Keeping the Meaning of Christmas in Your Family's Life during the Crazy Holiday Season

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Every holiday season I look for resources to help my family keep Jesus in the front of our minds. This year I found two books--one for me and one for Hazel (and possibly the whole family) to read together. Both are from Sarah Young's Jesus Calling series. I am sharing them nice and early so you can get a copy for yourself and your family and experience Jesus during the crazy season. The one for children is Jesus Calling The Story of Christmas. 

New Colorful Origami Papers -- a Crafty Weekends Review and Link Party

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing sent me these packets of origami paper in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

When I shared our Advent table a couple of weeks ago, I got the origami bug. I pulled out the two colorful (and a bit wild) packets of origami paper I had sitting on my review shelf. The first is Kaleidoscope Colors Origami Paper. 

Christmas Fun -- a Merry Monday Review

Disclosure: I was sent these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Well today I am going to share our final Merry Monday review. I have saved some great ones for the end. Is your child counting the days until Christmas? I know Hazel is. She is so excited and anxious for the holidays. Today's products and free printable games will be perfect to help calm her a bit or at least distract her. Our first book is Christmas Paper Play by Lydia Crook. 

Sharing Saturday 17-48

It is time again for Sharing Saturday! This is a link party to share all of your child-oriented crafts, crafts made for kids, activities and lessons as well as your parenting and/or teaching posts. So glad you joined us!!

On Sunday night we also host Crafty Weekends for all your crafts (done by any age), patterns, and craft product reviews! It is the perfect place to share your creative side!! 

An Advent Table to Help Focus Us on Christ This Season

Every Christmas I see all the commercialism around. I mean Hallmark begins putting out ornaments in July. It is a bit crazy. I always like to create ways to keep our focus on the religious side of the holiday. After all we are celebrating the coming of Jesus, our Savior. Over the years we have gathered some great resources. One of our favorites are the four family storybooks for Advent we have reviewed (Jotham, Tabitha, Bartholomew and Ishtar). Each of these stories tell the nativity story from kids point of view. One is a shepherd and another is the son of one of the magi and so forth. The stories intertwine with each other and make the Advent stories quite an adventure. Hazel loves to reread them each year.

Fun Facts about Advent Wreaths

It is hard to believe it is time to pull out the Advent wreath. I thought I would continue our Fun Facts Series and share some fun facts about Advent wreaths today. Be sure to check out our Fun Facts about Advent. 

Sharing Saturday 17-47

It is time again for Sharing Saturday! This is a link party to share all of your child-oriented crafts, crafts made for kids, activities and lessons as well as your parenting and/or teaching posts. So glad you joined us!!

On Sunday night we also host Crafty Weekends for all your crafts (done by any age), patterns, and craft product reviews! It is the perfect place to share your creative side!! And for all of your cultural posts come share them at the monthly Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop.

Fun Facts about Advent Calendars

It is hard to believe it is time to pull out the Advent calendar. I thought I would continue our Fun Facts Series and share some fun facts about Advent calendars today since it is the first day to open a door on yours. Be sure to check out our Fun Facts about Advent. 

Fun Facts about Advent

Now that Thanksgiving is over it is time to get ready for Christmas!! Advent begins a bit later because of how the dates fall this year. In the western world it begins on Sunday this year. In honor of that I thought I would share a bit about Advent, its history and other fun facts!

Merry Monday -- Christmas Picture Books Featuring Holiday Songs

Disclosure: I was sent these products in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Ok, I know we still have Thanksgiving coming up and many people do not want to think about Christmas yet, but I am in a bit of a Christmas mood and have some fun Christmas books to share with you (there has been a pile on my shelf for quite some time). Now I know in the past I have done many round-ups from my Must Read books (featuring religious ones), Multicultural books, Christmas Trees & Classic stories, Advent stories, and so many more!! Today we are going to focus on Christmas music or should I say picture books about Christmas music!! The first item is actually a personalized gift set. Now we have reviewed several amazing personalized Christmas books as well as non-holiday ones over the past couple of years. Hazel's comment about this one was, "This is the best one yet!"

Christmas Crafts - Focus on the Nativity with Oriental Trading - a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: Oriental Trading sent me these products in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

So yesterday we had a Holiday Preview Party at work. We had to be festive even though it is only the beginning of November. I still have holiday nail stickers on. Yes, Santa is on my thumbs. It was fun though and it got me into the mood. Of course it also helps that Hazel has been pulling out holiday DVDs to watch for a couple of months now. Well I always like to find a way to bring the religious side into our holiday and am going to share some crafts and products that do just that. Now Oriental Trading has an amazing collection of religious Christmas products. Hazel and I looked through and choose a few fun things which mostly were crafts. I fell in love with the DIY Unfinished Wooden Nativity & Stable Set, which is no longer available. See their religious Christmas crafts for other ideas. 

Dollar Tree Christmas Crafts including Cheap Doll Finds -- a Crafty Weekends Post and Link Party

Disclosure: I am receiving a small stipend for writing this post and will receive a small percentage from any purchases made from the Dollar Tree links. All opinions are my own!

I know Halloween is coming fast and once it has come the holiday season has begun. I love to focus on Christmas since it is one of my favorite holidays. So yes, I am sharing some Christmas crafts and items. The best part is the supplies are from Dollar Tree where everything is $1!!  And like most stores, they already have Christmas items out!!

