This is so delightful! My friend Raquel is offering this PDF of a walking guide inspired by Pride and Prejudice. It’s basically a challenge to walk 125 miles in 90 days, which is the distance from Longbourn to Pemberley. Go get it here in etsy.
I’m so happy about this! I was already planning on doing a challenge of 15K steps a day for this new year. This challenge will make it so much more fun! Also, for months, I’ve also been wanting to do a girls’ night out party in January or February because Jane’s birthday was in December, and my December was crammed full with Christmas festivities. It wasn’t just any birthday, it was her 250th birthday!
So doing this challenge fits in with both those desires!
Here’s where it gets even better…you can get this 9 page PDF over here in etsy for only 50 cents, using the coupon code ELIZABETH. If you are a Jane fan, you will love it! Be sure to give it a good review in etsy so Raquel will feel motivated to make more luscious Jane Austen ephemera!
Here’s what you get in this elegant printable PDF:
-instructions for how to do the 90 day walking challenge
-a week-by-week and day-by-day guide for completing the challenge
-a tracking page for your progress
-gorgeous images of four of the residences that you will be starting from and”walking” to if you complete the challenge: Longbourne, Meryton, Netherfield, and Pemberly.
-a list of suggested viewing if you are walking on a treadmill or walking pad
-award ribbons to print and cut out to wear with honor as you complete each phase of the challenge
May I suggest a few audiobooks and videos to add to the mix?
Here we go…
-watch the 250th birthday party for Jane above, held in her hometown of Bath, England.
-you can find her books read aloud in YouTube. Look especially for P&P narrated by Jennifer Ehle, who played Lizzie in the best movie adaptation
I’m listening to the above book this month. It combines all of Jane’s characters into one book!
Above is a tour of Jane’s Home With Lucy Worsley.
This video below shows the backstory of the book above. A guidebook to all the places Jane lived and visited, it was created by three BYU students.
This video below shows the life of Jane Austen.
Then this video below shows things you might have missed in the BBC 1995 Pride and Prejudice.
Watch the one below to see what Jane Austen looked like.
Here are proposal scenes from six Austen couples.
Then here’s a modern day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, filmed in good old Provo Utah. My cousin’s daughter, who is at BYU now, says she went through a phase in her tweens when she watched this regularly. I first watched it when I was postpartum with Baby #4 while eating Cafe Rio at home. for a babymoon married date night, with all the other kiddos gone. It’s silly and fun so watch it when you want lots of laughs.
Every Jane Austen Adaptation Ranked from Worst to Best is in the video below.
The video over here shows Susannah Harker, who played Jane Bennet in the 1995 P&P.
Then there’s this new series, Lost in Austen. Episode 1 is below. I haven’t watched it all yet so can’t vouch for wholesomeness but it looks promising.
It’s a new year of study for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! For 2026 we are studying the Old Testament this year. The study guide of the Church for the OT is over here. I’m excited to increase my knowledge of this part of the Bible. So many, many beautiful stories of God’s covenantal grace abound in the Old Testament. The word “testament” means “covenant.” So when we study the Old Testament we are studying the ancient evidences of God’s covenantal love and grace. This helps us live to feel this love and grace more as well. I love learning about Jesus, aka, Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament/Covenant, who fulfills His promise in the New Testament/Covenant.
Here’s a great video of scholar Dr. John Hilton III introducing the Old Testament. I love the overview he gives in the images above and below.
You can access Brother Hilton’s OT masterclass here. Then you can get the free ebook about the Dead Sea Scrolls that he mentions in the video from the QR code below.
Then Brother Hilton’s aunt, Sister Lynn Hilton Wilson, has an introduction to the OT in the video below.
As Sister Wilson says in the video above, the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Christ is one of the best commentaries on the Old Testament. She also says that the OT has more references to women than any other book of scripture.
Speaking of women, I encourage you to get the book below by Heather Farrell to learn more about women in the Old Testament. I believe it is a compilation of what she has in her blog over here. (I was so blessed to find this book when thrifting this past year. I saved it to give to my daughter as one my Christmas gifts.)
How about some music to connect to the Old Testament stories? I raised my children on Scriptures Scouts music. The Old Testament music is here to buy and over here in Spotify.
Then there’s the beautiful music by Shawna Belt Edwards. The video below shows clips from her OT songs. The whole playlist is here.
Today in Sunday School in our intro to the OT lesson the teacher mentioned Dr. Ross Baron. I thought, “Hey, I know him! He was the favorite professor of two of my children at BYUI.” I don’t know him personally, but I feel like I do after listening to so many of his speeches. He is amazing! Here are his thoughts below to keep in mind as you read the OT this year.
Lastly, here’s a fun intro to the OT video by Kristen Walker Smith.
I had the thought last night that when I take down my Christmas picture books that I have up for decorations in my front room, on the ledges above my windows and doorways, I can put up my few winter picture books, my few Valentine picture books, and….the books I have about the Bible. I’ve also got my heart garlands, my snowflake garlands, and my pom pom garlands. I’m excited!!!
These are the books I finished in 2025, in order of reading, as far as I can remember. I completed 40 books!!!! That averages to over three books a month. Not quite one a week which is what I aimed to do, but that’s OK. I am so pleased with myself for doing this!!! I did this on top of all my responsibilities, mostly by listening to audiobooks and reading right before bed. This is also in addition to all the podcasts I listened to, especially for my Come Follow Christ study. I am pleased with the mix of fiction and nonfiction that I finished, across a wide variety of subjects. The size of the book cover images in this post show how much I loved the books. The bigger the image, the more I liked it.
The book above I started in December and finished in January. It is so, so good!!!! The author starts the story with a Christmas vacation to Africa so in that sense it’s Christmas-y. If you want a book to inspire you about what one woman can do, especially fulfilling her pursuit of God’s will, read Kisses from Katie! It is all true and so amazing!!!
The Message is soooo good as well! This is one book I want to read every year in January. It is about a man who died, was allowed to watch his family from heaven to see what they were doing, and then God allowed him to come back to his mortal life with “the message.” It is all true!!!! So incredibly marvelous! I found it a thrift store last year and picked it up because I remembered my Veggie Gals recommending it. I just found another copy today when thrifting. I’m excited to give it to my mom and talk about it with her! I hope to find many more copies of it to give away. I love that it shows big family life, faith in God, and a view of the spirit world. It’s utterly fabulous!
