Philippians 4:13
I can do everything through Him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13
Let's face it. The last thing my girls need are more toys or stuffed animals. I mean have you seen their beds? Their play room? Maybe you haven't, but trust me on this. They don't need more stuff!
I decided this year that their Easter Baskets would not contain a toy or a stuffed animal. While I've never been the kind to go overboard on Easter Baskets, even one toy or stuffed animal would be one too many.
But I didn't want it to be all candy, either. They have enough of that, too. This year I did something a little different. I was told it was the best Easter Basket ever by my almost 10-year-old.
Each basket contained a little more than a dozen eggs, some with candy and some with small pieces of paper. Coupons. A coupon to skip a chore. A coupon to stay up 30 minutes past bedtime. A coupon for an iTunes song download. A coupon for a dessert of their choice at Sonic. Seven different coupons for seven different things that would be a special treat for them. And most of them would not cost us a cent.
Best. Easter. Basket. Ever. Who can argue with that?
This just might be the beginning of a new Easter Basket tradition.
My child, never forget the things I have taught you. Store my commands in your heart. If you do this, you will live many years, and your life will be satisfying. Proverbs 3: 1-2
Several years ago, I started a Valentine's tradition with my girls, and now they wouldn't dream of doing things any other way. Each year they make Valentine's cards for their classmates.
Trust me, it can be hard work getting my youngest, now 7, to sit and make that many cards. Sometimes we have to do it in stages. But when the work is done, they have such a sense of accomplishment.
This year we took ideas from Family Fun Magazine. My oldest made the Tic-Tac-Toe inspired card found on page 71 of the February 2014 issue.
She made them with two different messages, one for her closest friends and another for everyone else. We used M&Ms for game pieces; her message and Tic-Tac-Toe game drawn onto card stock.
Wonder how many will play a game before they eat the game pieces?
We packaged the card and candies together into treat bags and taped them in the back with fun Valentine tape we found at Hobby Lobby.
My youngest made cards found on page 70 of the February 2014 issue of Family Fun Magazine.
We glued large googly-eyes to the bottom of chocolate kisses and put several into a treat bag. Each bag had about 7 kisses, with 3 of those kisses having the googly-eyes. We stapled the bag shut with a piece of folded card stock to share her Valentine sentiment: "I have eyes for you!", replacing the word 'eyes' with a set of smaller googly-eyes. She added some extra hearts just for fun.
But that was not the end of our Valentine fun. This year they needed to provide their own Valentine boxes. Though I do remember one year one of them making a box at home (we just added pink paper and heart stickers to a shoe box), most years they've made boxes at school.
For this project, we turned to Pinterest. My oldest decided on a robot she found.
While it's very similar to the one she saw on Pinterest, my daughter decided to skip the legs, change the arms and add a bow. It's just too cute!
My youngest has been a little Minion crazy lately, so it didn't really come as a surprise when she wanted to have a Minion Valentine box. There were several different versions on Pinterest, and we took ideas from several of them, including making his mouth as the box opening so Minion can eat the Valentine's cards. We made his goggles, arms and legs 3-d with the use of toilet paper rolls. He turned out very adorable and I hope he makes it to Friday because she keeps trying to feed him various toys.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:7
A couple years ago, I found an old school desk for my youngest daughter. The rest of the family had his or her own desk, she needed one, too. Right? It was terribly ugly, but I knew I could take care of that problem with a little paint. However, the project ended up on the back burner until recently when my daughter brought up the subject.
Last Saturday we had a really beautiful and pleasant day - a perfect day for a paint project on the deck.
Here's the before picture. When I bought the desk, it was painted a plain off-white color. Very ugly. You can see that my daughter added some doodling to the desktop area, and that gave me the idea to paint the desktop with chalkboard paint. Then she could continue to write on the desktop without messing up the paint.
I had her decide what color she wanted to paint the rest of the desk. She first chose blue. Then green. And finally settled on yellow.
I used a high-gloss indoor/outdoor latex paint so I wouldn't have to worry about a clear coat. We used some old flower stamps from my craft closed to add a little decoration.
- You'll find these same flowers used in several projects in my blog!!
My daughter wanted black flowers to match the black chalkboard desktop, and I used a glossy acrylic craft paint for them. Then I added some yellow flowers to the desktop using the same yellow paint used for the rest of the desk.
We think the result turned out great, and most importantly, my daughter loves it. She just gushed over it and absolutely could not wait for me to give her the clearance to sit at her "new" desk and draw on the desktop.
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Psalm 127:3
