But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. Deuteronomy 11:11-12.
Wishing you a wonderful new year!
Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.“
I suspect most of us might be doing this, but I wanted to show some of the Christmas presents I received this year. These are most of the ones from my family.
Here is a close-up of some of the book titles.
One of the books, Sew Pretty Homestyle, was one I saw on Anita’s site. 🙂 I was so glad Anita mentioned the title of the English translation. This is an absolutely gorgeous book. Another is by one of my favorite crafters, Charlotte Lyons, titled Between Friends: Craft Projects to Share.
Missing from the pile is Sabrina by Lori Wick, sequel to Cassidy. I had already taken and started reading it before I took the picture. 🙂
I also wanted to highlight a couple of others from my husband. This would be the prettiest presentation.
A pretty heart necklace, pretty box, and chocolates. He knows me well. 🙂
This necklace was one I saw on someone else’s Christmas list online — but I can’t remember who! I thought it was so pretty, though, I added it to my list as well. But whoever mentioned it linked to it here. Lots of pretty stuff there!
This one is a Christmas gift to myself. 🙂
It’s a little tabletop tree, though I haven’t decided which table top to put it on yet. I had seen it at a little Christmas shop in the mall several days ago. Then it was $20, marked down from $25. I actually ventured to the mall on Christmas Eve, something I rarely do, but there was something I was thinking about for Jim that I decided to go ahead and get. I checked on this while I was there, and it was marked down to $12.50, and I couldn’t resist. It came with the ribbons and lights already on. Jim teased me that if I had waited til after Christmas, I could’ve got it for $5. 🙂
This was one of my favorite gifts to give:
I’m sorry I couldn’t get the photo any clearer than that. Here’s the story behind this picture: it was the picture they had on display at my mother’s funeral. I had never seen it before. I asked for a copy, and my sister tried to take it somewhere to be copied, but they wouldn’t touch it because it was a professional photo. She then tried to find the person who had taken it at my mom’s company Christmas party to see if we could order more copies. I don’t know if she couldn’t find the person or if they didn’t have the proofs any more, or what. But when my family came to visit last October, and my sister said they were bringing some old pictures for us all to go through, I asked them to bring that one so we could scan it. I mentioned the “historic” pictures on a previous Show and Tell. My oldest son, Jeremy, scanned the pictures in and edited them and then made a CD for everyone (he did a fantastic job. He wrote a post showing some of the before and after editing he did here). They all knew the CD was coming, but in addition for each of us siblings we printed out this photo of my mom and step-dad and framed it for them as a surprise. They loved it. It’s one of the best later pictures of my folks. It almost makes my mom feel a little closer to have it out where I can see it often. At some point I will put it on my family photo wall, but for now I like it here on the end table.
Although the emphasis of Christmas is the greatest gift of all, our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, I am grateful for the loving gifts of my family, too. I’ve kept you long enough, so I won’t show you the rest of the family’s gifts, but I enjoyed giving to them, too.
Hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas!
A year or two ago some stores began forbidding their employees to say “Merry Christmas” lest it offend non-Christians. That led to a backlash by Christians toward those who would take Christ out of Christmas and transform it into a generic winter holiday.
While I do agree that that forbidding employees to say “Merry Christmas” is going ridiculously too far (that was one thing I hated about working in retail sales: everything from how you answered the phone to how you dealt with customers had to follow a prescribed script, though general conversation was also encouraged) and I do believe there is a general secularization of American society away from it Biblical roots, and I grieve that, on the other hand not every person who says “Happy Holidays” is a rabid politically correct anti-Christian.
Some might not mean anything amiss by it. I’ve said or written “Happy Holidays” for years. It started when I first began signing Christmas cards “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” got weary halfway through, and changed to “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.”
Some just might want to include the other holidays, like Hanukkah, celebrated this time of year in their well-wishing.
And even if a “Happy Holiday” wisher is a rabid politically correct anti-Christian….what good does a snarky chip-on-the-shoulder response do? Unfortunately I have heard and read such responses this season. We need to remember to “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man” (Colossians 4:5). Salt — truth — yes, but with grace.
