Happy Year of the Rooster!

Chinese New Year began its celebrations on January 28th.

This year we will be celebrating the Year of the Rooster and I’ll be visiting Josie’s 5th grade classroom first thing Tuesday morning to teach our annual lesson.

If you've followed me through the years, you know that we have a year-round decorative tree that receives multiple makeovers every other month (including some made-up holidays).

I've said this each year, but of all the trees that I display in the sunroom throughout the year, I think the CNY tree is my favorite.

Wishing you good health, good luck and much happiness throughout the year!

Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year...1st Grade Style!

As promised, a few strategically edited pictures from Josie's 1st grade Chinese New Year party.

Didn't they do a great job on their lanterns and their paper snake?  

We celebrated with a short Chinese New Year parade down the hallway with our paper snake and lanterns.  

After the parade, bubble wrap provided classroom-friendly fireworks.

Passing out lai see (red envelopes) filled with chocolates...always a big hit!

Happy New Year!

XOXO

♥

 

Josie updates and red lantern preparations...

Although Josie has gotten much better since the beginning of the week, she is still not strong enough to attend her Chinese School and the party this evening. As you can imagine, she's disappointed, but Chris and I just can't take any chances with her. The event is being videotaped, so at least she will be able to watch it later.  It also helps that I'm also going into her classroom to teach a lesson on Chinese New Year and we will be having a party with her classmates on 2/12.  

Despite her absence, I have committed to finishing out my obligations and I spent several hours with the Chinese New Year party Friday evening. One of the main decorations are 50+red lanterns that will be centerpieces on each of the tables at the Public Museum. One of the professors at my University volunteered his time and talents to paint Chinese characters on the lanterns.




While Emma babysits Josie this afternoon, Chris will be helping me transport and set up the decorations at the Museum.  I promise to share more pictures.  Have a beautiful Saturday.
 

My little corner of China...

After hanging up my latest Chinese checkerboard, I decided that I needed to update my blog with a few pictures of my favorite Asian collections found in my craft room. 

Soaring high above the checkerboards is a paper goldfish kite purchased while in Beijing.   The purple CNY lion puppet was purchased in Guangzhou.

The outfit/fan and silk tiger hat were once worn by Josie.  The honeycomb lantern garland is a gift from Renee (My Vintage Mending).

The suitcase is serves as storage and the perfect mini table to display a variety of special treasures.

Paper lanterns and tissue flowers remind me of festive party decorations.

 These vintage mini lantern lights are on my pink feather tree.  I love their tiny red tassels.

 The pin cushion was purchased from Beth's Bagz.   Isn't her pink jacket and little kitten so sweet?.

I definitely have a special place in my heart and in my craft room for China.

Lantern Crafts for Chinese New Year

With CNY preparations in full swing this week, today's post is going to focus on a bunch of different crafting ideas for creating Chinese lanterns. Last year, my adoptive blogging friend Cindy featured these fantastic Chinese New Year Lanterns out of red envelopes.

You can find detailed instructions here on her blog.

You can find red envelopes at Party City and Pier 1 right now. If you want to keep it simple, I've posted instructions for creating construction paper lanterns here on my blog. Josie has even been able to help me with this craft the last three years.

Instructions for making paper lanterns out of Styrofoam cups found here on Family Corner.

Another favorite lantern that we've made the last few years, is this glass lantern made of recycled glass jars, red tissue paper, stickers and other embellishments.

This craft was featured on my blog here and each year we've added another one to our growing collection.



A favorite blog that I've mentioned before (Let's go fly a Kite) posted this beautiful idea for creating lanterns out of thumb prints. Simply fabulous!!

She even sent us a Chinese newspaper (along with a colorful dragon and special Chinese envelopes) so that we could make our own artwork.

As you can imagine, Josie was eager to test out all her various paint colors on this project.

Based on advice from Let's go fly a Kite I used a sharpie marker to draw the lantern string/fringe.

I had so much fun with this craft, I even decorated a set of plain red greeting cards (found in the Target $1 bin) to make special CNY stationary.

Happy Crafting!

Happy soon-to-be Chinese New Year!