Behold, Jesus is at The Door - A Lesson in Attentiveness

I finally made a craft that I had thought of years ago while teaching Junior Church.  Jacob was still a baby and we were using lots of Costco brand baby wipes. They have the plastic closure on top where you pull out the baby wipes.  It hit me one day that you could use that as a door. Then Revelation 3:20 came to mind right away.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with Me."  Revelation 3:20

We are learning about "Attentiveness" for our Bible Character Quality Study right now and I thought Revelation 3:20 would be a perfect memory verse for it.

I explained to my kids that when we are attentive, our eyes are OPEN, our ears are OPEN and our mouths our CLOSED. In the verse it says, "If anyone HEARS My voice...."  So, we need to be listening for Jesus. He is waiting to have sweet fellowship with us.

And if we need salvation, all we have to do is "open the door of our heart" and let Jesus in. We believe that we are sinners, that Jesus is God, that He died on the cross as payment for our sins and rose again to have the victory over death. It is good to think of such things with Easter coming up.  This year I will not be putting out Easter baskets. I will give the kids a little treat on Saturday, but Sunday we want to focus on what Christ did for us on the cross.

Anyhoo, here are the instructions for this craft.

You will need;
the plastic closure from Costco brand baby wipes (door)
popsicle sticks
a picture of Jesus (you could have your children draw one)
brown paint
scissors
glue
paper to glue this on to

We started by cutting the picture of Jesus to fit behind the "door". Then glue that down to your paper.

Next we glued popsicle sticks to cover the door.

After we glued on the popsicle sticks (and a trip to Tim Horton's for coffee), we painted the door brown and added "cross beams" that were painted before they glued them on. (refer to picture)

This is what it looks like finished.  This one is Rebekah's. Notice the, "knock, knock, knock"?

And here is the open view. This one is Ben's.

They turned out exactly as I imagined they would. ONLY, please don't be like me and put them right into a notebook. I was so excited to be finally making these, that I didn't think about how thick they would be and had the kids glue into their Bible Memory Verse books!

This post is linked up to; Raising Homemakers, Hope in Every Season, Growing Home, A Wise Woman Link Up Mama's Moments

One of My Favorite Breakfasts

Lately I have been so enjoying homemade "greek" yogurt and homemade granola for breakfast or a snack. We ran out of Harvest Crunch a while back and I still have lots of old fashioned oats and sunflower seeds left from my bulk order, so I decided to try making granola.

I followed the basic recipe from here.  For the sweetener, I used part honey and part corn syrup and I did't have any oat flour, but now that I'm thinking about it, I probably could have just ground up some oats in my coffee grinder.

To make "greek" yogurt, I start by using Balkan style yogurt as my yogurt starter.  I had been using the cooler method to make our yogurt, but lately I have just been putting the jars in the oven and then warming it up to 130 degrees. Then I turn off the oven.  Every hour or so I warm it up again and turn it off repeating for 8 hours. It sounds labour intensive, but I just do it on days I'm around. Your supposed to keep yogurt at about 100 - 110 degrees. This way has been working great for me and I love that it doesn't use much electricity. I have been tempted to try the crockpot method, but I am really trying to lower our electic bill.

I strain my yogurt serving in a very fine strainer to get out the liquid. My mom had given me one just for yogurt a long time ago, but it's showing signs of it's age now. This strainer works just as good.

I usually add some canned peaches or raspberry jam as well as the granola.  Then I just enjoy!


This post is linked up to Mondays With Countrified Hicks

I Love Living in the Country

These are the days I especially love living in the country. Rebekah has been working very hard with our donkey, Jennie.  She has been teaching her to lead and to give rides. So, it's not out of the ordinary to see Rebekah, Jennie and Jacob walking up our driveway for a ride.

I'm so proud of all the time Rebekah has spent with the animals. She's always training, cleaning, brushing, feeding, watering or just loving them. Jennie came from a some what abusive home and it has been a long road for Rebekah to get this far, but you can tell Jennie is learning to trust her. 
Way to go Rebekah!

Homemade Window Clingers

This is an old post from 2011, but I wanted to repost it, because it is such a great idea. This is an inexpensive, fun way to decorate your house for all the holidays and seasons.

I'm sorry that the picture is so dark. We made snowflake window clingers for a winter lapbook we were doing. You can find the original post with instructions here.

Have fun and be creative!

Living History Books

In our home, we have a daughter who can not read enough history books! Rebekah prefers American history, because it's a little more exciting than Canadian history.  She also likes biblical history.
So, I have found that buying all these books is really starting to add up.  I bought her the first 5 of the Heroes of History by Janet and Geoff Benge.

