Krista, Author at While He Was Napping

December 2, 2011 by Krista

Weekend Wander #58

Wow, 58 parties already?! Time flies when you’re having fun, huh? As promised, here are some features from last week’s party, as well as the party two weeks ago. Some of my faves:

Holy Craft‘s Book Wreath

Increasingly Domestic‘s Laundry Cream

Hum… Now What‘s DIY Mercury Glass

Making Home‘s Vintage Ornament Wreath

Lisa’s Craft Blog‘s Pine Cone Ornament

Funky Polka Dot Giraffe‘s Winter Bucket List

Everyday Game Plan‘s TP Roll Nativity

Raising Dieter‘s Homemade Marshmallows

Congrats and thanks for linking up! It was a great couple of parties. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Real quick, just wanted to give you a little peek at some of the new goodies in my Etsy Shop. Coupon code WHWN1500 is still good and will get you 15% off everything in the shop.

Printable Gift Tags

More Gift Tags

Personalized Christmas Cards

Blue Personalized Christmas Cards

Personalized Santa Christmas Cards

Naughty or Nice Stocking Stuffer Love Coupons

And the Holiday Organizer Printable to keep all your holidays in one spot.

Ok… enough stalling… let’s party! You know the rules:

1. Family Friendly Content only, please.

2. No commercial site links.

3. MINGLE! No one likes a wall flower.

December 1, 2011 by Krista

Christmas Advent Binder

** This was originally posted at One Artsy Mama as part of {Our} Home for the Holidays series. I thought I’d share it here as well, in case you missed it.**

After my husband and I got married, we decided that it was traditions were important to our family. Not just traditions we each brought from our own childhoods, but establishing traditions for our new and growing family as well. One of our new traditions is the Christmas Advent Binder.

We have a page protector pocket in our binder for each day in December, up until Christmas Day. Each page has a short little story and an activity to do as a family. There is also a CD with 24 Christmas songs (one for each day) but some evenings it gets listened to in it’s entirety.

We complete one page protector a day, usually in the evenings. Sometimes on the weekends we’ll do it earlier in the day or in pieces (read the story at breakfast and do the activity a little later in the day when the kiddo is getting restless and bored).

Not all days are spiritual and religious-based. Some days are a more relaxed and fun. The stories have topics from serving others and having gratitude for what we have to helping out at home and, of course, the story of the birth of the Christ-child.

I got most of the stories from The Friend magazine (published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) and the activities were ones I’d gathered from a lot of sources and ideas. I went through all our Christmas music and chose songs that correlated (as closely as I could find anyway) to the stories. I tried to do the same with the activities, but some of them are completely random and have nothing to do with the stories. It’s all good memory building, though.

It’s a fun tradition and a small way to help our family remember that, although the presents and parties are fun, Christmas is about more than what we get under the tree.

Happy Holidays! And thanks again, Amy!

Krista

December 1, 2011 by Krista

Toddler Advent: Christmas Matching Game

You could use this for your older kiddos too. Like your elementary school-aged kids. Little Monkey loves to play matching games. Particularly on my tablet. I figured we’d try a real-life version with the hope that maybe it would hold his attention a little longer (simply because you have to do all the turning yourself, which takes a few more seconds…). I made one version that has Christmas themed pictured and one that is a whole bunch of Christmas trees. You know, to make it even harder.

Little Monkey hasn’t actually played the matching game yet, but he’s had fun throwing all the pieces around… fun for Mom. He does like to look at all the different pictures though.

You can print these files from 4shared.com. Simply download, save and print. Then, just cut the squares apart. You’ll have to print TWO copies of each page, though, or you won’t have matches. The images show up funny on 4shared, but they should all be there. I know it looks like it’s missing some pictures, but it all showed up when I tested it out. If you have problems, let me know. By the way, there are three religious photos on the Christmas Match set. If you don’t want to play with those, just take them out.

http://www.4shared.com/document/UjiU2Tlp/Christmas_Match.html

http://www.4shared.com/document/nuBDPI3B/Christmas_Tree_Match.html

December 1, 2011 by Krista

Christmas Advent Countdown with Printable Toddler Activities

First, I’m sorry I’ve been so awful at posting this week. It’s been crazy. Not only have I been trying to get everything back in order from our trip (who doesn’t love vacation laundry, right?), but all three of us got sick while we were gone. Like can’t-eat-for-24-hours-or-you’ll-throw-it-back-up kind of sick. Ugh. Little Monkey had it Thanksgiving day. I got it on my uncle’s wedding day and had to miss all the hoopla (which was the actual reason we went over for Thanksgiving). And My Mr Right spent the last three hours of the car ride home and all night with a plastic baggie or a trash can gripped in his hands. So, I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving. As for us, well, there’s always next year… Anyway, let’s move on to the good stuff.

My Little Monkey doesn’t completely comprehend Christmas or Winter at this point. He just thinks mommy is the meanest meanie that makes him stay inside all the time. And as far as the real reason for Christmas, well… the boy barely understands who Santa is, so the deeper doctrine of Christmas is kind of lost on him.

In order to try and stave off some of the boredom this month, I have concocted an activity advent calendar. I threw most of this together in about two days, but there are parts of it that aren’t quite finished. Basically, the idea is that Little Monkey will get to open an envelop every day before Christmas. Inside the envelop is an activity we can do that day. There are a lot of simple things (like make a snowman out of marshmallows, glue cotton balls on Santa’s chin, color and make a lace up stocking) along with a little more involved activities (helping to set the Christmas tree up, for example).

My Little Monkey is of the opinion that if he isn’t moving 500 mph, he’s not moving fast enough, so there are a lot of busy activities too. Like Snowman Bowling and a Snowball Toss. Because there is soo much involved with this, I will be breaking this down into several mini-posts, so you’ll see this snowman again…

You can get the whole list of activities HERE. It’s a Word document. If you have trouble, let me know. I’ll email it to you. All you have to do is print, cut them apart and then, if you get the itch to be an overachiever, glue them to card stock and put each one in an envelop.

Our first activity we will do tomorrow will be to set up and decorate the Christmas tree. I’m a little apprehensive to let Little Monkey help. I’m not sure he’ll like that he can touch while we decorate, but then after that it’s a hands-off deal… Guess we’ll see. Come back for that adventure…

I’ll do another post (hopefully tonight) with some more explanation of the other printable files I’m using with this activity advent countdown. There’s a bunch of them up on 4shared already, so feel free to browse and try to figure some of it out. They are all my original creations, so feel free to use them. Please don’t redistribute them though. If you want to send people here to get their own copies, great. Please don’t post them on your own site though. Here’s the links.

Check out this year’s (2012) advent calendar HERE. More printable activities!

And if you’re looking for gift ideas (I know I’m madly combing the internet…), check out the WHWN Gift Guide.

November 30, 2011 by Krista

A Winner, A Winner!

I have one hour and nine minutes to announce this winner before I’m a total liar. So, let’s get this done, shall we? The winner of the 8×10″ Personalized Subway Art Giveaway is…

Congratulations! I’m sending an email your way right now. You have 24 hours to respond and claim your prize!

If you didn’t win, you can still order these (or anything in my Etsy Shop) in time for Christmas! Don’t forget to use coupon code WHWN1500 at check out. Code is valid until December 23, 2011. In order to receive items by Christmas, payment must be received by December 18th, 2011.

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