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Earth Day – Taking care of His Creation

April 22, 2009 By Laura 3 Comments

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Last year on Earth Day, our family started the tradition of going out and cleaning up our neighborhood roadsides and beach, to help care for God’s Creation in our own teeny tiny corner of the world.  We actually do this other times of the year as well, but it’s a plan on Earth Day, if the weather permits. Thankfully, today it did.  So instead of our formal school work, we headed out and got to work!

I HONESTLY helped clean up trash too, but I was also very busy taking photos, as usual.  Last year, Michael made all of our kids trash poker sticks, so they won’t ever be using their hands. I would take issue with using their hands, big time.   They work pretty hard, and have a lot of discussion about what a horrible and inconsiderate habit littering is. Teachable moments, are all over Earth Days.

Unclogging the street drains….

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

For ME?… <blush>…..

Earth Day homeschooling ideas
–

Patheticism, at it’s best!…..

(Now WHY is that word underlined in red??  That’s a word, isn’t it??)

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

I’m telling you, People, this one is a real worker. Always.

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

You should see the cars slow down, and the people look at us sometimes, as we parade through the neighborhood….completely confused about what in the world we are doing, or WHY? (The kids love to yell ‘Happy Earth Day!’ to them. lol)  But once in awhile a ‘quick’ one comes along, and not only knows what we are doing, but WHY we are doing it on THIS day.  We hope all people who happen to see us,  catch on, and become inspired.  If not to clean up, at least not to litter, if they do.

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Part of our Earth Day, is not only helping take care of this GIFT of Creation God has given us, but appreciating the beauty of it everywhere!   These are the little stops I call ‘pick-me-ups’, because I seriously need one as I watch our barrel fill up with the disgusting abundance of trash we found on the ground.  So I hope it picks you up too, because there is more photos of trash coming…lol…

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

Earth Day homeschooling ideas
She likes butter.

Earth Day homeschooling ideas

How do you think we did?!

Earth Day homeschooling ideas
Heading home after a good couple hours of work.  Showers are sounding good right about now. YUCK!

Public Service Announcement:

THANK YOU FOR NOT LITTERING GOD’S GLORIOUS CREATION!!

So…..did you happen to do anything for Earth Day today?  Big or small, chats or actions, we’d love for you to share with us what Earth Day was like for you.

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Filed Under: Life In General, The Big Picture Tagged With: Catholic-blogs, Catholic-family, Catholic-kids, Earth Day, Earth-Day-community-clean-up, Earth-Day-homeschooling-ideas, Earth-Day-neighborhood-clean-up, homeschooling

Winner of Our 1st Giveaway Received….

April 20, 2009 By Laura 4 Comments

For those of you who have been itching to know what the winner of Our First Giveaway received, this is the post you’ve been waiting for!

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 For those of you who are new to our blog, and have no clue what we’re talking about here, these links may help:

Announcement for our blog’s First Giveaway!

Winner Announcement

Now that we’re all on the same page, here we go…….

The first thing the winner received, was the box itself, that we put all of our hand-made gifts in! I’m telling you, I just loved this box.  We did not make it, we bought it.  It was just the perfect size, sturdy, and simply lovely. The cover had a front flap that magnetics closed!  I opened and closed it several times, just for the fun of it!  :  )  The cover adorned the phrase:  Live well, Laugh often, Love much.   Wise words we try to live by around here.  It really was a great box.  One could use it to store all kinds of things, like letters, cards, drawings from your children, or any kind of special momentos.

But here’s what WE put in it…..

….an assorted collection of handmade gifts.

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One of my favorite handmade gifts was this sign….

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This was my idea and I designed it, but Michael actually made it.  We bought the sign unfinished, and Michael painted and lettered it. The paint is not solid, but more old looking, which is also one of the things that I love about it.  It’s rustic, and humble, and I think he should make me one now.

Next, I made glass stem bracelets….

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For those who are unfamiliar with these little doo-hickeys, these bracelets go on the stems of wine glasses or pedestal mugs.  They are made with wire rings and beads, and any other functional charms. These glass bracelets have a couple of purposes:  The first is simply to make your glass sets more festive and pretty. The second, is for social gatherings involving several guests, and therefore several glasses around. The assorted bracelets help people differentiate which glass is theirs, on the counter or table-top.  This was my other favorite gift we made. I think they are beautiful, style-ish, and frankly, I feel fancy and clever having them on my wine glasses.

