Tis the season to start ramping up the holiday fun – both with local grandkids and long distance grandchildren. One grandchild and I spent a delightful hour in Big Lots enjoying the Harvest and Halloween decor aisle. We left with a tiny scarecrow for the mantel, a bigger scarecrow for great-grandma’s room, and a cute metal decoration for the front door – three pumpkins and the inscription, “Bless This House.” Thanks to Big Lots’ prices it didn’t cost much and we had a terrific time picking just the right items!

Christmas and Thanksgiving decor were there as well, but we ran out of time to investigate those. We’ll have fun with them later. Picking out and displaying holiday decorations have always been some of my favorite traditions. Would you believe I have a full-sized scarecrow that is over ten years old! We used to put him in a chair right outside the front door to greet visitors to our door. Now he’s in the house as my grandkids absolutely dote on him! They dance with him, hug him, use him as a pillow to watch TV and just have the best time with him! The memories from this particular tradition are priceless and will be just as special 20 years from now!

My long distance grandkids also love Autumn and Autumn decor. They are wonderful at sending me Harvest pictures to help decorate the house! Those are always a special treat! 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some fun and free (one of my favorite ways to save money ) craft ideas for the holiday season – from Autumn and Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Years. Keep checking back for more fun ideas and also we’d love to hear your suggestions as well!

For more Family Friday articles, be sure to visit Home Ever After, where they have a great article about lunch notes for our grandkids!

I was wandering through a most delightful bookstore with one of my granddaughters last week when we spied an intriguing craft magazine geared for children. Purchasing it, we took it home to see what ideas it had for us.

Cool Kids’ Crafts from Woman’s Day Special Interest Publications is currently on sale for $4.99. The cover states:

• 156 Super-Easy Projects
• Great DIY Ideas Under $10

Having fallen for such claims in the past and then being greatly disappointed, I was a bit leery as I opened the magazine. I hadn’t even made it through page 16 of the 96 pages when I realized the cover told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It really is a great magazine for grandkids and grandparents to have a lot of fun with!

Many of the projects are, indeed, simple. The materials required range from construction paper to paper plates to foam. There are also some larger projects needing such items as socks, paint, wood, t-shirts, etc. Overall, though, many of the crafts are really simple and easy – perfect for busy grandparents who are also providing senior home care for aging parents.

Some of the craft ideas include:

• A cute picture of a house with windows full of photos of family members. We could fill it with grandkid pictures and use it as an adorable gift for great-grandparents.
• Grandsons and granddaughters would enjoy the cool sunglasses they can customize, not to mention the cute and easy-to-make sunglass holder.
• For those of you who, like me, are already thinking fondly of Autumn and Harvest fun, there are several adorable pumpkin crafts ranging from an ultra-simple pumpkin-face garland made from paper plates to a more difficult pumpkin totem made from plywood!
• There are even some cute Christmas projects to help you and your grandkids get a really early start on your Christmas cards and decorations. That’s always a good thing for us Sandwich Generation caregivers, since we never know when unexpected illness might slow us down in our holiday preparations.

All in all, this is a very useful little craft magazine. And at its discounted price, it’s also one of those fun ways to save money while having fun with the grandkids!

For more fun Family Friday ideas for you and your grandkids, be sure to take a peek at Homemaker Barbi’s site! She’s got a great article on rainy day fun. Not only that, I found another early-Christmas-planning compadre at Life As Mom who has written on getting started with your Christmas planning now. Pre-planning Christmas expenditures is one of our best ways to save money, not to mention time!  Since both are vital necessities for Sandwich Generation caregivers, do check it out.  Merry Christmas, in July. 

Halloween can be a lot of fun. It can also be a little controversial among Christians. When my children were little, we did a a lot of research and praying. We chose to have fun with it by attending and helping with our church’s Harvest Party each year. The kids had fun dressing up, we’d always show them off in their cute costumes to our closest neighbors, and then we’d be off for an evening of fun, fellowship, and lots of candy.

