Ladybug Daydreams

Christmas

Book Review: If He Had Not Come

Posted by Wendy on November 3, 2014 Leave a Comment

Christmas is coming. Like it or not, we’re already into November, and that means Christmas is just around the corner. And Christmas is a time for family traditions, both old and new.

(Please don’t hear me saying that having traditions is what Christmas is about. It’s not, and I know that. It’s about celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Traditions are just a nice thing to make us humans feel “warm and fuzzy.”) [Read more…]

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • Pocket

Like this:

Like Loading...
Posted in: parenting, reviews | Tagged: Christmas, Christmas book, Christmas story

Merry Christmas

Posted by Wendy on December 26, 2013 Leave a Comment

image

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
~Isaiah 9:6 ESV~

May God bless you and yours throughout the rest of this blessed holiday week!

–Wendy

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • Pocket

Like this:

Like Loading...
Posted in: Other | Tagged: Christmas, holiday, scripture, well wishes

Making Christmas Traditions

Posted by Wendy on December 19, 2013 1 Comment

xmas tree final

We live in the same town I grew up in, and my parents still live here. There are definite pluses to that: free babysitting, a close family, and never really “missing” my mom or dad. On the other hand, though, because we’re all so close (us, my mom and stepdad, and my dad all live in the same town; my brother is a half hour away; the in laws are a half an hour the other direction), we’ve never really had the opportunity to develop Christmas traditions for our own family. Since we’ve been parents for ten years now, we thought it was time.

(Our traditions thus far have involved “going to Grandpa’s [my dad] house on Christmas Eve, going to Grandma’s [my mom and stepdad] house on Christmas morning, and going to Grandma and Grandpa’s [my in-laws] on Christmas afternoon. Talk about exhausting!)

I mentioned once before that we explained the Santa Claus myth to our kids last year. They took it well, and we don’t regret for one second stopping the perpetuation of that particular tradition. We told the kids the true story of Saint Nicholas of Turkey, and based on his tale, we bought new “stockings” for everyone. Instead of visiting the Christmas section of the store, we visited the clothing department and bought real socks, just like those that Saint Nicholas would have stashed the money inside to help the poor people of his village. I then embroidered each of our names on one stocking. Because they’re real socks, we purchased them in pairs (obviously), so I’ve stashed away the sixth one if/when we have another baby.

stockings

Hubby and I each read the book The Zero Waste Home over the summer, and while we aren’t able to implement all of her tips based on the shopping options near us, the one that stuck with us the most was the zero waste, and yet “real,” Christmas tree. We had a real tree once when we were first married, and it was a disaster! It was so hard to cut the trunk straight enough to get into the stand that we just bought an artificial tree the next year. The author of the book had a solution that was the best of both worlds (a living tree, but easy and waste-free): a real tree in a pot. Bring it inside during the Advent season, and when once Epiphany comes around (traditionally the day the wise men visited Jesus), undecorate the tree and put it outside. The tree continues to grow in its pot all year long, but it’s not inside the whole year. We absolutely loved the idea! So this year, we’ve left our artificial tree in the garage and we purchased a potted Christmas tree (photo above, at the top of the post). We also decided that we wanted to go with a simpler, more natural look as far as decorations go this year. To accomplish that, we bought one bag of cinnamon-scented pinecones (do they have those where you live? You should totally get some if they do. They’re heavenly!) and I tied hemp cording that I found in the jewelry making section of JoAnn’s to each one for hanging. We wanted to buy some wooden discs to decorate for the ornaments, but after searching two craft stores, Amazon, and Home Depot, we couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for, so we made our own. The kids found a branch outside that had fallen from one of our many pine trees, and we took it across the street to our neighbor. She used her table saw to slice it up for us, and then she and Seahawk drilled a hole in each one. I tied hemp cord through each of those as well, and voila! Exactly what we wanted. Even though we’d originally planned to decorate the wood discs, once we got our branch sliced up, we found that it was beautiful all on its own, so we forwent that step. Add a string of white lights and a dozen candy canes, and that’s our tree. And we love it!

