Archive for January, 2011

Create a Winter Wonderland in Your Own Backyard


Here is a great article full of ideas for family fun in the snow! The link to the original is at the bottom. Plan some family fun this week!
DK

January 12, 2011 by Polly

By Beth Engelman and Jenna Riggs of Mommy on a Shoestring

Don’t let the chilly weather stop you and your kids from having fun outside with these “cool” crafts and activities.

Play Ice Cube Hide and Seek

A twist on the classic game, this activity is fun to play after a big snowfall. Prepare the ice cubes by mixing water and a few drops of food coloring in an ice tray or muffin tin and placing them in the freezer (or outdoors) until frozen. To play the game, choose one player to be the “hider” while the others will be seekers. The “hider” buries the colorful cubes in mounds of snow around the backyard. Then its up to the “seekers” to dig around the snow and find the frozen ice cubes. The player who finds the most ice cubes, gets to be the “hider” during the next go round.

Make Ice Sculptures

Sharp tools and ice picks are not necessary with this creative activity. To get started, gather an assortment of containers around the house. To add variety, choose containers that are different shapes and sizes such as muffin tins, jell-o molds and cake pans. Add water and a few drops of food coloring to each container and place in a freezer (or outside) until the blocks of ice are frozen solid. Remove each block from its container. If this proves to be difficult, try thawing the ice for a few minutes or submerge the bottom of the pan in a bowl of warm water. Once the blocks are removed, it’s time to build outdoors. Encourage your cold weather sculptors and construction workers to make decorative statues, enchanted ice castles, skyscrapers or ice forts. Use salt or layers of slushy snow as “glue” to make the blocks stick together. Best of all, when your kids are all done playing with their blocks, they can leave them as is and let Mother Nature take care of the clean up.

Paint the Snow Red (and Yellow, Green and Blue)

This craft is a dream come true for my four-year-old son who loves to spray water at anything and everything. Fill up empty spray bottles with water and a few drops of food coloring. The children can then take the spray bottles outside and spray the snow different colors creating a colorful mosaic, rainbow, or their very own abstract painting. Just imagine what passerby’s will think when they see your rainbow colored yard.

Make Snow and Ice Cream

This recipe should only be made with freshly fallen snow. I recommend setting a large bowl outside so you and your kids can collect the snow before it even hits the ground.
Ingredients
3 cups of fresh snow1-cup milk¼ cup sugar1 tsp of vanilla
Directions
Mix ingredients and serve immediately.

Jenna Riggs and Beth Engelman are the creative talents and owners of Mommy on a Shoestring, a website and weekly radio show chock full of ideas on how families can live creatively and large on a small budget.

Create a Winter Wonderland in Your Own Backyard

2011
01/12
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What does your email say about you?



Here’s a hilarious look at what your email tells about you. So true… I laughed like crazy when I read this. This comic comes courtesy of the oatmeal.

2011
01/11
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ILLUSTRATING HEBREWS 11:1


This little story was sent to me through a ‘chain mail’, which I don’t normally read, but having seen this, I decided it is just too great not to share! Enjoy!

DK


When illustrating Hebrews 11:1:  “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld”, a brother used the following:

Let’s take . . . PIE.  I have a favorite pie and when I walk into the room and smell that aroma, I think . . . “There’s a pie cooking”. Now, I look around the kitchen and I see apple peelings, bits of crust dough lying around, flour on the counter.  I KNOW there’s pie and what KIND of pie it is.  I’ve never seen it, but I know it’s there.


Then, there’s a NOTE which says:  “I know by now you’ve smelled the pie … and ‘YES’, you may have some as soon as the timer rings”.  Now I KNOW  that the pie is there …… it’s cooking …… it’s apple …… And it’s for me.

And I know all this without having ever SEEN the pie. The evidence of it’s existence is all around me. And I KNOW I’ll be eating pie soon. The same is true of ‘faith’.  We have never seen Jehovah … but we’ve seen the EVIDENCE of Him in the natural world, in his people, in the accomplishments of his organization, in prayers being answered, prophecies being fulfilled and more promised.  We KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt that He’s real and working for our good.

Then there’s the ‘NOTE’ … the Bible, that puts into words the assurance of His love for us, and the promise of better things. We’ve never physically SEEN Him or our future Paradise, but we KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt that they are REAL because of the enormous amount of evidence around us. We KNOW it.

… now we just have to wait for the “timer to ring”.  
2011
01/10
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Shaped to Serve


One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the passage in Jeremiah 18 when he is sent to the Potters House to observe the master craftsman working on the wheel. The way it relates to us, with God as the master Craftsman and us as the clay, is just so encouraging to me. Especially when we consider that the scripture tells us that:

You are God’s Workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared in advance for you to do. -Eph 2:10

As imperfect as our lives are, He still chooses to take us and use us for His wonderful purpose!

Very soon I am going to hold a training for my Children’s Ministry Workers and my theme is ‘Shaped to Serve’. God takes each one of us, with our different backgrounds and circumstances, our different opinions and viewpoints, our different experiences, successes, and failures…and He puts us into this One body, the Body of Christ. Then he starts forming our beliefs through the revelation and preaching of His Word. As the Word begins to change us-our thinking, speaking, and even our actions-we experience a uniting that binds us together as one. We become a family in a spiritual sense, but one that can have ties as close as those of a natural sense.

 I know that as a Children’s Pastor, I always view the kids God has given me charge over as ‘mine’ and the families I get to minister to are the same. Ministry is a job, sure, but you don’t get into it with the mindset of making money or a career, you get into it with the mindset of making an impression on people’s lives.

And that’s just what God does in us, as He crafts us. Through triumphs and tragedies, victories and defeats, He leaves lasting impressions on the ‘clay’ that is our lives that form us and shape us into the kinds of people He wants us to become. As we allow Him to do that work, we experience the fullness of the value He places on us as we are used by Him- to pray for someone who is hurting, be at the bedside of one who is sick, encourage someone growing in their faith, and demonstrate the Love of God to those who don’t feel very loved.

This isn’t always easy, to be sure. Sometimes the way He wants to form us and shape us stretches us in directions we don’t like being stretched. It can be uncomfortable, taxing, draining emotionally, and even move us to the point of breaking us. However, when that happens, the scripture gives such comfort…for that happens to the master craftsman that Jeremiah observes. The Bible says that:

The vessel that was made of clay was marred in the hands of the potter: so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to make it.- Jer. 18:4

Did you catch that?

Maybe you’ve experiences loss.
Or rejection.
Or abuse.
Perhaps you have been abandoned.
Mistreated.
Tormented.
Unloved.

And because of it you are broken. You think you’re worthless. You feel worthless. You don’t know what good you possibly could serve to anyone, let alone the God who created the Universe.

Don’t despair. He can take you and make you again! He can restore! He can revive! He can give you life where you haven’t felt alive and take your loneliness and replace it with joy! Just as the potter can take a jar that collapses back into a lump and make it into something else just as useful, HE can take you and give your life meaning and purpose and fulfilment!

Even if you don’t feel that way, which I admit I do sometimes, but not all the time, you can still be encouraged because you know that each thing you face is something that He is using to form and make you! You are being crafted by God! You are shaped to serve His purpose…a purpose much higher and greater than anything you could ever imagine!

Be encouraged by that today, be it a great day or a terrible one!

DK

2011
01/10
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