It Would Have Been Free....

Hi everyone, today I am guest posting for mom again. She has a lot going on and wanted to take pictures and blog about a craft but asked me to do it instead so here goes.......

45 magnets and paper bags later we are wishing all the GCA little ones a Merry Christmas! What do you get 45 elementary schoolers when you would love for the gift to be free? 45 is a big number and a lot of presents! It must also be nice because, "When it's free, it must be perfect!"

Mom found some free magnet ideas and paper bag cut outs online. So we figured out the number for each class and printed them out!

Kindergarten got red snowman patterned bags, first grade-Christmas trees, second grade-cute snowmen, third grade-snowmen hats, fourth grade-gingerbread men, fifth grade-holly.

This was all a great idea in theory until you run out of ink. Being the creative educators we are, we improvised! We printed the patterns in black and white and colored them.

This wasn't the only thing we used up. With only a handful of the magnets left to run through our xylon machine, we ran out of the magnet cartridge. Let me just tell you, it was quite humorous. Mom and I were in the basement pulling as hard as we could to get all the magnet we possibly could! "Waste not, leave not." Well, we still had to make a trip to Hobby Lobby. It was almost free! Purchasing a less than $3 strip of sticky magnet and we could finally finish! We thought......

We were almost done and mom realized there were two birthday magnet smileys. That could not do because these are Christmas presents, so we had to salvage the magnet (because we used a majority of the recently purchased magnet strip) and print two more pictures.

Mom had the idea to attach brads to each of the bags to keep them shut along with the gift tag explaining the gift and we finally finished! The above picture shows the brad in the star of the tree.

It was quite the project! We were happy with it in the end, after all....it was almost free!

-Emily

It's A Wonderful Life

It has been so long since I posted, that they changed the blogging website on me!  I am finding it more difficult to keep up with all the changing technology.  Hopefully, this will improve things and not make them more complicated.  The last post was done by Emily, so it has been a really long time since I have kept up.  Thanksgiving has come and gone and now we are into December with all of the Christmas "stuff" that happens.  I have been busy working on our house in Columbia.  In fact, it should be done this weekend!  Mike is busy working away at our "punch list".  We are praying that it will sell quickly and we can start moving on from our past in Columbia.  While we have many, many fond memories of our time in that house, it is definitely time to start making new memories!  Please pray with us that it will sell soon. Today I watched one of my most favorite Christmas movies, "It's A Wonderful Life".  I alway want to see it year after year, and I fear my family gets tired of it.  It is old, black and white, and long.  I agree, but even with all that going against it, there is just something amazing about the movie that makes me want to see it over and over again.  In fact, I alway seem to shed a tear or two, even though I know what will happen.  It really is a remarkable story about how everyones life is valuable and important, how much we impact each other's lives, and how even when we are at our lowest point, God hears our prayers and sends help (okay, not always in the form of Clarence Oddbody, but in some way!)  How can anyone not enjoy that?  Also, I love that it is a period piece and enjoy the clothes, sets, and scenery of the time.  Here is a clip for your enjoyment.  I sure hope you get an opportunity to watch it again this year, like I did!  Merry Christmas!