Thanksgiving day Adalyn took her first solo steps. Time is just flying by. Everly starts school this last week. Last week we also had our first snow flurries. We found a butterfly living in our office. I am betting it’s the offspring of one of the many bugs Everly has captured and brought inside.

I cut off a bunch of my own hair and im flabbergasted that Christmas is just a few short weeks away.

I’ve been working hard at planning and prepping for our new advent tradition… The advent basket.

The concept of the advent basket was gleaned from Pintrest. The idea is an item from the basket is opened each day in the count down to Christmas. Depending on your family values and preferences, your basket can be new trinkets, treats, experiences  up-cycled things, recycled things, saved things and more…

Our family is doing a combination of things in our advent basket.

You see, we already have a bunch of stuff that we have each brought to the family, like holiday books from our own childhood, movies, activities and such.  I’m even making a few gifty things, for example…

• I’m crocheting a christmas colored checkers set now for the advent basket. Will share the pattern for the crochet checkers set soon!

• I also have a up-cycled sweater purse in the advent basket that is stuffed with craft supplies for that particular day’s activities. I made the purse from a old sweater and the instructions can be found here if you’d like to try it too.

All our existing holiday movies and books are wrapped up, I used Everlys various painting and drawing papers to wrap them up. All that is left is to wrap and decorate are trinkets that symbolize the various experiences that are planned throughout the month. I made up easy printable numbers for Photoshop that you can download and edit here (a .psd file) if you’d like.

Our experiences for the basket include:

• making candy cane mallows
• going on a holiday lights excursion complete with hot chocolate to sip
• painting the house windows to look like snow and frost
• making and decorating holiday cookies
• writing letters to santa to send in the mail (If you mail them to Santa Claus, Indiana before 12/15 they will be answered for free!)
• making handprint ornaments to give as gifts and for our own tree
• having the kids go through their toys and choose which ones to donate to the less fortunate

On the first of December we unveiled the advent basket and Christopher Popinkins together via a surprise breakfast that our “elf on a shelf”, Christopher Popinkins, made for us. It was a crockpot french toast breakfast that cooked all night, Christopher made it *wink*.

The table was decorated for Christmas, the basket was displayed and the girls got a kick out of the whole thing. We are excited to bring this new family tradition to the mix and Everly really seems to be enjoying it.

The post Post turkey day reflections & a new holiday tradition: The Advent Basket appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

The idea of the webcast was that Peter Walsh and several panelists would present organizational tips for the home, for kids and for the classroom while allowing viewers to submit questions via twitter that the panelists would answer.

N isn’t the most organized person in the world so I was stoked to get some organizational tips from the webcast. They presented lots of good info and many good reminders about organization. Here are a few:

TIPS FOR HOME
1) Find the Vision you have for a Space
2) Make Organization a Family Value
3) Use the Right Tools for Great Organization

TIPS FOR ORGANIZING YOUR CHILD
1) Show that you Value Organization
2) Establish Clear Limits and Routines
3) Always ‘Finish the Cycle’ (Complete a Task)

TIPS FOR THE CLASSROOM
1) Establish Clear Routines
2) Involve Kids with Classroom Organization
3) Use Words, Pictures and Color to help Organize

Just before the webcast we received this surprise box of adorable cupcake themed school supplies courtesy of OfficeMax. The school supplies are adorable and were a fun gift, unfortunately we can’t really use them.

I decided it would be fun to host a giveaway here on the blog so I could pass these cute school supplies on to a lucky reader who can put them to good use. So here are the giveaway details: This giveaway is now closed.

Prize: Back-to-school supplies from Scoolio-Von-Hoolio (includes binders, mini notebook, drawstring backsack, notebook, 2 pocket folder, composition books, pencil set and pencil box)

To enter: Leave a comment on this post with your best organizational tip (this is a mandatory step). Once you have commented with your organizational tip you can make the following optional extra entries. For the extra entries be sure to use the form to enter each of your extra entries or they wont count.

