Dec. 3, 2007 - ~~Holiday Open House~~

Welcome to the Holiday Open House for Christmas 2007.  Tiany has been busy at work getting this project all put together for us to share in our Holy-Days traditions, fun activities, crafts, school studies and things that you and your family do together to make these days special.  Go to Tiany's blog and join in the fun.  The rules for this event are posted at the bottom of my page.

How do you keep Christ in Christmas?  Well, since Christ never went out of Christmas in our home that's not hard to answer.  We keep Christ in Christmas by being thankful for what we do have and knowing that we wouldn't have each other or any thing in our lives without Him.  We've never celebrated Santa because my husband and I never did that as a tradition either while we were growing up, it was something we mutually agreed on when we decided to get married.   

 Share some fun things you do with your family, traditions, is there  a new tradition you want to start?  I always do homemade crafts and used to do lots of baking, but baking has slowly dwindled to just a small amount.  I mostly do the craft thing because I've always done it.  My daughter keeps us singing through the year because she sings all the time anyway.  She's in charge of listening music and movies to curl up with on cold winter nights.  We're going to slowly start buying some Hallmark movies that we all enjoy...personally, I think the company should make a DVD of all their commercials...they make us cry as much as the movies.  LOL  I guess the oldest tradition I have is that since inheriting my mother's tree and ornaments I also possess the ceramic Nativity set (pictured below) that she made many years ago...around 35 years ago and some beautiful bells and Kelsey and I set them up on a table in honor of the Holy-Days and now in memory of my mother.

The whole nativity set made by my mother

Baby Jesus

I wanted to show all the animals individually but they're too blurry.

 Share fun activities, projects, crafts, unit studies or websites you might incorporate into your homeschool/home.   My daughter will be taking a volunteer course for the Hospice in our area this week so we can give gifts to people that are in need of constant attention.  We also make ornaments and little trinkets for the Senior center.  Our church does a yearly gift giving to children who may not otherwise receive gifts, so we will be going to the store with our Missionary funding and buying triplet girls and their sister some special clothing items this week.  Most of our studies at Christmastime are about the birth and life of Jesus, we do lots of crafts but most of those are for Children at the Local Hospice organization or for Senior Citizens.  Rarely, do we make anything for ourselves during the holy-days.  There's more gratification from giving than receiving. 

 Gifts~ Share gifts that you will be making, gifts from your kitchen, frugal ideas etc… We are making pasta angels, tobacco stick santas to hang on the wall, cookies, beaded icicles, trees, candy canes, and crosses.  These will be used for gifts as well as for our own tree.  Since losing our home in a fire we've slowly been rebuilding our ornament collection for the tree.  I have my mother's tree and all of her ornaments too.  It means a lot to me to have this because there are still some of the ornaments that my daughters and I have made over the years since they were younger.  She kept ornaments that I made and mailed to her, Lord only knows how many years ago. 

 “Holiday Homeschool Open House “ will start on Monday December 3^rd and will run through Friday December 7^th.

You must link back to the Open House on your post so that others can join the fun too!

Mister Linky will be up on the 3^rd, when you link to mister Linky  you must link directly to your Open House post.  I have had ladies linking that are not participating and it becomes too difficult to find your post.