Journey to Excellence

We will be adorning our Christmas tree with two kinds of garlands this year: A dried apple slice garland and a popcorn garland. Right now I have my apple slices drying out. They should be ready for us to string on December 23rd, like this:  It will look something like this when we are done. And, of course, for popcorn garlands we will just pop a few bags of popcorn, string them and hang them.

I hope you have been enjoying this 12 Days of a Simple Christmas reposted series. Again, these were a series of posts from 2010 when we decided to spend only the few days before Christmas preparing for it, just like in the olden days. It was a meaningful Christmas, definitely, and one I won't ever forget. As I looked at this post my heart melted. Look at how tiny Eli and Brynne were!!! Today is Eli's 11th birthday, so reposting this is especially emotional for me. Here is what I wrote in 2010 ... I had it in my heart to get a Ball and Burlap Christmas tree this year. (Honestly, I didn't even know what they were until I came across one as being a Christmas tradition of old.) What is a Ball and Burlap tree? It's a tree that has been dug out of the ground, roots and all, instead of cut. The roots are bound in a ball and wrapped in burlap. After it is used as a Christmas tree, it can be replanted. Something excited me about the idea of letting our Christmas tree continue...

Instead of paying the electric company to light the outside of our home, this year we are making luminaries to place on our sidewalk, front porch and doorstep. I purchased half-pint mason jars. We are covering them with Christmas tissue paper and decoupage glue. Then we will just add a tea light to each one and put them out on Christmas Eve to light the way for the Christ child.

Since making Bayberry candles would be a challenge, I found an alternative so that we can still get in some candle making which was a tradition in Colonial days. These lacey candles are not difficult and turn out beautiful! (These are candles from the Taste of Home site. Mine are below) Complete instructions can be found at this Taste of Home site. Here are a few tips from me. I used small milk cartons I got out of the trash at my son's elementary school. I just rinsed them out, cut the tops off and let them dry completely. I used two, 1-lb. blocks of paraffin wax and pre-made 3 1/2" wicks with tabs (instead of "tapers"). This made eight candles using small milk cartons. To put in the wicks, I hot glued them to the bottom of the milk carton. To melt the wax, I just put the blocks in an oven-safe pan, on a pizza pan, and melt at 225 degrees. I actually filled the milk carton about 3/4 full with crushed ice and then poured wax until the ice was just ...

One natural way to decorate your tree is with fruit! We will be making dried orange slices to put on our tree, apple slice garlands and pomanders. To make pomanders, you just take a whole orange, decorate it with whole cloves and ribbons and you're done. These always smell so good and look even better. Make sure you hang them on a sturdy branch on the tree!

First of all, be still my heart .... look at how adorable my little Brynney was in 2010. I want to reach into that picture and gobble her up!!! I had originally planned to make sugar cookie ornaments for the tree. But then I got to thinking about the four puppies and what they would do to a tree full of sugar cookies. Sooooo , I switched my thinking to Salt Dough. On Monday I whipped up two batches of Salt Dough, got out the tin of Christmas cookie cutters and put my two little elves to work. They made stars, snowflakes, gingerbread men, reindeer, stockings (one for each member of our family), snowmen and other things. And then they will be painted, starting today. So far we have made a couple of batches of crystal ornaments and salt dough ornaments. Paper ornaments are next. Today, tomorrow and Friday we are going to spend all day making ornaments. Things are coming along nicely! ** The only picture I have of these ornaments was on our tree and it is so far away you c...

Eli is one of those students who loves every teacher, and every teacher loves him .. even if he doesn't have them for any classes. He loves the secretaries (and never leaves for the day without hugging each of them), loves his principal and librarian and P.E. teacher and music teacher and computer teacher. He also has a speech pathologist, occupational therapist and reading specialist. Of course we give a Christmas gift to his homeroom teacher. But, he would be devastated if he didn't get to hand a gift to each of his other teachers (down to the lunchroom monitor, nurse, counselor and school instructional assistant.) That can get expensive!!   But we are grateful for them all and want to thank them for their love and care. Here is our yearly solution, that doesn't cost much. But they are oh ... so ... good! Spicy Pretzels 15 oz. bag pretzels 1 package  dry ranch dressing (i.e. Hidden Valley) 3/4 cup oil 1/2 tsp. lemon pepper 1/2 tsp. garlic salt 1/...

In 2010, when we celebrated our Old-Fashioned Christmas, we made all of the decorations for our tree. Our favorites were the Crystal Ornaments. They are easy to make and really beautiful! We will be making all of our decorations for our Christmas tree this year. One type of ornament that we will be mass-producing is crystal ornaments made from pipe cleaners and Borax. I got the idea from Nature Mom's Blog (go there for step-by-step instructions), and I can't wait to adorn our tree with them! In addition to these styles, I also want to make lots of silver snowflakes. Not only are we doing these for our tree, but we are making several of them for Brynne to barter at her bartering table at Homeschool Coop this Friday. (We have actually made these ornaments a couple of times since then. They are easy, pretty, and lots of fun. My favorites were white pipe cleaners twisted into spirals. They looked like icicles.)

Welcome to Day 2 of "The 12 Days of a Simple Christmas". This is a repost from the simple Christmas we had in 2010. Yesterday we talked about the tradition of the Bayberry candle . Today we are talking about fresh wreaths and swags. In Colonial days, the families made their own fresh wreaths and swags. We don't have any evergreen or pine trees in our yard. (I could go across the street and cut some off the neighbor's tree, but stealing is frowned upon, especially at Christmas.) But, we do have boxwood bushes. Boxwoods are a very popular bush here in the Midwest. They can be used to decorate a mantle or twisted into a pretty wreath. I like these ideas ... And this is a great idea! You could also do other words (such as NOEL) and even hang in windows instead. Here is what I did on our mantle in 2010 ... This was an easy decorating option. This year we used the extra clippings off our Christmas tree to decorate our mantle.

As I have posted about for the past several months, the kids and I have been using Prairie Primer as our main unit study for this year. We have read the first three books in the Little House on the Prairie series and will continue to read the rest of the books throughout the year.  For the past two weeks we have taken a break and done an author study on Tomie dePaola, specifically reading many of his Christmas books. I posted all about that study yesterday. In 2010, the kids and I read a book by Tomie dePaola called An Early American Christmas . I loved that book. It is all about how Christmas traditions came to America. So that year we based our entire Christmas around it, especially our decorations. I posted a series that year called "The 12 Days of a Simple Christmas" and each day I highlighted one of our simple traditions from that year. Since we have been reading about the simple and homemade traditions of the pioneer Christmas in the Little House serie...