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I made a set of eight different bracelets.  It was really hard to photograph them together, and make all of the sentiments readable, so I labeled them all for you, because I have a thoughtful side.  : )

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Also, while I was making them, I was mesmerized by all of the colorful beads on the table, and lost control with my camera once again.  I loved this shot, so I’m throwing it in here to share.  There are people out there who understand this problem I have, in needing to take such photos, and they appreciate it!

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Next up……..I bought this wooden carved word, which is very important to me, and many of you:  FAMILY.   I painted it pale yellow, and then just rubbed on some floral and ladybug decorations.  That came out like this…

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(Candle not included.)

The soaps we made as Christmas gifts were a big hit, so I made a few more (one of each color) for the Give-Away.  I love glycerine soap, and we scented it a lovely apple aroma.  I didn’t take a new photos of the new soaps alone, though….this photo is from the Christmas batch, just for a closer look…

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I also threw in some bookmarks, which honestly were from the abundance of leftovers we still have from making them as Christmas gifts.

Lastly, a charming little hand-painted pot….

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Michael painted this, and even pulled the painted stripes free-hand around the pot, with a fancy long-haired brush.  I think it came out really cute.

That would conclude the up-close review of the hand-made gifts given to our First Giveaway winner.  We plan to plan (lol,) another Giveaway, of some sort,  soon.  We’d like to wrap up our over-due ‘Michael Project’ we started first.  IF, that is, you all are interested, in another Giveaway??  If so…speak up People!  We’d love to know what kind of interest is out there.

The Regan Camp reports that the favorite items were the sign and the soaps.

What would your favorites have been?

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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, Giveaways, Giveaways, Homemade/Handmade Gift Ideas, The Big Picture Tagged With: giveaway, handmade gifts, handmade-gift-ideas

Photos of Our Easter Day Details – 2009 – Simple Easter Ideas

April 17, 2009 By Laura 6 Comments

Just another short post, with lots of photos, from our blessed Easter Sunday. We hope they are simple Easter ideas, to share with you.

The kids woke up to these surprises on Easter morning.  They were thrilled!

non-candy-easter-gift-ideas-for-kids_2

non-candy-easter-gift-ideas-for-kids

The kids, looking all dapper, just before heading out to a beautiful Easter morning Mass.  {A} altar served, as usual.  The kids were surprised with some gifts from friends at church, too. People can be so kind and thoughtful.

easter-kids-2009

When we got home, we had our simple Easter dinner.

This is my plate, below.  As you can see, I despise carrots, and I love asparagus. : )

I also forgot to put some potato salad on my plate before I took this photo, which  I worked so hard on. lol

simple-easter-dinner

The Easter cookies {A} baked, and us parents helped decorate. It was tooooo FUN!

easter-cookies

Chocolate Coconut Jelly Bean Cake, which was also more fun, to take photos of.

jellybean-easter-cake

jelly-bean-easter-cake-1

jelly-bean-easter-cake-2

I took  some individual shots of the kids too.

easter-kids-2009_1

Easter is one of my very  favorite holidays to take photos on. The spring-ish atmosphere, all of the colors around, and the sheer joy in the air, as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, after a long and soul-searching Lenten season.  But the truth is, I just always have my camera in hand, taking photos, because I love to, and I can. 🙂  I like to think this is a great place to share them, with you all,  as they all are the details of our days, our life, and our joys.  Just so you know…This blog will always have more photos, than wise words spoken. Because I definitely always have more way photos. lol

colored-easter-eggshells

Our Giveaway winner, Regan, had received her home-made gifts.  So would anyone like to see photos of what she received?  I took lots of those along the way for that, too.  Of course. It’s coming up!

Our family hopes your Easter was all kinds of Blessed and joyful, too!

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Filed Under: Baking, Celebrations, Desserts, Faith, Faith/ Catholic, Holidays, Kids, Photography & Lettering, Recipes, The Big Picture, Traditions Tagged With: Catholic, Catholic-blogs, Catholic-families, Easter-ideas, jellybean-Easter-cake, non-candy-Easter-gift-ideas-for-kids, simple-Easter-ideas

Creative Coloring Easter Eggs – Photos

April 13, 2009 By Laura 6 Comments

Just sharing with you today some photos from our creative coloring of Easter eggs tradition. Our family here LOVES to color and decorate eggs. Do you? We could do it every day.  It’s also one of my favorite things to photograph. We do hope you all had a lovely and blessed Easter!  Our entire Triduum was so focused and beautiful.  We especially enjoyed the services and Masses at our church throughout the Holy days, and our quiet Easter celebration together was  pleasant and relaxing.

