Savour the Christmas Season - DIY Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments

For the salt dough recipe click here

We used acrylic paint.

I made all of us an ornament, each with our initials.

One for the front door.

After painting them, we sprayed the ornaments with clear coating. This way they received their shine and last longer.

Savour the Christmas Season - Sugar Cookies

We are savouring the Christmas Season by baking sugar cookies and decorating them. I think this is also a brilliant gift idea! 

The Sugar Cookie Recipe (couldn't get any easier than this!)

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened  
• 2 cups white sugar 
• 4 eggs  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract  
• 5 cups all-purpose flour 
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4  inch thick. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. 
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

4. Decorate! 

Savour the Christmas Season - Gingerbread houses

We are savouring the Christmas Season by making our very own gingerbread houses. We had a blast making these, you'll see why! The end result is a killer!

I had ginger bread cookie cutters to begin with so I can't help with the design, but I can share the recipe which I altered for my "Finnish" taste buds. The mollases we get here (in Canada) isn't anything like we get back in Finland, so I had to make a few changes. I think it worked out well and tastes like the real deal. Almost.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 C molasses
• 1/4 C maple syrup
• 250g butter
• 1 C sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1tsp ground cloves
• 2tsp cinnamon
• 2tsp ginger
• 1T lemon juice/ 1tsp pomersanssin kuorta
• 3-4 C flour
• 2 tsp baking soda

Insturctions:

•  In a sauce pan bring butter, molasses, syrup amd spices to the boil, remove and let cool completely. Mix in eggs, flour and baking soda. Cover and let it harden over night in the fridge.

• Take small sections and roll them out flat with a little flour. If you find the dough too hard, warm it up in the micro 30seconds at a time

•  Cut out the parts for the house and place them carefully on a parchment sheet covered baking tin. Bake at 400F for 6-8minutes. Melt sugar in a sauce pan and use as "glue" by dipping the pieces in to assemble them. The melted sugar hardens fast, so be quick. Be careful you don't burn your fingers with the melted sugar, it hurts!

 VOILA!

•  Let the kids decorate, have a go yourself. Be creative, use colours, texture...

 We gave it our best, we really did. We ended up doing three houses that were just as pretty. Ha ha!

Savour the Christmas Season -Pipe Cleaner Candy Canes

 Fun craft idea with the kids. I only needed the idea since I had pipe cleaners in our arts and craft box.

 Twist 2-3 colours together. I am old school. This Christmas our colours are mostly red and white.

Savour the Christmas Season -Free Printable Advent Ornaments -By Confessions of a Homeschooler

I stumbled across this fabulous blog Confessions of a Homeschooler and to this fantastic idea for an Advent Ornament! Click here for the original source but scroll down as I want to share with you how brilliantly it turned out! 

I am a bit late in posting about this since we are on day 12 but nevertheless, this is brilliant and super fun!

 I put them along our mantel.

 Today we made hand made Pipe Cleaner Candy Canes!

I did laminate them because I plan on having these in our Christmas' to come! Fantastic! It's not too late to make your own! Oh by the way, this is what activities are on the back of each triangle:

1. Candle lit bubble bath!
2. Make paper snowflakes & decorate!
3. Fill Operation Christmas Child Boxes
4. Make personalized Christmas Ornaments
5. The Minivan Express
6. Rootbeer floats tonight!
7. Make Christmas cookies!
8. Make Christmas Cards for friends/family
9. Have hot chocolate and marshmallows
10. Make a pipe cleaner candy cane craft
11. Make Christmas Star Paper Chain
12. Make Candy Ornaments
13. Gather old coats, clothes, and toys to donate to your local shelter
14. Family Game Night
15. Make a Gingerbread house 
16. Dance and sing to Christmas Music
17. Make a christmas craft
18. Dress Fancy for dinner tonight
19. Wrap Christmas Presents
20. Watch “It’s a wonderful Life”
21. Take a night drive to see the Christmas lights in your neighborhood!
22. Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn of course!
23. Read or Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
24. Make birthday cake for Jesus!
25. Merry Christmas!

Homeschool - DIY Story Time Pillow Covers

We have circle time daily with our kids. This usually happens just before bed time. We ask the kids to grab their "Bible-Piiri" (Bible Circle in FINg-lish) pillows and gather around in the living room. My husband has normally prepped a topic, which he then reads about and then we discuss it. This is a real hit, the kids have so much input. Sometimes we discuss straight from their kids Bibles and sometimes the topic is related to what happened during the day.

