she and whim

My Collee was invited to a Bible Study with girls her age. They’re learning verses each time and this week she’s learning:

Colossians 4:6 “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”

Isn’t this excellent? My sweet oldest said, “Oh, we need this!” Love sibling love. :)

Last week she was supposed to memorize Prov 3:5-6. And her mom (ahem, that’s me) scrambled to make a printed version to help her “remeberize” it. It’s not cute, and barely designed, but it got the job done and we all learned it. It may be vain to not post here, but if I ever get around to redoing it I’ll post … but really,

“ain’t nobody got time for that!”  (I ♥ Sweet Brown!)

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

The library is such a fun visit for the shorts and me. They all go straight to their favorite section – my boys love non-fiction books on animals and cars, and the girls head for the juvenile fiction. I’ve enjoyed reading the juvenile/young adult classics that I didn’t read as a kid and new literature too like The Penderwicks series! :) We also have a family tradition of stopping at local book stores when we’re out of town, and they each get to pick out a book. We write in the cover where we were and the date. Half Price Books is a family favorite too!

So, I have this goal to build our family library. We have a decent collection going, and I was inspired by the book The Library and the character’s own checkout system she devised for her personal books. I had to explain the old-school way of checking out books to the shorts – the paper pockets with cards and date stamps. I checked out The Borrowers over the summer and it had the paper pocket still in it! So they got to see a real, old, date-stamped pocket :) Then I set to work on making pockets and cards for the girls’ books.

We decided to make them for chapter books only, since it was a pretty big undertaking and they’re the only ones that are old enough to work the system. The pockets are blank so each girl can write their name on their own books, and our last name goes on the family books. The checkout cards have “Date Out” instead of “Date Due”. We wanted it to be a family history of when the books were read and not about dealing with returns – no late fees here! And when our future grandkids come over they can check out books their mom read at their age. :)

Here’s the Library System I made for you to print as well. There are many colors! We printed one of each and sorted the books that matched each pocket color so we had a count before printing.

You’ll need these supplies to make them:

a cutting mat, xacto, straight edge, #65 smooth white paper, and double stick tape. We also bought this date stamp at the craft store! It’s so fun to stamp the cards!!

After you trim the pocket, fold the two tabs to the back. The double stick tape is wide enough to secure the tabs and adhere to the book in one step (see above photo). We found it easier to write on the pockets before attaching them to the books, but you may want to attach first so you don’t loose track of which goes where. The last page of the PDF file is the cards. Just trim them out using the crop marks, being careful not to cut through to the neighboring cards. The two rows are pretty close together to save paper!

And now you have your own official home library system! Yippee skippy and happy reading :D

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

I recently made clothes dividers as part of a baby gift for my girls’ sweet teacher. I thought these may be helpful for others so I decided to post here too. I printed the gift in blue-grey and orange but made these black and white so you can customize to match your room colors.

Craft stores have loads of different colored papers that the dividers can be printed on and ta-da! you’ve got a match! The first page of the PDF file is the striped pattern for the back of each divider. So print Page 1 on each sheet first. Then flip and reprint the remaining PDF pages of the front divider graphics on each sheet. Trim the outside circle, cut through to the center circle, and trim again. You could also leave the dividers black and white too :)

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

I love books. I love paper. I love good book design. I love a great story. I love learning something new. And I want my little bits to love books too. So I’ve made a sheet that will hopefully make my older two’s independent reading more joyful.

The illustration is a simple tree. It can be colored and written on as they are reading their book or when they’ve finished. My oldest saw the tree and said there wasn’t enough room to write all about the book! I encouraged her to practice being concise. :)

Hope your sweet ones find this useful and your summer is filled with lots of books!

Edit: I realized that I forgot a place to write the author! oops! The file has been revised :D

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

Hope your summer has been fantastic so far :) Ours has been filled and fun! We’ve been busy with projects I need to post. I’m very behind and hope to get caught up soon since I’d like this to be our family scrapbook. Part of the reason I’m so late posting is that my camera situation is not resolved (do I buy a new camera since it doesn’t seem smart to put money into my old one – or upgrade my iphone for it’s better camera??), so again, I apologize for the blurry pics in this post. But regardless, we’ve put up another verse!

