Rebekah made the invitations and kept on top of all the RSVP’s.

Trisha set the atmosphere with beautiful Christmas music she curated.

She also organized and made a great many of the desserts.

Serenity (on the right) planned the menu and made some of the food including her delicious artisan bread.

Mmmm, simply delicious.

Natalie was in charge of decorations and made many of them herself.

Natalie took a log from her backyard, added greenery and this little bird to it that she picked up at the dollar store.

The pinecones were spray painted.

This is a little manger scene she created using craft sticks and pinon nuts from her backyard.

Another girl organized the gift exchange in which the girls were encouraged to make their own homemade toppers.

The hot drink station was a hit. (organized by yet another CK girl)

Two of our Castle Defenders read the Christmas story and did a tremendous job!

Games were organized by Hannah.

Each of the girls invited their own guests and gave them a gift.

(My girls with their grandma.)

It was a beautiful evening for the girls…

and I am so proud of them and what they put together.

The girls made hair bow holders (painting picture frames)and hair bows. There were some very beautiful ones!

Here’s one of them up close.

The girls wearing our club colors and t-shirts we designed.

While the girls were busy making hair bows, the Castle Defenders and I were outside doing a few things ourselves.

First on the agenda was to make sun tea.

Then we blew some bubbles.

…and then we did a few experiments from http://www.hometrainingtools.com/a/super-soap-bubble-solution/.  After blowing a bubble on the lid, the kids would insert different objects into the bubble like this plant…

…and these scissors. It was pretty interesting.

Then we attempted to make giant bubbles using bubble wands the boys put together.

We ran into one problem

…that made it difficult to get any bubbles at all.

And that was the wind.

So if you try this at home, please take my advice and do it when it is calm outside.

We tried it last night when there was not even a breeze and it worked so much better. It really was quite enjoyable and a nice thing to do with the kids.

We used the bubble solution recipe from The Happy Hooligans. It calls for glycerine which you can find at any pharmacy even Wal-Mart, right on the shelves.

May you have many giant bubbles!

]]> https://treasuringthemoments.net/2014/06/13/bubbles-bows/feed/ 1 https://treasuringthemoments.net/2014/02/10/to-arms-to-arms-defend-the-castle/ https://treasuringthemoments.net/2014/02/10/to-arms-to-arms-defend-the-castle/#comments Mon, 10 Feb 2014 15:15:09 +0000 http://treasuringthemoments.net/?p=699105 For this months Castle Defenders, I asked what is a knight without a sword.  So while our Castle Keeper girls were learning how to make journal covers, our boys were learning sword making skills.

My husband taught the class and started off telling them a few stories.

and then it was time to make their swords!

This link has a good tutorial – How to Make a Boffer (Foam Sword).

Then the rest of the day they fought and fought and in between chased chickens.

My older boys even got in on the action and took on all of them.

And they all went home tired but happy “Castle Defenders.”

I have a couple of boards on Pinterest where I pin Handicrafts & Skills for Girls and Handicrafts & Skills for Boys. You won’t find cut and paste art projects but projects more in keeping with what Charlotte Mason taught. I wrote about Charlotte Mason Handicrafts here.  If you think you would find the Pinterest boards useful, you can follow them here.

Handicrafts & Skills for Boys

Handicrafts & Skills for Girls

]]> https://treasuringthemoments.net/2014/02/10/to-arms-to-arms-defend-the-castle/feed/ 3 https://treasuringthemoments.net/2014/01/13/scrapbooking-recipes-teaching-boys-how-to-shine-shoes/ https://treasuringthemoments.net/2014/01/13/scrapbooking-recipes-teaching-boys-how-to-shine-shoes/#comments Tue, 14 Jan 2014 03:03:23 +0000 http://treasuringthemoments.net/?p=699022 Did you think there were only a few ways to enjoy popcorn?

Cheese?

Caramel?

Plain?

We found out in December with the challenge issued to our Castle Keeper girls, the variety of ways you can season and flavor popcorn.