We will have more Easter photos to share tomorrow or the next day, but have a heavier than usual work week, so we just may not be so chatty until later on in the week, if we are disciplined.  ; )  But we’ve got a long list of blog posts and plans on hand-so stick around! And Enjoy!

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cups-of-dyeing-easter-eggs

white-eggs-ready-to-dye
cups-coloring-easter-eggs

red-colored-easter-egg

coloring-orange-easter-egg

cups-coloring-easter-eggs cups-of-dyeing-easter-eggs

few-colored-easter-eggs-in-carton

coloring-eggs

coloring-purple-easter-egg

love-colored-easter-egg

blue-colored-easter-egg

chick-easter-egg

bright-colored-easter-eggs-in-carton

god-easter-egg

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bowl-beautiful-creative-colored-easter-eggs

Hope you enjoyed this fun photo collection of our family memories!
Thanks so much for visiting.

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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, Faith/ Catholic, Holiday Crafts, Holidays, Kids Arts and Crafts, Kids Arts and Crafts, Photography & Lettering, The Big Picture, Traditions Tagged With: beautiful-colored-Easter-egg-photos, Catholic, Catholic-blogs, Catholic-family, Catholic-kids, creative-Easter-egg-coloring, decorating-easter-eggs, dyeing-Easter-eggs, Easter, Easter-egg-coloring-photos

Stained-Glass (looking) Tissue Paper Easter Cross – Kids Craft

April 7, 2009 By Laura 20 Comments

Today we have an Easter themed craft tutorial for you!  It is beautiful, and so fun to make!  It’s a stained-glass (looking) tissue paper Easter cross, for your home or school windows. Or glass door!

stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_mini

The kids have been working really hard with their school work, and will actually be done with their formal work in just a couple of weeks.  So in preparing our hearts and minds for this Holy week, we decided to do some more lengthy study of the Stations of the Cross, and then get creative today and make a big Stained Glass (looking) Easter cross decoration for our Easter celebration come this Sunday.  It will be fitting in faith and spring spirit, to leave it up as beautiful cheery decor, for several weeks following Easter.

There were really only 5 things we needed:  a very large sheet of window cling, lots of colored tissue paper, a sponge brush, some Modge Podge and a pair of scissors.

colored-tissue-paper-layers modge-podge-gloss-lustre

I didn’t take photos of this part, but, we first drew out a large cross on the back of the window cling material backing-paper, using a board for the straight edges, and a round container for the rounded decor ends of the cross.  Once that was done, the kids all grabbed sheets of the tissue paper, and starting ripping it into pieces 1-2 inches or so. (Might I add, the colors each of them go for are so predictable.  lol)

stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_6 stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_5

Once we had plenty of pieces ready to go, I started spreading some Modge Podge, with a sponge brush,  in small sections (on the front) of the cross at a time, going outside of the lines somewhat on purpose.  Then the kids got to work, putting down pieces, overlapping each other, and rubbing them down.

stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_3

When the entire cross was almost done being covered with pieces of colored tissue, I started on one end, and went over any uplifted corners, or flappy pieces, of tissue, just Modge-Podging them down good with my sponge brush.  I LOVE Modge Podge-that stuff is great for so many projects!

stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_2 stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_4

We made the cross 20″x34″.

Once it was all dry, we cut it out!

cuttingout

It was a perfect fit for our front door, because we planned it that way. : )

stained-glass-tissue-easter-cross-craft_1

With the main events of Holy Week still before us, we anticipate the somber and difficult remembrance of the journey Jesus has yet before Him-and we will follow Him all the way to His last breath.

But the radiating colors of this cross, brought to life by the sunlight, reflect the state of our hearts come Sunday, when we will celebrate our risen Jesus Christ, in all of His dazzling and promising glory.

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We appreciate the 100’s of visits our blog has received in the past couple of days.  As we all take part in this holiest week of the year, and end our personal Lenten journeys, may you feel your hearts full of peace, prayer, and the undeniable presence of the Holy Spirit, and find yourself in a deeper, and more meaningful relationship with Christ.

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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, Faith, Faith/ Catholic, Holiday Crafts, Kids Arts and Crafts, Kids Arts and Crafts, The Big Picture, Tutorial Tagged With: beautiful-Easter-crafts, Catholic-blogs, Catholic-crafts, Catholic-family-activities, easter-crafts, Easter-home-decor-idea, faux-stained-glass-craft, faux-stained-glass-window-craft, kids-easter-crafts, kids-religious-Easter-crafts, paper, tissue, tissue paper crafts, tissue-paper-craft

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