Those Hard to Buy For People -- Holiday Preparations -- Gift Buying

Disclosure: Uncommon Goods sent me these products in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. All of the pictures are from Uncommon Goods website. 

Have you begun your holiday shopping yet? Now I know there are 68 days still before Christmas. However I for one like to have my shopping basically done by Thanksgiving. Why? I like to be able to relax and enjoy the Advent season plus I work in retail and my work schedule gets a bit crazy so I honestly don't want to shop and deal with the crowds. Plus there are so many fun things to do besides shop during that time of year. Therefore I start early. The best part of shopping early is you spread out the bills that come in from holiday shopping!

Oriental Trading's Fun365 --a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: Oriental Trading sent me these items in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Have you discovered Oriental Trading's Fun365?  It is a site that has different craft projects and articles. There are choices of Party Ideas, Craft Ideas, Wedding Ideas, and Classroom Ideas. I was inspired by ideas from the Craft Ideas and Party Ideas. I had so much fun exploring the many ideas there. I let Hazel look and help me pick what we would try. In the Party Ideas section there is a Rainbow Party and one of the crafts is a DIY Rainbow Coin Purse. Instead of doing the coin purse we used DIY Totes. (See current available totes here.)I asked Hazel to paint a rainbow on one for me. She wanted to use the Pearlized Acrylic Paint (available paint). Then she wanted to do a heart rainbow, but hers turned out more like a circle. She also did a square but wanted to use the pink on it.  I did a heart one for her as well as a star and an H. 

Christmas in Nigeria -- Jollof Rice

Today we get to share our post for Christmas in Different Lands. Before we do, however, I want to share a quote from Hazel: "Next year you should pick four countries and cook something from each one for each week of Advent to post on your blog."

We decided to explore Nigeria because Hazel wanted to learn more about it. One of her best friends' family is from Nigeria, so I asked her mother for information. So much of this information is straight from someone who grew up there and still has family there.

Crafty Weekends Link Party & Christmas Crafts

This week has been busy with various things, but I am not ready to write a craft review for you. I will share a couple of crafts we have been working on though. Every Christmas Hazel's school has each class adopt a child in a battered women's shelter. The list for the four-year-old boy her class has this year included wanting a quilt, so I decided to make a quick one. I bought a set of flannel squares at Joann's and cut some more from other flannel I bought and had. I quickly stitched them together using my serger. 

Sharing Saturday 16-48

It is time for Sharing Saturday!! This is a link party to share all of your child-oriented crafts, crafts made for kids, activities and lessons as well as your parenting and/or teaching posts. On Sunday night we also host Crafty Weekends for all your crafts (done by any age), patterns, and craft product reviews! It is the perfect place to share your creative side!! And for all of your cultural posts come share them at the monthly Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop (a new one starts this week). We also are hosting a Virtual Holiday Cookie/Treat Swap Around the World. Stop by to share your cultural treats and learn about various holiday traditions & recipes!!

Thank you to everyone who shared with us at our two week party! I hope all that celebrated had a lovely Thanksgiving!! Our features are just a sampling of them so if you haven't checked them all out, you should! This week we have two groups of features: Craft Features and Lessons & Parenting Features.

Holiday Cookie/Treat Swap Around the World -- a Multicultural Link Party

Christmas time always brings cookie swaps and I thought it would be fun to have a virtual one around the world. Cookies have many different names around the world like biscuits in England and Australia and galletas in Spain.  The idea of Christmas cookies probably started in the Middle Ages. The use of spices started in Europe during the Middle Ages. Cookies have probably evolved quite a bit since then, but think of some of the heavier spiced cookies like gingerbread that we associate with Christmas. (Sources: What's Cooking America and History Channel) To make this swap happen I asked my fellow Kid Blogger Network and Multicultural Kid Blogs members to join me. A few signed up and I am hoping you will join us as well!! Then I googled our favorite kind of Christmas cookies--thumbprints and discovered they are from Sweden!!

Christmas Trees, Personalized & Classic Stories & More!

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. Some of the links are affiliate links where I will receive a small percentage of any purchases made through them at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Crafty Moms Share!


Now that Thanksgiving is over we are focusing on Christmas. I love the time of Advent. It is the time I take to enjoy the season and remember the amazing gift that Jesus truly is. The first thing we always do is put up our tree. Hazel wanted to do it on Thanksgiving this year since her grandmother was here. (My mother-in-law hardly ever comes to our house, so Hazel was really excited.) The tree went up.

Getting Ready for the Real Christmas

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

Yesterday I was the storyteller in our church's Goldy Play classroom. I got to share with the kids the first two weeks of Advent since the kids will be upstairs in the service for the second week. (Click here to see the Godly Play story of Advent.) As I told the kids about the mystery of Christmas and the busyness of people at this time of the year I realized that my early holiday preparations that I have been sharing since the beginning of November are so my family has the time to prepare for the glorious mystery of Christmas. My shopping is mostly done and my holiday cards are just about ready to mail, so now I can slow down and enjoy and reflect on the season. I have even shared some new Advent books that are also calendars and the gifts I bought for Hazel's big Advent calendar. Today I am going to share five books that help us focus on the true meaning of Christmas. The first three books are part of a series by Arnold Ytreeide. I reviewed the newest one last year: Ishtar's Odyssey. This year we get to read the other three books in the series. Jotham's Joruney, Bartholomew's Passage and Tabitha's Travels. Hazel was so excited to read one about a girl so we started with Tabitha's Travels and have been reading it each night. She LOVES this story!!