Our Valentines

We made our own Valentines this year and had a blast doing it!  (Thanks Pinterest!)  First, we had to peel the paper off of and break into pieces many, many, many crayons!

 

Then we took the broken crayon pieces and randomly placed them in our star muffin tin.

   

And into the oven…220 degrees for about 20 minutes.  I kept a close eye on the crayons since I wanted to pull them out of the oven before the colors melted into pure liquid and became a solid brown color.

   

It took a little bit of trial and error but at the end of the day we had  14 beautiful star crayons!

Jesse wanted his put on “star” valentines. 

The boys’ valentine’s said, “You’re a Superstar!” and the girls’ said, “Jesus’ love is out of this world!”

 

Trey wanted his to be in the shape of hearts, and they all said, “Jesus’ love is out of this world!”  Our valentine’s were super easy to make and  a huge hit in both the kindergarten and 4th grade. 

A Little Christmas Crafting

Today was our 7th day of no school.  I hesitate to call it our 7th day of vacation because there hasn’t been much R & R around here.  The boys have been awesome about letting me sleep in every morning, but once I’m up we’re B.U.S.Y. 

Saturday was our first official day off but we were up bright and early kicking off our 2011 Upwards Basketball season.

Sunday we went to church in the morning and both boys graduated from the “New Converts Class” that they have been attending the last several months.  And while Jesse asked Jesus into his heart about a year ago, this class has led him to make the decision to be baptized!  We are very excited about that!

Sunday night we visited our in-laws church to watch our nieces & nephew in their Christmas play.

Monday was mine & Phil’s 13th anniversary and he treated to me one of my favorite restaurants and some shopping in Jacksonville!  I am super blessed to married to my best friend.  Although he can drive me crazy at times, there is no one I would rather go through this life with.  His fortune cookie that night read, “Your ability to find the silly in the serious will take you far.”  This fits him to a tee and is the secret to our wedded bliss.  No matter what is going on, he can always make me laugh.  It’s saved him from many a serious beatings;-)

Tuesday I took the boys and one of their friends to see the new Chipmunks movie, Chipwrecked!  It was super cute and we had a blast!

In between all of this, we’ve been crafting!

For several years now, we have been making cinnamon dough ornaments.  The boys love it and look forward to playing in the dough!

And while we’ve been making these ornaments for several years, this is the first year that I let the boys paint them.  I had so much fun watching each boy’s individual personality emerge while they were painting.  Trey had a plan for each ornament and was very careful in carrying out his plan.  And Jesse was paint happy and slapped the colors around as the mood struck him. 

And I think they turned out GREAT!

Our 2nd big craft project was making footprint Christmas tree tiles!  This involved me painting the boys feet green & their toes red!  They LOVED it!

 

Once the “trees” were dry, the boys decorated them.

And I am in love with the results!

Our final big project was mostly all mine.  I saw an idea on pinterest of creating magnet boards with cookie sheets and I knew just what I wanted to do.  When Trey was 3, we wrapped some of our Christmas presents in homemade wrapping paper that was just too cute!  So I pulled out some of Trey’s leftover wrapping paper and I duplicated the wrapping paper design with Jesse and created my magnet boards.

I tell ya, I’m going to hate taking these cuties down after Christmas!  I am very pleased with how our Christmas crafting has turned out, but I’m also very exhausted!  I’m ready to enjoy some down time next week, popping popcorn and watching movies with my boys!  But first…we must bake up some of our favorite Christmas treats and spend some great time with family!