Craft Roundup-Mother Daughter Day

Ruth's cute fabric and cardboard couch. (There was also a chair that I did not get a shot of.) See the little pillow cushions?
Ana's earrings.

Lora's (and Corinne's) Shrinky Dink necklaces (minus the laces.)
Caitilin's rice handwarmers.

Nancy's Christmas Scones. Jannell's Milkweed Pod ornaments.

Ann's cinnamon ornaments. Sandy's gumdrop trees. What fun we all had!

Second Annual Mother /Daughter Craft Day

Friend Ana helps me organize a mother/daughter Christmas craft day. Each mom brings a craft to share and each girl (fifth grade and up) goes from station to station working on whichever crafts she would like to make. The crafts are meant to be gifts for the girls to give to others on their lists. Gift wrap at each station may be offered so the gifts go home all ready to give.

The gang's (and their shoes) all here. Friend Ana helps girls make earrings at her station.


Friend Ruth helped the girls make some neat doll furniture of her own design. Great for little sisters such as these.

Friend Nancy had an assembly line for making Christmas scones with only the finest ingredients.


Toward the end of the day, the moms and others start sneaking in some crafting too.


After the crafting was done and guests were gone, the organizers shared a supper of eggplant casserole and chicken noodle soup. Yum! Three girls making homemade noodles for the soup.

Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Tree up.
"New" cupboard in place and decorated.
Red and gold beauty.
These fresh pears were so seasonally appropriate-red and green and gold.

Christmas parts to learn.

Winter Recital

Juniper R. Twiddler Poetry

We have a young friend who is quite a writer. She is 12 and puts out a monthly (or whenever) newspaper called the Pipsqueak Monthly. I have a subscription, and our whole family enjoys her reports of "goings on" of her farm life and animals. She also includes original poetry. Although she wishes to remain anonymous on the www, she has said that I may publish some of her work here. She has many pen names, but my favorite is Miss Juniper R. Twiddler.

The Wind's Song

I whistle during church,
I bend the slender birch.
I tangle children's hair,I leave some places bare.
But I always go whistling,
Whistling My song. My song, you
say, What can it be? And why is
it unheard by Me? My song is the
whisper of waving wheat, My song
is the slap of stinging sleet, My
song is the swish of swaying grass,
like swirling dancing skirt of
lass. Yet I sing in the rustle of
falling leaves, I sing in the sigh of
a tree that grieves. I whistle a
tune in church, while bending the
slenderest slender birch, and when
I am not whistling, I sing My airy
song.
-Margaret Mae Jones


Wind and Sky and Water

Wind and Sky and Water,
Comfort me, Eve's poor young daughter.
The Wind that waves the whispering wheat,
And also drives the stinging sleet,
The Sky that holds the stars aloft,
At twilight deep and dark and soft.
The Water fresh and cold and clear,
With multitudes of ripples dear.
Yes, in this one such special place,
Where daisies bloom 'side Queen Anne's lace,
Wind and Sky and Water, comfort me, Eve's daughter.
-Cricket Milla Paul

Ball Chain Button Bracelets

These fun ball chain bracelets are what L. made for her girlfriends for Christmas. She made about a dozen of them.

There are several tutorials on the web, but this is the one we worked off of: http://honestlywtf.com/diy/diy-wrap-bracelet/We changed the "clasp" from a nut to a button. This made them more decorative and each one more unique. We love old buttons!

To make them you will need:
44 " of 1.5 mm thin leather cord (ours was a bit heavier)
12" brass ball or crystal chain
58" waxed linen cord, or similar (we used 6 strand embroidery floss or beading/braiding cords from Wal Mart-thin hemp works, too)
a button and scissors



Fold leather cord in 1/2 and make a loop that will pass over the button of your choice. Run the smaller colored cord end up along loop and wrap at the base of the loop two or three times. Take the longer end of the colored cord and begin wrapping over the looped end, catching the ball chain as you wrap down the leather cord. When you get to the length you want for the bracelet, snip the ball chain if necessary and tie your button onto the end with the colored cord, wrapping tightly around the end of the leather cord. Tie the ends of the leather in an overhand knot or square knot, pull tight and trim.

Teacher and Friend Gifts

We love to make things at our house, and this week we got to put together a bunch of gifts for teachers and friends from our homeschool co-op. For our teachers we gave dish towels that I embroidered and wrapped each one around a bag of homemade microwave caramel popcorn.

W. made her girlfriends decorated hair clips. She made Shrinky Dinks and we glued them onto dollar store clips with some E-6000 glue, which seemed to hold very well. We clipped them to some cute printable gift cards from here: http://wildolive.blogspot.com/2011/11/print-christmas-gift-tags.html We have a great Shrinky Dink jewelry book from Klutz Press that has many fun patterns to copy. You can buy Shrinky Dink plastic sheets at most craft stores. Follow directions for coloring and cooking.

Choir and Art Show 2011

Today was our last day of the semester and our choir concert/art show and pizza party. Top to bottom: W. and friends sing, L and M. and lots of their girlfriends, the whole choir, our great directors: Mrs. I and my dear friend Nancy.

New Washer and Dryer and Porch-O My!

Washing clothes all day in our new washer and dryer in our new porch. Nine loads down and 3 or 4 to go! Husband is switching loads over like crazy.

"Thankful For You" Leaves

We made some more of the clay leaves and altered them a bit for Thanksgiving favors. I made the leaves in a smaller size and put a hole into the stem before cooking, then added a brown-paper note for each one.

To make the brown-paper notes, I ripped off a narrow strip of paper bag to give a ragged edge and used some slightly watered down gold paint sponged onto the edges to guild them. The words were printed on with a narrow black permanent marker. I punched a small hole into each tag with a wood skewer. I made the leaves and M. and W. helped me guild them the same way as the larger leaves in this earlier post. http://artteajannell.blogspot.com/2011/11/gilded-clay-leaves.html I used a thin, gold, stretchy thread to tie the tags to the leaves.

We made enough for each place at the Thanksgiving table. (About 35.)