Re-Thinking Our Christmas Cards

Christmas cards~sending them and receiving them~are one of my favorite things about the holidays. I started sending them to friends and family when I was just about six years old (I've always been an avid letter writer, so I always had pen-pals).

I love the whole process of Christmas cards: choosing the card(s), making my list, addressing the envelopes, putting on the holiday stamps, dropping those huge stacks of cards into the mailbox. It's all so much fun to me!

In the early years of our marriage I discovered how to stamp my own cards, using rubber stamps and ink. That started a whole new Christmas card process for me. The first year that I stamped our cards I did a 3-stamp-multiple-color-plus-ribbon process on over 100 cards. Yeah, a little too ambitious, but they turned out great!:)

(front cover)

(inside)

The next year I wasn't nearly as crazy. I still stamped over 100, but I kept it to a 2-stamp-1-color process.

(front cover)

(inside)

The following year I think I stamped about a dozen and bought the rest.

For The Princess' first Christmas I made about a dozen cards--bought the rest--but I slapped a picture on the front and only stamped on the inside. (Are you seeing the downward progression here? haha)

(front cover)

(inside)

I didn't do a handmade card at all for a couple of years, then The Princess drew the cutest family picture one day and we decided to make that the front of our card (we used an online printing company). It was adorable!

And that was the end of our handmade cards...so far.

This year I'm re-thinking our Christmas cards entirely. Lately it's been a store-bought card with a family pic, maybe a family letter every other year or so. But have you noticed how expensive stamps are getting? We are really making a concerted effort this year to scale way back on holiday spending. It makes me a little sad, because like I said before, I adore sending Christmas cards.

However, we are going mostly digital this time around. In this age of blogging and Facebook~and, yes, even the *ancient* email~we are in touch with nearly every one of our friends and family by internet. So this year we plan to utilize these means to share Christmas tidings with everyone. I'm looking forward to creating our digital card to post and send.

I am planning to stamp a few special cards, too. Those should be fun because there will just be a few and I can be as elaborate or as simple as I want to be.

How about you? Do you enjoy sending cards? What kind do you like to send?

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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