Family
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 MorePolka-Dot Party
For Elliana’s 2nd Birthday we had a polka-dot themed party. A theme party is a great way to stay organized and have a lot of fun.
The idea started small from a pair of polka-dot pants and then soon became a spectacular polka-dot extravaganza!
We found the pants at Carter’s first, then picked out some fabric at Joann’s for personalized birthday shirts. …
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 MoreTacky Sweater Tradition
As I have said before, I LOVE CHRISTMAS! I love the smells, the holiday spirit, the time with family! And, I love traditions! One of our newer traditions in the last few years has been to have a Tacky Sweater Party. This was not only a really fun time to find the ugliest sweaters in our homes (some of which were found in my mom’s closet…Sorry Mom, we were just helping you out! 😉 ) but it was also a great idea for gathering with friends when coming home from college! It gave us the opportunity to open up our home and see a large group of our friends to catch up and enjoy time together during our short break away from different colleges! …
Read More“Make Your Own Snack Bag” Activity
I had a fun snack activity at Elliana’s 2nd Birthday. (Birthday party post coming next week!).
This “make your own snack bag” activity was great for Elliana’s toddler friends because it incorporated food (a toddler favorite!), making choices (I know my toddler loves to choose), and our polka-dot/circle theme. …
Read MoreThanksgiving 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 MoreMarriage Refreshed
This past weekend my husband and I got the opportunity to go to a marriage conference. And of all places it was right on the outskirts of Yosemite. Beautiful! It was so refreshing and energizing to be there. Not only did we get time away from the chaos of life, but we were taking time to focus on the importance of our marriage relationship. The conference was awesome. We learned more about ourselves, discovered more about marriage, and connected through some great discussion time. But I think what was even more impacting than the information we acquired, was taking the time to do something intentional for us. Life gets crazy, schedules get busy, and priorities shift. But amidst whatever it is, we need to remember the most important things. And marriage is the most important relationship you have on this earth. …
Read MoreViewing the World Like a Child
My daughters challenge me constantly.
Lately, they are reminding me to be happy and to be excited about the little things. My almost two year old, Elliana, loves pumpkins. Today we went to the grocery store and to her delight, there was a huge pumpkin display. She ran right up and said, “WHOA! PUMPKINS!” as she handed me the perfect sized mini pumpkins. She made other patrons smile with her laughter and excitement as she pointed to all the pumpkins she could see. …
Read MoreReviving Old Traditions
I am not sure why women ever stopped having social gatherings where they worked together to support one another and carry out communal tasks like canning, baking, knitting, sewing or quilting. Why did we allow these old quilting bee type of customs to die out? Some might think that it was caused by the invention of our modern appliances and household conveniences. Maybe it is a result of fragmented families? Maybe we bought the idea of feminist movement to get out of the house and demand our equal rights in the workplace.…
Read MoreFamily Photos that Last a Lifetime
—“A picture is worth a thousand words” —–“A picture is a poem without words” (Horace)—–“Photograph: A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art” (Ambrose Pierce)—–“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs” (Ansel Adams)—
“If pictures are worth a thousand words, than photo books are worth a million”
-Ashkon Banihashemi
I love pictures. I love how they can grasp memories and take you back to that place every time you look at the photographs. One of my favorite crafts used to be scrapbooking- creating pages and books to relive certain events or times of my life and to have for a lifetime to look back on and remember such pivotal years of my life! …
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