Serenity made a delicious Pumpkin Pie Spice Caramel Popcorn with White Chocolate.

and Audrey made Marshmallow Caramel Popcorn.

There were a great variety made and all the girls brought a sample to the next meeting for everyone to try.

14 different kinds.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make the meeting because of a cough.

So on with what the girls did at their class.

They put their creative skills to good use and scrapbooked recipes.  Everyone printed off recipes to share with the other girls.

While the girls were busy being crafty….

…my hubby, son and another dad were teaching the young boys how to shine their shoes.

Some of the shoes required quite a bit of elbow grease to get them to shine…

…but they did in the end.

I was thankful for the men who stepped in and helped with the class.  To me that makes them great because they were willing.

It is not enough to just say relationships are important; we must prove it by investing time in them.

                                                                                                                                                              ― Rick Warren

And sometimes time seems in short supply, doesn’t it?

We get so busy being a mom with all of our various responsibilities, especially if we’re homeschooling, that it’s easy to not set aside some special time just to have fun. At least for me.

My husband and I try to make a conscious effort to spend the evenings just with the kids but to be honest, we miss the mark many times.

This will show you how it can be.  It takes us about a year to finish a read-aloud book that we read only at night.  Pitiful, I know.

Have you figured out a solution for your family?  Do you have special nights you set aside to do something special with the kids?

He burned one before we left just to see how it would do.  It was pretty amazing!  It burned for over 8 minutes!!  I liked how they worked so much that me and Audrey made some more just for us.  I’m looking forward to a good hot fire.

The boys club is called…. Castle Defenders!

They are a fine bunch of boys don’t you think?

My husband, Russell has agreed to help with the classes but since he was unavailable yesterday, I had the honor of doing it.  I love working with young children. They are just so special to me.

The first thing we did was to make firestarters.  Elk hunting camp is just around the corner and the kids all love to have their own campfire.  Of course, they end up using quite a bit of matches to do this, so these firestarters will give them a good start when making their own fire.  They are supposed to burn for a minimum of 3 minutes and up to 5 minutes, I think.

Don’t worry.  At elk hunting camp all of the fires are started within eyesight of the adults.

To make firestarters, I followed this You Tube video.

If you want to make them you will need:

cardboard egg cartons

sawdust or dryer lint

paraffin wax

The boys had to cut the wax up into small pieces.

We placed the small pieces of wax into a can and placed the can into a pot that was filled partway with water.  We turned on the heat until the wax was completely melted.

In the meantime, we filled egg carton cells with sawdust and compacted it.

The next step was to pour melted wax over the sawdust. I found out that it takes a lot more wax than I anticipated to really cover the individual egg cells up.

Once it hardens you cut the lid of the egg carton off and then cut each individual egg cell apart.

We then headed for State Land that was nearby and learned how to leave trail markers whether using stones, twigs or grass. I had made copies for everyone from this site.

We practiced making the signs and then we split into two teams.  The first team was given 5 minutes to leave trail markers for us to follow.  The point was not to lose us but to be sure we would find them.

After we found them, we then took the trail with a 5 minute head start to leave markers for them to follow.

We finally finished up our activities with Red Indian.  Red Indian is a game that Charlotte Mason talks about in her books.  I wrote about it here in this post – An Outdoor Game when Justus was just 4 years old. We’ve played it for years and my kids have always loved it.

This boy thought he would be sneaky and hide up in the tree thinking I would just be looking at ground level.  But I caught him.

Justus was great at remaining undetected.  My camera did not do what I wanted it to do yesterday, so a lot of these pictures are overexposed.  Believe it or not, he’s hiding on the other side of this bush, laying flat on the ground.

With them being this savvy, how could I help but NOT find them.

We had a great time. I don’t have a lot of ideas of what I want to do with these boys so I’ll be doing plenty of research looking for useful and fun activities/handicrafts.

An update on what the Castle Keepers were doing while we were out in the sun and wind is coming up!