Personalized Books for Boys, Girls, Teens and Adults -- Early Holiday Shopping!

 

Disclosure: In The Book sent me these three personalized books in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own. 

This year everything seems weird. I know many products are delayed quite a bit lately if they are not American made. I always begin my holiday shopping early and have begun quite a bit of it. One of my favorite things to give kids is personalized books. Kids love seeing their names and photos in books. This year In The Book Published by Signature reached out to see if I would be interested in doing a review. I checked out their site and was very interested. They have something for everyone!! There are books for boys and girls of all ages. There are books for teens and sport lovers. There are even books for adults including newlyweds!! I love the personalized anniversary books. A friend gave me an anniversary book at my bridal shower. We love it. Having it personalized would be even more special!

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Happy Spring! Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and a very special thank you to all who took time to be inspired by what others shared! Once again I feel there were so many amazing ideas shared. As spring begins here, there is a light snow flurry. I am so ready for spring and no more snow!!  For features this week we have Spring Holidays, Spring, and a few of my favorites.

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A huge thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! It was the largest party we have had in awhile. I had a very hard time choosing features since there were so many amazing posts. Here are some of the ones I liked the best, but really there are many more to see if you have not checked them out yet. The topics for this week's features are Martin Luther King, Jr. (Monday is MLK Day in the US), Frozen, Valentine's Day and some lesson and polar bears ones.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Features

For everyone featured in this topic and ones not picked, please also link up at the Multicultural Kid Blogs Martin Luther King Day for Kids link party!!

DIY Disney's Frozen Birthday Party Thank You Notes--Free Printable

Last week we shared the fun things we did, served and decorated with for Hazel's Frozen-themed birthday party. The girls are still talking about it and how much fun they had. Hazel thinks it was the best party ever!!

Frozen Themed Birthday Party with free printables and product review

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease but receive no compensation.

This weekend we had Hazel's Frozen themed birthday party. Ever since Hazel saw the movie (her first movie at the theater), I have been collecting Frozen ideas on Pinterest. I got to use several of the ideas I pinned and products I pinned for this fun party. All of the girls had a great time and loved it. Today I am going to share the details with you including the products Oriental Trading sent me for the party to review. First I have to share Hazel's Elsa dress. Elsa is Hazel's favorite character in the movie and she really wanted an Elsa dress. With all the sheer fabric on them I knew her delicate skin would not be able to handle just any Elsa dress, so I made one for her. I used the Simplicity Pattern 1233, however I lined the bodice and cannot imagine using any of the sequined fabrics without lining.

Christmas Crafts & Sewing: Elf on the Shelf, The Christmas Story, and Frozen

Well with Christmas fast approaching, I thought I would share a bunch of the things we have been up to lately. It is amazing how fast Christmas is coming. Between Hazel and I getting sick I feel like we have not gotten everything done that I hoped. Now we are hoping Hazel's fever stays away long enough for her not to be contagious (she has strep and possibly something else) so we can celebrate with extended family. With my time I have been doing some sewing and am working on a quilt to review a quilt book hopefully later this week since I'm hoping to have the quilt as part of Hazel's Christmas gift.

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This weekend was planning on I taking off with a girlfriend for a much needed mommies weekend away, but Hazel developed a fever, so plans postponed. However the party will still go on!! Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! This week's features are divided into Multicultural Holidays, Christmas and Winter and Stars. I went a little crazy with the number of features so I hope you enjoy them all!!

Multicultural Holidays

1) From Multicultural Kid Blogs: Hanukkah for Kids

2) From Dad's The Way I Like It: A Toddler's Christmas in Wales

3) From Planet Smarty Pants: Christmas Around the World -- Germany

4) From A Life in Balance: Swedish Christmas Braid

Christmas Features

1) From An Idea on Tuesday: Vegetable Printing Nativity

2) From Christianity Cove: Holiday Snack Idea: Jelly Bean Christmas Trees

3) From A Life in Balance: Easy Gingerbread House for Christmas

4) From Best Toys for Toddlers: No-Sew & No-Glue Paper Roll Christmas Elves

5) From Kandy Kreations: Christmas Shepherd 2 Nativity Advent Calendar Gift Idea Day 5

Winter and Star Features

1) From The Practical Mom: DIY Christmas Decoration: Star Lantern

2) From Sunshine and Hurricanes: Frozen Inspired Christmas Crafts

3) From Life with Moore Babies: Egg Carton Snowmen

4) From In the Playroom: Kid Made Star Display Inspired by How to Catch a Star

5) From Say Not Sweet Anne: Creamy 3 Ingredient Hot Cocoa

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess: This week we shared some simple nativity crafts, reviewed some books for traveling from home, shared the history of the Christmas tree and some customs and trees from around the world, and shared our persimmon exploration!

Now for This Week's Party 


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Elsa and Olaf Crafts

Being Advent, I thought I would share each post where our Mouse and the Miracle Mouse (Holy) has been up to. (He now has an elf friend named Elfie who often is hidden with him.)

