Crafting Christmas the Guy's Way

Christmas was nice this year. A lot of handmade gifts were passed around our family. Sierra made a Grinch worthy Who feast out of Sculpey. Marina was knitting socks for her sister and superhero Deadpool for her brother. These things I will post later in the week. Today I wanted to focus on Chase's crafts.

Chase is more reserved and quiet than his sisters. Most of his art is done in the wee hours of the night. Sometimes he is sketching ideas or pictures, but usually his artwork involves duct tape. We can usually hear the tape being pulled and ripped in the dark of night. His crafts blew me away this year. He used the tape to make sculptures! Who knew how endless the possibilities were with this simple tape?

Chase made Sierra her very own dragon.

Marina got a model of her League of Legends character, with an extra pair of glasses she could wear!

 He made a beautiful lotus flower for me.

For his father, he made another video game character based on the Egyptian God Anubis. Click on any of the pictures to see a larger image.

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If you enjoy my comics, the first collection, No School Today? is available from these sellers:

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Amazon.com

Home Spun comic strip #690

The song Aña is singing is based on Sierra's toddler rendition of "Deck the Halls."

I will be taking a short break and will have more new comics in 2012. Thank you all for your well wishes, I am feeling a little better this morning. Hopefully, a day in will nip this cold in the bud!

May you have a wonderful Christmas weekend, Happy Chanukah to my readers in the middle of their celebrations, and may the New Year be filled with peace and laughter!

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If you enjoy my comics, the first collection, No School Today? is available from these sellers:

CreateSpace
Amazon.com

Of Coughs, Storytelling, and Putting Up the Tree

The tree is finally up. It's still undecorated, but it is up, thanks to Sierra putting it together. I was only able to muster up enough energy to pull the box down from the attic. I'm afraid I'm coming down with a cold. I fought the good fight, but I am pretty certain I was doomed. My husband has been coughing for over a week now. Sierra is on the mend after several days with the same illness. In fact, I ended up leaving her home with Marina yesterday and only brought Chase to storytelling. 

The last storytelling of the year was not what we expected. Chase was the only one of our core storytellers present. He wasn't to happy about this. He has never been comfortable with leading the group, and he's never had to do it all by himself. I did my best to help him out by starting everything. I also let other adults read, since the average age of the children who came yesterday was four or five. I don't expect children this young to want to read at storytime. Only one of the three was brave enough to get up in front of the group, the others asked their grown-ups to read.


Chase started storytellling with The Contest Between the Sun and the Wind and ended with Twas the Night Before Christmas. Afterward, our librarian friend told him that a patron had complimented his reading and how clear his deep voice sounded. I think he was embarrassed by the attention, but I could not be prouder of him. He has a powerful voice that he hasn't always known how to use. It must be odd for boys when they start to change their voice. He went from being mistaken for his sister on the phone to being mistaken for his dad. Maybe this is why teenage boys mumble so much. While their voice transitions, they don't know what will come out.

Now I am finally winding down from all of the activities. Marina had her last final exam yesterday. Nature classes are over until next year. Things haven't gone smoothly at times this December, but somehow we muddled through and made it to the holidays again. I'm sure I have no idea how this all comes together every year, I'm just happy to have a moment to stop and contemplate how grateful I am to have this beautiful family.


And cough drops.

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If you enjoy my comics, the first collection, No School Today? is available from these sellers:

CreateSpace
Amazon.com

Home Spun comic strip #689

FYI- The tree still isn't up. I suppose I should take care of that soon...

Carnival at Holy Spirit Led Homeschooling

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is at Holy Spirit-Led Homeschooling! Please stop by and read some of the posts submitted!

A Quick eCard for You

Merry Christmas to all of my readers, and may the New Year be full of Peace and Laughter!

Home Spun comic strip #688

I know I say this a lot, and really, I say it to remind myself. As parents and homeschoolers, we tend to be a self-sacrificing bunch. We don't like to slow down, especially if an educational or social opportunity appears. Decembers seem to be the worst. End of the year activities, get-togethers with family and friends, and general holiday preparations all combine to create a perfect storm for burnout. As much as I enjoy this time of year, I know I need to be cautious, especially since my asthma can be stress induced, and my worst attack ever happened in early January of 1995 as the holidays were winding down.

Of course, even with extra caution, I couldn't predict how stressful this December would be. With one sick cat that required several hundred dollars' worth of vet care, releasing a book, and several family issues, I've struggled to keep well this month. As a result, I haven't done nearly as much as I would have this year. No cards were sent. I missed my favorite homeschooling caroling party due to illness. The tree is not up yet. Any decorating was done by my husband and children. I only started baking cookies over the past few days. And I'm trying to be OK with all of this. I have said before that I'm no Wonder Woman. It's important to know my limits so that I can be there when my family needs me the most.

My wish for my readers is that you take time for yourselves this season. Whether you celebrate several holidays or simply welcome in the new year, remember to honor yourself and respect your limitations. You are worth so much to your family and yourself. Try not to overdo it.