• Comment on any of my other posts (besides this one), tell me which one. Unlimited entries.
• Follow me on twitter, leave me your username. 1 extra entry.
• Tweet the giveaway, leave me the link to your tweet. 1 extra entry per day.
• Follow this blog publicly via friend connect, leave me your username. 1 extra entry.
• Follow this blog on facebook, leave me your facebook name. 1 extra entry.
• Use another media sharing tool (stumble, technorati, digg etc), tell me what you did to share. 1 extra entry per sharing tool.

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Eligibility: This contest is open to those with a US mailing address (unless you are willing to pay for shipping costs to ship out of the USA) and will close on August 31st 2009 at midnight.

The winner will be announced here on the blog. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the announcement of the contest winner!

The winner will have 72 hours following the announcement to contact me and claim their winnings. If the winner fails to contact me within the 72 hour period they forfeit winnings and another winner will be selected and posted here on the blog.

Random.org will be used to draw the winner.

The post Back to school with Scoolio-Von-Hoolio and OfficeMax giveaway. Get Organized Today! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

I personally like creative homemade, do-it-yourself gifts because they are more from the heart than store bought ones. Plus I have a blast making gifts for people cause I am crafty like that.

Now since so many are flocking here in search of homemade holiday gift ideas and craft projects I wanted to take a second to suggest some easy gift ideas for you to try this holiday season. If you want to check out the instructions just click on the linked text! you have a project you have written about on your blog use mister linky below to share the link with us.

1. Turn scrap fabric in to braided usefulness by making your very own braided rag rug. These are super easy, have tons of character and can be used almost anywhere in the house.
2. Make a sentimental gift and clear out some closet space by taking all those stored clothing items you can’t bear to throw away and turning them in to a functional throw or quilt. Anyone can make their own t-shirt quilt quickly and easily just in time for holiday gift giving. Use baby clothes, shirts or just about any special piece of fabric and turn those memories in to a great gift for someone special.
3. Have an environmental lover on your gift list? You can make several fun earth friendly gift items (like a biodegradable bird feeder or a shoe scraper) that they will enjoy and they’ll love that you took and interest in being earth friendly too.
4. Have some small trinkets to give? Why not make your own paper gift box using origami? It is super easy, it is fun for kids and you can decorate them exactly the way you want them. You can even make them hang from the Christmas tree.
5. Got a cell phone fanatic on your gift list? You can make them a cute cellphone cozy out of fabric or yarn to keep their phone protected and also in style this holiday season. Theses are also insanely easy to make and can be oh, so unique and personalized.
6. Know someone who is in need of some new bedding this holiday season? Put your sewing skills to work and make them a homemade duvet cover or comforter. Don’t worry even a beginning sewer (me) can do this and it is pretty fun too!

Now I know you have a project you are just dieing to share with us. If you have written about on your blog use mister linky below to share the link with us. If you don’t have a link to share but want to just tell us about your project just use the comment field below to do so.

The post Homemade holiday gifts are IN, what are you making? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

After checking out the Garland Prarie Soaps page I got really excited about the occation soaps idea. N and I have been brainstorming fun wedding favor ideas and homemade soaps are a really good idea! With our forest wedding theme we wanted to encorporate the scents and textures of the forest in to the wedding reception. Giving individually wrapped homemade soaps to our guests is a very cute idea. Fun!

Thanks Maiden53 for the bar of soap tell Nicole it is beautiful and I can’t wait to use it! I am also loving the textures and colors of it, I know that can’t be easy to do.

If you want a chance to win a free bar of Garlan Prarie Soap head on over to Nicole‘s blog for her friday soap giveaway.

The post Lookie what I got… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

It’s a kind of funny sight and thought so I snapped a photo of it and thought I would make it the title of this post. Nice huh? I am sure I’ll get lots of 1 second hits from people searching for homemade porn now huh?

Seriously though I was recording a video demonstration for another craft article I wrote. As I mentioned yesterday I sold another article and have been feeling highly motivated to write these days. Plus the search terms on this blog have been super instructional craft project oriented. The people have spoken and want more craft instructions so I got busy writing some more tutorials.

I sat down and wrote up an article on how to make your own t shirt quilt from shirts you have collected over the years. I used our bed to record the demonstration video that goes with the article and I just happen to leave the tripod at the foot of the bed. Nice and random huh?

What? You want to see a t shirt quilt? Well lookie here:

The post I was not making porn I promise! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

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