Holy and Elfie Preparing the New Manger
that was built by a friend at church!

Today I thought I would share two simple Disney's Frozen inspired crafts. They both have some inspiration from The Dollar Tree. Last month we made autumn fairies with doilies we got at The Dollar Tree.  Well this week I found some doilies that had snowflakes on them. I thought they would be perfect to make an Elsa peg doll. I made her an Elsa and Anna doll awhile ago, but apparently I never shared them and I cannot find the pictures. I'll have to take more when I find where Hazel left them! Hazel liked this new one better though.

Clay Nativity Ornaments

Today we are sharing our fun and simple Christmas ornaments. Hazel is making these for all of her teachers and family members as their Christmas gift. The idea came from making a nativity set using clay and nativity cookie cutters. This was one of our crafts at our Night in Bethlehem last year, but Hazel did not try it since I was busy and Steve is not that into doing crafts. I made a sample one up for the church event this year.

Disney's Frozen -- Marshmallow Olaf and Party Activity Ideas

With Halloween fast approaching, I know the holiday season is not far behind and then it will be time for Hazel's birthday party. Her theme this year is Disney's Frozen, so we are going to do it for her real birthday (well a couple of weeks after so it is not during the holidays). I have seen all over the web the bags with the tag "Do you wanna build a snowman?" and the supplies for a marshmallow snowman. I decided to see how they would come out. I have to say our tries did not turn out well. So this is something we will not be doing for the party. Now for full disclosure, our large marshmallows were stale, but I do not think this is what caused the issues.

Sorbet Floats--Summer Celebrations or Perfect Drinks for a Frozen Party

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

We are in the middle of Labor Day weekend here in the United States. It is the unofficial end to summer. Hazel starts school this week and she is not happy about it. To celebrate summer, say an end or just for fun, we made some sorbet floats. Now this idea started when we were out to dinner with my parents at the Rock Harbor Grill. We looked at the dessert menu after dinner even though none of us could eat another bite and I saw a blueberry sorbet IBC cream soda float. I was tempted, but then noticed all desserts were $8 and figured we could make it cheaper at home. I bought a six pack of IBC cream soda and then searched for blueberry sorbet. I finally found some in one of those serve yourself frozen yogurt places. We bought a small cup of it and made the floats.

Now since this was a summer celebration we used our umbrella straws. I could totally see Olaf drinking this in his dream of summer. Since we did not have much sorbet, we only needed one bottle of soda for the two drinks. Hazel loved it! (Now she has yet to like any of the drinks with bubbles in it previously.)

I finally got her to take the straw out of her mouth and told her to smile to show she liked it, but the smile didn't quite happen.

Now one of the best things of these floats is it is made with sorbet which is dairy free so Hazel can have them without worry of the dairy issues! We had some raspberry sorbet in the freezer, so we tried that the next day. We put in a lot of sorbet the first time we made them and not quite as much so it could have a chance to melt. We talked about the sorbet being like frozen hearts from Disney's Frozen. So we decided this would be a fun punch to make for her Frozen party. 

Hazel has been asking for these every night now. We are not quite as fancy as the first ones. Needless to say we love them. 

My favorite is when the sorbet is really starting to melt and you can taste the fruit mixed well with the soda. So that is our summer celebration/Disney Frozen inspired drinks. Goodbye, summer!! We will miss you!!

For more Frozen inspired things check out:

• DIY Olaf Mugs for Frozen party
• Frozen Fractals Lesson
• Frozen Fractals Lesson 2 & Olaf Craft
• Sharing Saturday with Frozen Features
• My Disney's Frozen Pinterst Board

Olaf Mugs for Frozen Party

Hazel has decided her birthday party will be a Frozen theme this year. I saw in a few places making easy Olaf mugs and t-shirts. While pulling out some supplies for our mermaid play date, I found some white mugs I had bought for Hazel's Tea for 2 Birthday Party. We had left out paints for the older kids to decorate them. We only had one taker so I have six left over. Although painting and drawing are not my strong points, I thought I would give it a try. Olaf's face is rather easy. I pulled out my paint markers: black, white, brown, orange and blue.

I started with his mouth outline and then drew the spot for the teeth (which I later enlarged with the white marker). Then I drew the eyes and hairs and finally the carrot for a nose. 

Then on the back I wrote: "I like warm hugs."

The first one I did I thought the mouth was too big, but I actually liked that one better in the end. Our plan is to have a hot chocolate bar with the mugs and then have the kids take the mug home as the favor.

