At our house, Thanksgiving gets its dues. We don’t do any of that Halloween-straight-to-Christmas nonsense, we make sure to give each Holiday its rightful turn. Part of not neglecting Thanksgiving includes reading themed children’s books about the holiday. One of my kids’ favorites is “Turkey Trouble,” written by Wendi Slivano and illustrated by Lee Harper.  It’s a great little storybook about a turkey doing everything it can to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner. Will he succeed? Well, you’ll have to read it yourself to find that out.

We are always looking for fun new titles. So if you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to share!

(Megan Alayne is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees (at no extra cost to you) by advertising and linking to amazon.com.)

These paper cutouts based on “Turkey Trouble” are a great way for your child to actively engage in the book as you read. I used my handy-dandy Silhouette to cut these out automatically with print and cut (.studio3 file download available below), and then I laminated the pieces so they can last through as many readings of the book as we need. Quite often, I find the kids playing with the parts without reading the book. Independent play and storytelling are important skills for a child to learn, so it makes me so happy to see this happening.

Why do we read so much?

Reading and storytelling are such a crucial part of child development. Stories inspire the imagination and provide language and communication skills. They make your kids more empathetic and understanding of the fact that other people may think differently than them. Stories also provide children with scenarios that may help them make decisions in real life situations where problem-solving skills are necessary. Stories expand a child’s horizons and shape his/her view of the world. A child who is read to often is more likely to succeed in literacy as well as in their academic and professional lives. Frequently being read to helps a child to concentrate and pay attention. Plus, reading to/with your child is a great way to strengthen your relationship. There are absolutely no downsides to lots of reading!

Here is some more great information about reading and child development. Click each link to read more about the benefits of reading with your children often. 
“Why is storytelling Important to Children?”
“Reading and Storytelling with Babies and Children”
“Reading to Children Promotes Brain Development”
“This is your Child’s Brain on Reading”

Summer is here, and your kids will lose the whole break to screens if you aren’t prepared! Download this free printable summer electronics checklist to make sure they keep up with their daily chores and summer learning before they indulge in screen time. For simple day after day use, run it through a laminator or frame it behind glass.  Then have your child use a dry erase marker to check off completed tasks. This way, you only have to print it once!

I created these for my own kids, and my six-year-old son was so excited that he had accomplished most of his list… only to be devastated when he realized he had to start from scratch the next day. So, be clear with your kids from the start that this is a list for them to complete daily.

We had a few specific guidelines for our kids. I stipulated that the task of helping Mom or Dad with something gets to be the parents’ choice, not the child’s. They must help us out without complaining about the selected task. Also, their 20 minutes of art can be creating something out of Legos, they just have to show me their creation and tell me about it. I didn’t include a set time for outside play because (at our house at least) it’s never been a problem to get the kids to play outside for a reasonable amount of time.

This has been a great tool to get the kids to help around the house. It also helps limit screen time a ton because they don’t always want it bad enough to complete their list. And that is each child’s choice. They deal with the consequence of not getting to join in on a family movie night or whatever the case may be. They learn about the ramifications of their actions (or lack thereof) and are motivated to be prepared in the future by doing their chores.

The PDF download contains both the magenta and blue versions of the checklist. Hopefully, this simple list helps you and your children as much as it has helped our family get our summer started on the right foot. Best of luck! 

I’m happy to say that the 2017 Christmas designs are finally here! As with all of my seasonal designs, I create them with printable for wall galleries in mind, but I always share the SVG versions too. And when you have the vector versions, the possibilities for applications are endless!

One very popular crafting project right now that will work great for these types of files is farmhouse style signs. You can do these on wood or canvas, and they are pretty simple once you learn the process. There are oodles of tutorials on YouTube for these projects. I haven’t done many of these myself, but since my husband has a garage full of woodworking tools, I really should take advantage of that! 

Other fun applications for these Christmas designs are pajamas, shirts, bags, mugs, cups, tumblers, magnets, cards, and ornaments. Please share with me any other creative ideas you might come up with. I love to see what others create using my designs!

Clearly, I was not at all on the ball for Thanksgiving and am a little later making a presence for the Christmas season than I should be. Then again, if you consider that commercial stores have their Christmas merchandise out in September, I am WAY late. We are just going to look on the bright side and celebrate the fact that I didn’t miss Christmas altogether!

Without further ado, here are the 2017 Christmas printables! I hope that you catch on to the references to two of my favorite Christmas movies. If not, those specific prints are probably not for you. But fear not, there are others! 

You’ve probably noticed by now that I like to throw in some minimalist typography prints. I am a sucker for these. This time around, Santa’s reindeer won the slot for that print. Most people know reindeer number seven and eight as Donner and Blitzen, but did you know that the original names are Dunder and Blixem? I went old school with this print and used those original names even though the print includes the youngest and most fantastic reindeer of all. It’s subtle, but there is an homage to that big red nose in this print.

Three of the prints will work as is, but I created them with the intention of foiling them. These prints include “You serious, Clark?,” “NOEL,” and an “O Holy Night” print that is in the PDF file but isn’t displayed here. Now, if you don’t know what foiling is, you are missing out! It’s the most wonderful way to bling up a print and make it shiny and dazzling. And that is something that most Christmas decorations need, right?

To foil a design at home, you will need a toner printer or purchased toner copies, transfer foil, and a home laminator with a 3mm setting. I use Deco Foil because of their large selection of colors, and I purchased an AmazonBasics laminator for under $20. (Please note: I am no longer an Amazon affiliate, so I don’t get anything for linking you to products.) Place the transfer foil (foil side down) on your toner copy, lay a plain sheet of printer paper over the top to keep everything sandwiched in place and to keep your laminator clean, and then run it through your laminator on the 3mm setting. Peel off the foil transfer sheet and voila! Easy, right?

Because paper has some porous irregularities, it is not unusual for the foil not to adhere perfectly. That is part of the charm though. Just use the smoothest paper you can and it will generally apply pretty evenly. Also, BEWARE, foiling can be addicting. Once you do it and realize how easy it really is, you will want to put foil on everything possible! Whether you choose to foil any of these or not, I hope they will add some joy and Christmas cheer to your home. Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

Foiling isn’t always foolproof. I had this brilliant idea to print my “O Holy Night” design on black paper then foil it in silver so that it looked like shining stars. In theory, this was a great idea, but the only black paper I own is a package of scrapbooking paper. I was thrilled that I had this on hand, but when I ran it through the laminator, almost NO foil stuck to it. I realized that this paper is extremely porous. It has a much rougher texture than the regular white cardstock I usually use and sadly, is useless for this particular application. I tried again with gold foil on a white sheet, and that didn’t work very well either. I’m not sure if it was that particular piece of paper or foil, or if my printer didn’t lay down enough toner, or what. I already had my two perfect prints for my frames, so I quit fiddling with it and moved on. My point is that sometimes you just have to make some mistakes before you get the ideal outcome. So, don’t be afraid to try, because every mistake is a lesson learned!

Usually, when I release new seasonal printables, I also share them as SVG files. I love the versatility of SVG files, and I love seeing what you, the creative people of the internet, can come up with to do with them!  Vector graphics are great for invitations, t-shirts, cups and mugs, bags, notebooks, and on and on. They are easy to edit and personalize, so the possibilities for variations on one file are really endless. That said, here are the 2017 Halloween printables in SVG versions. I hope you enjoy and I hope you’ll share your creations too! Share with me on Facebook @meganalaynecreates and Instagram @megan.alayne

If you haven’t already, get the 8×10 printable versions here.