"For unto us a child is born"

Picture by Simon Dewey

It is the most wonderful time of the year.  And as far as I know it is the same all over the world.  I spent a Christmas on the other side of the hemisphere where it was the middle of summer and there was still the same Christmasy feeling.  The spirit of Christmas.  The spirit of Christ, the light of the world.  How grateful I am for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Born into the most humble of circumstances but King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  I love Handel's Messiah- our Christmas wouldn't be complete without (attempting) to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.

I think there is so much I have yet to learn about the story of Christ's birth.  But I have been thinking about a lesson I learned one Christmas when my oldest was a baby.  As part of a church activity for the women we watched a special program that featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and a portrayal of the nativity story. I have forgotten the particulars of the video but hopefully someday I will come across it again.  (If this sounds familiar to anyone please let me know.)  We were watching it in someone's theater room and when they turned out the lights it was pitch dark.  I felt like I was the only one in the room and all I could see was the story of the nativity unfolding before me.  I felt like I was right there, witnessing it first hand, with the singing angels around me.  And maybe partly because of that, it became so real, so true to me.  More than just a story that we repeat and read every year.

I realized that Mary and Joseph were human beings like us that were given an awesome responsibility.  But life went on.  Everything didn't automatically start going perfectly even though they were bringing the Savior into the world.  They still had to deal with ordinary inconveniences like paying taxes despite the fact that they were righteous and fulfilling a very important prophecy and commandment.  A prophecy of such eternal significance.  Things didn't just work out perfectly and fall into place.

I wondered how Mary must have felt at 10 months pregnant having to travel so far to pay taxes.  Traveling away from her family and this her first experience with pregnancy!  What horrible timing!  And then once they got there they couldn't even find a room to stay in.  How they must have worried!   Or maybe not- I'm sure they had more faith than I do.  I just think about how I feel when I am about to go into labor- the feelings of nesting and wanting everything to be prepared and clean and ready.  I am overly worried about germs and sicknesses.  And they knew who this special baby was.  Did they feel like they were already failing as parents?

Often times when I feel like I'm being taught spiritual things I can't describe what I learn in words.  And a lot of what I learend that night I can only explain as an understanding.  I felt like I understood things that I thought I'd already known but realized I didn't really know.  Does that make any sense?  And at that time one of the biggest lessons for me was that even when we are doing what's right and what we know we should be doing, even when we are doing our very best, things don't always happen as planned or how we would like them to.  But maybe the things we think should matter so much aren't so very important.  We just keep trusting in God and keep trying our best.  And as a good friend of mine once said, "Even if everything is not okay right now, in the end we know it will be."  Thanks to that wonderful baby who's birthday is the most wonderful time of the year!

Healthy Christmas Snowmen

Meet a warmer, more health-conscious Frosty....

With all the junk goodies we've been eating lately I started craving something healthier. I remembered an idea from FamilyFun years ago where they made snowmen out of banana slices and pretzels. I didn't want to take the time to hunt down the whole recipe so we used what we had and created our own edible snowmen.

My boys had these for after school snacks and they kept wanting to make more!

Christmas Treats: Rudolph Cookies

As a Cubscout leader at church I get to come up with fun ideas for about twelve 9 year-old boys.  For the Bear achievement 9f they needed to make a dessert for their family.  I couldn't picture us making a cake or something like that without envisioning a chaotic mess so I adapted an idea from Pillsbury.  And it was a fun, yummy and easy dessert.

(Side note:  Later I laughed as I told my husband the scene in the kitchen at church when we first arrived: one scout was scouring the drawers for knives, some were trying to "skateboard" on the pushable carts for serving, another couple were pushing buttons on the microwave and a few were turning on the fan and blowing things around.  This was IMMEDIATELY as we walked in the door.  These guys are busy!)

These would be fun to make with any group of kids!

All you need for ingredients are:  Oreos (or similar cookie), almond bark, cherry sours, mini-chocolate chips and pretzels.

First, melt the almond bark according to package directions. Then dip the cookies in the melted bark until completely covered in white gooey yum.  Fish them out with a spoon and set them on a plate or wax paper.  Stick on a cherry sour for a nose, mini chips for eyes and pretzels for antlers.  (You can break the pretzels if you like.)

You may need to let them harden before eating or handling. (If you can wait that long!)

Watch out reindeers!  We're mass producing Rudolphs! 

I am linking to these parties:

Christmas Treats- Toffee

For me, it is not Christmas without homemade toffee.  My mom used to make it when I was growing up and now I make it every year.  It is really easy and oh so good! 

 

Here we are on the stove top with a whole lot of sugar and butter. 

 

 Stir, stir and stir until your thermometer reaches 300 degrees.  Pour onto a butter cookie sheet.  Let cool just a teeny bit and then sprinkle with chocolate. 

 Your chocolate will melt and then you can spread that around.  We aren't looking for perfection here because once it is completely hard and dry, you are going to smash it into little bits.

 It doesn't get much yummier than this!  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Toffee

1 1/4 c. sugar
1/4 c. water
1/4 c. light corn syrup
1/2 lb. butter
chopped or slivered nuts (I like almonds, but I usually just go the plain chocolate route.)

