Foodie Wedding Favor Idea

Spice Blend Wedding Favor

I love weddings - planning, sewing, decorating, attending, singing, playing piano, etc. - so I was really excited to attend the 1920's themed wedding of some friends. They had fabulously simple and elegant decorations, which makes me wish I would have remembered to bring my camera. The dresses worked perfectly with the theme as well as complementing every body type (yes, the seamstress in me comes out hardcore when I attend weddings). But the things that I loved most were the little expressions of who the bride and groom are. The groom is a chef so the favors were little packets of a spice blend that the he'd put together. They are simple, unique, and inexpensive. All you need to create these are:

• jewelry sized ziptop baggies
• printable labels and a computer to design them on
• spice blend of your choosing/creation

They had these in little baskets all around the reception for guests to take home. Since we're total foodies, my hubby and I loved it!

Christmas Banquet 2013

Jared and I had the privilege of planning our church's yearly Christmas Banquet. I thoroughly enjoy planning, decorating, and cooking for banquets and things so I was really looking forward to doing it. We planned our previous church's Valentine's banquet almost every year that we were there and found that we worked well as a team. This is the first year that I have also had the opportunity to prepare the food besides planning and decorating. I had some awesome help in every aspect so I don't suggest trying to pull something like this off unless you can recruit some help at every stage.

DIY Medieval Torches, Chandeliers, and Banners

Our church hosted a "Kingdom Chronicles" VBS this year so I needed to come up with some simple and inexpensive medieval decorations. Here's what I made...

Valentine Caroling, maybe a new family tradition?

At Christmas, Mr. R was so excited about caroling to our neighbors, but alas, we all got sick and stayed sick through New Years. He was quite disappointed over missing out on caroling. Fast forward to Valentine's Day... I decided that we were going to make up Red Velvet Brownies, cut them into large hearts and deliver them to our neighbors along with homemade Valentines. When I told the kids about the idea, Mr. R got a big smile and said, "We're going Valentine caroling." I told him that I wasn't really thinking about singing to the neighbors (since that is what caroling is all about, singing). He declared that they could sing as they delivered their valentines. I asked what song and they unanimously decided on "Jesus Loves Me". So that's what we did.

First, I took some white cardstock and I printed our Valentine message on it. Here is a link to the PDF that I made. Then, I cut the cardstock in half and had the kids glue heart shaped foil paper doilies to the front. They wrote their names on the back.

Finally, we cut our brownies into large hearts (they look small because I forgot to pick up little paper plates so we had to use large paper plates), and placed them on plates covered with plastic wrap.

The kids LOVED visiting each of our neighbors, delivering a Valentine, treat, and song to them. I think our neighbors enjoyed it as well. 

Permanent Marker Mugs

Right before turning the oven on

Since adding homeschooling Mr. R. and Miss E. to my list of jobs, I have struggled with including more of the extracurricular activities (art, music, etc.) into their school week. There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day for me to get everything done, so when I do fit some such activity into the day I want it to be a little big and definitely memorable. This was one week where I really wanted to do a fun art (well, more craft than art) project with the kids.

Fingerprint Fall Trees

This Fall I embarked on a new adventure...homeschooling Mr. R. (K5) and Miss E. (K4). This new adventure brings many joys and struggles. It is a continual learning process for me - learning how to teach each child (as they are VERY different in learning styles as well as personalities), learning how to balance family, school, work, church, and hobbies, and learning how to lean and depend more fully on God for wisdom and strength. Anyway, today after finishing up all our books for the day I decided to do something fun (and messy because to children the level of fun is directly related to the amount of potential for mess). So I got out the brown permanent marker, some cardstock, and the red, green, and yellow finger paints.

Draw a wispy tree on the cardstock with your brown marker

Then pour a puddle each of the red, yellow, and green finger paint into styrofoam bowls or onto paper plates.
Show the kids how they can get different colors, a marbled affect, etc. by combining the paints.

Let them create a fall scene of falling leaves using the paint and their fingertips :o)

Miss A (3), Mr. R (5), Miss E (4), and my pictures (in order from top left to bottom right)

There are lots of things that you can do with these pictures.

1. You can laminate them and use them for place mats during the fall season.
2. You can frame them.
3. You can make a smaller one on folded cardstock and write a note to someone on the inside. 

Fingerprint Christmas Cards

We had a wonderful Christmas spent with family and friends. I thought that I'd share a quick project that the kids and I did together this year. I'd have posted earlier but time got away from me.

Mr. R., Miss E., Miss A., and I made up some fingerprint Christmas cards as one of our 12 days of Christmas activities.

First, I printed up 2 cards with this text onto one piece of cardstock. 

Then I cut it in half using a paper cutter and folded it.

Our Christmas Tree Fingerprint Cards

Step 1: draw a zigzag line for the tree with green permanent marker, colored pencil, etc.
Step 2: draw the outline of the tree's trunk in brown
Step 3: fill in the trunk with zigzags
Step 4: using yellow paint, place a fingerprint at the top of the tree for the star (I later painted the outline of a star in black over this but forgot to take a picture)
Step 5: using all different colors, place fingerprints all over the tree for ornaments

Mr. R and Miss A painting their tree cards

Miss E painting hers.

We also painted the front of a Christmas card to look like Christmas lights. Yes, this was another idea that I found using Pinterest.com. The original creator's instructions can be found here. I liked the the original "landscape" format better than my "portrait" format but forgot to plan accordingly when I printed the text for the inside of the card. 

Step 1: using all different colors of finger paint, place fingerprints all over the front of the card.
Step 2: draw lines connecting each finger print, so they look like a strand of Christmas lights.