Fake It Till You Make It

Made it through Christmas, not sure how but I did. Granted there where plenty of tears and sadness. Excuse the figurative language but I got the…

worked out pretty good now. I think my mom and sisters are doing a pretty good job at it too. 

The kids and I made the birthday cake for Jesus. 

We did the Christmas Eve service at church. I worked the audio/visual. This helped me not to get caught up in missing my Daddy.  I was able to make it through the service without being a blubbering idiot. 

Big Daddy was there on Christmas Eve supporting me all the way. Here is a picture of the Bear Pandora bead Big Daddy got me in memory of my Daddy.

Next we take down the tree and get the house back to normal. What ever normal is.  Not sure what we are doing for New Years Eve, yet. We used to meet up with my parents and play cards.  One more week and then it is back to school for the Strouse Academy.  

Lil Momma Strouse

Christmas Decorating

Our family has grown. No we have not had a baby. Biggun's friend, Super D, has become the 4th child we never had. Super D, is 14 like Biggun so he fits right in.  He helped us put up our Christmas tree.

I went to put up our Christmas stockings and he seemed sad he did not have one. When asked what he would want on his stocking if he where to have one, he kept saying he wanted a chicken on it.  I do not know why he wanted a chicken, but he did. All the other stockings have a biblical story behind them and I have hand made them. When I pointed that out to him, he responded Jesus was born in a stable, so who knows if there was a chicken or not. 

I surprised Super D with a stocking that I created for him. It even has a chicken on it.

What does your family do for Christmas traditions? Do you have a tree, stockings, special displays?  Do you do any special games for Christmas? Have you tried any US state games? How do you include christian homeschool activities? 

Would love to hear from you. 

Lil Momma Strouse

Christmas Wrap Up!

Christmas has come and gone.  How did ours go. Pretty good and I hope that your's went good also.

Here is our Christmas in pictures.

Making Christmas Cards

Making Birthday Cake for Jesus, we changed up the story a little this year. 

Multi color swirls to represent all the DIFFERENT people in the world. 

White icing to represent how pure Jesus is. 

Kisses to represent the love that God has for all of us that he sent his son.

The candle that is lit and never blown out like the love that God has for us will NEVER fail. 

On Christmas Day there was Christmas at church where the kids had a party in children's church. 

We had a wonderful sermon, I will share some of that in a different post.

When we got home we finally let the kids open gifts. 

Top Gift pictures are below...

This was the face of, "You had me clean my room and make room for a stool?"

Only to find out later on in the day when Aunt C and J came over that this was the true reason for making room in his room.

Honey asked for a PINK guitar, here is what she got! Thanks Nana you did a great job on this find.

One of Mooses many favorite toys.

I got the cutest bee slippers!!! LOVE THEM! 

There are so many pictures in my Christmas 2011 file that I can't post them all.  I hope your Christmas Wrap Up was just as wonderful as mine. Blessings to all.

Christmas Traditions.

Every family has Christmas Traditions. Last year I did a 4 part series on listing our traditions. Check them out.

Part One - 3D Christmas Art (baby)

Part Two - Hand Made Christmas Stockings 

Part Three - Gift From God in the tree. 

Part Four - Birthday Cake for Jesus

This year I saw to late to implement but would love to maybe next year what Amy over at Raising Arrows  Thanksgiving Stockings. I love the idea. 

This year we started a new tradition to add to the other four. We made our own Christmas Cards. The kids made two different designs.  One was of their finger prints making Christmas Lights and one of a scarp book paper Christmas Tree. All 3 kids did the Christmas lights but only Honey did the scrapbook Christmas Tree. I found both of those ideas on Pinetrest. I will have to look for new cards for next year. 

School, Break, or Review

Are you doing school, taking a break or reviewing?

Hard to think of school when the holiday's are here. Which seem to be the norm in our house. We get to this time of year and school slows way down. Usually it is Christmas Schooling but this year it has been crafts and holiday books are the way we seem to go. With a little of interest led learning thrown in for good measure.

I have some friends that take this time of year as a time to review. What better place to review your spelling then on spellingcity.com and use their popular word list to help make your life easier. No typing up word list just go to that page and use one of those great list to review. Is your child going to be taking the SAT test in the spring? There are even SAT word lists to use for reviewing.

For us we will keep trying to make it through this holiday season. What are you doing?

Merry CHRISTmas 2010

‎"she delivered Him so He could deliver us"

Merry Christmas from the Strouse House

and 

Happy Birthday Jesus!  

