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There have been many posts lately about pinning on Pinterest and needing permission. For more information you can check out this post at Corkboard Connections. I am happy to grant such permission. Please do not pin anything from a Sharing Saturday since those are not my pictures to share and I would ask that you not pin a picture with my daughter in it. Otherwise I'm happy to allow anything to be pinned.

I know I use Pinterest instead of bookmarks now. Being able to see a picture of the item makes it so much easier to find what I'm looking for. I really use it for inspiration and new ideas. After reading some of the legal stuff, I question some of my pins and from now on will look for a permission to pin from sites before I do so. Corkboard Connections provides the red button with Permission to Pin on it and is having a link party of blogs that are doing a post like this to grant permission.

So Happy Pinning!!

The Ant and The Grasshopper and Prayer Bracelet for Lent

On Sunday, one of the crafts at the Lenten Simple Soup Supper was to make The Pearls of Life bracelets to use in our prayers. Each bead means something. Starting with the gold one which is to represent God. The clear oblong ones are for silence. The white pearl is the I bed. The white bead is the baptism bead. The brown bead is the desert bead. The blue bead is the serenity or calm bead. The red beads are for love given and received. The three small white beads are the secret beads. The black bead is the night bead. The translucent circular bead is the Resurrection bead.  For more details about the meaning of each bead check out here. For a bit about the history of them read here. Personally I like to wear it especially during Lent to remind me to prayer and to bring me closer to God.

Sharing Saturday is still open through tomorrow. Please go check out the amazing projects people have shared. There are many for celebrating Dr. Suess' birthday on Friday as well as St. Patrick's Day and more! And I hope you will follow me at Facebook!! And voting at Circles of Moms is still open. I'm at number 34 and could use some more votes. You can vote every 24 hours.
One of our favorite books to take out of the library lately is Ant and Grasshopper by Luli Gray. So today, we began to work on some ants and grasshoppers. We also plan to make Ant's house out of tissue boxes. Hazel has already included Ant and Grasshopper in her daily activities of shopping, etc. when she plays. She also repeats some of the things Ant says in the book. I for the most part made both of these, however Hazel is working on some as well. We will share those when they are finished.
The story is a take off of the Aesop Fable. Ant is rich and has a big house. He likes to count the food he has collected each day. Grasshopper sings and plays the fiddle in Ant's yard and bothers Ant while he is trying to count. As fall comes Grasshopper tries to come into Ant's house and get fed and Ant laughs at him and turns him away. One night Ant wakes up and finds Grasshopper on his stoop nearly frozen to death and covered in snow. He brings him in and saves his life. There are so many lessons that can be taught from this story. The Grasshopper is homeless. Ant admits in the story he wishes he could sing. And the last line is my favorite: "'Everybody counts.'"
I used pom poms, pipe cleaners, googly eyes and felt for the grasshopper's wings. Hazel is painting some egg cartons for them and I have a great grasshopper out of TP roll pattern I found in several places when I searched grasshopper crafts. Here is one location. Another with a template is here.

We will share more of our ants and grasshoppers and our Ant's house soon. Hope you are having a lovely day!

Lent and The Big Wide Mouthed Frog

Our Lenten Table
Close up of our Lenten Tree
So Lent started last Wednesday. I was away and didn't really do much for it (except stop eating candy) until yesterday. Last night my church held a Simple Soup Supper for Lent. It consisted of soup, rolls, drinks and desserts (potluck style on the desserts) and crafts. We went, but I brought a hot dog and mixed vegetables and blueberries for Hazel since she doesn't do too well with soup yet. One of the crafts was a Lenten Tree. It was a cardboard tree trunk and branches and you added leaves. The directions said you should cut out 40 leaves and write things to do to celebrate lent (like do something nice for someone else) and then put all the leaves in a jar and have one person pick one each day and then try to do that thing during the day. This is a bit beyond Hazel's comprehension so we cut out 40 leaves and colored on six of them (for the six days that have already gone by) and I wrote words like Jesus, God, Love on them. Then we glued those six on. Now we will do one each day until Easter when we can decorate our tree with yellow or gold ribbon. I put our tree (and extra leaves) on a table in the living room that we covered with Hazel's purple play silk (it has red undertones which came out in the picture) along with a cross I received when I was young, and a purple candle. This will be our Lenten table. We will add more to it as the season goes on. And I will let you know some of the different Lenten activities we do.

Just a reminder that Sharing Saturday is still going on. Feel free to share a kid-friendly activity or craft with us and go check out all the amazing ones already shared! I also bit the bullet and started a Facebook page, so please come like me over there. And finally, please vote daily for me in the Circles of Moms Top 25 Creative Blogs. (I'm so honored to have been nominated!!) Thank you for all your help!!

A few weeks ago, Lorie over at Reading Confetti posted a great craft to go along with the book The Big Wide Mouthed Frog by Ana Martin Larranaga. I looked for the book at the library and we loved it. Instead of doing her craft, we decided to make all the animals.  I did some searching on-line for help. I found several at DLTK-Kids. I needed a wide mouthed frog, kangaroo, koala bear, possum, emu, and crocodile.
Our collection minus the crocodile
The wide mouthed frog is the main character of the book. He goes out into the world one day to explore and asks every animal he meets what they are and what they eat. Then he tells them he is a big wide mouthed frog and that he eats flies. He does this until he meets the crocodile who eats big wide mouthed frogs. So needless to say he was the most important animal to make. I found a great paper plate frog puppet template at DLTK-Kids. I followed it mostly except I used white pom poms and googly eyes for the eyes instead of the print outs.