 

 

These books are great! And Rebekah can remember most all of the facts she reads, but there are so many and it would cost a fortune to buy them all.

 

I thought it would be nice to have some Living History books. Living History books are books written in a story format about real people or events. That makes them easier to relate to and remember and maybe a little more interesting than a biography book.

 

So, we set out to some thrift stores.  We were blessed at the first thrift store. We found a Signature Book about "The Story of Edith Cavell" for $ 0.50.  These books are out of print, but can be found on Amazon, Ebay, or at thrift stores or library book sales.  Rebekah and I both read it and it was very good.  We looked up the Signature Biography Series and found out they have 51 titles.

 



I had also read that Landmark Books are very good and have many titles. So, I headed off to a local used book store. You would not believe what was sitting on top of a box just as I walked in.  The Clara Barton Landmark Book!  The owner hadn't put it on a shelf yet, because he didn't know what section to put it in. Which makes me think he doesn't get a lot of those types of books in.  He charged me, I think $1.50.

I see now, we just have to make more of an effort to look at the thrift stores and used book stores for these books so that we don't spend all of our homeschool funding on history books! We might even find some "Heroes of History" if God wills and Rebekah can read until her heart's content.

PS: If you check out Rebekah's blog, Country God Girl, you will see she has a whole section on history posts.

This post is linked up to Thrifty Thursday

Another Wonderful Birthday

So, it was that time of year again when I turn yet another year older.  As usual, my kids made my day great!

The boys wanted me to open their presents to me first thing in the morning. They painted wooden bird house ornaments and made cards for me. Ben also bought me a gift card to Tim Hortons. He's so thoughtful.

Then we had to get going to violin lessons. After we were done, we went to the dollar store. Rebekah bought me a Mars Bar and Jacob bought me a Caramilk.  When I asked him later if I could eat it, he asked, "Which one did I buy you?" I told him and he told me he ate it! So, he gave me a tootsie roll instead. He is so funny!

Rebekah also painted me a wooden bird house ornament and she and her friend worked all day to make me a beautiful birthday cake.

Rebekah and her friend measuring ingredients

They did such a lovely job.

Later, Larry came home with some balloons, pop and chips. It kind of gave me the idea that we were expecting company, but I didn't say anything.  And while we were eating supper, Larry handed me a jewelry box with a beautiful necklace with heart pendent.

 

 

When we were just done with supper, a vehicle pulled into our driveway and our really good friends showed up for a party!  We had lots of fun.  They came bearing gifts too.  They are Mennonites from Mexico and brought us some Mexican beef soup with jalapenos and chocolate cheesecake.

 

 

We ate it for lunch the next day. When I opened the can of jalapenos, they smelled so good. So I added a good teaspoon of them to my soup. My mouth was on fire!  I didn't add as many to my second bowl. It was so good and I am so thankful for good friends.

Also, throughout the day my family and friends called to wish me Happy Birthday. I even was completely blessed by a friend who phoned. We hadn't talked much in the last few years and it was SO nice to hear from her.
Thank you to my family and friends for helping me have a wonderful birthday.

A Recap of Our Last Week and a Half, Valentine's Day, Family Day and Penpals

It's so nice to feel good again! I have been under the weather for 2 weeks and finally started feeling better.

But there is so much to share, so I will just do a review post, starting with Valentines Day.

We don't really celebrate Valentines Day around here, so when Larry came home with beautiful roses and chocolates, I was very surprised and happy!

 

 

Next year I think we might borrow Shannon's idea from Apple Blossoms and make Valentine Hearts with scripture verses about love on them.  I just love that idea!

Then, here in Alberta, we got to celebrate a holiday called, "Family Day". We love this holiday that we get to spend time together and do fun things. 
First, our church had a Family Day Celebration a couple of days before Family Day.  Our youth pastor had a competition between the boys and girls to see who could do the best ice sculpture.

The girls had to make a sculpture of the bible story, "Noah's Ark".

The girls carving out Noah's Ark

The boys had to make a sculpture of the bible story, "Jonah and the Whale".

Here is the inside of the whale and Jacob is "Jonah"

 

 

Here are a couple more pictures of our Church Family Day

 

 

 

 

 

Then came Family Day. Our town always puts on such a fun day. With free hot dogs, hot chocolate, wagon rides, face painting and ice skating.

 

Enjoying a horse drawn wagon ride

Our Spidermen

Later that week, Jacob had a dentist appointment in Edmonton and I realized one of Rebekah's pen pals lives in a little town kind of on the way. So, Rebekah contacted her and made plans to go and spend the afternoon at her house.  She was so sweet and I really enjoyed getting to know her family over tea when we got back.

 

 

That's not all, but this post is getting too big, so I will stop it here for now.