Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Family Summertime Activities

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Looking for some creative ways to spend time with your family this summer? Here are some ideas for Family Summertime Activities that we shared last year. We’ll be pulling these out again this year to do all over again!

It’s easy to have big ideas at the beginning of the summer to think that you’ll do ALL THE THINGS with your family before school starts up again. It’s ok to come up with lots of ideas but don’t feel bad if you don’t get to all of them!

We hope that the ideas we’re sharing here are unique and doable for you. Just choose what seems to be the best for you and your family.

Obviously, anything food related is always a hit! So you’ll see that many of these ideas have to do with food. What can we say?

Also – I can’t say this loudly enough: SERVE OTHERS TOGETHER!!!

Do not make summertime or anytime all about you. Ask God to help you find ways to serve others. The opportunities are endless and God will most definitely show you who needs your help when your heart is open for service.

Our family has made so many wonderful memories together serving others. Not because every act of service has been easy or fun. But because serving together has taught us more about who God is. And looking back on that as a family is always glorious.

So whatever your plans this summer, put “Serve Together Often!” at the top of your list. Pray as a family about this and watch God work!

Family Summertime Activities

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Get Your Focused Family Fun Easter Packet – Quarantine Edition

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Looking for a way to make Easter special at home this year? We put this Focused Family Fun Easter Packet together for our family and want to make it available to you too!

This year, with our houseful of kids (including two new foster sons who have very limited understanding of the Bible and who Jesus is), we wanted to make Easter a time of learning and of fun.

Since we are not able to leave the house, we came up with this way to make Easter an extra special day for everyone. Here’s hoping we’ll all have fun and learn more about Jesus and His resurection at the same time!

How our Hello Easter Focused Family Fun works:

  1. On Friday, we’ll read and share about Jesus’ crucifixion and death.
  2. On Sunday morning, our boys will wake up to nothing. Oh! But they’ll receive their first riddle/clue to help them know that something great is coming! (The details of this are all in the packet we’re giving you!)
  3. The first clue will lead them to a great big basket. Hmmm, an empty basket?? Well yes. It represents Jesus’ tomb. That was empty too. :)
  4. We’ll read from scripture about how Jesus’ friends discovered His empty grave. We’ll hand the kids the next clue so they can work together to figure out where their first gift is. This will lead to more scripture reading, more gifts, and more riddles and clues.
  5. Throughout this fun scavenger hunt, our boys will learn or re-learn the beauty of Jesus’ plan for salvation. We’ll take communion together. We’ll work together. We’ll have fun together. We’re praying that this will be a time of joy and learning for our kids!

Want to join the fun?

We put together a packet that shares more details about what you need if you’d like to put together a similar scavenger hunt for your family. It includes a full sample of riddles and clues that show you what we’re gifting our kids and where we’re hiding everything (shh, don’t tell!).

Obviously what we’re doing won’t work perfectly for your household – but we hope you use the sample we share and all of our riddles to give you lots of ideas for how you can adapt and make this work for your family!

Grab your free Focused Family Fun packet by signing up below. Watch for an email asking you to confirm that you want to receive this information. Then check your inbox again to see the packet come your way!

You’ll become a part of our wonderful Heavenly Homemakers community, something that brings us great honor.

Sign up to receive your Hello Easter Packet below:

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Free Valentine’s Day Activities for Kids

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Want some free Valentine’s Day activities to enjoy during these long winter months? We’ve got fun for all ages!

Valentine’s Day Activities for Preschoolers

First, for the little ones in your life, you can download and print this free activity packet:

Free Pre-K Valentine Activity Packet - Sample Pages

Pre-K Valentine Activity Packet - Free Download

Gain free access to this here.

Valentine’s Day Activities for Elementary Students

This packet brags that it makes grammar fun – because it actually does! Who knew?

Valentine's Day Fun with Grammar

There are activities which include Valentine Sentence Builders, Fun with Creating Cheesy Poetry, and much more! There’s even a Valentine Brownie recipe – but before your student can make the brownies, he/she must find the errors in the directions first. So much fun!