The Air We Breathe is also soooo good! The author, Glen Scrivener, explains how the values of freedom, kindness, progress, and equality, which reasonable people appreciate the whole world over, all come from Jesus. Without Jesus, we wouldn’t have these values. Another way of putting it is that we can’t have these values lasting in our civilization without believing in Jesus. I want to read this one again too! Jesus has influenced our culture to the point that His values have permeated our lives to be just as unnoticeable as the “air we breathe.”
I found Angela Braniff as a YouTube influencer when I saw one of her videos about recommended Christmas gifts on amazon a year ago. This book is her story. It was fun and interesting. I admire for adopting internationally and being willing to be a mom of of so many children, following faith in God.
I heard about the above book from Marcie Holladay over at singlemomonafarm.com. She used what she learned in this book to get her dream, which is a farm with lots of acreage in Virginia. I enjoyed it! It’s another one to read/listen to every January. I love all the stories the author tells of people achieving their dreams, from famous people like Tim Allen to ordinary people. It’s an exciting book! If these people can achieve their dreams so can you and I!
We did the above book for our December Morning Basket 2024 but then it took us until about February 2025 to finish it. The illustrations are just so sumptuous! A lovely book!
My son and I listened to a few Gordon Korman books while I drove him to his different classes that he participated in as part of his homeschool education in winter, spring and fall of 2025. These are all fun books for tweens and teens. Mr. Korman is a gifted writer for coming up with captivating plots and witty dialogue.
The one above was for Sisters’ Book Club. It was fun but frustrating. The mom in the story annoyed me because she was such a micromanager. It paints stay-at-home moms in a bad light.
This one is such a great book! It’s a graphic novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian, family man, and spy. He was part of the plot to kill Hitler. Such an amazing, true story!!!! So grand! If you don’t read it, you are missing out!!! I show how to make timeline cards for it as an educational aid for teaching history over here.
The 13th Gift was another item for our December Morning Basket which spilled into January and February. It is a true story of a widowed mom of three who had someone give her family gifts for a “Twelve Days of Christmas” project. Such a fun, inspiring, heartwarming story! Put it on your TBR books for your Mother’s Merry Christmas curriculum for next year!
Another Sisters’ Book Club pick. It was delightful!!!! I listened to it in everand.
Linked is a great story as an introduction to Jewish life and culture. It’s also a great story of community and forgiveness.
Speaking of Jewish life, this next one also relates to that. The above book is another amazing book! Go here to read my full review! It’s about a young man, Jason Olson, who was born to a Lutheran father and Jewish mother. He converted to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a teen after reading/studying The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Another true story of God working in someone’s life to bring truth to someone who earnestly sought to know God better. I absolutely loved it!!!!
I heard about this book from Sarah Mackenzie as one of her books she recommends to moms. It was fun but there’s nothing morally outstanding about it. It’s OK if you miss it. I picked it for Sisters’ Book Club in June, and hadn’t read it previously. From now on I will only pick books that I have already read so I know whether or not I can give it a hearty recommendation.
The above book was another Sisters’ Book Club pick. It was horrible! I don’t recommend it. I wasted 6 hours or so of my life listening to it. A fictional book, it shows a woman cheating on her fiance with no repercussions. I didn’t appreciate the open door bedroom scene which I quickly skipped over. Come to think of it, there may have been more, which I also skipped over. I kept thinking it was going to get better and it never did. So take it from me and avoid this book! Notice the image is really small to show how much I hated it. I have it just big enough so you can read the title and the author so you know to avoid it. My sister-in-law picked it not having read it. I hope she only picks books she has read before as I have vowed to do from now on.
I love Patti Callahan Henry’s books. She is a great storyteller! Another Sisters’ Book Club read.
In what was definitely a serendipitous/positively Providential/God wink discovery, I found the book just above and the one just below at the Orem Savers maybe three years ago? and finally read them to help me in writing my novels. One is to come out this winter of 2026. So watch for it!
I somehow stumbled across a YouTube video of the author above. So then I did some sleuthing and found her blog and her publishing company of books for homeschoolers. She is so wonderfully delightful! Sarah Janisse Brown, in this memoir above, shows the power of a godly young woman who dedicates her life to God, following His will as to who she will marry and how many children to give birth to as well as to adopt. Her story is so fun to read, so inspiring, and best of all, it’s all true! I envy anybody who hasn’t read this book yet and gets to read it for the first time. This is just such a huge meaty treat of a book!!! It’s steak and ice cream for the mind all at once! I admire Sarah so much. She resonates a lot with me as a home birthing, homeschooling mom of many. You can see more of her here.
A friend was raving about this book above. It sounded so fun I had to read it myself. It’s by one of the co-authors of The Burning Book, James Goldberg. It’s a totally delightful story about a Latter-day Saint young man falling in love with a Sikh young woman. It’s entertaining, educating, and thought-provoking! A wonderful book!
OK, this one above is a must-read. It is written by a woman who lived a lifestyle totally opposite to my life. As an atheist, she was a professor of English at Syracuse University and set out to prove the Bible wrong. Imagine her surprise when she came to know the Bible as true! She is now the wife of a pastor and homeschooling mom and grandma! She makes a case for including all people, not matter their background, as part of a mother’s hospitality, to “make strangers into friends and friends into family.” Her stories are fun to read, heartwarming, and instructive of how to have a hospitality culture in your home. Just don’t compare yourself with what she does. I believe there is a season when a mom has many children and/or other responsibilities to focus on her own and not feel guilty for not doing more.
I stumbled across this one when I was researching for and writing my blog post over here about musical big families. It is the true story of a woman growing up black with only sisters. Her dad was determined that his daughters would be more successful than he was. A big key to success, he was told, was for them to study music. So he got them playing in a family band. They traveled all up and down the East coast doing gigs, which helped pay for their college educations. I think it was all but one of the five daughters that became either a doctor or a dentist. This is a wonderful story of the power of parent mentors. So, sooo, sooo good! I love true stories like this! The author, Yvonne Thornton, became the first black woman to become board-certified in neonatology medicine after becoming an OB-BYN. Very inspiring!
