A Circle Journey Book

Having lived in a few states now, my daughter has quite the little list of far-away friends. She loves keeping in touch with them all!

One day this summer when the kiddos needed something different and fun to do I dragged out all of my old stamping supplies. In the days before I had children I actually did a lot of stamping, making cards with friends and I still have all of my stamps, stamp pads, special scissors, etc. I get them out for the kids once in a great while.

In the process of getting out all of these supplies, I found a little journaling kit that I'd forgotten all about. It was a Circle Journey kit, which I don't think they even make anymore. It's basically a correspondence kit for friends and comes with a small journal, extra envelopes, stickers, and journaling ideas. I had bought it thinking to keep my circle of high school girlfriends in better touch ...and that didn't happen. It had never been used. It suddenly occurred to me that this would be a very fun thing between The Princess and her friends in Arkansas.

She agreed! And she began her first entry in the circle journal, first writing to them, then adding stamps, stickers, and photos. Think: mini scrapbook!

Then she got it all ready to mail, along with a self-addressed envelope. The idea for her and her friends is for her to write in the journal and send it to one of her friends back at our home church in Arkansas. They in turn do their journaling thing and pass it along to another friend at the church, and then another, and another ...who then mails it back to The Princess to start the circle again. She's already gotten it back once, so the journal is on Round 2! She's really enjoying it so far. It's a whole other level of pen-pal-ing:)

You certainly wouldn't need to have a special "kit". A mini scrapbook, some small manilla envelopes, along with some stickers, stamps, photos, and whatever you think of that can fit in an envelope would do the trick! This would be a very fun project between just two friends, or five friends. It's all about the journey, right?

I need to remember to get out the stamping and scrapbooking supplies more often! Even Mr. B got in on the fun as we also made cards to send to far-away family members. It doesn't take a lot of time and as long as you use washable ink pads, the clean up is relatively easy.

And the memories last forever.

*****
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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...

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