TOS Review: Apologia Press: Good Morning God by Davis Carman

I was asked to review this sweet, sweet story as part of the TOS crew.  This story takes us through each day of the week delighting us with the blessings given to us by God. From morning til night this book shows your children how they can worship the Lord throughout their day.  Along with just being a beautiful story, there are also questions at the end of the book for each day.  What a wonderful way to really get more out of this book!

 

Written from a child's point of view, this book is incredibly sweet and innocent.  My kids absolutely LOVED it.  They have read it many, many times and I often have to go find it in one of their rooms just for the other one to have a chance to read it yet again.  :) 
The pictures in this book are beautiful.  Parker (our little artist) likes to try to draw the pictures on his own paper and fill them in using similar colors.  Apologia Press also offers a coloring book to go along with this story.  It is $4.00 and you can find it here.  If you would like to purchase this book for your family, it is $14.00 and can be found here.  Make sure to take a peek at what other members of the crew thought of the book as well.

I was given this book to review from Apologia Press for being a part of the TOS crew in exchange for my honest opinion.  No other compensation was given. 

Brynn's Sweet Shoppe

For Brynn's 8th birthday party we decided on a candy shoppe theme.  She LOVES candy, so this was perfect!  I spent hours searching for ideas and of course loved every single one of them.  But first, I needed to come up with an invitation.  I went to my favorite place, Etsy.  You can find anything there.  It is so hard to choose, because everyone just makes the cutest things.  I finally decided to order from Espie May Crafts.She was an absolute joy to work with.  I needed my order super fast and wanted to change tons of things.  Plus, I had trouble making decisions.  I know, surprising.  This is the invite I ended up going with.  I also ordered water bottle labels and favor tags.  Everything was perfect!  I am not getting anything for telling you all about Espie May, I just really liked her work and wanted to share it with you.  :)

This party was going to be a sleepover with all of her gymnastics team, so I knew I needed LOTS of candy.  I picked up a bag of something every time I went to the store.  I already had a ton of jars to put the candy in, but I did pick up a couple of things from the Dollar Tree to go with them.  Here's a pic of the candy buffet.  

We had Smarties, Mike n Ikes, Skittles (of course), Jelly Belly's, taffy, Lollipops, candy buttons, M & M's and Gummy bears.  Oh, I think there were some gumballs hiding in there somewhere too.  :)  Each candy jar had a small metal scoop inside that I picked up at Walmart.  The plan was for the girls to have pizza for dinner, then visit the buffet for some popcorn and candy before the movie.  I had plastic popcorn buckets and some small lime green treat bags that they used for the candy.  

This table held our plates, cups, drinks and little munchies as well as the Mike and Ike cupcakes.  The girls used the Twizzlers as straws.  You can see the popcorn buckets and candy bags in the back.  


We only ended up playing one game, but it was a HUGE hit...guess the Skittle flavor.  If you have a room full of 7-8 year old girls, I highly recommend this.  They loved this game.  It wasn't easy for them, believe it or not.  I think only 2 of the girls got it right!  Later, there was much playing of Hannah Montana dance for the Wii and High School Musical karaoke. Sigh...

When it was time to settle down for the evening I gave the girls one of the favors I had bought for them.  Crazy mismatched socks.  Um, they thought that was the best. thing. EVER!  I actually bought 2 packs of knee high socks at Target and just paired them with another sock with the same color.  Here they are modeling them...  And Parker too.  hence the black socks.  Hey, he was happy.

Here are a couple of other pictures to share how I had things set up.  I made a gumdrop wreath for an inside door and I used my Cricut to cut the girls' names out for the "to go" boxes of candy.  There were candy necklaces for prizes throughout the night (everyone got one in the end).  I did make giant lollipops for our planters at the front entrance, but I forgot to take a picture. :(  They were cute too!

This was my absolute favorite party I have ever done.  Everything was so pretty and bright.  Not to mention, I just love all of these girls.  They are like my own and I would do anything for them or their parents. 

 

We couldn't end a gymnast sleepover without headstands...

If you're curious, yes, there were flips and tricks of every kind well into the night.  Last back walkover that night was at 11:30 pm.  First one of the next day?  7 am.  They do not stop. Ever.  Love them.  ♥

Oh Christmas Tree

It's that time of year again and I couldn't be happier!  I LOVE the holiday season.  Last year we went to Disney World at the beginning of December and came back right before Christmas and while that was amazing and beautiful, I feel like we missed some of the "normal" Christmas traditions we have at home. We always put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and this year was no different.  Most of the time we go out early in the morning and cut down a fresh tree from a farm not too far from here. Unfortunately,  this year it was raining and as we are really serious about getting the tree up on this day, we had to use an artificial one.  Still beautiful and the kids are just as happy.  I was having great difficulty getting pictures of the decorating process.  The kids do not hold still.  Seriously.  We listen to Christmas music, drink egg nog and decorate late into the night.  What a wonderful time of year!  I will leave you with the one picture I was able to get.  It's from my phone, so I apologize for the quality.  I would love to see your trees too!

Advent Activity

Each year we try to do something fun for Advent.  Most of the time it involves candy of some kind.  This year I wanted to do something a little different and a lot healthier.  ;)  I decided to wrap a Christmas book for them to open every night leading up to Christmas Eve with the final story "Twas the Night Before Christmas", of course.  Now, I just used mostly books I already had on hand, but I did purchase a couple of new paperbacks to keep things interesting.  Here's some of the books we are using: The Wild Christmas Reindeer By Jan Brett, Hurry, Santa By Julie Sykes, Mooseltoe By Margie Palatini and The Night Before Christmas By Clement Clarke Moore.  This version is my absolute favorite!  It is a pop up book and the details are just beautiful.  I linked to it just in case you want to check it out.

I wrapped them all in the same paper since I am lazy since it matches my basket I am keeping them in.  Then I added these cute little numbers to the front of each one.  You can find the printable for these at It Is What It Is.  She has the cutest printables and shares them for FREE!  What a sweet blogger!  She recommends using a 3" scallop punch for the tags but all I had was a 2", so I just cut them out as squares and used my corner punch to round them off.  Easy peasy!

 The best part? The kids don't care how they are wrapped, so you can go through the 25 pretty quickly.  I really love this idea, and I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere else last year, but I honestly can't remember.  If you happen to have seen it elsewhere please let me know so I can give credit.  What are some of your Advent plans?