Felt Zoo Preparation

Sharing Saturday is still open and waiting for your child-oriented crafts and activities!

For Christmas we are giving Hazel a finished version of her zoo mat with a castle play mat on the other side. We also bought her the Melissa and Doug Castle Block Play Set. I wanted to make her some animals for her zoo, so I got started on them this weekend. I made her this adorable penguin. I got the free pattern at Nuno Life.

Zoo Play Mat Unfinished

I also made a lioness. I got the pattern from my Joan Russell book, The Woman's Day Book of Soft Toys & Dolls. It is out of print but you can buy used copies at Amazon. I will be making the male lion as well which is similar but has a mane. Are you making any Christmas gifts for your little ones?

Sharing Saturday #47

Have you had a chance to be inspired by the amazing ideas shared last week? If not, go check them out and leave some blog love with comments! I also shared some features during the week. I shared some from Sharing Saturday #45 here and some Thanksgiving posts from #45 and #46 here.

Click on picture to visit post!

Now I should tell you we put up our Christmas tree today so I think I have Christmas on the brain even though it is still November. Here are a few of my favorites.

1) From Being Inspired: Nativity Hand Puppets (I so need to make Hazel a set of these--maybe next year for her Advent calendar gifts.)
2) From Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom: Paper Mache Trees (Oh, I can see us making some of these. I love them!)
3) From Making Boys Men: Things to do with Foil and Kids (Some great ideas!!)
4) From Ginx Craft: Christmas Love (She offers the pattern for free and I can see knitting some of these for next year's Holiday Fair.)
5) From Mother of Discussion: Monoprints Inspired by Margaret Preston (With a wonderful tutorial!)


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:

Thanksgiving Round-Up

Today I thank God for a wonderful holiday with most of my family!

 

Now for This Week's Party   

A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow both hosts via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. A reminder: Mia is taking a blogging break. Hopefully she will be back soon to host again!!

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Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest. 

Christmas Around The World & Other Holidays!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I am going to start my focus on our next big holiday, Christmas. I have joined a group of bloggers led by Beth at Living Life Intentionally to present Christmas Around the World. Each day a different blog will feature what Christmas or a winter holiday is celebrated in a different country around the world. This amazing event starts today! My post will be on December 10th. To check out all the amazing posts, just click the links above!!

To kick off the holiday season, I thought I would share a few holiday books and an amazing multicultural CD with you. First from my friend, Daria (who is also participating in Christmas Around the World). (You may remember Daria from my first Multicultural Monday. She is the one who inspired me to start Multicultural Mondays!)

Daria was kind enough to send me her holiday CD to review here. Now this CD is not a Christmas CD. It is a World Holiday CD. The difference of course being that it does not only have Christmas songs.

Now my favorite part of this CD is that on the back she gives a little information/history of each song. The CD has five songs on it. Two are Hanukkah songs: one from Spain and one from America. Then there are two Christmas songs: Feliz Navidad and a German song with an English verse added and finally it has a version of Jingle Bells with the history that it is actually a Thanksgiving song. So if you are looking for a way to celebrate the season and not just one holiday, check out this great CD. You can purchase it here! I should also add that we love her other CD's as well or at least the one we have. Also, if you should check out her Monthly Song Newsletter. It always has amazing giveaways, songs, and crafts. November she is celebrating Native American Heritage Month and has some amazing ideas there.

I also wanted to share with you some of the Christmas books we have found and love!

Of course several are from this month's author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. You can check out the blog hop for some ideas to go with a few. 

The first is The Story of Mary by Patricia A. Pingry. This is a book I picked up at a discount store a few years ago, but we love it. It tells the story mostly from Mary's view and sticks pretty close to the Bible, but is in a way that Hazel has always loved.

The second is The Birds of Bethlehem by Tomie dePaola. This is the newest book by dePaola (and I know there are some posts in the blog hop on it). This story is about the birds discussing the different things they saw in Bethlehem the day before which of course was the first Christmas.

The third is The Story of the Three Wise Kings by Tomie dePaola. This book tells the story of the three wisemen in a way that children like to follow. We really enjoy it!

The fourth is Who Is Coming to Our House? by Joseph Slate and Ashley Wolff. This story is about the animals in the stable getting ready for their special guests on Christmas Eve.

