The Shore Beyond

The Shore Beyond by Mary Joslin and illustrated by Alison Jay is a book we own. Alison Jay is one of our favorite illustrators, and her artwork in this book fits seamlessly with the story of adventure, the unknown, and life.

Follow Clara as she helps her father with his ferry service as a young girl, and as she grows up longing to see more of the world. Her desire for what lies beyond what she can see will take her to the shore beyond...
The text is longer in this book, but the story holds the attention of even my book loving 2 year old.

I saw an Ant on the Railroad Track

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One of our favorite train books is I saw an Ant on the Railroad Track by Joshua Prince and illustrated by Macky Pamintuan. The brilliant colors bring to life the story of a hungry ant that goes out for a walk on an empty  railroad track.

The story is told by Jack, the switchman, in brilliantly rhyming verse. One of our favorite lines is "sure as shellac" as Jack describes the sight of a train heading toward the ant.

 Discover what happens to the ant, Jack, and the train!

The week in review: when things don't go as planned...

This past week seemed at times to be quite the comedy of Christmas errors (including my intention to get this post up last Friday!).



All mostly went as planned Monday when we made it to the Christmas tree farm and cut down our tree just before the rain began. Then our tree sat naked in the corner for three days before we got any more than the lights in it.

I manage to make merengue cookies with the kids, but part way through my chocolate shavings began to get stuck in the piling tube because I hadn't chopped them small enough! (What a mess!) we had to make multiple trips to the grocery store for the necessary gingerbread cookie ingredients. And while the gingerbread decorating went well, every time I turned my back some little munchkin was shoveling handfuls if sprinkles in their mouth. Whew!


We managed to get the tree decorated (my candles are still sitting in a box next to my vacuum) and the wreath on the door (though the wreath kept sticking in the "Happy thanksgiving" window clings for several days before we got them down!)


As so many of my best laid plans and intentions fell crashing out of my hands this week I had a choice...to despair, through a pity party, and complain, or to realize that things don't have to go perfectly to be meaningful.

Our kids have had a blast helping decorate, make cookies, and take part in our disjointed advent activities. We've read the Christmas story from Luke and they are excited to celebrate the birth of Jesus. They don't need a thousands activities to make Christmas special, they need Mom and Dad to point them to what is most important, even when the tyranny of the urgent and less significant tries to take over.

I hope you are enjoying making memories with your family this Christmas season, and that you can be encouraged that things don't have to go as planned to be meaningful and significant.

The week in review: tis the season to be busy!

Our December is shaping up to be jam packed already. I love having special activities to do with our kids (and we make a point to do those with our advent calendar) and we were blessed this past week to enjoy time with family.

We visited a somewhat local train garden that Grandpa has taken us to the last 3 years.
It is fabulous!

We had silly fun together at home, singing songs and reading lots of books. Some favorites lately have been The Nutcracker by Alison Jay, Snow by Uri Shulevitz, and Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry.


I love how much fun and joy these two are!
Then we spent a few days in Williamsburg using a Groupon we purchased several months ago.

My family did many trips to Williamsburg when I was little for homeschool field trips, by I had never been to see it decorated for Christmas...beautiful!

Then we enjoyed ourselves at Great Wolf Lodge and wore our kiddos out playing in the waterpark. The Christmas decorations were beautiful here too, including an indoor snow!
I finally got my first batch of Christmas cookies baked! I feel quite behind on baking; it's one if my favorite things to do and I have so many memories of baking cookies at Christmas with my sisters. I had some fantastic helpers too.
Yum!

Here's a look at some of my favorite cookie recipes as well.
Candy Cane Cookies
Cinnamon Sugar Biscotti
Candy Cane Biscotti
Molasses Sugar Cookies
Chocolate Crinkles

The week in review: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

To keep things simple for December, I'll be posting each Friday a little review of our week, specifically the thrifty and frugal things we are doing to celebrate and enjoy the Christmas season.

This week I began to decorate with my kids, swapping our thankful tree for a felt Christmas tree and adding our stockings.

I finally stitched Will's stocking together (it was just pinned last year) and I'm so excited to see them next to each other. I can't even begin to imagine how many hours I put in cross-stitching their stockings!

The idea for the felt Christmas tree is all over Pinterest (check out Johnny In a Dress). I should have grabbed a yard of felt when I was at Joann's last to make it larger, but ended up just using the small rectangles and piecing them together. It was super simple, and has been a hit! I used cookie cutters as templates for the ornaments.
It was so great to pull my advent calendar activities and Scripture verses out of our Christmas box this year. I spent a considerable amount of time last year getting it exactly how I wanted it. I still need to put all the activities and verses in order along with some treats. Emma has been asking all week when we can get started!

I'm also incredible thankful for all the Christmas activities I packed away last year! Our sensory bin of Dollar Store items:

A few preschool pack activities (I think from 1+1+1=1, but not positive):

And a whole slew of Christmas stickers just waiting to go on coloring sheets and activities.

Before Thanksgiving I tackled a project one afternoon and was so excited to see how well it turned out....new skinny jeans!

This was a pair of Gap jeans passed on to me from a friend that were extremely flared at the bottom.

I turned them inside out and pinned them where I wanted, then sewed a brand new seam, removing the excess material. So easy, I highly recommend it!

Shutterfly winner!

Congrats to Sarah, who won the $50 prize from Shutterfly!




If you are looking for a great deal on photo cards, there are still several options. Check out this one from Cardstore via Moms Need to Know! http://momsneedtoknow.com/70-photo-greeting-cards-cardstorecom-free-shipping/
This includes your stamp for mailing, so it's a really sweet deal!

Thanksgiving Week

I mentioned yesterday in my Christmas Card post (enter the $50 Shutterfly prize giveaway!) that we have been doing a bunch of fun Thanksgiving related activities.

Here's a quick run through of some of our favorites; hopefully you will find a few ideas for over the Thanksgiving holiday this week!

Last year's "thankful tree" was much smaller scale. We modled after this craft on 1+1+1=1 and added things we were thankful for on each leaf.

This year I knew I wanted it to be much bigger and give both kids a chance to add as many things as they could think of. I used brown construction paper and cut out branches, then taped them to the wall. I just free-handed the tree, trying to make it look like a huge tree with lots of branches, but I traced the leaves. They've done a great job adding to our tree; it has many additional leaves at this point. It has also been a great teaching tool...the easiest thing for my kids to be thankful is all their favorite foods! But they are thinking outside the box a bit more now (and they both wanted to put each other on the tree!).

I was inspired by Housing a Forest to make shape turkeys. These took just a little bit of prep time and were a fun activity for both kids. We used it to work on not only shapes, but colors and sequencing/patterns.

Here's the finished product hanging up!

 Along with the turkeys, we've done several fall pictures, including a tree with the leaves made out of crumpled and wadded tissue paper.

We've also enjoyed using a number of free preschool packs that are Thanksgiving themed! Check out this one by Our Little Monkeys and another by 1+1+1=1. Some favorite activities include putting stickers on the white dots:

Measuring Thanksgiving items:

More stickers with a special visitor:

And lots of color by number fun with an Aunt!

 These puzzles are fantastic too!

 We'll also be making good use of some of the travel activities I posted about last Thanksgiving while we make the rounds with family and friends! Happy Thanksgiving!