Now that the kids are grown and the grandkids are here, we have a new custom that I enjoy just as much. We order pizza and pop, sometimes get to show the grandkids off to the neighbors, and have a great time handing out lots of yummy candy along with stickers, booklets, and coloring pages that tell the children of God’s love for them.

The local Christian bookstore usually has a nice supply of cute stickers that have Bible verses, cute pictures of the Nativity scene and other Bible stories, or positive sayings about God, such as “Stop and Pray,” “Smile – God loves you,” and “One Way – Jesus.” Those are very popular with the little ones. They often have fun tracts with jokes or word searches that the older ones seem to enjoy. I always make sure to give a good amount of candy with these, and have never had any complaints. In fact, I actually get quite a few comments like, “Hey, cool! Stickers.” and “A puzzle. Looks like fun!”

If you’re not able to get out to the store, or are looking for ways to save money, you can make your own surprises. Kids coloring pages are great for the little ones. You can give them by themselves or add a crayon with them. ChristianAnswers has a wide variety of Bible coloring pages that would work nicely.

For older children, CSAHM has a cute little poem, Our Trick, God’s Treat, written by Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos. You can print out several copies, perhaps combining it with various kids coloring pages, and hand them out with Tootsie Rolls. 

One other site I discovered while researching for this article, Tons of Sons, has a cute idea for decorating their pumpkins to share God’s love. I didn’t see that in time for this year. But I’m going to save it to try next year.

Have a wonderful day tomorrow, full of God’s love, power and joy. Join me in praying for safety and salvation for our nation. And enjoy sharing God’s love with others.

Happy Harvest Time! Autumn is truly here in much of the U.S. Yesterday I went out in the early morning and it was around 70 degrees. Today, it was definitely in the 60s! And I’m loving it! I love the whole harvest season and now that we are into October I’m seeing more and more decorations going up. So far it’s mostly scarecrows and hay bales which are all my favorites so I’m a happy camper!

A friend sent me the sweet story that has been circulating in emails and blogs for years. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the author is unknown (if anyone does know the author, please let me know). It’s such a great story to read and enjoy and even better if you can ever use it to share the gospel with others. I love to read it to my grandchildren.

The Inspiring Pumpkin…
A lady had recently been baptized. One of her co-workers asked her what it was like to be a Christian. She was caught off guard and didn’t know how to answer; but when she looked up, saw a jack-o’-lantern on the desk and answered:

“It’s like being a pumpkin.”
The coworker asked her to explain that one.
“Well, God picks you from the patch and brings you in and washes off all the dirt on the outside that you got from being around all the other pumpkins. Then he cuts off the top and takes all the yucky stuff out from inside.He removes all those seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc.

Then he carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all to see.

It is our choice to either stay outside and rot  on the vine or    come inside and be something new and bright.”

Isn’t that great?! In trying to research who the author was, I discovered a great site with several other cute Halloween ideas for you to share with your grandkids. It’s at http://www.christiancrafters.com/pumpkin.html  and there you will find a variety of Halloween Alternative Resources – a pumpkin prayer activity, a craft, two stories, and a poem which were sent in by Diane Bracher. If you want to explore their site further, they have a wide variety of other craft ideas for general purposes as well as many for holidays. Some require a fee while others are free although I know they’d appreciate a donation. I’ve added them to my Delicious bookmarks and am looking forward to trying some of their projects with my grandkids this fall.

One other cute resource for having fun during the harvest holiday season while keeping our eyes and the eyes of our grandchildren firmly planted on Jesus is found at http://www.annieshomepage.com/halloweenprintable2.html . There you will find a cute poem, Pumpkins & Jesus. The writer (also unknown) has taken the letters for the word Pumpkins to spell out the gospel message for kids. I’ve enjoyed visiting Annie’s website many times over the years and highly recommend it. You can also find many other Christian-based Halloween and autumn ideas and projects there at http://www.annieshomepage.com/annieshalloweenpage.html .

Have a bushel of fun with all of these fun “harvest” goodies!