Perspective

Tonight I dipped cherry filling for chocolate covered cherries, peppermint patties, oreo truffles and thin mints. I will share recipes and pictures later.  As I was finishing up and clearing things off the counters blessing #2 came in and asked if she could look at her baby scrapbook. She is very quiet and is probably the only blessing I have that would actually ask before grabbing her book. I said yes and she took the book down and went to look through the book. I ended up sitting down at the table with her. She and I took turns reading the journaling. Boy was my perspective different back then. It has really convicted me. What happened when that third blessing came along? Why do I have such a different perspective, Oh, I love and know that they are all blessings, but would I write those same wonderful, complementary things in current scrapbooks?  I don't even make time to scrapbook any more. What do I fill my spare moments with that doesn't allow time to scrapbook, journaling how wonderful it is to have  these blessings, to list their personality  traits and find the best in them at all times? What a precious thing to read tonight, she will have my words in my handwriting about her, she will be able to see the pictures and read the love I feel for her. I could right now list many negative things about my children (boy we had a "self on the throne" time span this afternoon by two of my blessings, and I do not mean bathroom throne, I mean selfish behavior!). Now, I know what I need to work on this up coming new year...ME! My attitude, my perspective, my relationship with God. I am thankful for that little girl that wanted to look at her scrapbook tonight, I am thankful that I sat down with her to look, it is painful to know that I am the source of my frustration, but it is good to know where to start, where to begin the journey back to 2000, when my perspective was dead on center.

Proverbs 18:10

The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.

I typed that from memory so if it is not word for word, I apologize. Now, excuse me while I run to a strong tower.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Twelve Blogs of Christmas Contest Post

My favorite parental Christmas memory was last December when we built a gingerbread train. It was just fun, calm and we were home!!

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

We settled on playdough

I found some great playdough recipes but I really prefer cooked playdough. Next time I will take my recipe

which is:

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

2 cups water

2 Tbsp.oil

1 Tbsp. cream of tarter

1 package of kool-aid, unsweetened  (this makes for a good smelling playdough, plus it gives color)

Throw it all in a pot and stir constantly on medium until it looks like gloopy mashed potatoes. Throw it onto the counter to cool and knead. Next time I will just not do the kool-aid thing and add the other ingredients from the website linked to above. Today we made gingerbread, peppermint and sparkling snow doughs.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Orange Fudge recipe

 

Here is the orange fudge recipe (One clarification, the batch in the picture  was too orange. I guess I mismeasured the food coloring.) I will try to post a picture of this years batch, if I ever get back to blogging regularly. I think I will once I get good routines established! It is coming along. I have kept my house clean most of this week.

Does anyone know how I could add archives to my side bar? I will research it later, probably after Christmas if I get no replies here. Many thanks in advance.

Now, go make cookies or candy or these stars or homemade gift cards or anything homemade, how about these minibooks, or mini matchbook notebooks. Take a few minutes today to make something with your blessings. If all else fails make some hot chocolate and watch a Christmas movie together.  We have overnight company tonight, two boys, we are going to either make the classic cinnamon applesauce ornaments or peppermint, gingerbread and snow playdoughs. I have not decided yet.

Have a great day.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Just haven't gotten around to blogging lately

It was just one of those weeks and weekends. Not a whole lot going on last week, but I just did not get around to posting anything the rest of the week. The girls and I went to the Nutcracker Ballet on Saturday then we headed home and changed into play clothes and headed to an evening birthday party. It was a busy day and I am glad we don't have those too often. Today we have been home and completed our school time and a little cleaning time. Now the blessings are watching a movie and I am making orange fudge!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Blogger Friend School #11

 

This week's assignment is to list your prayer needs and then to visit classmates and pray for them. The complete list is on the training hearts blog.

My prayer requests are not for me. I need prayer but  my heart is for others this week,my Pastor is down again. He got some sort of flu and is having some symptoms that he had last winter when he began this journey of illness. Please pray  for him. Also, please pray for my little three year old friend I mentioned here earlier in the week. He had to spend last night in the hospital. Pray that if the doctors here cannot treat him that they will take him to pediatric specialists. 

 

May the Lord find us faithful

Today's recipe and a prayer request

Today we are making:

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

(or Buckeye's as some call them)

1 pound butter

1 quart peanut butter (I used one 40 ounce jar)

2 (16 ounce) boxes powdered sugar

Melt butter and add peanut butter. After peanut butter is melted add powdered sugar and stir until mixed well. Cool. Shape into balls. I put them on a cookie sheet and put in fridge. I only pull out small amounts when dipping to keep them cold and firm.

1 large package semi-sweet chocolate

1/4 pound paraffin or a couple TBSP. of shortening

Melt in  a double boiler or in a glass bowl on top of a pan of simmering water. Dip balls in chocolate and place on waxed paper to harden.

