An Impressive Craft for Organizing

I’ve been thinking a lot about impressing my kids lately.  And this great post a while back had me thinking about the verses that this blog is based on:   Deuteronomy 6:4-9… Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (NIV)

These words are also in Deuteronomy 11:18-21 – I didn’t realize that until I started this post and I realized that the verses I referred to in the NASB were the verses from chapter 11.  How wonderful is it that God gave us these instructions twice?  How important is this to His heart that he told His people again to teach His words to our children and surround ourselves with them each day – by talking about them and by writing them in places we see every day!?

I want to be sure I memorized these verses – and to keep them always in front of my eyes, I made a tray for my “homeschooling supplies” with the verse on it.  The tray only holds our crayons, colored pencils, our 100 jar (for counting to 100), and a small box that has our flashcards, buttons, and scissors in it.  Things that we use everyday but didn’t fit into our paper box… a tray that I see everyday as I work to impress God’s words on my sons’ hearts.

It’s a tray that I picked up on clearance at a craft store – and it had some lovely-antiquey roses on the bottom… roses that don’t really go with my I-live-with-3-males decor.  And it was an easy transformation – I already loved the white-washed wood on the outside of the tray, and the rustic handles… I just needed to do something to the bottom of the tray to cover up the lovely roses.

I decoupaged a lime green sheet of card stock cut to size onto the bottom of the tray and made sure to get all the bubbles out as I pressed the paper down.  Then, as I waited for the decoupage medium to dry, I stamped Deuteronomy 11: 18-19 on the paper.  I eye-balled it as far as spacing goes, and I like how it turned out – you definitely can tell it was hand-stamped!

There were no numbers in the stamp kit I used, so I made up my own numbers out of letters from the kit.  Then I decoupaged over the top of the whole thing to seal it all, and I added some ribbons to the ends (because my paper wasn’t big enough to cover the whole bottom of the tray).

I really love my little homeschooling tray – not only does it make it easier to lug everything around, it helps me remember each time I sit down with my kids why I am homeschooling them and what my purpose is as their mother – to raise men of God who know His word because it is impressed on their hearts.

linked to these fab parties: Making the World Cuter Monday, Just Something I Whipped Up Monday, Motivate Me Monday, Market Yourself Monday, Made By You Monday, and DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land.