More Valentine cuteness. She loves to cuddle with this ginormous bear…
Dress: the Gap
Balloons: Target
Bear: Costco
Blanket: Ikea
Have a fun day,
Sofija
Photography by Emily Mulder for Teach Where You Live
Holidays
Valentines Photo Shoot
It is February (thank God, January is my least favorite month) and some of you may be thinking of Valentines day. Do you celebrate it? My husband and I don’t really but for our kids it is a big deal.
This year I thought it would be fun to do a Valentines photo shoot. So I was super glad when Emily took time out of her week to come over on Friday to take pictures. I love how they turned out.
My sweet mother-in-law had send us a Valentines package with matching blouses for the girls, so I asked them to join us.
Blanket: Ikea
Heart shaped light: Ikea (bought several years ago)
Balloons and xo banner: from the dollar section at Target
Tasha’s dress: Gap
Ella and Lucy’s blouses: Target
Ella’s leggings: Target
Have a lovely day,
Sofija
Photography by Emily Mulder.
Preparing for New Year’s Eve!
Friends,
How was your Christmas? Was it what you hoped for, or where there a few surprises? I was dreading mine a little bit, as it was our first year celebrating Christmas without our oldest son. His aunt and uncle graciously flew him to California to spend Christmas with my husband’s family. It wasn’t easy letting him go. But I am glad he has the opportunity. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be (though I missed him), largely because I was distracted with visitors. Dear friends we know from my husband’s time in grad school spontaneously showed up on Christmas Eve with all the trimmings for an awesome late lunch and early dinner. I love when that happens! Christmas day was pretty uneventful, which in our house is a good thing. On Saturday we took the kids sledding. In my book it doesn’t get much more Christmassy than that. Never mind that one of our children fell face down in the snow on the first run. Thank God she is tough and we still had a great time. All in all I call that a good Christmas break. How about you? What traditions make it more complete for you?
Now on to the New Year. Any plans? We still are working out some of the details, but it looks like we will be having a party at our house. We haven’t had one in a few years. Growing up in Germany New Years was a BIG deal (sort of like the 4th of July here). It was hard adjusting to the fact that in this country it might or might not be a big deal,and that many people seem content to go to bed at 10.Over the years as we have added kids to our family big parties were less and less doable for us. Needless to say I am really looking forward to having a party again. It’s my Birthday as well so it makes it extra special.
But before I have some shopping to do…
Sofija
Photo credit: Hannah Scott-Stevenson for Tutu Monde
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas from our family to yours. I am thankful for each of you. Have a blessed time celebrating with your loved ones. God coming to earth to be with us is truly reason to celebrate.
I will see you back here next week.
Sofija
Christmas Photo Shoot
Here is our 2013 Christmas photo shoot. It was very spontaneous, yet I am happy how it turned out. On Saturday we woke up to a new batch of snow. Emily was available to take pictures, so we decided to do it an hour later. The first one is so sweet. Tasha really wasn’t sure about this shoot; and she was cold when I took her jacket off. So she snuggled up against me to stay warm.
My vision for this shoot was to have the kids walking in the snow, pretending they are delivering presents.
I didn’t really plan for these two crazies to take off with the wheelbarrow. Somehow Shane decided to push the wheelbarrow and Ella jumped in and the whole thing turned into a wild ride. I love when a shoot brings out the kid’s personalities. 
It was Emily’s idea to have the kids stand in one line pretty much at the same spot we took pictures last year. I love the brightness and colors of this picture. 
Lastly a fun silly picture.
What a fun shoot! I had been wanting to do something like this every since I saw these photos.
Have a lovely day,
Sofija
All pictures taken by Lonely Mountain Photography. Styling by Sofija Burton.
Happy 4th Advent
It snowed. We went behind our house and took pictures. More coming soon…
Happy 4th Advent!
-Sofija
An Advent Poem
On the advent of antiquity
I AM
brought into being
Crows, chrysanthemums, caterpillars, clouds
Creating form and function
Facets and features out
Of nothing?
