Here are the boxes of Cookies we are giving as gifts to our family tonight!

I just love the windows in them so you can get a peek at what’s inside.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the cookies shall we?

I love making these face cookies. These are what inspired my idea for the cupcakes I entered into the “Hello, Cupcake Challenge.”

This is my own design, and it comes from little faces I’ve drawn my whole life. If you could see any of my notebooks from high school where I was supposed to be taking notes, they are covered with doodles like this.

The eyes are made out of mini marshmallows cut in half. We made the mouths by putting  holes in the dough with a straw before baking the cookies.

Here’s Santa and an Elf.

My mom made this one. She says he’s a Christmas Caroler with Earmuffs. He looks Italian to me. I picture him singing on a street corner in New York City outside of his Pizzeria.

Speaking of New York City…

Here’s a NYC Snow Globe. I’ve never been to New York, but if I ever go, I’d love to go at Christmastime.

Merry Christmas NYC!

Here’s another Santa.

This is probably my favorite Cookie out of all of them. Remy made this all by herself. She saw how we were making our Faces with the marshmallow eyes, and she made this one completely on her own. It looks just like all of her little characters she draws. So cute!

Here Remy is decorating a Christmas Bulb Cookie… I’ll show you those further down the page.

And here is another Cookie Remy made. Again… just like one of her little characters. I’m such a proud Momma.

Here’s Leo hard at work making a Snowman Cookie he saw in one of the many books we had on hand for inspiration.

Leo made this one too. He says it’s a portrait of the Professor.

We made sure to put it right in the window of the Professor’s Cookie Box!

He’ll be flattered I’m sure.

My mom and her sisters made these ones. They are Ginger Cookies filled with Lemon Butter-creme. Yum!

My Aunts are great Cookie Decorators.

They made all kinds of fun Cookie designs.

They are also great bakers.

My Aunts provided these delicious little Cookies to add to our boxes. They are called Anzac Bicuits and the recipe is from my cousins in Australia. They taste like Chewy, Buttery, Coco-nutty, goodness. You can’t eat just one!

Speaking of Australians…

This is Daniel. He’s from Australia too. He is one of my cousins friends and he’s been staying with my Aunt while visiting California.

He made several very good looking Santa Clause Cookies. We thought he was doing a great job. But then…

He made this.

He couldn’t explain it… He just made it… and left it with us.

Kind of reminds me of one of the stores I did some of my Christmas Shopping at. Also reminds me a bit of a certain hat… worn by a cat.

Everyone contributed to the production of Christmas Tree Cookies.

In addition to making Sugar Cookies, we made some Chocolate Sugar Cookies by replacing 1 Cup of the flour in our recipe, with one cup of Cocoa Powder, and reducing the vanilla content down to only 1 tsp.

These Chocolate Cookies make a nice contrast for the Frosting and add another look to the designs.

They taste really good too!

Speaking of delicious! Don’t these look yummy… if you like candy… which I do.

My husband always makes fun of my affinity for candy. He thinks it’s weird to still like candy as an adult. He says it’s because I wasn’t aloud to have much of it as a young child. My Mom preferred to give me Carob Chips, raisins, and sugarless gum when I was little. Now I prefer candy over most any other sweet treat.

Aren’t these cool? We made the cord with Black Licorice Rope… strictly for photographing purposes. Then we divided them up and put them in the boxes.

Another Snow Globe.

These kind of look like Snow Globes too.

Gifts.

A Wreath.

And a partridge in a Pear Tree!

Merry Christmas!!!

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I decided to show my kids how to make a snowflake with scissors and paper. This is the only picture I have of the snowflake because as you’ll see soon enough… the focus did not stay on the snowflake for very long.

As I was cutting the snowflake, I remembered how fun it also used to be to cut out paper accordion people. So, while my kids were “Ooooohing” and “Aaaahing” over my snowflake, I decided to make a link of accordion ballerinas.

Yep. My kids were seriously impressed.