Proverbs 16:24

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

I loved the imagery and message in this one. :)

P.S. I purposely don’t pick the typical verses for us to memorize as we’ve already learned them from the God Rocks songs (which we love, love!). Just if you were wondering why some seemed random :)

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

Guess who’s not allergic to corn and peanuts anymore!! I was completely ecstatic when I got the results in the mail! AND, his remaining allergies to milk, wheat, oats, rye and eggs have gone down some too – it was severe and now it’s just bad. Boy, was results day a happy day!! So, to celebrate the great news I’ve attached a recipe card for these allergy-free muffins. I make up his recipes since he’s allergic to so many things. This muffin recipe has been baked and tweaked loads of times and is the best version to date. :)

The recipe is wheat-free, and free of flours that have similar proteins to wheat. Spark isn’t gluten intolerant, but allergic to the wheat protein. But if you are gluten intolerant, this recipe is gluten-free too! It’s also dairy-free, soy-free, egg-free, and peanut-free. And I like it because it has a veggie (pumpkin) and fruit (applesauce – which was added recently, when he out grew his apple allergy.) Also, please note that the brand of “butter” spread is not Smart Balance, but Earth Balance.

The PDF has 2 copies of the recipe, just because there was space – maybe you could pass one along to a friend? Print one page, flip the paper and print again, and trim – so the recipe card is printed front and back. (See this post for specific paper used and trimming instructions.)

If you or someone you love has food allergies, I truly hope this recipe helps! :)

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

Today is Earth Day! It’s a big deal in our house for several reasons:

1. It’s my girl’s 7th birthday!!!

2. We are big recyclers and our kids are part of Green Team at school.

So, in honor of this great Earth, here’s a recycle sign that I made for our house a while back. Since our recycle can is next to our regular trash can, I made it to help the kids (and company) remember which is which…

I’ve also made the sign in 4 color schemes, so hopefully there’s one that looks good next to your recycle bin :)

Now, go recycle and happy Earth Day!!

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

This post is a little later than I had planned, but luckily the Good Book never gets old! :)

So here it is: Matthew 28:5-6 Do not be afraid, for I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.

This verse is my most favorite of all – and I just want to add 20 exclamation marks to it! I love how the angel shows up to Jesus’ distraught friends and says,”Surprise!!! But don’t be afraid!” You know they were scared out of their minds. God just knows we all love a good surprise! I sure do :) And any time fear sneaks in, I remember this one… Surprise! Don’t be afraid – He has risen!!

HAPPY EASTER!

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

The boys are doodle bug (and general animal) loving fanatics. Now that spring is here, they are on the hunt every day. They miss their doodle bugs at night or when they drop them and can’t find those little guys again. My favorite was when my youngest came shuffling out of his room the other morning, shoulders stooped, and I asked what was wrong. He said in his little 2 year old voice, “I miss Sweetie. She was my doodle bug last night. I dropped her on the deck and she fell down the crack. *sigh* She was a wife.” :D And he shuffled to the kitchen all sad. So after all this heartache, we decided to make some doodle bugs to keep in the house to play with too, just in case we need an emergency buddy.

We had to do serious doodle bug research for this project, so we decided the best doodle bugs were at the park! So we headed out…

…only to find a hungry tree that gobbled them up! After a quick escape, there was lots of exploring, playing, and finally some doodle bug hunting. Then we found one!

And don’t even think about taking that doodle bug away – or that cheetah in his pocket. :)

The next day I made a quick pattern (that you can use too). It’s just a simple line drawing in 4 sizes (a dad, mom, kid and baby, as requested by my guys). I cut the grey fabric from the pattern, then cut strips of striped material and sewed them to the bottom of each grey piece. Then I stitched them together leaving a hole at the bottom. These are the bugs, some inside out and some partially stuffed. I like the striped fabric, the black being their many little legs :)

And action shots of the fellows… one serious and the other, not so much.

After they stuffed them, I stitched closed, and then Mr. 5 year old drew the stripes and eyes on with a grey fabric marker. I’m glad we made so many because 4 have already disappeared!

We also made a set for their cousin’s 2nd birthday. Hope he enjoys them as much as my guys do :)

Yay for doodle bugs!!

{design © claire sneau : for personal use only}

Swedish Wafle Day is almost here! This Saturday, March 25th!! Yes, it’s a real reason to make waffles! :) And here is our favorite swedish waffle recipes from our 1947 swedish cookbook (given to me by my great friend, Candy)…

CRISP CREAM WAFFLES

1 1/3 cups flour

1/2 cup water

1 3/4 cups heavy cream

3 tablespoons melted butter

Beat cream stiff. Sift in flour, add cold water and stir until well blended. Then carefully stir in melted butter. Heat waffle iron slowly; brush generously with butter. Pour in a few tablespoons of batter and bake until golden. Place on rack to keep crisp. Serve with coffee or as a dessert with jam and sugar. (We have ours with real maple syrup.)

And for my sweet one with allergies and my gluten and lactose intolerant hub – it’s Van’s gluten-free waffles – yum! Am I so thankful for them (the waffles and my guys)!

Happy Swedish Waffle Day!