Earlier this week, my dad brought the kids a gingerbread house to build and decorate. They loved that project! I had fun decorating it with them, too. I’m thinking next year, we’ll try doing it completely homemade, though. There’s nothing I love more than making something most people just buy. I did the icing and the kids did the decorating. I’m especially proud of the icicles hanging from the roof!

gingerbread combo pic

One last thing on our new traditions. Gifts. We rebelled hard against consumerism last year and didn’t buy gifts at all for ourselves or our kids. Don’t think us complete Scrooges, though; we gifted our kids with “experiences.” We took them roller skating and to the zoo at different points during the year as their Christmas presents. This year, we’re trying to walk the line between getting the kids “nothing” and going absolutely crazy – like the grandparents are likely to do. I first brought up to hubby the idea of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh gifts that Jamie from The Unlikely Homeschool does. We tossed ideas around for a couple of weeks, and were getting a few good ones for each category (Gold is something desired, i.e. the “big toy” the kids want; Frankincense is something for everyone to share; and Myrrh is something of spiritual value), but then hubby found this little poem that he liked even better for simple gift giving:

gift poem

(I don’t know from what website he found the poem, so if you do, please let me know so I can link back and give credit where credit is due.)

So that’s what we’re doing for each boy. Most of the things are chosen, but not all are made/bought, but we’ll be ready by Christmas.

What are some of your Christmas traditions?

–Wendy

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • Pocket

Like this:

Like Loading...
Posted in: parenting | Tagged: Christmas, Christmas traditions, Christmas tree, family, holidays, parenting

Family Yearbook

Posted by Wendy on December 12, 2013 2 Comments

cover for blog

 

For a long time, hubby and I talked about making family photo books instead of an individual “baby book” for each child. This year, we finally did it.

I’ve mentioned before that hubby is a cartoonist (we make most of our living through the sales of his books). He also has a book layout business on the side. He uses Createspace for all of his printing, so when we wanted to do our family photobook, using them was a natural choice for us. There are definite pros and cons to going with Createspace over one of the “drag and drop” photo book companies.

Pros

* The price. Our books are 38 pages, full color, and only cost $3.65 each (plus shipping, of course). That’s the price for up to 40 pages. The pricing above 40 is still very affordable though. And black and white is even cheaper; that starts at $2.15. The $3.65 price is the minimum, and there is a 24 page minimum through Createspace because all books are perfect bound (standard paperback binding). For small run printing, you can’t beat them. We know – hubby researched book printers for a year before finally going with Createspace.

* The freedom. With a drag and drop company, you’re stuck choosing their templates and hoping your pictures fit.

Cons

* The freedom. Wait, you already said freedom. Wasn’t that a “pro”? Yes. But if you don’t have any graphic design experience, it’s a con, not a pro. Because Createspace is aimed toward “real” books, they don’t have any prefabricated templates to use for your interior. You have to build all the pages from scratch. They do, however, have prefab covers you can use. I was able to build the interior myself, with just my crude understanding of Photoshop, but fortunately for me, hubby has a much better handle on the program, so he was able to build us a custom cover. That’s what you see above.

Here are a few of the spreads from our book:

for blog 1

 

2

3

4

 

Pardon the black boxes; the real book has the kids’ names in it, but I didn’t want to post those here on the blog. And because of the way it’s saved, going in and making a quick change to the text wasn’t possible. But you can see what I mean about the complete freedom in our design. No two pages are quite the same, and we were able to include our own little “articles” and captions. Being on my high school yearbook staff back in the day definitely came in handy for this project! The methods have changed in the past 14 years (!), but the concepts are the same.

I ordered one copy of the book a couple of weeks ago – a proof copy – so we could look through it and make sure the pictures printed as well as we hoped they would. They did! Now I have three more copies scheduled to arrive here next week. One will go to my mom and stepdad, one to my dad, and one to hubby’s dad and stepmom for Christmas. We also ordered one for hubby’s grandma (we stayed with her when we were on vacation back in July), but we had hers shipped directly to her; we figured it was better to pay shipping once instead of twice (once to have Createspace ship it here, then again for us to post it to her).

I couldn’t be happier with the results of our 2013 family yearbook! I’m super excited to do one of these every year now, possibly more often, depending on how many pictures we have.

–Wendy

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • Pocket

Like this:

Like Loading...
Posted in: Other | Tagged: Christmas, createspace, family yearbook, photo book, self published books

Welcome!

Welcome to Ladybug Daydreams! My name is Wendy, and I’m glad you’re here. I am a homeschooling mom to 5 boys. I write about homeschooling, homeschool curriculum, yarn (both knitting and crochet), and more! I hope you enjoy what you read.

Social

  • View ladybugdaydream’s profile on Twitter
  • View ladybugdaydreams’s profile on Instagram
  • View ladybugdaydream’s profile on Pinterest

Subscribe

Join 492 other subscribers

March 2023
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Nov    

Search

MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected

Copyright © 2023 Ladybug Daydreams.

Theme by themehall.com.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: