Thanksgiving 2012

I snapped this photo of Coralee and Grandma Posey on Thanksgiving day. It embodies the happiness in our family and the blessing of love we all share with each other.

We took the week off from homeschooling and I focused my attention on doing crafts, stories and activities focused around the Thanksgiving holiday with the girls. I wanted to use the time to teach Marin about the first Thanksgiving and so we spent the week working on projects like these.

Thank you Lord for...Pumpkin Pocket courtesy of Christian Preschool Printables. The three items in the foreground made me smile. She wrote "LaLaloopsy" first, then "Bunny" and "me" came later in the lineup, but I found it humorous that she thanked God for herself. These foam activities I picked up at Michael's.

Other activities we enjoyed were:
Turkey Skittles Sorting Mat - Making Learning Fun
How To Draw A Turkey and a Color By Number Turkey - I can read. I will succeed.
Thanksgiving Dominoes Game - DLTK
Made Paper Pilgrim Hats - Martha Stewart
I read aloud a Magic Tree House book "Thanksgiving on Thursday" by Mary Pope Osborne and
"The Story of The First Thanksgiving" by Elaine Raphael and Don Bolognese. And of course we watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Pinup Lingerie Shower Invitation

My sister hosted an adorable pinup themed lingerie shower for our friend Sarah. I designed this invitation for the party. We created about 25 and I'm glad there weren't more as cutting out the tiny aprons and placing them on the doll was tedious! We thought a dress up doll was perfect for the 1950s housewife theme and everyone dressed up and wore an apron. Katy Keene is the diva on the invitation and we selected her because she embodied the attitude we were going for in the design. Fun, flirty, fifties.

The Tooth Fairy Stage

It's happened. My first born lost her first tooth. I'm having such a hard time dealing with my feelings about this stage.
Excitement for her and for instituting new family traditions
Sadness because she's growing up so fast and I'm worried I'll blink and she'll be finishing college.
Shock that I'm old enough to have a child loosing teeth.
Pressure to come up with the worlds greatest, most fun, meaningful tooth fairy traditions.
Love because I have a sweet little one who is growing into a beautiful little lady who believes wholeheartedly in fairies, princesses and the color pink. 

So, here you have it folks a tiny, magical, pink, glittered letter from the tooth fairy and two gold dollars. Let's hope it sparks her imagination and carries us all down a road full of magical tooth fairy filled years.

Vintage Inspired Wedding Invitation

These two love birds are getting married on Saturday. Can't wait to dance the night away at their vintage inspired wedding celebration. I can't claim to have designed this invitation. It would be more accurate to say I put it together for them. Their idea. Shane Rhoden's photograph. You get the picture, but I was happy to be involved and think the end result was super fun and I'm excited to attend!

Three Little Kittens {Halloween 2012}

The girls love the nursery rhyme "The Three Little Kittens Who Lost their Mittens" so when I was brainstorming costume ideas that would include all three girls, it was immediate choice. I used this "Quick and Easy Cat Ears" tutorial from Tally's Treasury to create their ears. The tails were cut from the same felt and I attached them to elastic bands so that they could use them for dress up all year long (and I wouldn't be tying on tails every day)!

Poor baby Coralee was running a fever on Halloween day, so she stayed home with Daddy while the other two girls and I went trick-or-treating.

During her five year old birthday interview, I asked Marin what her favorite holiday was. Expecting her to say Christmas, I was humored when she actually said Halloween. Makes sense I guess. Who doesn't love dressing up and eating FREE candy?!

Kindergarten {Our First Six Weeks}

While this probably isn't of much interest to most readers, I want to post these recaps as an archive of our Kindergarten year. Posting these will keep me accountable and help when planning school for Adalyn in the future. 

Kindergarten Recap (Our First Six Weeks)

September 3 - October 12, 2012

Read aloud to the girls: Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie, both by Laura Ingles Wilder.

Completed the Sing Spell Read and Write book “All Aboard” the first of the two books that make up the Kindergarten program. Marin can now confidently write all of the upper and lower case letters and her full name. She learned songs to memorize letter sounds, vowel sounds and the Ferris Wheel song that teaches beginning letter blends.

Completed lessons 27 through 45 of “The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading.” Introduced various punctuation marks (period, commas, exclamation marks, question mark) memorized sight words (I, yes, the and A).

Marin, read sets one and two of the Bob Book Series (12 books in all).

We completed Lessons one through 14 in “First Language Lessons.” Marin learned the definition of a noun and the difference between a common and proper noun and why we capitalize a proper noun. We also worked on picture and story narrations and memorized “The Caterpillar” by Christian G. Rosetti

Completed Lessons one through 15 of the Math.U.See Primer book. Marin can count to 100 and write her numbers 0-20 with confidence. Understands place value to 100 and addition plus one and memorization of addition with doubles (1+1 through 5+5).

Finished the Clothing and Fashion section of “The Usborne book of Living Long Ago.” This history book was wonderful and Marin enjoyed it so much. We covered things like the first clothing, Vikings, Romans, European fashion, North American Indians etc.

Covered the “Our World” section of “The Usborne Children’s Encyclopedia.” It was amazing to watch Marin’s curiosity when learning about hurricanes and tsunamis.

In her Calendar note book Marin made daily notations on a calendar where we learned the days of the week and the months of the year. She kept track of the number of days of school numerically and with tally marks. Every day she practiced writing the Month and charted the weather. She learned to say (memorize) and dial her home phone number and mailing address. 

Plus we had lots of play time and crafts and artwork. Like this:

Retro Wedding Shower Invitation

Created an invitation design for a 1950s retro inspired wedding shower. The final cards were printed as 4x6 prints and mailed in these rainbow colored envelopes. The wedding is going to be so colorful and fun!