The Blessing of Friendship

This past weekend my wonderful friend Donna came for a visit. We met 19 years ago at college in Springfield, MO. She now lives in Virginia and we hadn't seen each other in about 7 years. We had a great time together~she's a kindred spirit! This was the first time that she'd met my kiddos and they hit it off extremely well. Donna took home quite the collection of specially drawn and colored pictures (my children's current love language)!

We had fun doing some of the *touristy* things around town and just hanging out. Mostly we talked~it's what we do best:) This was also Donna's first visit to The South during the summer...she thought she was going to melt in our wicked heat! Bless her heart!

And look what she brought with her:

Books, books and more books...and a bag of delicious coffee!! She actually brought for the kiddos' library the set of the Pollyanna books and the Five Little Peppers series (all vintage, I might add!). Plus there were quite a few more books just for me. Only an amazing friend would bring an extra suitcase JUST FOR BOOKS! Thank you again, Donna!

And now....

A funny story from the weekend (one of many) :

I took Donna to one of my fave spots in Van Buren~a little shop called *Coffee & A Good Book*. It's a really great used book store with a few antiques thrown in. A wonderful place to browse~I especially love their children's book section and their cookbook section. So, I was looking at the cookbooks this past weekend and picked up a particular one that I've always wanted. When I opened the front cover, it had a very familiar handwritten inscription that said "Happy cooking in your new life together!" Vince and Lora (with the date). Yep, you guessed it: it was a cookbook that I'd obviously given a newlywed couple. One who doesn't like to cook apparently. I must say, I laughed and laughed! And I bought it~for the 2nd time!! And one of these days I'm going to remember who it was that got married on that particular day:)

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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