbon wrapped around a dowel rod. I thought it would be fun to make Seth a rainbow wand, but I just used some rainbow ribbon instead of trying to buy a lot of colors. He loved waving it around the yard.

This week we are going to take a break from learning about a specific letter
and we are going to focus on Thanksgiving.

Skeleton Key Art

When we were recently going through my grandparent's estate, I found a few skeleton keys lying around in my Pepaw's workshop. By the end of the day, I had collected about 15 keys throughout the house and workshop . I knew exactly what I was going to do with them once I got home. I picked up a small frame at Hobby Lobby that was 50% off, picked out my favorite skeleton keys, and one of my Memaw's handkerchiefs and made a new piece of art for our living room. I used the handkerchief as the background in the frame and then hot glued the keys on to it. I love how it turned out and I think it's a perfectly sentimental addition to our living room.

A New Fall Wreath

I started making a fallish inspired wreath for my door several weeks ago during a late night crafting session with a friend. I have actually made a few wreaths in the last couple of years, but none that are wrapped in yarn. I was excited to try something new. So when the idea of using plumbing insulating foam as a wreath form started floating all around Pinterest, I thought it would be the perfect use for my frugal new wreath. I picked up my foam from Lowes, duct taped it together just like the instructions said to do, but then noticed it was in the shape of a tear drop instead of a perfectly round circle. I re-taped it several times, but it still had a slight bump where the two ends of the plumbing tube connected. I should have stopped there and just waited to buy a wreath form, but being the impatient person that I am when it comes to craft projects (and several other things) I went ahead and started wrapping my form with the golden yellow yarn that I chose. Thinking it might straighten out the lump once the yarn was on it was an idiotic thought, but I kept going with it. Lots of fun conversation and two and a half hours later of wrapping, the wreath still looked like a teardrop. So I didn't have anything to show for our late night craft session except for a misshapen yarn wrapped wreath.
The next day, determined to start over, I went to buy a straw wreath form like the original instructions had used. Everywhere I went, the store was sold out of them. So seeing this as another lesson in patience, I decided to wait. Another week passed and I finally found a new wreath form. Time slipped by and I would casually wrap the wreath with yarn if I had any extra time during the day. I took it with me on our most recent trip to Jackson and finally finished the wrapping, but I still needed to make my felt flowers and attach them.
Two days ago I realized that Thanksgiving is NEXT week! My first thought was not about gratitude, great food, traveling, or any of the typical things a person might think about. It was about my wreath. I HAD TO FINISH IT BECAUSE I ONLY HAD ONE WEEK TO ENJOY IT ON MY FRONT DOOR! So during nap time (thankfully both boys were asleep at the same time), I finished my wreath and placed it on the door. I absolutely love the yellow pop it gives our front door and maybe, just maybe next fall I can enjoy it a little longer.

Sending Off Our Shoeboxes

This week is Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child. We packed our boxes when we went to a Thanksgiving party earlier this month, but we wanted to make sure to add a special message to the children that will be receiving these. So a couple nights ago we made cards to go in each of our four boxes. We placed the notes inside and attached our shipping labels. We can't wait to find out what part of the world these boxes are delivered to and we pray that these boxes of trinkets, candy, and a few necessities can brighten a few lives this Christmas season. Yesterday we dropped our boxes off at one of the local churches and just like we have done every year, we waved goodbye and told them that we would see them again next year.