We love you!

Christmas Birthday for Jesus 2010

This year there has been sickness in our house for the past week. First Honey had it, then it moved to Moose and on to me. (not happy) This really has put a yuck in my holiday planning and cooking.  I have no energy to do anything but for my kids sake, I keep going.

Here is our simple version of this years Birthday for Jesus.  (to get the full recipe check out this post.)


This year I took some premade cookie dough and put it in a small 9x11 pan and cooked it into a bar.  Then we laid it out and the kids went to town.  We talked while they decorated.

Today we are going to make a birthday cookiecake for Jesus.  Over the cake and between the layers goes a fluffy white icing to show how God’s love binds all God’s creatures to each other and to Him. 

The colored M&M's symbolize the different colors of God’s people. On the top 

goes a sprinkle of green M&M's to remind of us life God gives. On the top also goes the red M&M's that remind us of the blood that will be shed for our lives.  In the center we will place the manger bed for baby Jesus, along w/ the angel that watches over baby Jesus. 

 Here is a candle. We don’t put the candle on the cake because God has no age to be counted, but we have it near to remind us that Christ is the Light of the world!

  All sing Happy Birthday dear Jesus with candles lit.

Here are some of the out takes from the decorating...

 Front view was the work of Biggun.

This view was Honey's work.

The view was Moose's work.

Lil' Momma

Snowman Display

My friend Aunt C. sent me this great blog post about snowmen ornaments. I did not have the funds to go out and get the mini canvas's so called a wood working friend of mine Mr. JS. and asked him sweetly if he had any scraps.  His response was but of course what size do you need and how many.  

He cut me some pieces and we got to work...

First we painted

Ok some of us painted the table more then the blocks of wood. 

Let the wood pieces dry then painted the finger prints. 

Each child did their own little block, except Aunt C ( who had shared the idea with us) asked we make her one with the kids fingers on one piece of wood.  Then we added the details. 

This is the solid piece of wood that Aunt C asked for.

Here they are on their own piece of wood.  

Now ready to display somewhere in the house.  

Aren't they just the cutest!

Edit:

I totally forgot to share that I linked up w/ Not JUST a Housewife to share this cute craft.
Stop by her blog and see all the other great crafts.

Lil' Momma

Christmas Traditions - Part 4

Every year we go to our church Christmas Eve service then our family is invited over to enjoy Birthday Party for Jesus.  Here is the cake and the story we use.

Unique Christmas Cake

Ingredients:

 • White cake mix

 • Pink cake mix

 • Yellow cake mix

 • Chocolate cake mix

 • White icing

 • Green gumdrops

 • Toasted coconut

 • Small baby dolls

 • Votive or tea light candles

 • Tube of decorating gel (for writing on cake)

  

Directions:

 1.  Make all 4 cake mixes, (only need one layer of each color so we usually make cupcakes for gifts with the left over cake mix)

 2.  Wrap baby dolls in a scrap of material to look like swaddling clothes.

 3.  Have children build finished cake as the story shares below….

 4.  Today we are going to make a birthday cake for Jesus. Here is a white cake, a pink cake, a yellow cake, and a chocolate cake. These cakes symbolize the different colors of God’s people. Over the cake and between the layers goes a fluffy white icing to show how God’s love binds all God’s creatures to each other and to Him. Around the edge goes a wreath of green gumdrops. In the center we will make a manger bed for baby Jesus with toasted coconut to look like straw in a manger. Then we will write Happy Birthday Jesus to celebrate His birthday. Here is a candle. We don’t put the candle on the cake because God has no age to be counted. but we have it near to remind us that Christ is the Light of the world!

 5.  All sing Happy Birthday dear Jesus with candles lit.

In the past we have changed it up a little by buying white cake mix and adding food coloring to each layer, in a way to cut down on the amount of extra cake we had.  If you choose to make the cake as the directions say.  You will have lots of cup cakes to share.  You could even take them to a retirement home on Christmas day. 

The year Moose was born (remember his birthday is in Nov) it was crazy around here so I used the confetti cake mix to represent God's people. 

We also talk about the swaddling clothes but we use a ceramic figure that has baby Jesus on it.  

I will blog pictures from this years cake after Christmas but for now here are a few pics from the past few years Birthday Cake for Jesus celebration. The kids really have fun decorating the cake each year.

This year I made cup cakes w/ all the different flavors of cake mix instead of one big cake. 

Lil' Momma