Fun With Grammar - Valentine's Day Free Printable Packet

Gain free access to this here.

Valentine’s Day Activities for All Ages!

Print and put together these fun Kiss-Tac-Toe games to give away or to use as a family. We’re talking about chocolate kisses, by the way. But you already knew that. :)

Happy Valentine's Day Kiss Tac Toe Free Download

vday kiss tac toe4

Gain free access to this here.

Valentine’s Day Activities for the Kitchen

How about some Valentine recipes to go with your activities? These are fun to make with your kids, or if your kids are old enough, these are fun to turn over to your kids to make without your help! (Want to easily teach your kids to cook? We LOVE this at our house! #affiliatelink) Here are 29 great real food recipes for you!

chocolate cheesecake parfait

Red and Pink Treats (No Food Dye!)

Don’t forget obvious foods that are red – like tomatoes, sweet peppers, strawberries, grapes, cherries, or raspberries!

Chocolate Valentine’s Day Treats

Remember to gain free access to all the free Valentine’s Day printables by clicking here.

Signing up for this freebie will connect you to our new Heavenly Homemaker’s Learning Zone. It’s free and your info will never be shared or sold, and being on this list means that you’ll be the first to know of the other fun (yes, FUN!) educational tools we’re putting together! 

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This Week at Heavenly Homemakers: What You Can Cook, Read, Serve, and Craft for a Dollar or Less

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Over the weekend I had a fun idea to highlight some of my fun money saving ideas for you. So this week, I’ll be posting:

  • Meals you can serve your family for a $1.00 or less per plate
  • Crafts you can make with your kids for $1.00 or less
  • Ways you can serve/bless others for $1.00 or less
  • Random $1.00 or less tips
  • Freebies

It’s going to be kind of hodge-podge because I’m trying to keep you on your toes. Or maybe I’m just unorganized. (Hey, I’m working on it.)

$1.00 or Less Recipes, Crafts, Gift Ideas, and more!

First a fun craft and service idea for around a dollar or less

You all know I’m not the craftiest gal among us. But I can cut and glue, so there’s that. I had fun making these fun Owl Gift Sacks a couple years ago. You’ll find the free printables for this project here. Print ’em off, cut, glue, and fill the sacks with a treat to share. Get your kids involved. Have fun!

Owl Gift Sacks Free Printable

Now how about a recipe?

It’s the perfect time of year to put Garden Veggie Chicken Skillet on your menu frequently. This is a one-dish meal. It uses many vegetables, you can make it to your family’s liking, and it doesn’t cost much to make. I’ve calculated that it costs $1.00 or less per plate!

Garden Veggie Chicken Skillet 2

Want more inexpensive recipes?

You’ll get this eBooklet for free when you sign up to be a part of the Homemaker’s Savings Club. That’s the newsletter where I keep you up to date on all the best homemaking deals I find!

Top 10 Money Saving Recipes cover

Stay tuned all week for many more fun $1.00 or less ideas!

Subscribe here to make it easy to keep up!

The running list:

I’ll continue to update this post all week with the newest links to $1.00 or less ideas shared!

~ Tuesday: Bread, Recipe Card Craft, Service Ideas, and More

~ Wednesday: All Chocolate, All the Time

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Free Printables That Make Great Gifts

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Before we get to the printables, I thought I’d give you a little insight into family life around here our place.

Soccer season ended just in time for basketball season to begin. I feel like I’ve finally come up for air since school started this fall. Breathing is so very nice.

Asa (our 18-year old) is as busy as ever juggling his freshman year of college. He’s rocking it, working very hard in his classes (and on his social life too). Sleep is optional for him. ;)

Justus (our 15-year old) is taking one college class on campus – Basic Speech – which has been great for him. This is a kid who does not get the least bit nervous giving speeches in front of traditional college students. Dual credit classes are so nice. Elias (our 13-year old) was super sick for 4 weeks and is finally just about back to normal. Ugh, that was awful. I’ve never been so thankful to see my kid eat. Malachi (our 10-year old) has had the opportunity to attend a fantastic horse class as well as participate in some wonderful science days with our local homeschool group.

