For our advent calendar I am doing a combo. I am combing a Christmas book plus an activity or craft. Now this is a list of all our books and crafts/ activities. I am not doing them in this order. I'll do them according to what we can fit in that day. If there isn't a link to the idea then I think it's pretty self explanatory. You are welcome to use the same idea, just adjust it to the books you have. Like using a snowman book for making a snowman, etc. Clear as mud? :)
2009 Advent Book + Activity Calendar
1. Snowmen at night: Build a real snowman or make a paper snowman out of cottonballs
2. What Star is this? Cut out Paper Snowflakes
3. Dora’s Christmas Parade: Make homemade musical instruments and have a parade
4. Franklin’s Christmas Gift: Prepare Secret Santa gifts and drop off
5. Winter Wishes: Write letters to Santa
6. Sam’s Snowy Day: Build a real snowman (if didn’t do it) or make snowman cupcakes
7. I’ve seen Santa: Handprint Santa on cards or gift tags
8. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer: Reindeer cookies or decorate reindeer craft
9. Merry Christmas Little Critter: Wrap presents
10. Nativity: Make handprint angels
11. This is the Stable: Sparkly pinecones
12. The First Night: Gingerbread playdough
13. The Biggest Snowball Ever: Borax snow flakes
14. A Shepard’s Gift: Mittens for Grammy
15. Polar Express: Make Jingle Bell Necklaces
16. Joy to the World: Jesus Cutting and Coloring Page
17. Come and See: Nativity Page
18. Santasaurus: Gumdrop Characters
19. Christmas Trolls: Decorate our tree
20. The littlest Christmas Elf: watch the movie the Happy Elf
21. Russell’s Christmas Magic: Pin the Nose on the Snowman Game
22. The Night Before Christmas: Snowman/ Reindeer cookies
23. The Christmas Story: Rip and glue Paper Plate Wreath (rip green paper and glue onto a paper plate)
24. The Story of Christmas: Felt Gingerbread Boy
Since it's my birthday thought I'd share some things about myself....
1. I hate socks in bed. (Regan tries to sneak in with them.) I just can't stand socks in bed. Can't explain it, just HATE it.
2. I love avocados. I'd eat one every day if I could.
3. I am not a morning person. I wish I was. But I'm NOT.
4. I always shower in the dark in the morning (see #3)
5. I have been on a crafting kick lately. Made 3 things for my home and other crafts too.
6. I have a hard fast rule I've always lived by. No Christmas until after my birthday. December 1st starts Christmas. But this year I broke down and started listening to Christmas music the beginning of this week. And I even decorated a bit already.
7. I am taking cheer leading pictures for the University Cheer leading team tonight. Totally new experience for me. We'll see how it goes!
8. I'd love to book some more weddings to shoot with my brother Sean. I always have so much fun with him when we do them.
9. I love games. One of my very favorites is Bunko.
10. I have an insanely messy van. Like I'm always trying to open and close it fast so no one sees how messy it is. It's embarrassing!
11. I love cooking for people.
12. I even love cooking for big groups. I've always wanted to try my hand at catering for some big event.
13. I dream about my one day kitchen. White bead board cupboards. Full standing freezer next to a full standing fridge. (it is a dream!)
14. I have three sister in laws that live far away. And I wish all of them lived closer.
15. I don't see my family as much as I thought I would when we moved to Southern Alberta.
16. I "follow" a lot of blogs. Seriously. Lots. But you can just check one screen to see all the updates and it cuts out a lot of time.
17. I love the tv show Lie to Me and the Mentalist.
18. My new favorite thing is to rent movies on iTunes and watch them on my computer. Then I never get late fees.
19. Speaking of late fees I am horrible at getting back books to the library on time.
20. I really have a hard time buying pants. Either they come down way to low (and don't cover my baby leftovers) or they are way to short and are floods. It's a big problem.
21. A couple posts back I posted a list of questions where I said my favorite color was orange. It's not. I missed that question when I copied and pasted it. My real favorite color is green. Martha Stewart green.
