A Glimpse into the Past

Mommy-1970

Book Meme

Lisa, over at Are We There Yet, tagged me for this meme, and as she said, "it's a doozy!" It seems that as I think over the many, many books I have read, the majority of them are children's books (baby books, picture books and young adolescent read alouds) so I guess some will certainly be included here.

1. One book that changed your life: I would have to pick Catholic Home Schooling by Mary Kay Clark. It certainly changed my life by making me realize I could take on the challenge of homeschooling while having a large family.

2. One book that you have read more than once: There are many books that I have read more that once. The Janette Oke Love Comes Softly series of books. I read these before I was married and then will read them occasionally again and again. Also, all the Little House books, to assorted children, over and over again.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island: Easy, as with most other folks--The Bible.

4. One book that made you laugh: I must need to read more funny books, because I can only come up with Robert Munsch books--all of them.

5. One book that made you cry: Every one on the Nicholas Sparks books. I also remember a book that I read out loud to my middle graders--Baby, by Patricia MacLachlan. I reached the end of this book while reading aloud to Amy and Laura, and we all three burst into tears.

6. One book that you wish had been written:How to take care of alot of children and not go bonkers. Wait, if I find time maybe this book is in the interloan library system.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: The whole Harry Potter series because someone in this house is always reading some part of this. If they are not reading it they are listening to it on cd or on their ipods, and if they are in the middle of it they are not helping around the house.

8. One book you are currently reading: A Miracle for St. Cecilia's---I am enjoying this very much!

9. One book you've been meaning to read: The Virtue Driven Life, by Father Groeschel. Actually, this is a good book for a Christmas gift--hint, hint.

I will tag anyone who wants to do this "doozy" of a meme. Please comment here if you do, so that I can read about more books to read.

Apple Cinnamon Ornaments

This is the first year we made apple cinnamon ornaments and they came out lovely, and the smell is heavenly. I made a garland out of some of them which we hung it at the top of our living room bookshelf.

The s and I used glitter glue to decorate them after we dried them in out food dehydrator. This sped up the drying time from days to hours. Some were left plain and hung on our tree.

APPLE CINNAMON ORNAMENTS

3/4 c. ground cinnamon 2 tbsp. ground cloves 1 c. applesauce 1 tbsp. ground allspice 1 tbsp. nutmeg 1/8 or 1/4 inch ribbon Mix the applesauce and the spices in a bowl. Make a ball with the dough and then roll it out between wax paper. Using Christmas cookie cutters, cut out desired shapes you can and lay them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Re-shape the scraps and repeat the procedure using all of the dough. Take a pencil and make a hole towards the top so that ribbon can pass through it later. Lay the cookie sheets in a convenient place to dry for 4 or 5 days to dry uncovered. When dry, thread the ribbon through the holes for hanging. You can decorate one side of the ornament either by gluing things to it or painting designs. Store these in a resealable plastic bag. These make wonderful Christmas gifts that make a new wonderful family tradition. These will also be good for use as a room scent or to take musty smells out of closets or amp basements besides being attractive tree ornaments

Yesterday we also made necklaces and bracelets from ribbon and jingle bells. I couldn't resist adding this picture of Kimberly enjoying her bells.

Hip! Hip! Hooray!

Congratulations to Rebecca!!! She has been accepted to Paul Smith's college in pursuit of a culinary arts degree.
We are very proud of her, and we will looooovvvvvveeeee to visit her!!

She will be 1/2 drive from Lake Placid. The campus is on the shore of Lower St. Regis Lake.
Way to go Becky!!!

A New On-line Game

I have to thank Theresa,

who has her own thanks to give, for spreading the word about this game. It is a great thing to play while chaos reigns in your house and you have about a millions other things to do.

And the total is......

The Legend of the Candy Cane

We enjoyed a new book this snowy afternoon. The Legend of the Candy Cane
is the story about a stranger that comes into a town and is befriended by a named Lucy.
Together, Lucy and the stranger transform an empty storefront into a wonderful candyshop.
They also spread the story of the candy cane and the symbolism associated with it.

We learned that the shape of the candycane is very important. If you turn it one way, it is a J-for our savior Jesus Christ. If you turn it the other way you have a shepherd's staff-the first people to come to Jesus on Christmas Day. The red color is for the blood that Jesus shed for us on the cross, and white it for our souls, washed pure and white, in His .

After the story, everyone got busy making our own candy canes with pipe cleaners and beads.

Even Luke, with total concentration, was able to put the beads onto the pipe cleaner.

The results were amazing. I can't wait for these to be put onto our Christmas tree.

Requested pattern...

I am afraid that the pattern for this dress has been discontinued. It is Simplicity 8688 and I did find it on Ebay here. I have had it for years and have made all my girls dresses using it.
The dress is very similar though, to Kimberly's dress that you can see here.
Actually, the pinafore is the same pattern for both dresses. Butterick B4054.

Gracie's Christmas Dress.....

is finished!!! It looks like I could send her out onto the prairie!

A Gingerbread Baby Day

Actually, we had a Gingerbread Baby morning. Pat was home, so we could spend time with this great book while he entertained the babies.

