A Few Elf-capades

We have two elves that visit us at Christmas time....Hillary and Vera.  I wanted to share a few of the silly things they did while here this past Christmas.  This is by no means everything they did, but a few of the sillier ones....

They exchanged the stockings for underwear, oh my!

They turned our milk green...ewwww!

 They drew on my favorite pictures.....luckily, they used dry erase markers on glass, whew!

They put crepe paper across the doorway to trap the girls in their rooms...so funny!

They had a fight with silly string in the living room!  What a mess!! 

 

Sometimes, they forgo the mess and leave a gift.  The girls have been wanting a canopy for their beds and were super excited to wake up to one!!

 

Leah with Vera and Ella with Hillary :)

Fun Stuff   :)

A Little More School......

Nothing really extraordinary to post, but I just wanted to share a few pictures from school. 

The first is a picture of Leah with her ant hill.  We had quite a mix up with the ants and they came to us 3 weeks late and half dead.  Needless to say, they did not measure up to the reason we do an ant hill with I....insect...."I am a wise child.  I work hard."  Quite the opposite for these pitiful ants.  No fear, we have more on the way!  Hopefully, they will be busy little workers :) 

This second picture is one of the science experiments we were doing.  This is really one of Ella's most favorite things to do, but you would never know it by the look on her face in this picture.  HaHa!

This picture is one of Leah painting a rock to look like a ladybug.  I really need to let her do more arts and crafts projects because she loves them so much.

Finally, this is a picture of Ella doing her English on the dry erase board.  It is amazing how much these girls like writing on this board.  So, every now and then I let them do their lessons on the board (even though there is nothing to put in their notebooks).  Both of them really, really love to do work on the board.  I told Charles I may get a little bit bigger of one in the future.

I cannot tell you what a blessing it is to homeschool these precious angels.  I am so grateful that the Lord has blessed us with the ability to be able to do this.  I just pray that I will be able to give them everything they need!

A Big Flower

One thing I love about my friend, Christy, is she doesn't mind letting me experiment.  She asked me to make a cake for one of her daughters and do whatever I wanted.  I had seen a version of this online and wanted to try it for myself.  The online version was better, of course, but I had fun trying!  The cake is iced to a smooth finish and then a big fondant/gumpaste flower is attached to the side to cover the entire height of the cake.  It looked better when I first did it, but after a bit it started to droop....guess I should have used more gumpaste??  Either way, they liked it and that's really all that matters :)

Thanksgiving 2012

This past Thanksgiving was the first one EVER that me and my family, my brother and his family, and my step-sister and her family were all at my Mom and Sammy's at the same time!  We had a great time doing all of the usual eating and visiting.  I took the opportunity to get a few very rare pictures of us all together!!

Me, Dusty, and Charity

Back Row:  Kaleb, Ethan, Harrison (Charity's) and Ella
Front Row:  London, Robbie (Dusty's) and Leah

London, Mom, Dusty, and Robbie

Leah, Ella, and Harrison at the swing set

Charles holding Leah, Harrison, Ethan, Ella, and Sammy watching Paws swim across the creek

Paws (Mom and Sammy's crazy dog) in the middle of the creek

Homemade Christmas Ornaments

I love making homemade gifts.  To me, they are just so much more special than going to the store and buying something.  It takes thought and time to make something and that makes it special.  This past Christmas I knew I wanted to make ornaments but I didn't know which ones.  Then I saw these glitter ornaments and decided they were the ones...I LOVE glitter :)  I would really have loved to make them all a different color, but I was a little surprised at how quickly the cost of glitter adds up!  So, I had to settle for one. 

They are pretty easy to make once I figured out that I needed to use a good amount of glitter.  First, buy clear ornaments from the craft store.  Next, put in a little bit of liquid floor cleaner and swirl it all around.  Empty the excess.  Then, put in a good bit of glitter and swirl it all around.  Again, empty the excess.  Allow to dry overnight.  I used my Cricut to cut out names in different fonts.  Finally, I added a small piece of ribbon to the hook to give it some added detail. 

Here are a few examples.  I made about 14, so I'll just share a few :)

My Little Indians

Just wanted to share a picture of the girls in their Indian vests.  We made them out of brown paper sacks (which are actually pretty hard to come by these days with all of the plastic bags and reuseable shopping bags).  The girls each decorated their own and enjoyed doing so.  Leah was all about color and lots of it.  Ella is quite the drawer and drew and labeled things like a bow, an arrow, a deer, an Indian, and more on the sides and back.  I know this is an old, non-original project, but it brought back memories from my own elementary school days and was fun for us all.

Pioneer Days

First of all, I cannot believe I am soooo behind with blogging.  If I ever get caught up, I hope I can stay that way!  So the next several posts will be from over the last several months! 

I'll start with Pioneer Days at Fort Toulouse.  This was a field trip that we took that because Ella is studying early America.  We were very excited that Charles was able to take off and go with us.  I thought everything was very interesting, but it was so very crowded it made enjoying it a little difficult for me.  It was set up so that you could go from one area to another on your own (no real timed events) so we tried to stay opposite of the large school groups.  I know this will sound bad, but being around those large groups of mostly unruly kids made me so thankful that my kids weren't caught up in that mix.  I am so very grateful for the opportunity to homeschool!!  You will see in the pictures that all of the people were dressed up according to the era and that was fun to see.

Here are a few pictures from our day....

This is a lady demonstrating the cooking process and how they utilized hooks to hang the pots over the fire.

The girls behind the actual fort.

I can't remember exactly what this man was talking about but Charles seems to think it was about guns.

This was a representation of a temporary camp.  It was impressive, though, how well they were set up.  Some of the tents had two rooms, a kitchen area and a bedroom.  I was impressed by how much room there really was in there.

The girls getting to pet a bunny rabbit.  It was so very soft.

A couple of other things we learned was how to make bullets and how to start a fire with no matches.  We ended the day with a nice picnic.

One thing that studying early America has done for me is to give me a fresh appreciation of how very blessed we are with all of our modern conveniences.  Life was so hard back then.  The people had to work long and hard just to survive.  I know I am guilty of taking so much for granted.  This was a good reminder not to do that.