My son and I read the above book for Morning Basket for spring, summer, and fall of 2025. It took us that long because I would read aloud 1-5 pages a day and we had some breaks in there. It tells the story of Helmuth Hubener from one of his closest friends, Rudi Wobbe. So, sooo, soo good!
We, my son and I, listened to Carry On Mr. Bowditch for the Pyramid class I am mentoring, that he is in. This is such a splendid book. Another must-read for everyone! I had never heard of Mr. Bowditch until I became a homeschool mom. He was a real person who revolutionized the world of navigation with his mathematical figuring. His book, The American Practical Navigator, is on sale in amazon today. Imagine writing a book that is still being sold over 200 years later.
My daughter picked the above book for Sisters’ Book Club in October. I was happy about that because I had read it before and wanted a reread. It’s a fun book that shows the power of friendship and resourcefulness. It also gets the reader more interested in WWII. Definitely a Charlotte Mason living book that can and should be used to teach WWII. My sister Emily reviews it on her blog here, scroll down to Book #6 in her list on that page.
After listening to three Gordon Korman books with my son for all our driving to classes, I felt it was time to expose him to an old classic, so we did Little Britches. I think both our minds wandered during a lot of the listening, so he hasn’t discovered its magic. It’s still a great book!
The woman/main character in the story above reminded me of my mother-in-law just a bit. Catching Christmas is a darling, Christ-centered, clean, wholesome Christmas romance story. I’m glad I listened to it! It’s another book that shows the power of what one woman can do. This book and the next bunch below were all part of my Merry Christmas Mother Curriculum. (I’m thinking of having a personal curriculum that I formerly name from now on. I’m thinking January’s will be my “Jolly January Hygge for Mother” curriculum.)
Mr. Dickens and His Carol really delivered for me! It was even better than The Man Who Invented Christmas! Both titles have the same topic: the story of how Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol. The former started out as a screenplay and became a book, the latter started out as a book and became a movie. This one is better because of all the author’s luscious, evocative descriptions of Victorian England, as well as the emotional interplay going on with the characters, which is just hard to do with a movie. That interplay caused Dickens’ great transformation, a parallel to Scrooge’s transformation. It is so good I want to listen to it every Christmas!
The Christmas Chronicles! This is such a lovely, lovely backstory of Santa Claus. I listened to this book in podcast form, over here. It’s just so fun, so magical, so lovely, and fabulous. I love that it incorporates the Christ Child, St. Nicholas, Dasher and the other reindeer, Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, Santa’s workshop, and the elves into one beautiful amazing story. It rivals C.S. Lewis in Christian storytelling! So, soo, soo good!
I read maybe 80- 90% of this for our family and Church’s Come Follow Christ study for 2025. So I’m counting it! So many beautiful truths are in this book! If you haven’t read it, read it here or in the LDS Gospel Library app on your phone.
I listened to the above book, from a YouTube video, during an afternoon while multi-tasking. The American Girls books and dolls came out when I was a teen so I didn’t really get into them, or even when I was raising my daughters, even though I did get one of them the Felicity doll and some of the books. I decided that the Christmas stories would be fun to listen to during the Advent season. This book is short and delightful and shows family love. I enjoyed it! Next Christmas I’ll do some of the others involving Samantha, Molly, Addy, etc.
A Christmas Dream is kind of like a child’s version of A Christmas Carol. I also listened to this in YouTube while working. It’s a beautiful redemptive story!
The books above and below are collections of true short stories from LDS authors. They were fun and heartwarming! I liked the one above better than the one below.
I finished the one above after finding it when thrifting in 2024. I learned that the seven traditions listed are to be done as part of Advent, but not every day the week before Christmas, but starting the Sunday, before Thanksgiving so that you do one a Sunday and then one on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I didn’t plan ahead well enough with this because I finished reading this so close to Christmas. So I adapted this book to go through all of it in an hour for our family Christmas Eve program. We talked about each Nativity figure, what it symbolizes according to Emily, read the scripture, sang the song, and discussed the discussion question. It was lovely!
This one was great! A wonderful follow-up after watching the movie of the author’s journey to finding Christ, called A Case for Christ. I review the movie here.
At the request of one of my children, I read/listened to the one above. The whole concept of the autism spectrum fascinates me. I’ll be delving into this subject more in 2026.
Elder Jeffery R. Holland’s daughter wrote the book above. I found it thrifting. It’s short and sweet. Perfect for reading in one sitting.
We as a family used the study guide above for our study of Christ and His words in the Doctrine and Covenants for 2025. I enjoyed using this study guide. Sometimes I used the discussion questions as journal writing prompts which caused me to have some reflection for which I’m grateful for. 2026 involves the Old Testament part of the Bible which I’m excited about.
That’s my 2025 in books! I’d love to hear what you read, so if you’d like, please share in the comments below.
Home Alone, the blockbuster movie which became an instant Christmas classic, came out when I was in college. I remember loving the plot line. It was just so original. And the opening scene? It combined two of my loves: large family life and pizza! That hooked me from the very beginning. I remember laughing out loud with my husband at several scenes. Then when children came along and we showed it with him, it was so fun to see them laugh out loud too. Then too, as the children came along, and I became a mother of 5 boys, I related so much more to the mom and son dynamic. Then there’s the epic music, composed by John Williams. It really gets to my heart. I noticed as I got older that I liked the burglar traps less and less. My old age opened my eyes to how they border on sadism.
Anyway, for some reason yesterday when I was nursing a cold I got on a Home Alone jag and went down a rabbit hole of research. Here are some fun facts about the movie…
1. It’s been 35 years since the movie premiered 16 November 1990.
2. The movie joined the National Film Registry list in 2023. This means it is a movie of cultural and historical significance for the United States.
3. The movie was filmed in February to May of 1990.
4. The neighborhood where it was filmed didn’t really have snow, so the movie crew used white cotton batting and potato flakes to simulate it.
5. The home shown in the movie is a real home: 671 Lincoln Ave Winnetka Illinois. This is 16 miles north of downtown Chicago.
6. The only parts of the movie filmed inside the actual home were the foyer, the stairway, and the attic.
7. Most of the interior home shots were filmed on sets built inside an old high school gym, New Trier Township High School West Campus in Winnetka, to replicate the interior of the actual home.
8. The home has attracted tourists ever since the film debuted. The constant stream caused the owners to erect a fence to keep people off their property.
