November Events

Source

It is hard to believe it is already November!! We have so many exciting things planned for the month. My mind however seems to already be on Christmas, so expect some Christmas ideas in November as well as a couple of Christmas product reviews and at least one giveaway. But do not worry we will also have plenty on Thanksgiving!! November is National Native American Month. We will be focuses on Native American fairy tales as well as other Native American crafts. My love for the various Native American cultures will shine through out November.

This month we are exploring Thailand with Around the World in 12 Dishes. We will start our exploration on Monday with a Thai Cinderella! Our recipe post for Around the World in 12 Dishes will be shared on November 19th! However the placemat and passport pages for Thailand are available (Thanks to Valerie over at Glittering Muffins!)

The author this month for Virtual Book Club for Kids is Karma Wilson! She is best known for her Bear books, but we are loving the Mortimer ones as well. She seems to have something for everyone--holidays, lessons, young and older. Have you discovered her yet?

We will be sharing our book and activities on November 11th. I hope you will join us for these great posts and more!

Sharing Saturday 13-42

Ok, I have been a bad hostess the last few weeks. Once again I have not made it to visit many. I'm so sorry. I have to admit my life seems crazy from now until the new year. Hopefully I'll find time again soon. I am so behind on emails and social media as well. We also dealt with Hazel having a cold. She was sick enough to stay home and want mommy, but well enough to need to be entertained, so I didn't have the time I usually do the past few days. This is also why Flamingo Friday did not happen this week. Between Halloween and a sick child, I was lucky to check the computer. Anyway, I hope you had a chance to check out the great posts shared last week. They look amazing!! There was a large tie for the most clicked, so we will just feature a few that caught my eye.

1) From Doting on Deirdre: Wise Old Owl Crafting

2) From There's Just One Mommy: Preschooler Owl Craft

3) From What We Do All Day: 25 Math Activities for After School

4) From April's Homemaking: 52 Weeks of Fairy Tales #49--Lichka

5) From Juggling with Kids: The Secret to Cutting Felt

6) From Trillium Montessori: Parts of a Turkey (Free on Teachers Paying Teachers)

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. 

Featured Button Code:

<a href="http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g424/cpericola/SharingSaturdayoption2-002.jpg" /></a>

From Your Hostess:
This week we shared a Baby Moses craft and books we have been reading, an Islamic Snow White, craft book review to make felt animals, and our Halloween.

Now for This Week's Party  
A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow Crafty Moms Share via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post. 

3) Post the newly updated button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

<a href="http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com/search/label/Sharing%20Saturday" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g424/cpericola/SharingSaturdayoption2-150_zpsba88f805.jpg" /></a>

4) I would love it if you would follow me on Facebook,  Google+, and Pinterest 

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

Halloween

Congratulations to Andrea F. for winning the ebook of Christmas Crafts for Kids and a belated congratulations to Brenda W. for winning The ABC's of Australian Animals yoga book!

I have never really liked the scary parts of Halloween. I don't like where Halloween has gone and how over the top it is. I do remember loving dressing up and trick-or-treating as a child, so I wanted Hazel to have that experience without all the drama and commercialism. For her first Halloween I was excited to dress her up and take her to some family and friends' houses. Now of course she is excited to dress up and go trick-or-treating. I have made her costumes except for the first year where I found an adorable one at a consignment shop.

I chose the duck and lion costumes. She wanted to be the dish and spoon with me since she use to take my hand and tell me to run so we could be the dish and spoon from Hey Diddle, Diddle. Last year she wanted to be Rapunzel and this year she wants to be Cinderella. I finally finished her dress. I still need to put the elastics in her lower sleeves/gloves, but I need her here to measure her arms to do that. Here is the dress.

I bought her a Cinderella wig to go with the costume. I will add a picture to this post once she is dressed up for trick-or-treating. 

She picked the darker blue for her gown instead of the Disney light blue. I should add she has two light blue dress up dresses to be Cinderella, but will not leave either one for any length of time since the cheap fabrics bother her skin. This is why I make so many of her costumes. 