22. I am going to sew Lucy a dress for Christmas. I already have the fabric and the pattern.
23. I am making mostly homemade presents this year. And I am SUPER excited about the one I found to make for my SIL....... :)
24. I am already stressed thinking about what to buy Reg for Christmas. He is absolutely the hardest person to buy stuff for. He wants nothing.
25. One of my favorite heroes is Nelson Mandella. I think he is an amazing man. I loved his autobiography.
26. I want a Cricut.
27. Our printer is on the fritz and it kinda drives me batty.
28. I love having blog followers. I know lots of people look at my blog (i have a counter thing that shows a map and the numbers and where the look, etc) and I think it'd be ever cooler to have lots of followers on there. But at the same time that'd be a little nerve wracking.... what if I write lame stuff. (like #19)
29. We watched Transformers 2 last night. It was like an ad for Megan Fox and a car commercial. And seriously if you were running in the dessert from a huge Decepticon WHY would you be holding has while you ran? That's gonna speed you up for sure....
30. I often worry that I am not worthy of the amazing life I have. Someone day someone is gonna realize I snuck in here and kick me out.
31. I love love love love love Micheal Buble's music. A lot.
32. Sometimes when people ask how old I am, my first response is still to say I am twenty five and...... I'm NOT
I made this last week for myself and thought I would share it.
I love having a menu plan. I am better prepared when it is 500pm and Eli is acting like he is going to die if he doesn't eat soon. I added in snacks too since I need to think ahead about planning healthy snacks.
Same deal as last download.
You can download it from flickr or you can download it by going to 4shared and downloading it by clicking on the image below. .
What a sweet boy he is.
I had parent teacher interview tonight and his teacher told me he is such a joy to have in the classroom. I am around the classroom enough to see him flourishing. He is loving grade one. And I am grateful. He is participating and learning. I am just so proud. He is excelling at math and reading above his grade level. He is a very obedient, conscientious student. He is a kind, gentle, goofy boy. I love him tons. And I am so proud of him.
Grief is like a wave.
An ever changing wave.
In the beginning it is the constant push and pull of loss you feel.
Constant reminders around you of what could have been,
remember when she said this...
remember when we went there...
A tall, strong, constant wave that is always around.
You get used to the consistency of the ache
the hole that is left
but still
at the same time you can't believe that it happened.
That it's your loss.
Over time the wave changes.
It's there, but you don't notice the noise of it everyday.
When you stop and think about it you always know.
If you are still and listen you can still hear the constant wave.
A wave can catch you off guard.
You see someone who walks like them, Who has hair the same color
Or something in their mannerisms remind you
sometimes you can't even really put your finger on it.
A song or smell instantly taking you somewhere you weren't expecting to go right then
But there you are, caught up in the wave
It can be a soft wave, a calm remembrance of moments you shared.
But sometimes it's a strong over powering wave.
One that knocks you over.
You are blindsided by the strength of it.
It surprises you.
Not that it's there, cause it's always there.
But that it was so strong.
And you are left with raw ache that seems so fresh
so new, so tender.
Last night I was remembering my little sister Kelly.
And it caught me off guard.
I was ill prepared for the emotions that came.
From a simple statement someone else made about the sister relationship they see between their daughters.
Smack it hit me.
Right where it hurts.
Hey there! This is Kristi and I normally blog over at Visible Voice. But today I am lucky to be able to share some love here on Rhonda's blog! So fun!
So when Rhonda asked me if I'd like to do a guest post I was racking my brain as to what I should do. I was really wanting to have something....you know....to trick you all into thinking I'm super cool. (That's just the kinda stuff one should admit once in awhile. It's good for the soul.) And I've been wanting to take on this awesome art technique that I've seen in blog land. So I was all like "Oh yeah that's the one! That's gonna make for good coolness factor!"
So I did it and was impressed with myself for attempting it and..........it was a total artistic FLOP.
But I decided that in blog land we often only show our best face and our most perfect creations and I thought for a change I'd share my mistake! Because life isn't perfect and sometimes artistic ventures may not work out the way you like. But I like to embrace these sort of things.