9. The treehouse in the movie behind the home was built especially for the movie and then taken down afterwards.
10. The original owners of the home John Abendshein and Cynthia Demps, sold the home in 2012. The listed price was over $1.5 million.
11. When the movie was being filmed the owners and residents of the home remained living inside. Their daughter, Lauren, describes the situation in the video below. She was 6 at the time of the filming.
12. During filming, the cast and crew caught wind that one of the elderly neighbors was celebrating a birthday so they came to her doorstep to wish her a happy birthday. This is just so incredibly sweet! This moment was captured by neighbors who lived across the street from the home. They captured a little bit of the filming every day on a home video camera. Watch below.
13. Sometime after it was sold in 2012, the home was made it into an Airbnb, where people could stay and relive moments from the movie.
14. As of this writing, it was last sold for over $5 million in January 2025, according to zillow.com.
15. At some point along the way it was remodeled to look “modern.” This is so sad! Currently, modern means sterile which borders on soul-less, I’m afraid. It’s utterly tragic! I’m not the only one who thinks so, watch the video below.
16. Happily, it is being restored to its original Home Alone movie beauty charm and splendor.
17. Macaulay Culkin, the star who played Kevin, lets his children watch the movie but hasn’t told them that he is the star. He’s waiting for the moment when they figure it out and ask him about it.
18. Macaulay received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a few years ago. The woman who played his mom in the movie, Catherine O’Hara, got to speak at the ceremony. She said that Macaulay is what made the movie a success.
19. Some people have read Christian symbolism into the movie. I don’t know if the writer, John Hughes, and the producer, Chris Columbus, intended this symbolism or not. Watch the video below and read here to see some interpretations.
20. The movie has a huge cult following in Poland where it is always shown on national TV on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day
21. John Abendshein has written a memoir about his Home Alone home and its fame, called Home But Alone No More.
Image Credit: amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I disclose that any qualifying purchases made through any amazon links on this page earn me a commission.
22. Daniel Stern, who played Marv, one of the Wet Bandits, has written a memoir called Home and Alone. He is now a sculptor who also runs a farm with his wife.
24. Home Alone is one of the few movies mentioned in a General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thomas S. Monson mentioned it in April 1991, in a talk entitled “Never Alone.” You can read it here or watch it below.
In the talk, after seeing the scene of reconciliation of the old man neighbor, Marley, and his son, President Monson describes his feelings of leaving the movie theater in his typical third-person style.
“One emerges from the theater with moist eyes. As the brightness of day envelops the silent throng, perhaps there are those whose thoughts turn to that man of miracles, that teacher of truth—even the Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. I know my thoughts did.”
Knowing the love of Jesus Christ and acting on these feelings to reach out to others, I know that I will never be truly alone. I’m so grateful for this knowledge!
The movie remains popular because it represents the universal natural desire to be with family at Christmas so as not to be home alone. It also shows chaos and forgiveness in a family setting, which we can all relate to. We are all part of family in some form. All families have chaos at some level, and all families have need of forgiveness within because offenses in family inevitably arise. It’s just lovely how this movie shows reconciliation growing and glowing like the Bethlehem star within not just one, but two families. Not only that, but the symbolism of Old Man Marley as Christ, swooping in and rescuing Kevin from the bad guys after all of Kevin’s works failed…how did I miss that? I love that too! So if you haven’t seen the movie lately, it’s time for a rewatch, during this Twelve Days of Christmas season. Enjoy and please let it point you to the ultimate Christmas gift: Jesus Christ, whose love means we are never truly alone.
December 25 is over for 2025, but Christmas Day is just the beginning of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Growing up, I thought the Twelve Days ended on Dec. 25. As an adult, I have learned that Dec. 25 is actually the start of it. Watch the videos below to learn the history of these days.
I love Leila Marie Lawler’s ideas over here, on the blog likemotherlikedaughter.org, about celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas as a family. The following list is what she suggests on how to celebrate the Twelve Days, but of course, you as the mom and dad are in charge of your family. I certainly trust you to be flexible and do what fits your family the best. These are just suggestions, not commandments. The purpose of celebrating these Twelve Days is to spread out the Christmas festivities with wholesome recreation for your family, connecting your family to each other while celebrating the birth of the Christ child. This spreads Christmas out to be a big season into January, not just the Advent days in December.
Day 1: Christmas Day, which is over this year. I hope you all had a relaxing and merry Christmas Day with the perfect balance of relaxing and merry, which can be hard to find, I admit. It was a certainly merry day for me to the point of being overstimulating. Anyway, it’s over! Another day I’ll blog a debrief of Christmas Day like I have for other years, such as over here. So moving on…
Day 2: We usually play board games on this day, Boxing Day, December 26 and eat leftovers from Christmas Eve and Day dinners. Ms. Lawler suggests on this day for the family to make gingerbread houses. That’s never going to happen here. After the Tetris marathon of prepping for and orchestrating Christmas Day, there’s no way I’m doing gingerbread houses the next day! I like the idea of boxing up stuff to give away to make more room for all the new toys and clothes given as presents the previous day, but alas, I have never actually felt that ambitious and energetic the day after Christmas.
My nieces’ collections of Playmobil, Calico Critters, blocks and Legos.
Day 3: She suggests the family open up a whole-family present that everyone can enjoy for the day, like a board game. Or it might be an addition to a set of family toys to revive interest in an old family favorite, such as Brio railroad cars and tracks, Calico Critters, Legos, or a Playmobil collection.
Day 4: It’s good to add some outside time. Mrs. Lawler says to do an outing on this day: museum, Nutcracker, ice skating, etc. Hmmm, does any theater keep showing Nutcracker after Christmas Eve, I wonder? Regardless, I like the idea of getting out for a change of pace. She says to look for discount or free pass days.
Day 5: Have a quiet day at home doing a jigsaw puzzle together, she says. We did this puzzle above as an extended family during that week between Christmas and New Year’s at my parents’ cabin. Of course, I found the puzzle when thrifting. You can find great puzzles for just a few bucks at your local thrift store. Some people avoid getting puzzles at thrift stores for fear of missing pieces. I have only once out of all the puzzles I’ve bought at thrift stores had one with missing pieces. I love putting puzzles together because they are vehicles for conversation and relaxation while still challenging the brain. Here’s my mom and great-niece working together on it, below.
