Posts by Kerry Weisser
Have a Very Merry Christmas
Christmas Blessings to all of you. We are so grateful for your devotion and enthusiasm as we have endeavored to establish a website that brings encouragement, hope and joy to families and friends; old and new. We hope that your holiday is full of fun, laughter and joyous celebration. We are taking a two week break from blogging to enjoy our family time. We will be back to posting in January with some exciting new ideas for our blog.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! …
Read MoreGlory to the Newborn King
With all the hustle bustle of Christmas preparations we often forget to stop and really listen to the words of our favorite Christmas Carols. This year, I have made it a point to pay attention to the lyrics as I have Christmas carols playing in the car and in my home throughout the month of December. So many of the old classic carols have a complete message of the good news of Christ Jesus. The birth of Jesus is what we celebrate and it seems so easy to lose the real reason for the season as we get caught up in our list of “to dos”. So this season, join me in refocusing on the true meaning of Christmas. Focus on JOY, focus on HOPE and LOVE and set your eyes and heart on Jesus, our EMMANUEL-God with us!!! …
Read MoreChristmas Cut Out Sugar Cookies
What could possibly be more FUN than decorating a batch of Christmas sugar cookies with 3 two years olds?
One mandatory activity on the agenda this week while 5 of the 6 grand kids are visiting was to bake and decorate the famous Christmas Cut Out Sugar Cookies that I have been making with my girls for the past 25 plus years. So here is the secret recipe!
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Keeping the Magic in Christmas
A few of the secrets to keeping the “magic” in Christmas…
I love Christmas, but as the MOM of a big family, most of the Christmas details are my responsibility. Our family traditions include gift making, cookie baking, cookie delivering, shopping, gift wrapping, decorating and more. When the girls were young, I wanted to share my passion for the holidays with them, so I made a decision to place sharing the Christmas “magic” togetherness time a top priority. That meant that some of the final products were not the “perfect” craft projects we now see on Pinterest but we had fun together and that created our “magic” each year. …
Read MoreThe Best Gift
For me, Christmas time is all about giving! I love making and giving homemade baked goodies, jams and creative crafts. I love sending cards and receiving cards and catching up on the year in review from friends all over the world. I love Christmas parties, cookie exchanges, tacky sweater parties, gingerbread house decorating parties. I love everything about Christmas because Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus and Jesus is the GREATEST GIFT! A tiny baby born in a manger changed the world forever. …
Read MoreCinnamon Applesauce Christmas Ornaments
Christmas carols are playing in many homes and in most stores. The crowds are bustling around the malls. The calendar is filling up with holiday parties, gift exchanges, open houses and other casual get togethers. All these aspects of Christmas are wonderful, but my favorite traditions during the month of December are decorating our home, baking homemade cookies, cooking our family favorite meals and snacks, and making homemade gifts for friends and family. When the girls were young, (before Pinterest existed) we tried a new craft project each year. One that we absolutely loved was making cinnamon applesauce ornaments. They were fun and easy, inexpensive and made the house smell wonderful. So put on your favorite Christmas CD, gather these simple ingredients and have fun creating. …
Read MoreA Basket Full of Thankfulness
Today is Thanksgiving Day.
“O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord,
Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation,
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving,
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms,
For the Lord is a great God
And a great king above all gods,
In whose hand are the depths of the earth,
The peaks of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, for it was He who made it,
And His hands formed the dry land.
Come let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts,”
Psalm 95:1-8
My favorite family tradition as we sit around our Thanksgiving table is to pass a small basket and place a dry corn kernel into the basket and share what we are thankful for. Today, we are creating new traditions. My husband and I have the privilege of sharing this holiday with our oldest daughter and her family at her in-laws home. Since the rest of our daughters will be celebrating with friends and family all over the world, I sent them messages and asked them to share what they are thankful for so I could hold each one of them close to my heart today. …
Read MoreCrock Pot “Coq Au Vin”-French Chicken Stew
When I was growing up, one of my favorite fall dinners was a simple french chicken stew that my mom made. Before the invention of the wonderful and convenient Crock Pot, we made one pot meals in big metal stew/stock pots and they simmered on the stove for hours. I took our family favorite Coq Au Vin and modified it for a crock pot and it was fantastic. The same delectable aromas filled our home and the savory flavor was just as I remembered it.
Ingredients …
Thanksgiving Gatherings become Blessings
November seems to stir something deep with in me to acknowledge my feelings of gratitude and thankfulness. Since I have the privilege of hosting our extended family Thanksgiving celebration dinner, I also have the opportunity to guide our time around the table with traditions that mean a lot to me. For as many years as I can remember, we have had a tradition of placing three corn kernels at each person’s place setting. After the blessing and sometime during the meal, we would begin passing around a small basket and placing our corn kernels into the basket while we shared what we were thankful for that year. There were years when the basket went around two or three times as we had so many joys to share and then other years when it took the entire meal to make it around once, as family members shared how they were thankful to have made it through a year full of some difficult situations with health or other struggles. This time of intimate sharing always reminds us how grateful we are to be sitting around a table with loved ones in a country where we are free to worship God. …
Read MoreHarvest Apple Crisp
Apples, apples, apples…..crunchy, flavorful, tart, sweet, Fuji, Honey Crisp, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Pippin, Jazz……so many choices, such a versatile fall fruit. You can slice them, dice, them, bake them, make pies, muffins, cakes. One of my all time favorite recipes to make with apples is old fashioned apple crisp. I will give you the original recipe and them suggest a few healthier options in bold
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