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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Homespun Holidays: Fall and Winter - A Review

Have you ever felt a desire to celebrate an entire season?   I love the idea, but I lack the inspiration!  When I was asked to do a review of  Homespun Holidays: Fall and Winter, it felt like a great opportunity to find some new ideas and hopefully create some new traditions.  Homespun Holidays: Fall and Winter is an ebook from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.  You can find them at the link above or browse their website here.



This ebook is full of activities for families with children to celebrate fall and winter.  There are crafts, book suggestions, recipes, games, and more.  I like that some ideas are religious, yet not so many that it would seem overwhelming to someone not looking for that aspect.  Photos are included with many of the entries, which is helpful for visual people like me.  The ideas in the book range from quite simple (as in "I already do that") to complex (requiring time and odd items, such as a pane or block of glass), yet none have an intimidating look to them. 

The ebook comes as a pdf so it was easy for us to read on the computer or on a tablet.  After looking through it a few times, we found some things we wanted to do right away, and some things we'd like to do once it's winter.  Some of my children are responsible for helping to set up tables for Thanksgiving dinner and the "Thanksgiving 8000 Calorie Poem" seemed like a humorous addition to include!  We are working on designing it to fit in a small photo frame.

Another idea we'll be working on soon is the "I'm Thankful For You" gift bags.  The children decorate a paper lunch sack with reasons why they are thankful for the receiver of the gift bag, and then place a special gift inside.  This sounds like a great way to spread love, and my children enjoy doing secret service types of things.  Of course we'll be making pumpkin chip cookies, chocolate chips go on sale tomorrow!


M has already started making the Simple Scarf found in the winter section of the ebook.  These will make great gifts.  Always on the lookout for ideas that reflect the true meaning of Christmas, I was excited to find the instructions for a Shepherd's Supper.  This is a special evening that centers on Christ's birth from a shepherd's point of view.  There are suggestions for a meal to go along with reading Luke 2.  It sounds like a wonderful tradition that my family would enjoy, so I'm thankful for the family who shared it!  The ebook has a lot of Christmas dessert ideas, which will be fun for my kids to make and we can use many of them as neighbor gifts.

Not all of the recipes in the book are dessert ideas (though that seems to be the first ones we want to try!).  There are breakfast and dinner ideas we'd like to try as well.  While the recipes are on a pretty recipe card graphic, I appreciate that they are also simply typed out at the end of the ebook so I can save ink when printing them.

There are so many more ideas in this ebook that we will have plenty of new things to try.  I am sure some of them will become new traditions!  Won't you check it out and see what new traditions your family might create?

Homespun Holidays: Fall and Winter was given to me to review in connection with the Schoolhouse Review Crew.


2 comments:

  1. What fun ideas- great review! Welcome to the Crew!

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  2. I'll have to look into that Shepherd's Supper, sounds very interesting..

    Great job on the review and Welcome to the Crew!!!!

    ReplyDelete