I add to this suggestion to listen to Christmas-themed audiobooks or podcasts while assembling the puzzle if conversation lulls, like The Christmas Chronicles if you didn’t already finish it for the year. Or take turns reading aloud to each other the Christmas chapter books you haven’t finished yet, like Holly Claus. It’s OK to be reading Christmas-y things after Christmas Day!
Day 6: Take your children book shopping. The Lawlers used to go to a huge bookstore and spend all day with each family member totally absorbed in browsing the books. They would let each of the 7 children bring home a book. If you don’t have a huge bookstore in your area, go to a new or used bookstore, including thrift stores. Or if you can’t afford to buy any books, go to the public library, and come home and stay home for the rest of the day, having a reading party, reading the books you just got. This could even be the day you celebrate Jolabokkaflod. That’s the Icelandic word for “Christmas book flood.”
Day 7: New Year’s Eve! She suggests having a party at your home where you have your children invite all their friends to come. Her reasons for hosting the party are here. At the party she suggests smashing the gingerbread houses you made on Boxing Day.
Day 8: New Year’s Day. Watch a family movie she says. Go to Day 8 over here to see her suggestions. I suggest watching Mully, a great documentary/movie to inspire new goals for the new year. (Warning: if you have young children, you might want to skip over some of the early war scenes and the scene where he is abandoned.) If you want to stay Christmas-y, then watch Journey to Bethlehem, The Nativity Story, Muppet Christmas Carol, or Klaus. Home Alone deserves another go-around, especially after you learn of its Christian symbolism. Go here to learn more about that. I have lots of movie suggestions for Christmas here, scroll down to the “Activities” section to see Christmas movies to watch. It’s totally OK to watch Christmas movies after Christmas.
Day 9: For this day, she says to pull out a forgotten box of candy. Then there’s nothing else she suggests. Which surprises me. Just eating a new box of candy is not enough of a family time suggestion to me. Maybe she meant for this day to be a self-directed day of play and learning for each family member, a breather between days of programmed activities.
Day 10: Take a family walk she says. I’m adding here: how about a hike or sledding? A walk isn’t that exciting for most kiddos.
Day 11: Her suggestion on this day is to have a reading day. If you didn’t have Jolabokkaflod already, maybe do it on this day. Use the books you got on the day you went shopping for books! Or have this day be a time you visit an elderly relative or work on crafts, she says.
Photo Credit: likemotherlikedaughter.org
Day 12: Epiphany Day, January 6. This is the day traditionally celebrated as when the Wise Men arrived to see the Holy Family and gave gifts to Jesus. Mrs. Lawler says to make a Christ the King Spice Crown Cake. For this day, she says to also have your family give your Christmas gifts to each other. That makes sense in honor of the Wise Men giving gifts. She says that on Christmas Day she just did one Santa gift to her children. (They are grown and out of the nest now.) She also says somewhere that if she had to do it over again with her children at home, she would do stockings on St. Nicholas Day, December 6. This is really stretching the season out! I like this idea!
Of course, none of this is set in stone. It’s one veteran homeschooling Catholic mother’s ideas of enjoying family time in the darkest time of the year when school is generally out. It helps to have some guidance with all the free time we have right now. You might already have extended family or friends that you do things with on these days which already sets your rhythm for Christmas vacation. Myself, I prefer to play board games on as many of these days as I can. I like that in the top video the narrator says that the festival of the Twelve Days of Christmas helped make winter a communal time instead of
I hope it gives you some ideas to enjoy these precious winter days! I wish I still had a houseful of children to try this schedule out. This seems like a great recipe for keeping the joy afloat for all of Christmas vacation, keeping the day after Christmas from being a huge letdown. Thank you for sharing these ideas Mrs. Lawler.
This is one of my new games I got for Christmas that I’m excited to play.
Besides playing board games with family, I’ll be finishing up my Merry Christmas Mother’s Curriculum, while adding to it the Twelve Days of Christmas Craft Lit podcast, over here. If you haven’t already checked out those audio and print goodies, please do partake of them. Merry Twelve Days of Christmas everyone!
Even though my oldest is 32, I’m still evolving our Christmas traditions in my family of 7 children, 3 children-in-law, and four grandchildren. Here’s one I tried out yesterday that went well, which I’m going to keep and do next year.
After all the gifts were opened yesterday, and the little grandsons had retreated to a room to play with their new toys, I gathered the 16 year-old-and-ups to hear me read two books aloud, to generate reflection, writing, and discussion. We had pulled out the food for brunch as well and some people were done eating and others were still eating.
First we lit all the candles in the Immanuel Wreath plus a big fat candle in the center. Sorry, the photo above is from Christmas Eve and doesn’t show the center candle lit. It was on Christmas Day that we lit the big center candle. Anyway, then we sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. The two grandsons may have wandered in at that point to see what was going on.
Then I read aloud this book below:
It is a beautiful book featuring the artwork of Carl Bloch, and two other classical artists: Frans Schwarz and Heinrich Hofmann. Their artwork has been featured or is currently featured at the BYU Museum of Art. The book emphasizes all the holy gifts that Christ has given us. It is sold by the BYU Museum of Art Store, over here. (It’s only $9!) I’ve been blessed to find this book at a thrift store, not once, but twice. (The recent one I found I gave to a friend in a gift basket of books.) It’s a lovely book printed in board book format so it’s even suitable for tiny hands to flip through and not damage the pages.
Depending on the age of your children you might not read all the words just say a few words for each double-page spread.
Each spread mentions one gift from Jesus: a body, sight, wisdom, immortality, etc. Then each spread also has the refrain of “What gift will you give Christ?” This question is the perfect segue for the next book which I read aloud, below, by Kathryn Gordon Jenkins.
This book has gorgeous layouts of color, text, and design highlighting one gift you can give to Jesus on each two-page spread. Gifts like: studying the scriptures daily, forgiving others, keeping the Sabbath Day holy, being honest, being kind, attending the temple more often, etc.
Credit for Images of Gifts for Christ Above and Below: ldsliving.com
Each gift idea is accompanied by quotes from leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the facing page. So it is just a bit wordy for reading aloud all of it. So you probably will want to just read the gift suggestion and tell people they can read the rest on their own. I also found this book when thrifting. I love finding books that I end up using in family traditions!