I cut it out and then I asked Remy to color the ballerinas and give them faces. She did a good job.

With a snowflake and ballerinas on the table I of course thought of the Nutcracker. But then, looking at the ballerinas all linked together I thought of the Four Little Swans from Swan Lake. True… there are five ballerinas in my link and only four in the Swan Lake piece, but hey… I was close.

If you have no idea what the Four Little Swans piece is, here’s a video.

Next I needed some trees.

The stage was set!

But of course Remy… ( I say “of course” because this is so typical of her) said…

“Make some Bad Guys Mommy.”

This is what I came up with.

I know, I know… they aren’t attached. I got lazy. What can I say?

Remy drew their faces. She did a great job! She’s really got the concept down of angling the eyebrows just right to convey EVIL!

What?

You don’t think “Bob” and “Frank” look evil?

Now that is creepy.

These poor ballerinas are surrounded by psychos peeking through the trees.

Naturally the next request from the kids was for some Super Heroes.

Ta-daaah!

If you can name all four Super Heroes correctly in the comments section of this post you get a GOLD STAR. If you have one… to give yourself. Maybe add a little “pat-on-the-back” while you’re at it.

I have to admit… I’m pretty proud of those Super Heroes.

Did I mention I’d like to become a Children’s Book Author and Illustrator?

Zondervan, Random House, Thomas Nelson… If you’re reading this… which I’m sure you just must be… Call Me!

Let the Marvel Comic Ballet begin.

Imagine the lovely Swan Lake music playing as the ballerinas happily frolic by the trees.

Enter the menacing Bob and Frank with their EVIL Villain eyebrows.

It wasn’t long before they decided to cut the Super Heroes apart from each other.

Ah! That’s better.

“You’re goin’ down Bob!”

“No! Bob will be victorious!”

I think this is the part where Bob got crushed by a Giant Snowflake.

“Now to take care of Frank.”

Seriously… this kept both my kids entertained for over an hour.

“It’s a bird, It’s a plane, It’s… ” (Nope… that’s all the hint you get for the comments section.)

“You’re done for Frank.”

Curtain

This year has been a tough one for us financially. I’ve been feeling a little guilty about how little we have to spend on Christmas presents for the kids.

Something tells me they’re going to be just fine.

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This is one of my kids favorite school books.  I bought it when Leo was just four years old.  We started learning about different animals using some “Animal Encyclopedias” and “Amazing Facts About Animals” books.  Once a week we would pull out this Cut and Create book and do a little craft project to go along with our lesson.

The book is great for teaching pre-schoolers how to cut and paste simple shapes as well as how to follow visual step by step instructions.

This book is also really helpful for parents because it gives you the templates for all the pieces you’ll need to make each animal.  I’ve never actually traced any of the templates.  I just always copy the pictures as closely as I can onto different colors of construction paper and then let the kids cut them out and glue them together.

The book is full of all kinds of really cute animals.  You can just put them together as a craft to hang on the fridge, but some of them like this one, make really great masks and the kids love to put them on and act like the animals they are learning about.

This camel makes a great puppet for Old Testament Bible stories if you glue him to a Popsicle stick.

Check out this adorable octopus.

I just love octopuses.

Whenever I see an octopus at an aquarium the rest of my family has to drag me away.  I could just watch these guys all day.  They are so fascinating.

Did you know that octopuses are super intelligent?  They can learn to traverse through underwater mazes, unscrew jar lids with their tentacles to get to food, and even possibly distinguish between shapes and colors.

Octopuses have been known to sneak out of their habitats into neighboring ones in search of food and I have even heard stories about owners who have found them climbing up bookshelves with their suction cups.

Octopuses have no bones at all and can squeeze through openings the size of their eyeballs.  I read one story about an owner who found his large octopus curled up hiding inside a teapot.

I could go on and on about octopuses. They are so amazing!!!

There is also a page in this Cut and Create book that shows you some additional items you can make to create a habitat for your paper animals like flowers, trees, leaves, food, rocks, and coral.