It was so much more than nothing
That brought calm out of chaos and
breath into being
Mind into matter
Spirit into soul
People into promise
Love into life
Love that gives and graces and generates
Three times as much love
A trinity of capacity
Expanding dimension and scope
A magnitude of out-of-proportion love
A bigger on the inside kind of love
that defies classification, method,
logic, sense, reason,
gravity even
When Love came down
And brought us
Hope
The thing with more than just feathers
But hands feet heart
The thing becoming a Who
becoming a He
Who would rescue our
Deep, dark hearts
From hurt and hate and hell
Harnessing heaven
Hijacking history 
To give us haters and us hurters
Hope
and a future,
hope
in a He who would usher in
Hope
in the face of fear and failure and falsehood,
This swaddled son
the favored One
Who heaps favor on us
To be for us
The friend
the father
the generous benefactor
Of all good things
Given by God
In his great mercy
Granting us more than we could
hope
or expect
From He who is more than we deserve
More than we can imagine
More than we can comprehend
estimate
calculate
correlate
communicate
this communion
state of this union
of faith and hope and love
this newborn stranger,
this hope in a manger
this hope of Israel
the hope of their fathers
the hope of the poor
hope of human hearts
the hope of all the ends of the earth
this hope of salvation
of all who need saving
all who are straining
to receive
struggling
to believe
in a
hope
that
does not
disappoint
Friends, I hope you find some time to rest and prepare for Christmas. For a really cute, creative, funny New Zealand take on the Christmas story go here. My kid’s love it!! Thank you Miriam!
-Sofija
Tammy Perlmutter has graciously let me use her poem. Pictures taken by the talented Colleen Davick. Nice to have creative friends.
The Hollands! Christmas Tour
New Mexico friends, you don’t want to miss this. The Hollands! are coming to Albuquerque for their Christmas tour. They do a great interactive show involving kids buy letting them participate with shakers and rattles. I promise you this show will be a highlight of your Christmas season.
Want to know more about them? You can find my interview about their road schooling (home-schooling on the road) experience here. And here is a post I did on their concert in February at our house. Lastly you can find their blog here.
Hope to see you there,
Sofija
Make This: Christmas Banner
I made this banner originally for a Christmas card photo shoot. But it makes a nice decoration piece for your home, too. It is really easy to make, the only thing that took a little time was hand stitching the triangles to the cord. Had I glued them it would have been much faster and I could have done it in one afternoon. I am not much of a seamstress and not a super crafty person. So if I can make this, so can you. 
Here is what I used: a roll of Jute twine (got it real cheap at Hobby Lobby). A yard of muslin for the letters and a fat quarter of red material to separate the words. I cut the triangles free hand, but Hobby Lobby sells packets of them if you need a template.
I bought a red fabric marker and wrote the letters on the triangles. Make sure you have an old magazine under your muslin when you write on it with the marker. The marker will bleed through the material and stain whatever is under it.
I used the blanket stitch to sew the triangles onto the twine. I thought it would look classy. But gluing them with fabric glue would have been faster and easier. 
Here is what I would do differently next time. I would not leave any spaces between the letters. The banner is quite long and this would shorten it considerably.
Materials needed:
Jute twine
1 yard of muslin
1 fat quarter of red material
1 fabric marker
red thread or fabric glue
fabric scissors
Optional:
rotary cutter
cutting mat
If you just buy the essentials I would estimate this project to cost less than $15.
Happy crafting,
Sofija
Thanksgiving Crafts
I did this post last year and since it fits so well I wanted to repost it today.
Did you wake up this morning and realize that it is getting really close to Thanksgiving?? Are you ready?
If you are teaching this week you might be focusing on our nation’s beginning. Here are some craft ideas I found via the Martha Stewart website for your visual learners.
Here are the links to the tutorials: The corn dolls. The hat and bonnet. The table ship.
Happy crafting!
-Sofija
Teach Where You Live 