The frog first meets a kangaroo. The kangaroo we made from a TP roll and followed the directions at DLTK-Kids. Next he meets a koala. The koala bear also is from TP roll and we used the color template and directions at DLTK-Kids as well.
Our Kangaroo and Koala

The third animal he meets is a possum (hanging upside down). The possum I had more difficulties finding. I found an interesting looking one at Danielle's Place but since I'm not a member I couldn't get the actual template and instructions, so I went from the picture and made a few changes. I used two pipe cleaners for the tail and used a TP roll to give the body some weight and steadiness. Then I cut the body from grey scrapbook paper and made a cone for the head from a grey beige paper. I added a small black pom pom for the nose and some paper ears and googly eyes. Overall, I'm happy with it.
Our Possum

The next animal he meets is an emu. I did a google search and found a paper plate one at MSSS Crafts. Changing a few things to go with the story and based on what we had available we came up with a pretty good one. We did glue feathers onto it instead of a paper bag. I also made sure his feet had three long toes since the frog calls him three long toes.
Our Emu
The final animal the frog meets is a crocodile. I didn't really like my options on this one that I found. DLTK-Kids had some TP roll templates but they were green and since the frog calls the crocodile a knobby brown log I felt it needed to be brown. Since Hazel is not great at coloring in lines, etc. I figured that might be too hard. I also wanted it to be bigger than the frog since it eats frogs. So, I painted a paper plate brown for the mouth. I stuffed a brown paper lunch bag with paper and plastic bags and glued it the open end around a paper towel roll for the tail. I then glued on the bumps from a cardboard egg carton to make it knobby and added some googly eyes. I also tried to shape the paper towel roll to be a bit pointed at the end. Ok, I probably should have given her some legs and feet, but this was good enough for us.
Our Crocodile
So now when we read the story we have all the characters to act it out with. What do you think? Hazel loves them.

Happy Monday!!

Weekend Time==Cooking, Snow Angels, Lent Preparation

Coming home from my parents we rushed to the library for the Move and Groove program that we signed up for. Hazel loves it. While there we got a few new books. One of them is The Snow Angel by Glenn Beck.
This story is about a sister and brother who are very upset because their parents are working so much (out of need) and their grandmother keeps spending the night with them. They have been eating macaroni and cheese made by their father (which they claim is not as good as their mother's) every night. Their grandmother tells them a story about a young girl who had similar circumstances--her father was fighting in the war (World War II) and her mother was sewing uniforms for the soldiers and she was home by herself. When her father was home on leave he taught her how to make a snow angel the last day he was home and explained that snow angels are magical. They stay with the person you make them for and watch over them. Therefore, since he made one for her, she wouldn't be alone anymore. She no longer felt so alone when her parents were gone. The sister figured out the girl in the story was their grandmother. Then they talk about making snow angels for their parents, but their is no snow. The next morning the children surprise the parents with breakfast in bed and downstairs hung paper snow angel chains all around.

I folded some white paper like a fan (back and forth) and then sketched a snow angel and cut through all the layers. Then I tried folding it smaller and sketched half a snow angel. These are the chains on the top of the page. Hazel tried to cut some but had a bit of trouble so I helped her and cut it in half so she didn't have as many layers. Sorry the picture is a bit out of focus. (We also started some more crafts to do with books we have been reading, but we will save those until we are done.)
We also started our grass egg shells for Easter. Since Lent started on Wednesday and we were away, we started it a few days late. I had been saving half egg shells from whenever we used eggs. I washed them out and left them to dry. Then I used a safety pin to punch a hole in each one for drainage.
We lined them in a plastic egg carton (which we usually use to put Hazel's paints in when she is painting with different colors) and filled them with top soil. Hazel enjoyed this part and made a bit of a mess.
Then we put some grass seeds in each one (again Hazel had fun and dropped the handful in the middle so we had to spread them out). We added some more soil and water and placed them in the window. Now we need to check the water of them each day and look for growth.
We will share these closer to Easter when we hopefully have some grass. We did this last year and used them as part of our Easter basket center piece. Plus it helps Hazel learn about the growing process.

Yesterday morning we made pancakes. We decided on pumpkin blueberry pancakes. Hazel had a small breakfast with Daddy earlier, but she at almost four of these pancakes with me. Needless to say, they were a hit.
Mixing the Dry Ingredients
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax seed meal
2 Tablespoons toasted oat bran (you can use wheat germ as well)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of ginger

Mix all together. Then set aside.
Beating Liquid Ingredients

Then we did the eggs. I separated the egg white and let Hazel crack the whole egg. Then let her beat them while I got all the liquid ingredients together.

Liquid Ingredients
1 large egg
1 egg white
1 can of cooked pumpkin (you could use homemade as well)
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 Tablespoon canola oil
1 cup fat free milk
Mixing all the Batter

Beat these together with a whisk. Then add dry ingredients and mix. Then add a cup or so of blueberries (we use frozen) and mix. (I find the blueberries hide most of anything you put in there.)

Then heat a pan sprayed with a cooking spray.  When griddle is warm enough pour batter on in small circles. Let cook until edges look a bit cooked and then flip. Press down with spatula to make sure insides cook. Flip a few more times pressing down.

Enjoy!

Sharing Saturday #8


Thank you for all the wonderful entries we had last week!! I'm always amazed at the creativity everyone has. If you missed getting to see any of the 116 entries, please visit them. There are so many wonderful ideas!!