Community

People alone can only do so little…………but people together can do so much!

Why I believe in building together with your community.

This past weekend we were blessed to be able to take part in our community “Discovery days.”  This was one of many things that we took part in this past year since moving to our new town.  As you may remember we did our town’s tailgate market and enjoyed meeting many new people through that.  This event was for our whole community to come together to raise money for our park’s new playground equipment.

Here is a little video clip from our day

The days before we started with much “prep” for the big day.  My daughters took time to roll 100 paper bags to make potato sacks for food we were selling.

In each bag we placed one of those french fry trays and that is what we put the tinfoil wrapped potato in.  We put in a cup of chili and then offered shredded cheese, sour cream, and packs of butter for toppings.  We sold our meal for $4.  I don’t have a “finished” product photo as I forgot to take a picture that day.

We also made butterscotch pumpkin gingerbread trifle desert to sell.  We froze them and then as we served them, they were partially thawed.  An easy thing, and with leftovers we just kept them in the freezer.We stored them in a cooler for transport and to keep frozen.  Most stayed pretty solid all day at 65 degrees outside and sunshine.

Here we had a friend, Tammy make all our signs.  She is a good sign maker:)  The children had fun having “free for all” with markers this day—I lost many markers without lids this day:)

We also did an “Aprons with Attitude” contest.  We gave away aprons and had people decorate them.  This was the winner of the contest.

Isn’t this a neat idea?

   Here was my table the day before.  All holding everything we needed.  We did a Smores bar as well.  We ended up using those large tin cans and put the Sterno cans to burn inside of them and it was perfect.  The reason being is because it was very windy when we first started out and they would have blown out the flame.  The sides of the can were warm and I teased people saying they were “hand warmers” as it was a little chilly.  We went through 3 burners all day (8 hours). 

Here were some of our wood signs that we put for sale.  I decorated our wood plaques with twine and some greenery from our trees outside.  It spruced them up a bit and I put a paper tag on them so they would be ready to give as gifts.    Our wood table is on the left, our Choffy and Smores table in the green.  Choffy was something new we had.  It was brewed cacao.  It brews like coffee but has the health benefits of cocoa because it is all natural and healthy.  You expected it to taste like coffee but it was chocolate.  You can add creamer and sugar to it to make it more like hot chocolate.  Something new and different but a great thing to sell at fairs.  Google them!

Here is Autumn enjoying her sucker.

One of the churches gave away balloons for Jesus.  Inside the balloon was a piece of paper that said “Jesus loves you.”  When the children released them, someone somewhere would hopefully find that note.  Neat idea.

Here were my little ones, running having fun.  From left to right…Autumn, Stephen, Jentzen, Madelyn, and Brooklyn.

Madelyn loving her sucker.

Stephen loving his.This was a neat photo because there were all these chairs lined up watching the entertainment which included pickers, singers, guitar players, hula hoop dancers, hula dancers and more.  Then there was one older lady sitting watching, my children all lined up and sat down next to her watching the entertainment.  It was a neat moment.  Having the older with the younger generation—precious.

It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed it very much.  We had raffles for baskets and Lauren won the one with two tickets to Dollywood!!! She was so excited to get that.  Hmmmm wonder who is going to go with her…….?!?!?!?I am blessed to be able to be part of people who enjoy having a community of others as importance in their life.  I look forward to many more opportunities to serve and help.

Have a great start to your week!

 

We have lived at our current home for almost a year now.  I haven’t done any real big decorating because I didn’t want to “lock” myself into this house.  But I realize that we are going to be here so I might as well do something to make the home more homey.  Plus it gives the children a chance to be creative and help decorate the home.

I wanted to do stuff that wasn’t going to cost much, but would add a nice touch to our home.  I came up with these ideas…. thank goodness for Pinterest influence:)

Our $2.06 penny vase

This was a fun project for our ten year old to make.  I spray painted a glass vase  black.  My daughter then washed some pennies that she got from her brother Collin’s money rolls. She soaked them in 1 cup vinegar and 3 Tablespoons salt solution.  We let them sit for about 10 minutes.  You can scrub them as needed, but we just drained and dried them.  She then hot glued pennies all around the vase.  It was a good math tool as well, as she counted $2.06 that she used.

We filled it with a bunch of floral’s that we had found inexpensively.  Easy and inexpensive.

Yarn bottles

I had found a picture of twine covered bottles and I had thought that looked neat to do.  I saved a couple of Starbucks coffee drink bottles for this purpose.  The problem was that I could not find twine inexpensively.  Our local Walmart had some for the holidays but it was only a small amount and I would of had to pay $7.50 to cover the jar—not worth it for me.  Oh a need for a Hobby Lobby here…..

My daughter loves to crotchet and has lots of odd and end yarn scraps.  I found one and started hot gluing it around the bottle.

The results………we got two bottles, that I think look rather neat.

Another inexpensive idea.

Decorative balls

I had found a basket and wanted to fill it with something.  My intentions were pine cones.  But I was having a hard time finding pine cones here. Then I saw decorative yarn balls and I thought those looked neat at the store.  But the price tag was not.  In my head, I thought we could make this.  So we did.

We started out by blowing up balloons to the size that we needed.  I then took some Elmer’s glue and watered it down a bit.  Oh first….I covered our work area with paper—young children and glue make a mess!!!!

We then worked on the yarn ball.  We set the yarn in the glue bowl and then squeeze off the glue from the yarn as we wrapped it around the balloon. Messy, but it worked.

Other children were doing paper mache on the balloons.  We are going to paint these later.  It was like making mini pinatas.

Some children did well, smoothing out the paper and others, we had to go back and fix.  But overall, it was fun and they had fun getting messy.  Something I don’t like to do as far as crafts and mess and little ones.  But we did it!

Then we thought we would glue on some fall leafs that we got at the Dollar store…..we will see if that turns out.

It was a beautiful warm 80 degree fall day, so we set them on the porch window sill to dry.  By morning time they had dried.  I took a pair of scissors and popped the balloon inside and pulled it out.  A couple of paper mache ones had deflated while drying.  Too big of paper chunks and too much glue:)  One of the yarn balloons deflated and I just untied it and blew it back up.  It worked!

Here they are after they dried.  The thicker yarn is a little smooshy, I would recommend using more glue or using thinner yarn.The paper mache, I spray painted with some leftover paint that we had.  The turquoise one was the deflated balloon, but it was made by a younger child—so we kept it.  Shove it in the corner of the basket:)  Even the leaf one turned out pretty neat.  Not a bad decoration for things we had lying around the house.

popcorn candles and beaded candles

This was another idea I had saw on Pinterest.  Layer popcorn seeds, acorns from our yard, and a candle.   Simple and easy.

The beaded candle jar on the left we had made at our ladies group.  We just hot glued some beads to the jar and when it is lit, it looks pretty.

 The hanging lanterns we had used for a camping trip and those gave the mantle a rustic look.  I found a log round in my husband’s woodshop.  I placed a pumpkin fall candle on it and hot glued some Dollar Store leaves around it.

Some inexpensive, easy decorations for the fall.  Now I need something for the background on the mantle. Hmmmm…..something large and bright enough to break up the colors of the brick.  I had saw picture frames painted bright colors with a wreath hanging down the center.  I might do that.  Keep my eyes out for things.  In time, little by little.  The key is to do something.  These took me only a few minutes each day and now it helped spruce up our home and it didn’t cost us much at all.

Do you have an inexpensive fall DIY ideas to decorate your home with?