This little tree frog looks so cute perched on a big leaf.

Recently Remy has been quite taken with the Big Bad Wolf.  She is a fan of his work in both the tale of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.  As she flipped through the book this past week looking for which animal she would most like to make, she of course chose this one.

Remy wanted to make the Big Bad Wolf but she wasn’t in the mood to do any cutting on this particular day so Leo volunteered.  Even though he is now in third grade, Leo also still loves making animals from this book… I’ll admit it… I like it too.  It’s just fun.

We took the liberty of adding some fangs and scary eyebrows to make sure he wasn’t just a Zoo Wolf, but rather a Big… Bad… Wolf!  I also cut some slits in the eyes to see through and poked holes in either side to hold knots in ribbon so it could be worn as a mask.  Once Leo and I finished this mask for Remy, Leo decided he needed a mask too so they could play in their masks together.

This is one of the things I love about home schooling my kids.  It’s so awesome to watch brothers and sisters spend time with each other playing and growing together every day instead of being separated from each other for the majority of their weeks into their own age groups.

Of course they both still need time with their peers which they get through Sunday school, Awanas, enrichment classes, and team sports, but I love that the majority of their time each day is spent together as siblings.  My husband and I are hoping this experience will continue to foster a very close bond between all of our children.

So, we decided that the appropriate animal to create to go along with the Big Bad Wolf would of course be a Little Pig.  But this is a zoo book and it didn’t have any pigs, so Mommy had to put her illustration skills to work and create a Little Pig from scratch.

Here he is… our forlorn Little Piggy.

Isn’t it amazing what two strips of black paper used as eyebrows can express if placed at just the right angle?  He sure looks worried…. as he should.  There is a Big Bad Wolf coming his way!

Once you’ve used this book a bit and get the hang of putting these animals together regularly you really can start to create all kinds of your own masks, puppets, and craft projects from lessons and stories.

Cut and Create books come in several different themes and are great tools to inspire quick and easy crafts.

You may think it’s just the pig mask, but under that paper Remy’s face looks just about the same.  She threw a fit when I tried to get her to be the pig for this picture because I guess we made the Big Bad Wolf just a little bit too Big and Bad for her comfort.  She didn’t mind being the Big Bad Wolf herself, but she did not like seeing that mask on her big brother.

And I just paid how much for costumes from Wal-Mart this past week?  I could have used these free masks and been the hit of our Church Harvest Festival.

If you’re interested in having some inexpensive, educational fun with your little ones, check out all these awesome Cut and Create books…

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One of my home school philosophies is “Inspire and Require.”

I am thrilled to see the amazing things my kids come up with for school projects or their playtime, that comes from having been inspired by a story or idea. I am also thrilled to see their growth in foundational concepts because they have done the work I have required of them. If I can work some inspiration into the required things, that is the ideal situation.

Inspiration really is the best method for helping anyone learn anything.  When someone is inspired to pursue further knowledge in a subject, they take ownership of it and commit to learning it because of personal passion.

But, there is also a great deal to be said for the things we “had” to learn, and are now grateful that we did.  I wish my mother had “required” me to learn piano.  I took some lessons as a small child but I didn’t like taking them. My mother stopped making me go.  I wish she had “required” me to continue. Once I had gotten beyond the first few boring years and acquired some foundational skills in piano, I would have begun to appreciate it, own it, and pursue it on my own, looking for inspiration from the Masters.  Instead, I can only play Mary Had A Little Lamb, Heart and Soul, and part of Axel F… the theme song from Beverly Hills Cop.

Each week our home school time is filled with lessons and work that is required, as well as free school time when the kids are allowed to explore the books on our shelves, including the constant influx of library books, and to discover and come up with whatever kind of activities they are interested in, excluding television and video games.

Today was Columbus Day.