Then I shared what they had written down as their gifts to Jesus from years past. This is something we’ve done off and on through the years. I have totally been SO imperfect/inconsistent at this, and that’s OK. Every mom gets to plead some kind of insanity for pulling off Christmas each year, overcoming invisible obstacles and hurdles that only fellow mothers recognize. For years I have forgotten where I put the envelope with the slips of paper. Does anyone relate? I finally found many of these envelopes this year, all the way back to 2000 (!), in the box of our porcelain Nativity set. I don’t know why it was so hard to remember where I put the envelopes, I just have a lot to keep in my brain and inevitably, I forget things.
So this year, I set the envelopes out on top of the piano next to the Nativity set so I would see the envelopes every day when I sat down to play the piano for Christmas carols. The visual reminder helped me keep it in my mind to share them on Christmas Day and ask my family members to write new gifts. So yesterday I remembered! Can I get a hearty “Hooray!” for that!? I passed out the previously written on folded slips of paper, asked them to read and reflect on what they wrote, and write down a gift for 2026.
I invited people to share their thoughts. I can always count on my son-in-law to share something wonderful, and he did, which I loved. My married daughter shared as well and so did I. Then I put the slips of paper away in each person’s envelope to save for next year.
I had completely forgotten what I wrote. It was interesting to read what I wrote back in 2000, when I was a young mom of 3, and then we skip decades, ahem, to 2020. then 2022, 2024, and 2025. I’m excited to be more intentional on what I wrote yesterday and create my my gifts for Jesus in 2026. I decided to give three, not just one.
It’s not too late to start this tradition in your family! You don’t even have to have the books, although they help. You can see more of the pages from the Gifts to the Savior book over here.
Another idea is to make lists on a white board or big piece of a paper, first, those of gifts Jesus gives to you, then make a list of what you can give to Him. This works if your crowd is good at brainstorming and being verbal. Not all families are like that. So if your family is one of those, which is totally OK, just go look at the pages of the book here.
Make it extra special by lighting a candle, or all the candles of your Immanuel Wreath, playing your favorite Christmas carols in the background (like from over here), and serving some herbal tea or cocoa, with or without a treat. Do it this coming Sabbath Day, or for New Year’s Eve, or even All Kings’ Day, which is in January. After all, that’s the day that traditionally has been celebrated as the day the Wise Men gave their gifts to Jesus. Have an envelope for each person or each year, whatever works for you, then put each little envelop in a big envelope. Then remember where you put it! Putting it with a Christmas decoration you use every year, like the Nativity set, or your stocking is my big suggestion.
I found a pad of this pretty scrapbook paper when thrifting earlier this week, right before Christmas. I just might get a manila envelope and decorate it with this paper. I love that it is so Christ-centered.
Next year I’m going to remember to have the last name of Christ on the Immanuel Wreath that we talk about be “Gift,” to be talked about on Christmas Day. Concluding with “Gift” as the name of Christ will be a great prelude to discussing the Savior’s gifts that day. I love experiencing Christmas and continually refining it to be extra meaningful and life transforming. I’ve always wanted to make Christmas Day be more of a birthday party for Jesus, and this little ceremony definitely helped with that. It helps family members see that gift-giving is to be a two-way street, just like the original meaning of Christ’s grace. (That’s another post for another day.)
If you want more ideas about traditions, for seasons and holidays all year round, go to my companion website here.
Let’s talk more about thrifting for gifting! It’s Frugal Friday! You have less than a week left for Christmas shopping. If you still have some shopping to do, I encourage you to check out your local thrift stores. You can find things still new with their tags, or in like new condition, which are totally OK for giving, even if you pay thrift store prices.
I’m so excited about giving my gifts for Christmas! Many of those gifts include ones I found at thrift stores. Mostly books! Today I wrapped a lot of the books plus other items. I wrapped these fun guys and one girl Duplo figures plus non Duplo guys shown above for my grandsons. I found them in a bag for $3.60 at Savers. We have a big Duplo collection that we’ve gathered through the years for Christmas that the grandchildren now play with. They also have a lot of Duplos at their home. So I was thrilled to find these Duplo guys with some non Duplo guys. Definitely a Magical Thrifting Moment (MTM)! I wasn’t even looking for them, they just fell into my lap. Someone had placed the bag of them on a shelf with board games and puzzles. I saw them, and eagerly scooped them up. Brand new Duplos are expensive, so to find a bag of six official Duplo figures for less than $4 with my coupon was such a deal. I love that they are knights and one lady to inspire chivalric fantasy play in my grandsons. This is just spectacular! I felt my Thrifting Angels watching over me for sure!
I’m combining them with the book above and two books below which I found in the same aisle, right across from the games. I’m making a boys’ adventure-themed basket or box for my two grandsons who are brothers. Then I’m adding to the basket or box a new kit I found on amazon that is for cutting up and joining cardboard together to build play structures and objects. I thought it would be fun to build little houses for these guys or a castle and big structures too for the boys to use as homes or forts. I’ll put these action figures and the books all in a big basket I find in a thrift store this coming week, with some coupons that say “Good for Two Hours of Building and Playing Adventures With Grandma.” I’m excited to play with them with these fun toys, and read to them the books below. Hopefully the books will inspire some playful adventure.
The book above was $4. It looks like it was never used! I have had my own copy for years for my sons and the companion book for girls to inspire my daughters. Actually the girls book is my older daughter’s. She never took it with her when she left home for college, so it’s still here on a bookshelf here in this room while I blog. Maybe she’ll let me keep it until she has a daughter. I like seeing it sit next to the boy one, as sibling volumes.
So far she has three little boys and no girls yet. I love these books because they teach all the old-fashioned skills like tying knots, recognizing constellations, carving wood, rowing in a canoe, playing yard games etc. All fun things to do away from screens. It also has tons of lists for trivia lovers, like the 50 US States and Capitals.
My grandsons are a little young for it, at ages 4 and 7, but they will grow into it and hopefully use it their whole lives. In the meantime they will definitely benefit from The Little Book for Boys, which is for ages under 8. They can fight over them all when they move out, LOL, or leave them with their mom for the grandchildren. I also got this fun Marvel character storybook below for them to add to the adventure box/basket. So I’ve got a mix of old school fun with comic book superheroes and medieval times. It’s just so amazing that the Duplo guys, the book for big boys, and the book for little boys and the Marvel book were all on the same aisle. The books were all $4 or less each! I didn’t have to hunt for them, there were just there!