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Like the comics? Buy the first collection, No School Today? Available from these sellers:

CreateSpace
Amazon.com

Home Spun comic strip #687

Home Spun comic strip #686

My memories were stirred when I recently signed Sierra up for a special homeschooling day at Sunnyside, Washington Irving's home. My older two did events at a local Washington's headquarters site that has since closed. They did several activities that day, including satchets and snickerdoodles. Any event that involves cookies has to be good.

Sierra and I had a good time at Sunnyside, learning about how the Irving family celebrated the holidays and touring the family cottage. It is such a beautiful place, like something out of a fairy tale. I would love to visit it again, maybe in warmer weather when the gardens are in bloom. We didn't get to make snickerdoodles this time, but there were cookies and cider after three hours of activities including the tour.

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Like the comics? Buy the first collection, No School Today? Available from these sellers:

CreateSpace

Amazon.com

Home Spun comic strip #685

Like the comics? Buy the first collection, No School Today? Available from these sellers:

CreateSpace

Amazon.com

This Week in Perspective...

• On Sunday, I published my book. I also dealt with one daughter's crisis when she took an online math quiz without her calculator (we later found the calculator under her book-bag) and the other daughter's Santa crisis. Oh. It was my birthday too.
• On Monday, I spent most of the day traveling back and forth to the vet's office because Dusty was severely dehydrated in spite of the liquid diet we've been feeding her for months. She was also having adverse reactions to steroidal medications. I also took Marina to her class and did some grocery shopping and stopped at the pet store for cat litter and live crickets (the latter was for the anole, not the cats).
• On Tuesday, I took Marina to class and later to work. After I dropped her off at work, the rest of us went to a rally to save funding for our county nature centers. In the pouring rain. We also went into the budget public hearing, so we got to see our local government in action. We lasted a half hour. The budget is still in talks, but we are cautiously optimistic that the funding has been restored.
• On Wednesday, I drove Marina to class, took the other two to a homeschooling meet up at the library, stopped at the store because I was without a list on Monday and forgot things, started dinner, picked up Marina for dinner then took her back for another class, took Chase to taekwondo, then picked up Marina.
• On Thursday, I took Marina to class, took the other two to church, picked up Marina, drove us all to nature class, took Marina to work, and picked her up.
• On Friday, I took the cat back to the vet for oral surgery, went to the post office, realized the car was low on gas (seriously?), went to the gas station and picked up the cat.
• Today I will be at a volunteer training session at the library and working on my comics. It's a slow day.

I hope your week has been less productive than mine!

Home Spun comic strip #684

Home Spun comic strip #683

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Now available!
No School Today? A Home Spun Comic Strip Collection

Order from CreateSpace or Amazon!

Sometimes You Just Gotta Believe

I have decided to delete the original post. I accidentally broke one of my oft-repeated reminders to my children: Being on the internet is like undressing in the middle of a mall, you never know who might be looking. I assumed that the people who bother to read my little blog are my friends, that they are sensitive to me and the unique issues my family faces as we go against the mainstream.

In the words of Felix Unger of the Odd Couple, "When you assume, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me."

In spite of my pleas to treat the incident with sensitivity, my daughter ended up facing many people who were inadvertently or intentionally insensitive to her and to her family. This is sad, since the original post was exactly about this type of adult.

Belief is an interesting concept. From the FreeDictionary online:

be·lief  (b-lf)

n.

1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another: My belief in you is as strong as ever.

2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: His explanation of what happened defies belief.

3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

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[Middle English bileve, alteration (influenced by bileven, to believe) of Old English gelafa; see leubh- in Indo-European roots.]

Synonyms: belief, credence, credit, faith
These nouns denote mental acceptance of the truth, actuality, or validity of something: a statement unworthy of belief; an idea steadily gaining credence; testimony meriting credit; has no faith in a liar's assertions. See Also Synonyms at opinion.

Antonym: disbelief

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Does anyone notice anything about this definition? At no point does it mention that proof is required. That would turn it into a supported fact. 

Did you know that most people once thought the story of Troy was made up? It took a little boy, who believed in the tale so much, he decided to devote his life to finding the mythical city and in the process changed the course of archeology. Belief can do that. But you need to be open to the possibilities.

Historic note: Heinrich Schliemann was a bit of a character, and the documentary we watched showed that he was quite reckless in his zeal to uncover the ancient city of Troy. But without that excitement, archeologists would never have considered that the Homeric stories were anything but stories.

Home Spun comic strip #682

Now available on Amazon.com:


(At some point I'll figure out how to make a button for my sidebar. We'll see how busy this week gets! Until then, I will post links beneath my new comics. Please let me know if it's annoying and I'll stop.)

The Release

So this is it. My birthday present to myself. I am releasing my first comic collection into the world. Like any new parent, I worry about what I have created. Can it stand on its own two feet? Will it need me to defend it? Will others love it as I do? I hope so.

Click on the book cover to go to my CreateSpace eStore. It should also be available on Amazon. If you like it, please tell your friends.

Editor's note: I don't know how long it will take to appear on Amazon. I will let you know when I have a link for it.

Home Spun comic strip #681