A Quick Update

We wanted to pop in here to thank you for all of your caring and supportive comments. Your powerful thoughts and prayers are working! My father is home now and is recovering remarkably well from surgery. Much of the girls' artwork was proudly displayed in his hospital room, and we printed out all of the wonderful comments from this post for him to see.

Our local MOMS club was also a huge help, and many members dropped off meals for the girls and Mark while I was away. We are very grateful for all of their help and support! And someone... we still don't know who.... even shoveled our driveway during the intense snowstorms we had here. We feel truly blessed to have so many people looking out for us!

Yesterday was Mark's birthday, and we went to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate! Hence, the photo above.

We'll be back Monday with our usual adventures in frugal fun!

3-D Paper Lantern Picture

It's a bit early yet for Chinese New Year, but that didn't stop us from creating these fun 3-D paper lantern pictures. They were so easy and so much fun to make! Plus, it uses recyclables. I love projects like these, don't you?

The highlight of this project...... Clara using glue for the first time! There's no turning back now!

To make the lanterns, cut down the side and around the bottom of paper separators that come with foil baking cups. The box actually says "Discard paper separators". Ha!! Discard, my butt. What? You didn't think I would use these for baking, did you?

Save the bottom of the paper separator for the moon. Cut the long folded strip into shorter strips and use pinking shears on either side.

Invite your child over for some crafting fun!

Draw a line across a sheet of red paper. We didn't even use a full sheet of paper... talk about frugal.

Glue those beautiful lanterns down so they look like they are hanging on the line.

Add the moon to the night sky.

With a marker, draw handles and tassels for your lanterns.

Extra bonus points for gluing nine lanterns on your line. (The number 9 is particularly lucky in China!)

Who knew baking cup separators could be so much fun??

Preparing for Special Guests

Since we have made the decision to eat out less, we have been entertaining at home more often. Yesterday afternoon was spent preparing to get together with friends from college to celebrate Chinese New Year! We planned to get Chinese take out, eat with chopsticks, and spend some time getting caught up with one another. I was going to download some classical Chinese music from iTunes, but decided it might be worth a quick trip to the library to see what they had to offer.  Here is what we came home with:

I found several music CD's, a DVD for Emily and one for the adults, and several children's books! After we had dinner, we each made a mini lantern from empty baby food jars with tea lights placed inside. These can be lit 15 days from now for the Festival of Lanterns to signal the end of Chinese New Year. Our guests took them home as souvenirs.

We used pieces of red and black tissue paper adhered to the glass by brushing on a 50-50 mixture of white glue and water.

Does your family entertain from home more often? I would love to hear about it! Leave a comment and share your stories with us!