Now Hazel is easily scared so Halloween is not a time we pull out the scary and gory decorations. We tend to focus on pumpkins, though we do have a large spider and web on our staircase this year and some friendly ghosts in our front entrance. I have struggled with explaining Halloween to Hazel and why so many people like to dress up scary. Last year I used the Mexican Day of the Dead to help explain it. Today I found a wonderful way to do it and to bring the religious meaning back to the holiday. Over at Catholic Icing there is a wonderful post on Explaining Halloween to Catholic Kids. I would say not being Catholic, that it could be used for any Christian children.

Then there is the issue of the candy. We try to limit Hazel's sugar input (and should really limit ours more). We have used the story of the Pumpkin Fairy to help with this. I shared our version of the story here.

This year we spent some time making the egg carton pumpkins that you have seen around on-line including some at Sharing Saturday. We took our candy corn rice krispie treats a step further and made them apple and pumpkin shape (we used cookie cutters). We decorated them this time with M&M's and Steve helped Hazel with the decorating.

The final thing I would like to share with you is a wonderful book. Now the note to parents says it is not a Halloween book, but it is about a jack-o'-lantern. The book is The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs. I bought a copy of this book for my church and then found a used copy at the used book store and picked one up for ourselves. The church used it for Hazel's class earlier this month and one of the crafts they made was a simple one. They took orange jack-o'-lantern goody bags and stuffed them and then added a special leaf on the tie.

The book goes through a farmer planting a pumpkin patch and then when harvest time comes choosing one special large pumpkin to carve a smiling face and leaving it on his porch for all to see. Throughout the book, there are Bible quotes to go with the story. It is really a nice book to take some of the scary away from Halloween and make you like jack-o'-lanterns more.

So that is a bit about our Halloween. How do you celebrate? We are really excited that this year it appears there will not be a Halloween storm so Steve will be home with us!

Book Review: Super-Cute Felt Animals

Today is the last day to enter my current giveaway. Have you entered yet?

Today I get the pleasure of reviewing a wonderful book to make felt animals. I am truly honored to get to review this book. The book, Super-Cute Felt Animals by Laura Howard is her latest book. However I fell in love with her designs from her first book, Super-Cute Felt. I was really excited when I stumbled upon Laura Howard's blog, Bugs and Fishes by Lupin, and it was announcing the newest book. I couldn't wait to see it. Laura has also been posting complementary felt projects to go with her newest book on her blog. 

Super-Cute Felt Animals features 35 projects and are divided into six chapters: In the Woods, On Safari, Under the Sea, On the Farm, In the Garden and At Home. The animals are three-dimensional, but a flat three-dimensional. They are perfect for making into ornaments, jewelry or to add dimension to a felt board. Laura also jazzes up the animals with sequins and beads as well as some stitches. 

I got into making felt things, especially animals, when Hazel was going to the Waldorf School. Now that she is not going there, I confess to switching to the cheaper felt, but I am still enjoying having small hand sewing projects to do. I have completed two of the animals in this book and am working on my third. Here are my projects.

From the In the Woods Chapter, I made this adorable deer. The deer has white seed beads for its spots and black seed beads for its eyes. I think I will sew a ribbon on it so it can be a Christmas ornament. Her book provides full patterns in the back to trace or photocopy (if you are lazy like me) as well as very clear directions on how to make each animal. She also provides help with cutting small pieces of felt and for each type of stitch.

From the Under the Sea Chapter, I made this flashy jellyfish. Hazel could not wait for it to be done. As soon as she saw it, she added it to her felt beach playmat. Again, the pattern and instructions were easy to use and follow. 

From the On the Farm Chapter, I am making this sheep. It is not quite done, but it is coming together very easily. I am making this one in secret since I plan to use it for one of Hazel's Advent calendar gifts. I also plan to make some pigeons, robins and parakeets from the book for her Advent calendar gifts. I'm hoping to make the birds from Tomie dePaola's The Birds of Bethlehem. I bought her a copy of the book as the first gift. Plus I want to make some felt nativity ornaments for our tree or hers and I figured the sheep would be perfect for this. 

So if you are looking for some easy but fun animals to make in felt, check out Laura Howard's Super-Cute Felt Animals. The book is perfect for homemade holiday gifts as well as for the beginning little sewers. The title describes her animals perfectly. You will also find wonderful tutorials at her blog!

