Cutting Christmas Card Clutter

Some of you may know that we've been striving to become *greener* in our household. We still have a long way to go, but we made some major improvements in 2008 and we hope to do better yet in 2009.

Recently I found a great little idea for all of those Christmas cards that we send and receive. Now, I LOVE Christmas cards! (Strangely enough, addressing Christmas cards is one of my favorite things to do in the holiday season.) And even though our budget was as tight this year as it's ever been, I couldn't not send out cards. I just shortened my list:)

Now that the holidays are over though, it's time to sort the cards we received. Each year I always have four piles: one for those special cards to keep, two for the pictures to go into my album, three for those that I can recreate into next Christmas' gift tags and four for those to toss.

Well, this year the first three piles were the same as usual, but the fourth was different. I found a great *green* idea on Katie's blog that I just had to do.

I knew that St. Jude's Hospital sold Christmas cards, but what I didn't realize is that the children at St. Jude's created those using recycled Christmas cards sent to them by others. How cool is that?! So this year my fourth pile will go to the children at St. Jude's instead of the trash.

Check out St. Jude's website to see how you can help, too!

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Making Notebooks

Recently I tried out a new craft idea~and it was SO much fun!! And extremely frugal, too. That's always a bonus, right? So here we go: 1. Take your basic composition notebook (purchased at the back-to-school sales for .99 each). 2. Go to your craft supplies and get your Mod Podge ready, along with a good paintbrush. 3. Look through all those scrapbook papers you've been randomly collecting and choose some. 3. After choosing your paper for the cover of your book and trimming it to fit, start *painting* the cover with the glue. Next, give the back of your paper a good coat of glue, too. (I left the binding uncovered so that I could use a contrasting paper there later on). 4. Glue it on! Remember to smooth out any air bubbles under the paper. 5. Flip the cover open and make a few cuts on the corners so that they will fold over nice and neat, then add a little more glue to the edges of the inside cover and a little more to the paper edges. 6. Fold them over and press...

my blessed life

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