We love these. I just remembered I took my glass bowls to church to leave them there. Oh, well, onto plan B and I will have to pick them up for the next few weeks and then take them back! Oops!

I will post pictures when we complete the dipping. The peanut mixture is cooling now. We will dip later this evening.

Prayer Request: a little  three year old at our church was hospitalized today, he has asthma and has been in and out of the hospital many times when he is struggling to breathe, also his mom just had a baby a few weeks ago and is having to go through this as well. Pray for this family please.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Losing teeth and a mother's heart

Blessing #2 lost her top tooth on Friday night.

Then, Friday I walked through the house and saw this:

Oh, how it did my heart good. I have longed for the day of useful handicrafts for my girls and I. I loved seeing this.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Open House

 

 

 

Okay, here goes. I love to decorate for Christmas! The main thing about Christmas for us is that we keep it very Christ centered (as we should in our lives every day) and we keep it very others oriented(as we should every day) and we keep it very family oriented. This is a month that we focus on Christ! I share here the gospel in as given in this scripture:

1Corinthians 15:2By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

 3For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

 4And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures

We spend December reading the gospel accounts of the birth of Christ. 

We also have a Christmas tree and many other decorations with lots of snowmen and lights! I love the lights, maybe because it is the darkest time of year for us.

We chose not to do the whole Santa thing when blessing #1 was born. Our choice and we have never regretted it, we do watch all the television specials, santa is a tv character to our blessings, just like Frosty the Snowman.  We are teaching them to discern these things at these early ages.

We make lots of candy and cookies to give and also to enjoy for ourselves. Blessing #2 wants to know why we only make peanut butter balls at Christmas. I will be posting  recipes in December. Our plan is to make one recipe a day after we finish with school work. So, stay tuned for some delicious treats!

Now, pictures:

It sure was nice to have this type of help this year. I have always undertaken this job myself in the past. I still love the red walls in the kitchen! I am glad I painted even though it was time consuming.

A few special things, does your Mom send you gourds and rocks, mine does! I love them.

 

 

 

 

A simple wreath in the entry of our home.

The entry is almost like part of the kitchen:

Ignore the cluttered fridge: I am just thrilled that the counters are fairly clutter free.

This is a set of those, I think they are called alpine treees, anyway, they are a set of three. This year they found a place in the kitchen and they are covered with snowmen garland and ornaments.

The dining room

Oh, my that wreath needs some adjustments!

The tree

 

The tree: I am pleased with how it turned out. I posted a picture of a tree a few days ago. This is my interpretation of that tree. I know it is not the same. But I am thrilled with how it turned out. A  dear friend came over yesterday and she helped me get it finished. We work well together on projects such as these.

This is my frugal wall filling decoration for my family room. I made this with salvaged shutters from our house. I changed out the wreath that usually hangs here for a pine wreath and berries and of course, lights.

These mice ornaments are special to me, they are from my childhood. I have no clue where they are from. I actually have quite a few mouse ornaments?

Here is the tree in the girl blessings room

Here is the tree and our one village piece in our boy blessings room, I think some one lives there as there were cars parked in front of the lighthouse the other day.

Well, thanks for stopping by, may you enjoy traveling around to others "homes" and sharing Christmas posts. Zip you coat and put on your boots and gloves and don't forget your hat~it's cold out there!!!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Two weeks

I find myself with a few minutes of down time this Saturday morning. It's not that I do not have things to do, the list is long. It is just time to sit down for a few minutes and do something else. It seems as though I have been composing quite a few "catch up" posts lately. So, here goes:

The week of Thanksgiving we read  and on Tuesday we make Grandmother's Cranberry Bread recipe  from the back of the book.

 We read the recipe and gathered our ingredients.

Everyone took turns preparing the batter.

 

 

The finished product. It was really good. We had made it a few years ago and we didn't really care for it.

Then we prepared our home for Thanksgiving dinner with 17 guests plus the 5 of us equals 22 people! What a blessing and some thing to be thankful for. I was so busy that I failed to take many pictures, this is a picture of the dessert table in the dining room. We set up three tables in the family room and all ate in there.

I am saving my Christmas preparations and decorating for my Open House post on Monday, but while I was getting Christmas boxes from storage I found the blessing's bounce balls. Sweetheart immediately pumped them and they were off. They have bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced....... Oh, my. No wonder they are all so thin! I love the bandanas! 

Like I said this is a catch up post. Here is  a picture of the sunrise yesterday morning.

Lastly, here is our Christmas card picture for this year. I know it is not real creative and you can't really see the blessings very well  (and a couple of them look as though they have extremely long heads?)but this picture is us. After the picture taking was over all kinds of snowmachine riding took place, they had a blast. They actually like winter.

May the Lord find us faithful.