I probably should have done some sort of lesson on Colombus… but I didn’t.  In history we have been studying ancient times, so Columbus was nowhere on my radar… or my bookshelves.  Beyond that, truth be told, today was a free school day entirely, because Momma – that’s me –  needed to get some overdue cleaning done.  I mean the works! Corners and crevices, baseboards, nooks, and crannies.  It was just time!  I could not go another day with such an ignored mess lurking about me.

Remy spent most of the day drawing pictures, except for when she took a break to paint some pictures.  In addition, we read one chapter together from Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.

We also had a major breakthrough playing with Leapfrog letter magnets on the fridge while I was feeding Llany dinner.  Remy sounded out the words, “pig”, “bug”, and “big” completely on her own.

Leo spent the day building with Legos, defining Latin nouns, reading books about Egyptian Pharaohs and boy detectives, playing outdoor games with some friends, and… with my permission… helping Nana do some housecleaning upstairs…. In the home school world we call house cleaning “working on life skills.”

For me the day was a total success… except for the recurring guilt that I was completely ignoring Columbus.

I didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything but focus on cleaning.  Both Remy and Llany took three hour naps… extraordinary!

I didn’t even have to stop my house cleaning to make dinner, because Nana offered to make homemade Chicken ‘n Dumplins for the whole house.  She usually does this when the fall days start to turn cold, and today was the first fall day filled with gray skies here in good ol’ Southern California.  Tomorrow we are expecting rain.

I’m ecstatic! !

I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the rain!

Maybe because in these parts it’s so rare.

In addition to all of that, I weighed myself this morning and have dropped two pounds from last week.  Thanks Gilad. We won’t talk about the fifteen pounds Einstein has dropped in the last month with absolutely no effort.  Yep.  Just a freakish drive-by pound dropping for him.  No change in his eating.  No exercising…. I better just stop right there before this post becomes a rant about the things in life that just aint fair.

What was I saying?  Oh yes… total successs….

And to top it all off, after my entire day of guilt for not giving a history lesson on Columbus, Leo surprised us all with a dessert he and Nana made.

He called them New Land Cookies.  The sails are made from won-ton wraps, on toothpicks.

Nana said it was all his idea, which I entirely believe because typically we don’t allow the kids to have dessert on week nights.  Leo however will find any excuse he can to try and wiggle into a treat after dinner and of course today his excuse was Columbus day.

I must say I was thrilled however that he ended up acknowledging Columbus on a day when I completely dropped the ball and didn’t teach about him.

I just love great days like this.

Life is most certainly sweet!

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We live in a guest house, downstairs from Nana and Papa.  It has been a joyful experience living with my in-laws for the past seven years and one that comes with plenty of benefits, wonderful memories, and lots of laughs.  We couldn’t do what we do without them.

And ohhh the FUN we have!

I’m Rachymommy – a stay-at-home- / home schooling / soccer Mom.  If you want to learn more about me, check out my detailed profile here.

I refer to my husband as Einstein, and in posts about him in his younger years before we were married, I refer to him as “the boy next door.”

He’s a software engineer who writes code and is a whiz with all things electronic and technological.  He and I grew up in this town and had secret crushes on each other from a distance.  In college we ended up at the same bible study and finally started hanging out.  After six months of a blossoming friendship we began a courtship, and after six months of that, Einstein proposed and we were married a month and a half later.

We have three AMAZING children… so far!

Leo is our gifted firstborn.  He began reading at age two.  He is the reason I started home schooling.  At age four when I was considering the idea of starting him in kindergarten early, he tested into the second grade.

Though he is brilliant he is also a typical boy; he plays soccer and baseball and is obsessed with video games, Legos, and all things Star Wars.

His nickname is a reference to Leonardo da Vinci, one of the many inventors that fascinate him. Leo devours books and is constantly jotting down ideas for songs, stories, and inventions.

Rembrandt is our second-born.  She is a true girly-girl with the exception of her love for Lightning McQueen. Yes that racecar is on her sheets and comforter… No we are not NASCAR fans, just Pixar fans.