Thanks to the wonderful people at Homeschool Share I found many fun resources to make the most of our morning. I love these gingerbread boy matching cards we played the game concentration with them with Mark winning every game. Luke loves these cards too, he is a great matcher.

Homeschool Share also have many printables to go along with Gingerbread Baby. I am not exactly sure what Mark and Grace are doing behind their pictures.

We played the Gingerbread Baby game many times. This was printed off the Jan Brett website.
I think I could use this website for my whole preschool curriculum and save a lot on money. It is a great site with many, many activities for all of Jan Brett's wonderful books.

As you can see above, we used store bought gingerbread men for our playing pieces in our game.( Gracie bit the leg off of hers so that we could tell the pieces apart.) They are super yummy, and I knew if we waited until we baked our own gingerbread men, it might be February.

In honor of today's snow.....

my big brother and I in 1971.

A Wonderful Birthday Gift

I celebrated my birthday yesterday, and today my best friend and love of my life gave me this ring. It replaces my original wedding band that was unwearable after being cut off me several times during various illnesses.
Thank you love. I will treasure it forever.

Of Crafts and Cookies

Yesterday, the smells in my house took me back to second grade when, with very sore fingers, I made an orange pomander for my parents' Christmas gifts.

We each took a medium orange and whole cloves from the Amish bulk store (much cheaper than from the grocery store). I had read a tip on the internet to use a toothpick to make starter holes in the orange to put the cloves into. This worked like a charm, and my sore fingers from the past remained history.
We put our ribbon around the oranges first and then began to fill the orange with cloves.
The smell is simply heavenly!

As the orange dries out we will take our pomanders down and re-adjust the ribbon.
When we arrived home today from running errands, the house was just filled with this wonderful smell.

Becky and I made a large batch of "buck-eyes" last night and today. These have been safely hidden away in the freezer for the Christmas cookie gift tins!

Grace and I also made the yearly footprint-handprint reindeer decoration. We needed a lot of glue to hold on the tremendous reindeer nose, but hopefully it will hold.

Knitted Stocking Ornament

I have been knitting these cute little stockings to decorate the cookie tins Becky and I will be giving away as Christmas gifts. I can make one in about an hour and a half. I think I will tuck a candy-cane inside each one before attaching them onto the tins.

Material: small amounts of red and white worsted weight yarn
size 8 knitting needles.

Procedure: Work the stocking back and forth on two needles. Cast on 20 stitches with white yarn. Work in garter stitch for six rows. Break off white yarn and join red yarn. Use stockinette stitch for rest of stocking. Work 16 rows. On the 17th row, knit 13 stitches. Turn and purl six (center of foot). Turn again and knit across these six stitches, leaving remaining stitches on needles.

Work seven more rows in this manner on the six stitches. Break off yarn and tie it on where stitches were divided to start center of instep. Pick up seven stitches evenly on each side of vamp. Knit across the center of row (34 stitches total) and purl back across all stitches.

Knit two stitches together at the beginning and end of the next row (heel), and at the same time knit the center two stitches together to round off toe. Purl the next row and continue to decrease in this manner every other row twice. Bind off the remaining 25 stitches leaving enough yarn to sew up stocking. Use yarn or ribbon to make a loop.

A visit with......Grandpa?

We haven't seen Grandpa this week, and when we got to his house the Christmas village was all set up.

The manager was filled with animals, awaiting the Holy Family's arrival,

but who switched our Grandpa for this red-nosed "reindeer"?(This imposter even scared Kimmie out of the room.)

A Sewing and Baking Day

I took a day to begin baking today. Every year Becky and I make many types of cookies for Christmas parties and Christmas gifts. I got us started today with "Kiss in the middle" cookies. It is one of our most requested cookie.
I also finished Kimberly's Christmas dress.

We did manage to do a little schoolwork. Mark got 100 percent on his weekly spelling test!

Hey! What is in my shoe?

Thank you Saint Nicholas!

This is good!

A Trip to See Santa

Pat and I headed to the mall today with the four youngest kids in tow. We put Kim and Luke in this very cute firetruck stroller and we were good to go. Of course, one of the main stops for us was the north pole, not the real north pole, as Grace commented, a pretend one. I wondered who would have the courage to sit with Santa this year. The babies didn't want anything to do with the big guy, and Mark was to mature to sit with him-he thought it was just nonsense. With Grace, I had no doubt, she is a definite Santa lover.

She talked and talked with Santa, and then she talked some more. After about 10 minutes I was finally able to coax her away, with a promise that maybe we will stop by again another day.

It certainly was a fun day. Pat and I knew that this was an outing--not a shopping trip--shopping would be impossible with this crew. We did manage to make a few purchases, and Kimberly ended up with two new "friends".
It was a very good day!

What do I hear? Soft classical music offering us a backdrop for learning? Beautiful Christmas carols serenading us and helping us prepare for the coming of our Savior?

No....

it is the toddler pots and pans band.

Oh my!!!!

Our new Jesse Tree Banner

Becky and I spent a cold snowy Sunday afternoon making a new Jesse tree for this years Advent.
Becky made the beautiful tree and I cut out and laminated the Jesse tree ornaments.
We are all looking forward to dinner time everyday when we will add a new ornament, which will bring us closer and closer to Christmas.