Anyhow, here is how we made their circle time pillows even more special. I got a set of white pillow cases from Walmart and fabric pens. I have increased the colour range of the pens since then, ready for future projects.

 They drew things that made them happy, things they like, are good at etc.

The theme of the month is OBEDIENCE. This theme should last a life time, hence the printing on the pillows :) A good verse to memorize.

Savour the Valentine's Day Season part 5

Savour the season by giving tulips for your sister, daughter, mother, friend or /and grandmothers...

 -Make their day!

Savour the Valentine's Day Season Part 4

  This morning, we savoured the season by making and eating heart shaped omelettes! yummy!

I don't have a heart shaped cookie cutter, so I had to improvize....

For my two oldest monkeys...

Savour the Valentine's Day Season Part 2

 DIY  "I love you Day!" Shoe box gifts!

Have your kids decorate the boxes as they wish, encourage them to decorate with pink, red, hearts, you know... with all of those LoveLove colour and theme :)

 Fill the boxes up with rice paper, sweets and the gifts they have bought for each other. 

 Let them be creative! Finish it off with "I love you day!" self made cards.

You don't have to spend much money to fill up the boxes. For example, i found a jar of bubble gum in my pantry. I seperated the pink and red gum balls from the rest and put them in zip lock bags. Voilá. Be creative!

-Enjoy!

Savour the Valentine's Season Part 1

I'm trying something very new here. We don't normally celebrate Valentine's day, since we know it as 'Friends Day' back home. However, now we live in North America and it is a BIG thing here, - we'll embrace it! We'll welcome it into our home and we will call it "I love you Day!". (Thank you Bates Family for the title idea!)

How can we make this "I love you day" last? Here's an idea!

Write letters to your loved ones and tell them how much they mean to you!

These letters ofcourse are given to them on the day. Hence, the last paragraph. Show your children how much you as parents love them by serving them for example, sweets/popcorn, dvd, their favourite blanky, and really go "all out" for them. Pretend your waiters and it's a V.I.P Movie Theatre ;) in your own home!

I'm declaring my love for him!

Reward Chart

 If you need to motivate your child to do right, a reward chart is a good start. However, it would be good to teach the child to do right from the heart and not just because she/he will "get something out of it". There is a saying though, "what gets rewarded, gets repeated". I have created a Reward Chart for my kids with the areas that they are currently struggeling in. There are many areas they struggle in that I put on the chart, but I don't want to overwhelm them. So I choose the 'worst' that need dealing with a.s.a.p as in, bad attitude, ungratefulness, selfishness, disrespect, disobidience etc and then turn those into ' happy heart, sharing is caring, no back-chatting, instant obidience'... So far so good!

Homeschool: Creating a Classroom in Your Kitchen

I have been homeschooling my son for 2 years now. Officially 1. Untill now it has never really had that feeling of "school" that I hoped for. What I have tried to do is create a school like feeling that is one condusive to learning, but second, a place where I feel motivated to be a teacher. 

So, I went out and bought some things that would help me to create this educational enviroment, and spent the evening -and some of the night, putting up all the stuff. When we were done we had a white board, A-Z stickers, a month chart, days of the week cards, weather chart, and a reward chart up. 

In the morning when the kids woke up, they were amazed and happy.

 Click on the images below, to appear bigger.

Our Classroom.

 Months and weekdays.

 The blackboard and reward chart.

I look forward to teaching these little kiddos again on Monday!

Family Rose Easter Menu and Recipes

Roast Beef

I sear it before putting it in the oven 400*F for about an hour untill the inside temperature reaches 75*C. I lay the beef on top of thickly sliced onions and pour over some water to create the steam and juice whilst roasting. I use the left over juice in my gravy.

Roast Lamb 
Click for recipe

Pasha
Click for recipe

Green Salad with Goat Cheese

I dip the slices of goat cheese in batter (just milk works fine too) and then bread crumbs, and fry it on a medium heat with butter until they are golden and crisp. Place a few slices on top of a bed of greens and drizzle balsamic oil on top. Plain and delicious.

Roast Vegg

I chop swede, beets, onion, potatoes and carrots, place them in a glass dish. I drizzle olive oil, a sprinkle of salt, parsley and pepper- throw in a few cloves of garlic with skin on and then some rosemary. They roast in the oven at the same time as the roast beef.