Remy is preschool age and is an entirely different creature than Leo.  She just began reading this year at age three and is interested in reading at least one “BOB book” (available in the teaching reading section of my store) each day, as long as she gets a piece of candy for it. She flits from one activity to the next at a mind boggling pace and nearly everything she spends her time doing has some kind of connection with art.

She is a lefty who began drawing little characters like this one at age two.

We find scribbles and doodles like this on notebooks, bills, mail, and any type of paper that lays around our house unclaimed.  Her nickname is a reference to her love for drawing, painting, coloring, sculpting (play-doh of course) and all things artistic.

Magellan is the newest addition to our bunch.  He is our toddling explorer who is still trying to get his sea legs. He is busy discovering this new world and trying to get a grasp on what everything is and of course what everything tastes like.

Llany LOVES his freedom during those short daily moments when I release him from the confines of his playpen or high chair and just let him roam.

Papa was born in Norway and has taught all his children and grandchildren to proudly boast about their Viking blood. Grrrrrrrr!!! He runs a construction company and builds office buildings, custom homes, churches and such.  He is a no nonsense hard working guy who knows nothing about pop culture… and that’s the way he likes it.  He loves to laugh and have fun and throw a line in the stream every chance he gets.  He has a deep wisdom that he keeps to himself unless one of us comes seeking.  He doesn’t watch movies and he doesn’t read books but he does love a good old fashioned game of darts or a day out in the hot sun on a boat or Seadoo.

Nana is an encourager.  She is the dearest, sweetest spirit you’ll ever meet who can’t stand to see our little ones without a tasty treat in their hands.  In her younger years she was an actress and a model and her face still shines with a beauty worthy of the silver screen.  Now she is the matriarch of this ever growing family and her prayers and spoken blessings cover all of us as we come and go.

We have one other member here at the commune (We used to have four other members until the spring of 09 when Einstein’s sister, her husband, and their two kids moved out of state to start their own business. Yes – if you’re doing the math – at one time there were twelve of us all under one roof.  But now there are only a mere eight.)

The Professor is Einstein’s younger brother who is living here while working on his Master’s degree in education… and ladies… this one is single. (And we are trying to get him married so we can have more cousins for our kids… shhhhhh)

He loves our little munchkins and they see him not just as an uncle but like a fun big brother.  He’s not really a professor stereo-type at all. He surfs and snowboards and just about every night of the week he is off playing some kind of sport… soccer, baseball, basketball, tennis, football, etc.  He does love to read though and he is working towards becoming a teacher of math and science.

Yep… we’re quite a clan!

If you stick around and visit often, you can look forward to many more posts about our jolly lives together.

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When I was in high school I was discipled by two wonderful women who both home schooled their young children.  Home school was presented to me at that young age as a very respectable, reasonable way to educate your children if you had the privilege of being a stay at home mom.

My first son Leo said his first word at nine months, was talking in full sentences at eighteen months, and could locate and name all of the fifty states by age two. He also began reading at age two and by the time he was three and a half years old my son could read the New American Standard Version of the Bible on his own with comprehension.  At age four he tested into the second semester of 2nd grade based on his math, reading, and comprehension abilities.

I’m sure it was God’s perfect plan to introduce me to the idea of home school at a young age in order to prepare me for the only type of education which seemed reasonable for such a young advanced learner.  Now that I’ve been doing it for four years I’ve grown to love it and would be willing to continue with it, for all of my children for their entire pre-college educations.

I am open however to changing the method by which my son and my other children receive their educations, at any time the home school approach we are now using no longer seems to be what is best for them and for our family.

Home school carries with it tremendous privileges as well as challenging obstacles. I have thoroughly enjoyed our journey with it so far, but must remind myself not to allow home school itself to become my “cause”. Mine is the cause of Christ, and for now this is where He has lead our family and I have been greatly blessed by it . If  at some point the Lord leads my husband and I to place our children in public school, private school, or elsewhere, I know there will be grace and blessings in that part of our journey as well.

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