horses1

science day

So Wiggams. You remember Wiggams? That darling cat has been so high maintenance the past few weeks, bless her little cat heart. You can read here to catch up on all the mama-baby-drama if you dare. Not wanting to risk going through that again, we took her in to be spayed last week. It is a relief to have this taken care of. When we went to pick her up the next day, they said that she appears to have a bladder infection. Ugh, not this too! The poor thing.

wiggams

Since she is an outdoor cat they kept her (at our local Adopt-a-Pet facility) so she can heal properly before she comes home. Poor Malachi misses his daily Wiggams play time. We go visit her when we can sneak in a trip (in my spare time).

We’ve been talking an awful lot about holiday food around here. Well, obviously. Food is where it’s at. There is so much to love about food. Slowly but surely I am making our Thanksgiving food and putting it into the freezer. Check out all of the Getting Ahead for the Holidays info here. Here’s what I’ve checked off my list so far:

If feels great to have so many of those big jobs crossed off my list already. Shoot, I’m running out of Pyrex dishes – if you can possibly imagine. It’s a good problem to have, as long as we don’t need to make a casserole between now and next Thursday.

Fb.banner (1)

I’m excited to be participating in a fun online Thanksgiving Recipe Swap this year! It’s a “progressive dinner” so each day this week, more recipes will be added. Start today by finding some yummy appetizer recipes. The first one I’m going to try is the Pumpkin Spice Fruit Dip. Wow, that looks good.

fruit dip

Go check out all the appetizer recipes and see what’s coming up later this week. This is going to be awesome! I love free resources like this!

So now let’s look at the fun printables, want to?

I’m hoping that next week we can take a bit of a Thanksgiving break from most of our school work. We’ll still need to do math lessons, but overall, I hope to play a lot of board games and work on some fun Christmas projects.

All of the following printables are free. I thought you might enjoy looking through them to see what you might want to use as inexpensive gifts this Christmas. For just the cost of paper and ink, you can put together some nice packages!

This first one says “Summer Blessings” but I hereby declare that they can be used in the fall and winter too. Print them onto cardstock, cut them, grab some envelopes, and tie them up with a ribbon.

Summer Blessings Printables

Blessings Card Printables

Galatians 6:9 is one of my favorite Bible verses. This can be printed and framed for a sweet gift of encouragement.

Galatians69color

Galatians 6:9 Printable

Of course, we have to talk about giving gifts of food. Here are some fun printable labels to go with food gifts that are fitting for this time of year:

Pumpkin and Apple Stickers

Pumpkin and Apple Treat Labels

It’s fun to put together a basket of apples with a jar of homemade caramel dip…

CaramelSauceTag-prev

caramel_dip_with_apples

Caramel Apple Treat Labels and Recipe

Below are sticker printables that can be used to label any treats you put into jars!

HHM-Chevron-Labels-printable-preview1

Canning Jar Labels

You can print gift tags to attach to any of your gifts…

Christmas Gift Tags HHM

Christmas Gift Tags 2 HHM

Christmas Gift Tag Printables

…Or fun Christmas cards.

Free Printable Christmas Cards

Christmas Card Printables

Our family made these wrapped candy bars last year to give to some of our youth workers at church and adopted college students. They were a hit!

Christmas Candy Bar Gifts

Candy Bar Labels

I have more fun (and inexpensive) gift ideas up my sleeve that I’ll share during the next few weeks!

How are your holiday preparations coming?

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What Are Your Favorite Family Games?

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Our family loves playing games, especially now that all four kids are old enough and able to play games we all enjoy. Finding a chunk of time that works for all six of us to sit down and play together is rare, so when we find it, we jump on it!

What Are Your Favorite Family Games

We are trying to come up with a new family game or group game to get our kids for Christmas this year. Because you are all brilliant and always full of great ideas, I thought I’d ask you what games you love at your house. First, I’ll give you a list of what we already have and enjoy together:

Wow, after making that list, it kind of makes me wonder if we actually need another game this Christmas. We have oodles in our closet! Still, tell me your favorites. Our lives may just not be complete yet without one more game. :)

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