Here’s what the companion book to the Dangerous Boy book, the girls book, looks like.
My daughter’s copy is very worn and well-loved. As you can see below :-). It looks like she took it camping and on many other adventures! I think I’ll wrap it up and re-gift to to my daughter to open after the boys open theirs.
You can see other stuff I got for Christmas gifts over here, and items I gifted my mom for her birthday here.
Watch these videos in YouTube over here and below for more thrifting for gifting inspiration!! It’s not too late to find cool stuff for Christmas gift-giving. Merry Thriftmas!
Want even more thrifting inspiration? Go here to see all my posts about it.
One of my favorite things about Christmas is the music! It is just the sublimest of all. So today I’m sharing my favorite resources for Christmas music, which includes old and new songs.
Let’s start with the basics. First is the book of Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It has the basic traditional Christmas carols of “Silent Night,” “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” etc. I prefer the spiral-bound edition so it stays open on the rack above a piano keyboard.
Second is the songbook above. I got this from the BYU Bookstore (now known as the BYU Store) for my 16th birthday. I eagerly took to playing as many songs from it on the piano as I could. It is out of print but you can find used copies from booksellers online. Check ebay first then if you can’t find it there use addall.com to find the cheapest copy. (You might have to search by the ISBN number of 978-0895771056 in addall instead of the title.)
This image below shows one of the later editions. I love both covers! So vintage looking!
It has come in so handy through the years to take to our extended family gatherings so I could accompany the family singing, as well as for our nuclear family singing on Christmas Eve and Day. It has almost every “old” Christmas song I can think of: all the traditional carols, plus songs like Jingle Bells, plus the Christmas songs that have been written in the 1900s like “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “White Christmas,” “Rudolph,” “Up on the Housetop,” “Frosty,” “Mele Kalikimaka,” “We Need a Little Christmas,” etc. The ones it doesn’t include are: “Silver Bells” and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. It has different editions. Maybe the later editions have some of those songs. Fortunately, I have found those songs in the book below.
OK, now we are moving into lesser-known Christmas songs. The new collection of hymns from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called Hymns– for Home and Church has a few songs that aren’t in either of the books above or the old hymnbook. The Christmas and Easter songs start at #1201.
Maren Ord Bushman wrote “Born to be a King.” This is probably my absolute favorite Christmas song. You can watch Maren sing it and play it above. I love, love, love playing this song on the piano. When I do, I feel like I am bouncing on jingling bells and playing chimes all at the same time. It is is just so fun to play! You can get the sheet music here. I have a little story to go with this song, a little Christmas miracle, which you can read about here. Maren’s website is here. She is an amazing musician! Then the official music video is below. I am so grateful to Maren for writing this song. It just makes me happy! It’s a great way to start the day, when I play this on the piano as a call for our morning family prayer.
Then there’s Christmas music here by Shawna Belt Edwards. Her latest Christmas song is below.
Then the video below shows many of her Christmas songs. You can get the sheet music here.
Just like Shawna, Sally Deford has written so many beautiful Christmas songs! One of them is shown in the video below. You can get her music here, and it’s all free for noncommercial use.
Then there is music published in the magazines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from 1971 on. These magazines are The Friend, The New Era, later renamed For the Strength of Youth, and The Ensign, later renamed The Liahona.
I have curated the music from 1971 to 2020. My Celestial Family Devotionals Ebook has this music linked to the internet under the December section. You can get the ebook for free here. You can print all this music for free by clicking on the links and then printing them. I have a binder to keep all this music together with a beautiful Nativity scene on the cover that I got from on the LDS Church magazines.
This month of December 2025 the Friend, which is for children, has this song here by Janice Kapp Perry called “Somewhere a Baby Sleeps.” Hooray, a new-to-me children’s song by Sister Perry!
Speaking of Janice Kapp Perry, her Christmas music is over here. You can only get hard copy CDs or songbooks, no digital downloads. That link also includes music from her daughter Lynne Perry Christofferson.
I hope you enjoy all this music!!! May it bring the spirit of Christ, of love, light, life, liberty, and joy into your home and heart!
It’s late, after 9 PM on a Friday, but I don’t want to let Friday pass without sharing again about thrifting for gifting with a #frugalfriday tag. I don’t have many days left to share about thrifting gifts for Christmas, with the big day less than two weeks away. Here are more ideas of thrifting for gifting! Part 1 is over here, where I talked about making themed-book baskets for the book lovers in your life. I gave my mom the basket above, with the theme of her interests, for her birthday yesterday. I had so much fun putting this together. The photo below shows the books I picked. Now that I’m posting this photo I realize the bow’s loops aren’t even but oh well, just look at the books and not the bow.
I found all these books at thrift stores, as well as the basket. I know my mom loves near death experience stories (NDE) or stories about people who die and come back to life so when I saw the book in the upper left corner months ago I got it for her. Sorry about the glare in the photo above, here it is below.
The book in the bottom left corner is a book by Susan Branch, a tiny gift book about Christmas. If you want to know more about Susan Branch books, go here and here. I love finding her books when thrifting, it feels like finding thrifting gold! They aren’t gold in terms of being able to resell and make a huge profit, but they are gold in terms of bringing much pleasure to me. Sometimes I find them in the children’s book section even though they aren’t children’s books. They are cookbooks and homemaking books. Ms. Branch does all the text by hand-lettering and illustrates all the books with ink and watercolor. They are just so charming with all the fun illustrations, ideas, and anecdotes. I knew my mom would love reading this since she is an artist as well. This was only $1!
I remember my mom telling me a few year ago that she likes Sarah Palin so when I found a book about Christmas by Sarah Palin with her conservative views I knew my mom would love it. It was $1.50.
Then I found a book that still had the retail sticker price on it, about Mary, the mother of Jesus, by Camille Fronk Olson. It was $2. It has so many different lovely artist renditions of Mary, along with Ms. Olson’s scholarship on Mary. Again, since my mom is an artist I knew she would love seeing all these different paintings of Mary. My favorite painting in the book is the one by Elspeth Young, and my second favorite is the one showing Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem by Joseph Brickey, below. I just love his use of light and shadow. It is so amazing!