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: Snow White: An Islamic Tale

Have you entered my current giveaway?

This week I am sharing Snow White: An Islamic Tale by Fawzia Gilani. Similar to her version of Cinderella, this picture book was created to teach children about the Islamic religion. It is an adaptation of the original story. I love how she intertwines the Islamic culture into the story and then offers a glossary at the end. I feel it is so important for all of us to understand one another's beliefs so we can find ways to get along and live in peace and want Hazel to understand others as well.

In this version, the wealthy couple has everything they want, except a child. On snowy day the wife falls asleep and dreams of a little girl and when she awakens she makes a du'a to have such a child with the patience of Job, peace of dawn and heart as pure as snow. Within a year she has a daughter and she remembers her dream and prayer on the snowy day and names her Snow White. The family is very happy and they teach Snow White all about their religion and her mother gives her a copy of the Qur'an. By the time Snow White is ten, her mother falls ill and dies. 

Although they find comfort in the Qur'an, Snow White's father wants her to be happier and hopes having the love of a mother again will do it, so he remarries. His new wife is very beautiful and at first she is kind, but soon she starts to mistreat Snow White. When Snow White's father says something about the mistreatment, he mysteriously becomes ill and dies. After his death, the stepmother no longer shows any kindness. She is very vain and asks her jinn (a being created from smokeless fire living in an alternate dimension on earth) who is the fairest of all. The answer is always her until one day the jinn says her beauty cannot compare to Snow White's. At this the stepmother is jealous and angry and calls for a huntsman to kill Snow White and bring back her heart and liver for the stepmother to eat. 

The huntsman tells Snow White what he must do or the stepmother will kill him. She begs him not to kill her and then a wild boar comes by. He kills the boar instead and brings its heart and liver to the stepmother. Snow White runs into the forest and keeps running until she finds a small cottage. No one answers when she knocks and she collapses on the porch into a deep sleep. 

At sundown the residents of the cottage return home. They are seven dwarf women. They find Snow White sleeping and bring her into their cottage. When she awakens she is frightened, but they are kind and introduce themselves. Each has a special quality to their character: wise, brave, forgiving, just, generous, patient, and kind. Snow White finally opens up and tells them her story. They tell her she shall stay with them and they will protect her. Each dwarf teaches Snow White their special skills that go with their characteristic and through the years she mastered them all. 

One year, the stepmother asked the jinn again about who is the fairest and it answered again Snow White. Again she became jealous and angry. She asked the jinn where Snow White was and found out about the cottage with the dwarfs. It was the month of Ramadan and the stepmother prepared some poisonous dates for Snow White. It is wrong to refuse dates to break your fast during Ramadan, so Snow White took them and of course fell to the ground. At this time the dwarfs were coming home and the brave one ran after the stepmother and caught a glimpse of her. The dwarfs took turns taking care of the sleeping Snow White. 

One day a prince came riding by. He saw one of the dwarfs out with the sleeping Snow White. After hearing about Snow White from all the dwarfs he dropped to his knee and recited the Fatiha (the opening chapter of the Qur'an). He then said he would send his mother, the Queen, to visit Snow White. The Queen came with a doctor. Every day the doctor gave Snow White the cordial and every day Snow White stirred a little more. One day she finally opened her eyes. 

The dwarfs were so happy to have Snow White awake. They sent news to the Queen. She came immediately and asked the dwarfs to permit Snow White to marry her son. They agreed. The King and Queen invited many people to the wedding including the stepmother. The day of the wedding the stepmother happened to ask the jinn again and found out the bride to be was Snow White. She comes up with another plan to kill her once and for all. She makes a poisonous comb. The brave dwarf recognizes her and tries to kick her out of the building, but the stepmother locks her in a room and then goes to find Snow White. She disguised herself as a servant and claimed that the Queen had sent her to help with Snow White's hair. However when the vain stepmother saw one of her own hair's out of place, she put the comb to her own head and she fell to the ground. A doctor was sent for and she was attended to during the wedding. 

A few days later the stepmother woke up and was shocked to see Snow White wearing a crown. Snow White told her she would forgive her and recited a verse from the Qur'an. The stepmother recovered and was said to never look in a mirror again. Snow White, the prince and the dwarfs lived happily ever after.