Put all ingredients, except nuts in saucepan.  Heat over high heat while stirring constantly.  Heat until it reaches 300 degrees.  Take off heat and pour onto lightly buttered cookie sheet.  Let harden for a few seconds.  Sprinkle with chocolate chips.  Spread chocolate as it melts.  Sprinkle with chopped or slivered nuts if desired. 

Christmas Treats- Snowball Cookies

I LOVE making Christmas goodies to share (and to eat). This recipe is for Wedding Cookies but during the holiday I like to call them Snowball Cookies. They are so buttery and sugary and just melt in your mouth. If you are not a nut lover, don't get scared away. I'm not really a huge nut person, but I had no idea these had nuts in them for the longest time.  Just chop them really small. I used walnuts because that's what I had in my freezer.

 The dough is really sandy.  The recipe says to roll it into balls, but really its more like squishing it together.  I abandoned my cookie scoop after this picture.

 Here they are ready to bake.  Do you use stoneware pans?  They are the best.  You can tell I love mine and use it tons, huh?

I didn't get a picture while rolling them in the powdered sugar, but that's easy.  Just roll and then let them cool completely before sharing (devouring). 

The recipe I used is from the Lion House.  Good stuff.

Snowball Cookies (Wedding Cookies)

1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 c. butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 c. all purpose flour
1 c. chopped walnuts or pecans
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper (or just use stoneware pans like I did).  In a large mixing bowl, cream together sugar, butter and vanilla.  Add flour and mix well.  Add nuts and mix.  Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls and place on prepared cookie sheets.  Bake 10 to 12 minutes.  The tops of the cookies should have slight cracks in them and the bottom edges should be just barely light golden brown.  Roll cookies in powdered sugar while very warm.  Makes 3 doz.

Christmas Advent Calendar

I'm a little late in posting about our advent calendar, but this is one of our favorite Christmas decorations so I didn't want to ignore it on our blog.  I made this two years ago and it was so fun to make!  Felt is the best invention ever!  Here is a picture of it yesterday.  In case you can't tell, its basically a big piece of white felt with a green felt tree on top.  There is an ornament for each day in numbered pockets.  My kids take turns putting up the ornaments each day.

 And here is what it will look like on Christmas day with all the ornaments on the tree.  Can you believe there are only 18 days left until Christmas!  Oh boy!  I've got some shopping to do!

 Some of my favorites:

Christmas Quilts

 It may not be warm enough for snuggling up under a Christmas quilt right now but that won't keep us from trying! Sometimes we turn our ceiling fan up high just so we can justify snuggling under the quilt and reading Christmas stories!

 I've made a couple of quilts throughout the years and have one that I'm ready to get started on. My first quilt is a lap-size one from a pattern I got from the magazine McCall's Quilting. I love the poinsettia fabrics in this! 

 The next one I made I love partly because it's a scrappy quilt. I used scraps from Christmas quilts and crafts I'd made throughout the years. I love that with quilts you can take a bunch of small little scraps of fabric and make something as beautiful and whole as a quilt.  I can't think of the name of the pattern- can anyone help me out, please?

With my Mom's help, I used her quilting machine to quilt poinsettias throughout, which looks especially nice on the white fabric. 

It's great for playing peek-a-boo under, too!

 And now I'm ready to get going with this gorgeous fabric! It's by Kate Spain for Moda and it's called flurry. I found it on fabric.com a year or so ago in July. They were having a great sale on it.  

I have wanted to use this great pattern featured on modabakeshop by Angela from Fussy Cut.  

 I'm hoping to a get some free time at night to start working on it and hopefully I'll have pictures to share before too long!

Nativity Puppets

Before we had children, Jer and I were nursery leaders at church for the 18 month old children.  

We had about eight 18 month to 24 month old children.  They were adorable but it was quite a challenge to keep them happy for 2 hours and try to teach them a lesson and sing songs when most of them couldn't talk. My Mom made me these wonderful puppets to use with them at Christmastime and they are still a favorite at our house.  

 I've said it before and I'll say it again, I LOVE FELT!  

It is so easy to create with and great for things like this!  

I love the details on each one- yet they are so simple.

We use them to act out the nativity story or the boys just like to play with them around the house.  Thanks, Nana, for making these for us!

How long does it take to decorate for Christmas?

My kids were so sad to leave Nana's house and all their cousins after Thanksgiving. :(

But then they realized that we could go home and decorate for Christmas! 

My five year old asked MANY times during the five hour drive home if we could put up the tree THAT NIGHT.  [She likes to repeat herself to make sure she gets her point across.  :)]

I'm just as excited as they are, but I'm also really loving the fact that we have had this whole week before December!   Isn't it great?!

Life with little kids means everything takes longer than normal.  So having more time to decorate and get everything ready is SO NICE! 

Here are my $6 (approx) stairway decorations. I think the two fake garlands cost $2 each at Hobby Lobby a few years ago, and the little red jingle bell ornaments were probably about the same.

Martha Stewart

Ok, no, I didn't quite achieve this look.  So pretty!

Country Living

 

 I'd love to have real, big, fluffy garlands, but I don't want to pay for them when I've got so many other things to spend my money on at Christmas time.  

 

And guess what?  My kids have no clue who Martha Stewart is and don't care that our house isn't ready to be featured in Country Living.  They love my $6 decor! And I do too.  :)

How are you doing with your holiday decorations?  Do you like to make a big push and get the whole house decorated in one day or are you enjoying having a little extra time this year to get everything done?