I took the basket to my mom yesterday on her birthday. We enjoyed looking at all the paintings in the book together and talking about them. The image on the cover is also by Elspeth Young. I just love beautiful artwork and love to look at art with my mom.
Then I found the cute mug below back in November, on Black Friday. It’s hard to tell in the photo below, but it has a cut-out-heart shape that goes all the way through the mug. I knew my mom would get a kick out of it and she did, as evidenced by her laugh when she saw it. Then I got the potholders new at the Dollar Tree and the tea at a grocery store. The herbal tea bags are what is inside the mug.
I also added a candle, never used, as the wick was not burnt, that I found at the Provo DI for $1, plus a bag of mixed nuts and sugar-free chocolate chips since she is allergic to sugar. She loved it all. When I walked into her home and showed her the basket, she said, “Oh, do I get to pick one of the presents from your basket?” I told her “Oh, they are all for you!” She was so surprised! It really made my day, as she said I had made her day. Then on this Sunday we are having a family dinner birthday party for her with everyone, and I’m going to give her another gift, the gray cardigan sweater I thrifted on my trip to Maine to visit my sister Emily last October. It was NWT but only $10, at a Goodwill in South Portland, ME. It’s in the photo below. It’s a large so I don’t know if it will fit since she’s a small, but if she decides it doesn’t fit, she can give it back to me :-). (There’s something about my camera lens that makes the sweater look wavy, when it really doesn’t have wavy lines.)
Then I also have some Christmas gifts that I got for her and my dad that are all thrifted. I’m giving my mom these two books below:
My mom and I are descended from John Howland, “The Boy Who Fell off the Mayflower” and my dad and I are descended from William Bradford, so I think she will enjoy this book because, hey, it’s family history! Then I got this board game below, brand-new, with the seal intact at Savers’ earlier this year, which I think she’ll love because she’s an artist. I was gong to keep this myself to replace the same game I got thrifting years ago but needs new markers but now I’d rather give the new one to her. I’ve played it once before and enjoyed it. I gave her another Bob Ross board game for Christmas a while ago so this will complete the collection.
Then I got this puzzle for my dad, below, at Savers for $4, since he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Winnipeg Canada as a single young man before he met my mom. He has a bunch of Eric Dowdle puzzles but I’m pretty sure not this one. We often put these puzzles together as a family when we stay at my parents’ cabin.
My dad has gotten into poetry lately, especially since he retired after 45 years as a college professor. I’m hoping he loves this book I just found at the Provo DI for $2. It’s over $45 on amazon right now so what a deal!
Below are some fun videos I’ve enjoyed lately that can show many more ideas for thrifting for Christmas gifts. It really is amazing what you can find at thrift stores! You can give thoughtful gifts that really make the people feel loved for a fraction of the cost of new items.
I haven’t blogged about what’s in my Morning Basket in a while. Morning Basket time is when I share what is good, true and beautiful with my son who is the last one left in my homeschooling nest. The Advent season makes it extra exciting. So many, many wonderful, beautifully illustrated books abound about Christmas for us to enjoy!
Here’s what we are doing for Morning Basket time this month.
Year, round we always start out with this book above to see what happened on this day. It has a few interesting historical facts for each of the 365 days of the whole year. On Monday we go over Monday and Sunday, and on Friday we read the Friday and the Saturday entries. I have a similar book way at the bottom below to bookend with this.
OK, now on to Christmas-themed material!
Then we read aloud an article or story from one of the December magazines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I just love all of these! I’ve been reading all of them since I was about 10 or 11. When I couldn’t sleep at those ages, I would go into the hallway where my mom had a stack of old issues in a box, and I would read them until I was sleepy and go back to bed. I have a bunch of Christmas stories curated from these magazines over here in my FREE family devotionals ebook.
I’m focusing on the For the Strength of Youth, which is for teenagers, then/if we finish all of those stories, we’ll do the stories in the Liahona, which is for adults, and then the Friend.
I heard about this book above from veteran homeschooler Carole Joy Seid’s podcast down below and knew I had to get it. I’m looking forward to finding out what is really inside the huge box that this little family receives on Christmas Eve. They are told it’s a lion, but we shall see. We do 5-6 pages a day.
Then this one below I found when thrifting sometime in the past year or two. I have never read this one either. Some years I’ve read aloud books to the younger children that I already read to the older children. So I already know what happens. Such is not the case this year. It’s about a family that moves from Utah to Arizona after losing a bunch of money and having to start over. They end up having a rich, yet grumpy landlord/neighbor. Just with the title’s name I can tell what will happen already and you probably can too. I’m counting on it being heartwarming!
I just love picking up what look like promising Christmas chapter books and picture books from thrift stores throughout the year and saving them for Christmas. Then when I get them out with the Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving it’s a little surprise because I’ve forgotten what I bought. A little foretaste of being surprised on December 25th.
We started this one below last year, maybe the year before, and never finished it. I found it at a thrift store. It’s a novel about Mary the mother of Jesus, and Joseph, especially their journey to Bethlehem. It’s for adults and every wordy so we just do 2-4 pages a day. It’s fun to read about one person’s idea of what they were like and what their journey must have been like.
Then we are doing one or two Christmas picture books a day. Picture books are not just for children! Teens and adults can learn from them too. I love reading the ones that either make me laugh, give me that cozy Christmas vibe, or help me learn about the first Christmas story or Christmas history, cutlure, and lore. Go here to see my HUGE list.
Then we do a chapter a day from this book above. We’ll do A Christmas Carol the week of Christmas. We did the one below last year. It’s just fun to experience different versions of this beloved classic.
I have so many Christmas picture books and the above chapter books are long enough and our Morning Basket time is so short that we’ll be spilling over all this material into January. Which is totally OK for me. I love reading Christmas stories in January. No Christmas police are coming to get me.
We end by reading what happened for the day in the world of children’s literature from the book above. It has fun and interesting tidbits about authors and illustrators with great suggestions of titles.
When MB time is done, it’s on to math for my son. While he does it, I sit by him and have my drawing time. Then throughout the day I’ll be continuing with my Merry Mother’s Christmas Curriculum, which I detail over here.
I’d love to hear what you are reading or learning about in your December/Christmas Morning Basket. Merry Christmas!
Tree of Life Mothering 