By Jeanine Drylie
Who is this baby lying asleep where cattle feed
Who is this babe that merits not a bed?
As angel choirs proclaim the glory of His name
And wise men by the star to Him are led?
He’s Emmanuel,
The God of all the ages clothed in human flesh
To die in sinners’ stead.
Though He was God yet He was pleased to live on earth with men.
But why these swaddling clothes, this cattle stall,
And why this manger bed?
Who is this weary man sitting down upon a well
Too busy with the souls of men to eat?
Who is this man that’s sleeping in tempest-driven boat
Until aroused it’s glory to defeat?
He’s Emmanuel,
The God of all the ages clothed in human flesh
Salvation to complete.
Though He was God yet He was pleased to live on earth with men.
But why no palaces, no pillow soft,
And why these weary feet?
Who is this man they’re mocking with thorns upon His brow?
Who is this one deserves such cruelty?
Who is this man suspended on yonder rugged cross,
The object of such shame and blasphemy?
He’s Emmanuel,
The God of all the ages clothed in human flesh
To bleed and die for me.
Though He was God yet He was pleased to live on earth with men,
But why these cruel nails, this mocking crowd,
And why this fallen tree?
He’s Emmanuel.
May we rejoice in Emmanuel, God with us, and if you don’t know Him in that way, I pray that you would even this day.
Earlier in the month someone, I can’t remember who, was hosting a meme about Christmas traditions. I didn’t have time to write then, and didn’t think we had all that many, but as we have gone through the month I’ve noted several things that we almost always do, and I guess that’s what traditions are made of. 🙂
Jim doesn’t like to put the Christmas tree up after Thanksgiving, especially years like this one when we have an extra week in November. So we try to aim for the first Saturday in December. We all go out and pick the tree, always a real one. When we lived in GA we found a place where you could cut your own, and that was fun. Then we bring it home and the boys get the Christmas boxes from the attic while Jim gets the tree into its holder. We put on a Christmas CD (this year a new one of piano renditions of both sacred and “fun” carols called “It’s Christmas” by Kenon Renfrow); Jim and the boys figure out the lights while I put out some of the decorations, and then we all put ornaments on the tree. The boys enjoy putting out the ones they’ve been given over the years and of course we all enjoy commenting or exclaiming over various ones each year.
Through the month there are various programs and recitals in connection with school and church. It got to be a bit much when we had kids in high school and elementary school and therefore double the things to go to. They were always enjoyable once we got there, but just the number of evenings taken up with such things got to be kind of stressful. One year we had church Sunday night, the elementary piano recital Monday night, secondary piano recital Tuesday night, prayer meeting Wednesday, elementary Christmas program Thursday night, and secondary Friday night. That about did this homebody in. 🙂 Now I do kind of miss the elementary ones — but not enough to go to without having a child of my own in them. Our kid’s choirs at church do usually do a Christmas program one Sunday night in December that we enjoy, and the adult choir does a cantata every year. Our adult Sunday school class has a party and the kids’ classes usually have some kind of party of Christmas event as well.
The last few years we’ve gone to Hollywild Animal Park’s Holiday Lights Safari and seen all the neat light displays and fed animals.
I like to watch some Christmas movie every year, but not always the same one. We’ve varied between A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott version), It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas.
I make Harvest Loaf cake every year, but usually a couple of weeks before Christmas. Often I give away extra loaves of it. I don’t know how it got started, but Jim loves Chicken in a Biscuit crackers around Christmas time, and I get the canned spray cheese for them. My mom used to send those sausage, cheese, and cracker packages, so we’ve gotten into the habit of having something like that around for munchies during December, along with store-bought eggnog (I can’t stand the stuff, but Jim, Jason, and Jesse like it). We used to make Christmas butter cookies every year — we had gotten away from it just due to busy-ness, and now the boys are probably too old for it. I don’t know — they might still enjoy it. I also have a recipe for gingerbread teddy bears that I make sometimes and wanted to this year, but haven’t yet.