The fifth is An Early American Christmas by Tomie dePaola. This story is about a small New England town where no one has Christmas trees, puts candles in the windows, or sings Christmas carols until a family from Germany and Pennsylvania move in. They make bayberry candles to put in the windows to light the way for the Christ child. They have a Christmas tree and sings Christmas carols and soon their neighbors start doing the same. This is one of Hazel's favorites!

The final one is The Friendly Beasts: an Old English Christmas Carol illustrated by Tomie dePaola. This English carol is about the roles the animals played in the stable to assist with the new baby king.

So here is our Black Friday post. I hope you will join us for the various events mentioned (Christmas Around the World, The Virtual Book Club Blog Hop, etc.)!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Today I thank God for having most of my family here together and keeping us all safe and healthy!

Hazel helping make the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie for our feast!

Today in the United States we are celebrating Thanksgiving. This is the day to thank God for a good harvest and for all your other blessings. Supposedly it dates back to 1621 with the Pilgrims and some Wampanoag Native Americans. 

I shared some Thanksgiving books here, but we found another amazing one that I have to share! A Child's Story of Thanksgiving by Laura J. Rader is a great book that goes through the historical part of Thanksgiving including why the Pilgrims left England and Holland to the modern time of what is done. This is among my top two Thanksgiving books!

Since I am spending time with my family (and hosting/cooking) I will be busy so I am going to share with you some Thanksgiving Features from the last two Sharing Saturdays. Feel free to click on the picture to go to the Sharing Saturday where each was shared! I did a similar sharing last year if you want even more ideas!

1) From The Chirping Moms: Handprint Thanksgiving Shirts
2) From The Chirping Moms: No Bake Thanksgiving Cookies
3) From Grandparents Plus: 15+ Thanksgiving Games
4) From Waldorf By Me: Autumn Activity Round-Up
5) From The Chirping Moms: Turkey Snack
6) From Making Memories...One Fun Thing After Another: Turkey Cookies
7) From Repurpose My Life: Turkey Craft with Messages of Thanksgiving
8) From Momma's Fun World: Turkey Lantern

1) From Raise a Boy: Leaf Window Treatment
2) From Like Mama ~ Like Daughter: Thanksgiving at Playschool
3) From Making Memories...One Fun Thing After Another:  Turkey Cookies and More Turkey Cookies
4) From Making Boys Men: Autumn Masks
5) From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: Eye'm Thankful  No Picture, but worth a visit!
5) From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: Mayflower Math and More
6) From Tippytoe Crafts: Thankful Turkeys
7) From Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom: Cranberry, Pomegranate Pineapple & Orange Sauce
8) From Diana Rambles: I Am Thankful for My Daughter Lunch

If you are still looking for some Thanksgiving Crafts and Activities here are some of ours from the past two years. 

Features from Sharing Saturday #45

If you came to share at Sharing Saturday #46, you are aware I did not have time last week to visit all the wonderful posts shared at Sharing Saturday #45 and I only featured the three most clicked on Saturday. However I did visit them today and have some of my favorites to share with you.

Also due to Thanksgiving on Thursday, I will be sharing some Thanksgiving features with you on Thursday both from Sharing Saturday #45 and #46. Oh, and Sharing Saturday #46 is still open through Wednesday night (EST) if you would like to share anything with us this week!

My Sharing Saturday Features:

1) From Family Home and Life: Spoon Dolls
2) From Life with Moore Babies: Watercolor Constellation Hunt
3) From Annie One Can Cook: Operation Christmas (a way for us to support our troops this holiday season!)
4) From Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom: Peasant Dress Tutorial
5) From Wesens-Art: Paper Globes
6) From Like Mama ~ Like Daughter: Winter Birds (Books and activities!!)
7) From De Gulle Aard: Teddy Bear
8) From Inspirational Laboratories : D is for Density (Sorry I couldn't take a picture from it, but what a great lesson!!)

Other reasons to visit the amazing ideas shared last week--they included how to fix your dishwasher by cleaning the filter (from Family Home and Life) and a great list of books for dealing with social skills (from Play Dr Mom) just to name a couple more plus lots of delicious looking recipes and some great ideas to get started on the holiday season!

Today I thank God for the time to play catch up in my life and to sit back enjoy my time with my daughter and family!