Christmas in the Village

We spent this past summer creating a village. It is still one of Jay and Kay's favorite things to play with. For Christmas we made a Bethlehem Village with many of the same pieces (our family lives there for this month) and then a few extra.

I planned to make more peg people for the nativity characters, but found a similar set already in our Christmas box from years past.

The village gets all kinds of visitors from the jungle as the kids add all kinds of animals to the stable. It's fun to watch them interact with each of the people represented.

The village is in a corner and has small cardboard boxes covered with a piece of burlap. I had a piece of starry night scrapbook paper to put up behind, but haven't yet :)

So many of our decorations are not very kid-friendly. This Bethlehem Village has been a fun way to interact with the meaning behind why we celebrate Christmas at our house. I have a feeling it will become one of the favorites as the years go by.

The Village Park

The green space before:

And after:
We are having fun discovering this new city that we have moved to for the summer. We are lucky enough to have a really awesome park just across the street. It's one of those parks that is huge and it's playstuff is mostly made of wood. The kiddos have had a blast playing outside there so naturally, it was the new addition in our village.

The swing set is made from popcicle sticks lashed together with embroidery floss and cemented there with elmer's glue. The swing is a button with sides to hold our little village people in. Jay especially has loved the swing set.
We added the gardens around the park the following day with different trims that I've collected over the years. I just brought an inch or two of a bunch of fun trims, not knowing what we would do with them.  So far we've used them for gardens, swing wrap-around, and water in the pond.  Jay loved painting the pine tree for our park (from Casey's).
Jay is really into birds right now, so you will notice that a little "chick" likes to swim in the pond. I like the fact that this piece of green "grass" is mostly just empty...I'm thinking our park may turn into a little farm one of these days too, since that is what little Kay would prefer. That is really the beauty of this fun little project. The possibilities are endless....

Here are some photos of our family playing at the park :)

More village to come...

Kickin' it up on St. Patty's Day

I'm not sure that I mentioned on the last post that we've been out of town for over a week now. I'm not around a computer a lot. I actually forgot to pack a green shirt for Kay.  So yesterday I stopped by the dollar store and found a green and pink one.  I added the lettering, as you can see below.

 St. Patrick's Day is one of my FAVORITE DAYS!

I'm not even Irish.

But I taught Irish Step Dancing for nearly 10 years. Needless to say, today is a day that Irish Step Dancers LOVE to celebrate.
These aren't my dancers, since I'm not home to put their photos up. But you get the idea :)


If you haven't discovered Pandora yet, today is your LUCKY day! You go to the site, type in your favorite style, composer, artist, genre and it kicks out your personalized music stream! Seriously! And it is Free! Try putting in Irish, or Irish Traditional, or Riverdance and have a listen!

If you want to discover a little about Irish Step Dancing and add some kickin' fun into your day, check out this video.

I should have posted about our upcoming St. Patrick's Day projects ahead of time so you could join in, but feel free to celebrate a week of Irish fun, we will be!

I have a new obsession: This is my first "Peg Person."  She's an Irish Step Dancer.  Her name is Peggy :)  She is wearing a traditional Irish dancing dress and even has her arms down to her side, like a good irish step dancer should.

She is made from a peg and some Sharpie markers.  Kay loves to play with her!

She was fun to make and hopefully I will get better.

Want to try making some irish dancers too?  

Here are some on Flickr

These are some paper dolls to get here too for just a buck :)

And here are some Irish Step Dancers to color.

We've been spoiled by 2 sets of grandparents lately.  My Mom had some fun ideas for recycling left over Valentine's candy to celebrate today. 

BEFORE:
AFTER:
These hearts are wrapped in green plastic wrap and pasted on a "paint card" that you can get for free at home improvement stores.

If we were home we would definitely be making green frosted cupcakes with leftover candy hearts for shamrocks on them!

This chocolate frog (left over from Val. day) is the perfect green treat for Jay, the frog-loving-boy.

She also made these little bags for the kids to collect their leprechaun gold in.  

My sister works at a craft store and brought the Cricut over to show us.  It's pretty spectacular. It cuts out all kinds of things.  She cut vinyl frogs to hang in Jay's room and lots of paper frogs and frog bookmarks, etc.  It even can cut fabric!  

I put some "steam a seam" on some fabric and she cut all the letters out on the Cricut for the finishing touches on Kay's dollar store shirt.  This photo is before the letters were ironed on.

From our family to yours, I hope you have a kickin' St. Patrick's Day with a fun Little Project!