For more Frozen ideas check out:

• Frozen Fractals Lesson
• Frozen Fractals Lesson 2 & Olaf Craft
• Sharing Saturday with Frozen Features
• My Disney's Frozen Pinterst Board

Frozen Fractals Lesson 2 and Olaf Craft

Last week I gave you an introduction to fractals in response to all the interpretations of frozen fractals from Disney's Frozen movie's song, "Let It Go." Today I thought I would continue my lesson on fractals. But first I wanted to share an easy craft to make an Olaf from the movie. Hazel got her Elsa and Anna dolls this week and she now wants the males so she can re-enact the entire movie. I told her we could make an Olaf. Looking at our supplies I came up with some styrofoam balls, a little bit of white and black Model Magic and some pipe cleaners (black and brown), googly eyes and an orange tear drop shaped foam piece. I cut the biggest and medium styrofoam balls in half and toothpicked them together. Then we used a small styrofoam ball and some of the white clay to make his head. We covered the other two balls as best we could with what we had left of the white clay. We did not have enough, but she didn't care. Then we used the black to form the buttons and mouth. I took a small piece of white for his tooth from the back. We added the brown pipe cleaners for arms and hair and then put the eyes on with tiny black pipe cleaner eye brows. The eyes and eye brows as well as the nose all needed to be glued on to get them to stick well.

Hazel is happy with how he turned out, so we will go with it. I will eventually get us some more white Magic Model to finish his bottom part and add the legs.

Now onto fractals. Last week we looked at the Koch Snowflake since we are talking frozen fractals. But I was thinking I should explain why study fractals besides to know what they are from a line in a song. Fractals are a very new thing in the math world. However they are being used in so many places and have been around forever. Fractals occur in nature and always have. Mathematicians and scientists somewhat ignored them for a long time due to how complex the shapes looked. For years we have simplified our shapes to fit into our cookie cutter basic shapes: circle, square, triangle, rectangle, etc. However things like a fern are not a basic shape and when you simplify it to such you lose some of its elements.

"Barnsley fern plotted with VisSim" by DSP-user - Own work, using model written by Mike Borrello This chart was created with VisSim.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

As we learn more about fractals we are finding more uses for them. For those who remember Encyclopedia Encarta, the pictures on this CD were developed by programs written to make fractals similar to the wanted picture. Fractals are used in making movie backgrounds, video games as well as being explored in medicine. The lungs are now realized to be fractals as well as our blood vessels (veins and arteries). The more we learn about fractals in the human body the better our medical science will be.

"Thorax Lung 3d (2)" by AndreasHeinemann at Zeppelinzentrum Karlsruhe, Germany http://www.rad-zep.de - http://www.rad-zep.de. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

We will talk today about one of the more basic fractals and one that is easy to create. I often had my geometry students create this fractal in different ways. It is a wonderful way to teach about measuring, as well as midsegments of triangles. We are going to make a Sierpinski Triangle or sometimes called the Sierpinski Gasket. To start you need a triangle. You can use any triangle. Most commonly used are equilateral triangles, but any will work.

Now the rule is to draw the three midsegments of the triangle. A midsegment is a line segment that connects the midpoints of two sides of triangle. Its properties are that it is parallel to the third side and its length is equal to half the length of the third side.

The final part of the rule is to remove the triangle formed by the midsegments. To remove it, we will color it in.

Now we continue to the next stage by doing the same thing for all the non-colored in (nonremoved) triangles.

Sorry for some reason I did not take a picture of Stage 2 with the triangles removed. We continue our rule for Stage 3.

Finally we have Stage 3 which is where I stopped since I was not feeling well and I was getting a bit of a headache. However you can see how the rule can be applied infinitely as with all fractals.

The Sierpinski Triangle is also a great fractal to explore self-similarity. In the one below you can see how each color represents a shape that looks like the whole.

"Sierpinski-rgb". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.


The one below is zooming into magnify the smaller parts of the Sierpinski Triangle to show its infinite range. 

"Sierpinski zoom" by Mariko GODA - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Finally I want to share with you a Sierpinski Pyramid that we made in one of the summer classes I took at Yale. We made it by forming regular tetrahedrons from envelopes. I do not totally remember how now, but thought it was neat to share.

 A true Sierpinski Pyramid would have a hole in the middle, but that is not easy to construct in actual life. Here is one I found on-line.


"Sierpinski pyramid". Licensed under Public domain 
via Wikimedia Commons.

Finally if you want to learn more about fractals in nature and the importance of them, check out this video of the Yale professor, Michael Frame, who taught the courses I took on fractals. He ends it with a story about the amazing late Benoit Mandelbrot (last week I shared a picture of myself with Mandelbrot) and about how fractals are about storytelling as is most math and science. It is really worth watching. On that note a talk about fractals is not complete without looking at the Mandelbrot Set. The math involved is more advanced, however it is beautiful to look at.

"Mandelbrot set with coloured environment". Licensed under  
CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

For some more on fractals check out:

• Happy Pi Day
• What Are Frozen Fractals?
• My Math Pinterest Board

What Are Frozen Fractals? A Lesson on Fractals to Go with Disney's Frozen Movie and Let It Go Song

Hazel and I LOVE Disney's movie Frozen. We are constantly listening to the soundtrack in our car. One of our favorite songs from the movie is Let It Go. If you have not heard the song or seen the movie you can
check out the song from the actual movie (with movie scenes) from Disney's website.