And the technique is called Photo Transfer. If you haven't heard of it before you essentially can transfer photos, or text or anything that you can print to paper onto something else...like canvas. If you HAVE heard of it before....please email me. Remember...this project was a flop. Hurry....run!
Then I did a search and I found this fab ladies blog and found out how to do the technique this way and this is what I based this project off of.
So here's what I used to do this:
A painting that my cute kid did.
Some text that I printed out on my ink jet printer.
Some Gel Medium. (I found this at Michael's on my last trip out to the real world. Did I mention that I live in isolation? Yeah that's a whole other post kids...that's a whole other post.)
And a cute kid. Hi cute kid!
One of these isn't necessary for you to do this project...however it may also not be a choice you get to make.
Oh and a supply of stickers for the cute kid helps as well. Have 'atter buddy!
Now that the kid is taken care of the next step is to take some of the Gel Medium and just spread it all over your canvas.
I started with a thin coat but I think you need to not be super generous but not be super cheap either. Clear as mud right? Thought so.
Next lay your print out - ink side down - on top of your Gel Medium covered canvas.
Just go ahead and pretend there is a photo of me doing this right here.
Then you need to smooth out the bubbles. Now it's probably best to use a brayer rollie pollie thingy but I forgot to buy one of those and since it's a hop skip and a -hour and a half plane- ride to the stores I opted for my pampered chef stone scraper.
It really wasn't that successful. This is when I started to get nervous. This is when the fact that this just may not work out started to creep in.
Once you've smoothed out the paper, let it dry for about an hour.
Then you have to do something super weird.
You have to wet it. You should use a spray bottle or something along those lines. But I like to do things wrong so I used a wet dish cloth.
Then you have to rub away the paper and as you rub it off the ink will stay on your Canvas.
And what will be left is the ink, transparent on top of what you've created underneath.
Okay did you see one of the major flops in this design? Look again....
"i love you" is backwards. Worst part is...I thought of this...went to print it out so that it would work out properly...re-thought it...and thought no no I did it right.
Yeah...dumb blonde moment.
Next thing that went wrong is that some of the text rubbed off and the color didn't pop out much because I couldn't rub the paper off properly. And then some of the Gel Medium needs to be cut off the edges.
Moral of the story....it just wasn't what I expected.
But with this "flop" I did some research and found a "fix" and a method that would work if you so wish to try this. I think it will be way better!!
Sometimes it's fun to just think outside of the box and try something a little bit different. Be sure to watch on my blog....because someday.....someday I may get it right. Maybe........but I did another one last night and it turned out worse. But that was before I found the above youtube video! We shall see my next try someday!
Thanks so much Rhonda for having me. It was super fun to share my mistake with you all!
by my friend Connie.
1. Where is your mobile phone? purse
2. Your hair? up
3. Your mother? just left
4. Your father? also just left
5. Your fave food? avocados
6. Your dream last night? my sleep was way to interrupted for that!
7. Your fave drink? milk
8. Your dream/goal? happiness
9. What room are you in? living room
10. Your hobby? scrapbooking, baking, photography, sewing, crafts....
11. Your fear? dissapointing loved ones
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? settled
13. Where you were last night? home
14. Something that you aren't? complacent
15. Muffins? cranberry-zucchinni
16. Wish List Item? cricut
17. Where did you grow up? HillSpring
18. Last thing you did? kids bedtime
19. What are you wearing? jeans
20. Your TV? off
21. Your Pets? NO thank you
22. Friends? miss some of tem
23. Your Life? good
24. Your Mood? content
25. Missing Someone? always
26. Vehicle? mini van
27. Something your not wearing? socks
28. Your fave store? consignment
29. Your fave colour? orange
30. Last time you laughed? today
31. Last time you cried? couple days ago
32. Your best friend? Reg-o-rama
33. One place that you go to over and over? the kitchen
34. One person who emails regularly? Heather
35. Fave place to eat? depends on the day
I am a child-wrangling-scrapbooking-crafting-photographer-baker who's married to her handsome best friend husband. Follow along on the crazy ride we call life.
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