Happy New Year 2018

"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!" 

2 Corinthians 5:17

You can feel free to use the coloring pages for your own PERSONAL use.  But please be kind and do not claim these pictures as your own or offer them for downloads.  It makes me sad to see my pictures on a coloring page website run by someone else.

Ready for the new year? It's coming whether you are or not. I love a fresh start, and that's exactly what the new year is good for. It's a chance to leave mistakes in the past, and begin again.

Here's a few fun New Year's coloring pages that I worked on today with my son. We had a good time drawing together!

The best new year's resolution you could ever make: This year commit to ALWAYS tell yourself the truth. The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that, "It's not that bad." We dismiss things we should be looking at. You can't hope to change what you don't take responsibility for. Be honest with yourself. Once we admit to ourselves the truth, we can start to grow and move forward. 

Elf on the Shelf Coloring Page

I wanted to give you some more of our Christmas coloring pages. It's been a busy time and we are all in the Christmas spirit. Everyone seems to love the Elf on the Shelf right now. We thought we'd join in with some Elf on the Shelf inspired coloring sheets.

You can feel free to use the coloring pages for your own PERSONAL use.  But please be kind and do not claim these pictures as your own or offer them for downloads.  It makes me sad to see my pictures on a coloring page website run by someone else.

Please enjoy!

I had to incorporate a quote from one of our favorite family Christmas movies! Buddy the Elf!

And to keep it simple... just the elf....

The Bible Periodic Table

A few years ago, I decided my classroom at church needed something to fill the boring grey walls. When my daughter was little we found her a shirt with a periodic table of names of Jesus. I thought it was pretty neat, and she got lots of compliments when she wore it. I wanted instead to do a little twist on that and make it books of the Bible. It's important that kids learn what they are, and familiarize themselves with how to look up Bible verses.

Sword drills are an awesome way to help with this skill! If you've never heard of a sword drill- it's a game you can play with your child(ren). You have everyone hold their Bible above their head (this makes it fair), yell out a Bible reference, have the kids repeat the reference, and then the person who can find it the quickest wins. Kids love some competition!

Another way I helped the kids in my church get familiar with all the books of the Bible, I made a HUGE Periodic table on our 2nd and 3rd grade classroom wall. It was so easy! I uploaded my PDF document I made to our local copy shop. (You can scroll to the bottom of the page to download this.) I printed each section of books on different colored paper. The Gospels had their own color. The Books of History have their own color. Paul's letters have another color, and so forth. This makes it look more like the real Periodic Table of Elements. I always meant to make a key to the books and what color they were, however I never got around to it. The kids still love them! I laminated each page, and I used thumb tacks to hang them up. They look pretty good for being on a classroom wall for the past three years!!

I also chose a helpful verse to put on the bottom of each book, usually the verse that is most popular for that book. This has helped the kids in class many times for certain assignments!

Here's a couple examples....

Of course I had to use my favorite verse, "My cup overflows with blessings..."

Download a PDF of the Bible Periodic Table

Origami Christmas Tree

I love finding easy, inexpensive crafts to make! I get excited and I just have to share them with someone. These origami Christmas trees are sooo cute! You could make an entire winter landscape with them, or your own mini Christmas tree farm. You can make them all different sizes too! You would just need to have different size squares of paper. The folding would be the same.

I found my square paper at Hobby Lobby. Since we are in the middle of the Christmas season, this paper book was 50% off. I only paid $3.50 for 48 sheets. That's a lot of Christmas trees that I could make!

You start by folding your square in half diagonally, making a triangle. Then you want to open it up, and fold in half again on the other diagonal of the square.

Open it up, and fold it in half again, this time making a rectangle. You could begin with this step. It doesn't matter which is done first, the diagonal or the rectangle folds. You want to open it up, and fold in half the opposite direction you just folded again.

After you have made both the rectangle folds and the diagonal folds, you are going to open the paper up, and fold in half between each of the folds you have already made. In the photo below you can see where to fold. The solid lines are the folds you have already completed in previous steps, the dotted line is the new fold you are going to make. Do this same thing to each of the remaining 7 sections.

It should start to stand up like a tree.

You are going to lay it flat, with two sections of 4 folds. In the photo I'm holding it open so you can see the four different folds.

This is what it should look like from the top when it is flattened into two sections of 4 folds. It resembles the Star Trek emblem! You are going to cut off the bottom of the tree on the line I have shown below.

Keeping it folded in half, you will cut small triangles out of each side of the tree. This is what makes your branches.

You can now spread the sides of your tree so that it will stand on its own. So cute! And SO easy to make! I'd love to make a whole forest of these trees. They would be perfect to put next to some winter cottages. I've always wanted to make a mini village, however I don't have the room to display it.

A friend of mine used them for table decorations at a Christmas party. What would you use these mini Christmas trees for?

Christmas Coloring Pages

I'm back with some more Christmas fun. I love sharing the artistic ability of my family with all of you. Everyone took part in making these beautiful Christmas coloring sheets.  If you'd like to save a bigger file size, be sure to click on the picture that you like before saving it to your computer!

You can feel free to use the coloring pages for your own PERSONAL use.  But please be kind and do not claim these pictures as your own or offer them for downloads.  It makes me sad to see my pictures on a coloring page website run by someone else.

**ENJOY!!**

My daughter drew these next two coloring sheets. Birds are a passion of hers, and she loves to make roses!

 I LOVE this picture of the Grinch that my 10 year old son drew. I think he is pretty proud of himself too. He spent a long time getting the Grinch to look just right.

My other son thought he was funny, and made several coloring sheets with "Deep Thoughts". This deep thought comes from the Lorax.

My husband made this sweet star coloring page. I like the simplicity, yet beauty that it captures.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas season! I pray you are filled with the hope that only Jesus can bring.

If you missed it... here is a link to yesterday's Christmas coloring pages.

More Christmas Coloring Page Fun

Christmas Coloring Pages

For Christmas this year, we did something we have never done before! We had an afternoon of Christmas fun drawing our very own coloring sheets. We put on some Christmas music, turned on the diffuser with a Christmas scent, and sat at the table as a family working hard. It was so much fun, and we had lots of laughs! I have many coloring sheets to share, and it will probably take me until the end of the week to finish all that we made.

I wanted to give you a sneak peek into all our hard work. There are so many sheets, I will be splitting them into a few blog posts. 

You can feel free to use the coloring pages for your own PERSONAL use.  But please be kind and do not claim these pictures as your own or offer them for downloads.  It makes me sad to see my pictures on a coloring page website run by someone else.

As always if you like a picture, click on it and you will be able to save a larger file size of it.

I wanted to make this coloring sheet of candy canes to resemble the original candy canes with three stripes, and one solid stripe. The poem goes like this:

Look at the Candy Cane- what do you see?

Stripes that are red like the blood shed for me.

White is for my Savior who's sinless and pure!

"J" is for Jesus, my Lord, that's for sure!

Turn it around and a staff you will see-

Jesus, my shepherd, was born for me!

-Author Unknown

My husband drew this sweet snow scene. It looks so inviting! I love it!

ENJOY! I pray you have a very Merry Christmas season this year!

Some MORE Christmas Coloring Page Fun