No one here wants a big sit-down breakfast on Christmas morning, and since we like to take time opening presents and I have low blood sugar, I can’t wait til afterward. My solution the past few years has been to get one package of Sister Schubert’s sausage rolls and one package of the same brand of cinnamon rolls, warm them up in the morning and set them out with some fruit, and everyone wanders in the kitchen and gets some whenever they feel the urge.
Christmas morning we gather in the living room and Jim reads the Christmas story and prays. Then we open gifts usually one by one or each person working on one at a time, and we show each other as we go along. We like to take our time and enjoy it along the way rather than just having an opening frenzy. The Christmas tree and presents are in the living room while the stockings are downstairs in the family room (there’s a mantle and fireplace there), so ate some point when all the gifts are open we go down to investigate the stockings.
When the boys were little I used to make a birthday cake for Jesus to help them remember in a way they could relate to whose birthday we were celebrating. We haven’t done that in a number of years. Usually on Christmas day we have ham, either mashed potatoes and gravy or some kind of cheesy potato casserole, either a salad or steamed broccoli or a vegetable mix, rolls, apple and pumpkin pies. We eat around noon or 1:00, then fix a plate of leftovers or sandwiches in the evening.
Then usually in the evenings we’ll call grandparents. This is when I miss my mom the most.
Jim usually has vacation days enough left to take the whole week off.
We’ve never done Santa Claus. I was originally going to write a whole separate post on this, but wanted to do it before Christmas, and time’s running out. I used to be militantly against Santa, but I have known some godly people who do incorporate him into Christmas in good conscience and still feel they keep the main focus on Christ, so I have softened up a bit. It’s one of those things that each family should consider and do as they feel led before the Lord. But for our family we felt that a strong emphasis on Santa put the wrong perspective on the holiday. We do look forward to gifts, but when the kids were little I hated that they were met everywhere with, “What’s Santa bringing you for Christmas?” Plus, though rewards aren’t in themselves wrong and every parents has used them, the whole idea of being good so you can get presents felt wrong to me: I wanted to teach my children to be good as unto the Lord. Though gifts are a big part of Christmas, we wanted the main focus to be on God’s gift to us of His Son ad the salvation He freely offers.
I do have problems with trying to get children to believe this whole false mythology about Santa (and some put an awful lot of effort into getting their kids to believe) only to have their kids find out it all wasn’t true. I don’t know if any kids have been seriously traumatized enough by that to disbelieve everything else their parents taught them, but, still, it just doesn’t seem right to me.
And besides, I don’t want to give Santa the credit for bringing those gifts! I want my kids to know they came from us because we love them.
I think it is good to teach about the original real St. Nicholas, but I do think young children have problems connecting that to the Santa figure of today.
Over the years we’ve regulated Santa to a fairy tale character. We’ve watched Rudolph and other specials and tried to keep our kids from spoiling it for other kids. I think when children are young they want to believe in something like that. I remember when the boys used to watch Superman cartoons, once Jesse said longingly that he wished there really was a Superman. I was startled and tried to explain that God is so much better in so many ways than any made-up superhero, and I do think he agreed and understood, but he was still a little reluctant to let go of that wish. I don’t want my children so enamored of a made-up character that the real wonder of the real God — who loves us and has done so much for us and is ready to hear and answer every prayer according to His will and meet every need — loses its luster.
Well, those are our traditions. We kind of hold loosely to most — I think traditions help family cohesiveness, but I never want to become enslaved to them or to the thought that it just won’t be a “perfect” Christmas if this or that isn’t done. Whatever we do we try to keep the main focus on love — God’s for us, ours for Him, and ours for each other.
May you have a wonderful Christmas celebrating God’s love for you.
We had an…interesting anniversary. Jim was going to try to get home at 5 and we were going to go eat at Steak and Ale, which is one of those places we usually only go for anniversaries. But he didn’t get home til after 7. When we got to Steak and Ale, they couldn’t get us in til 8:15. We drove to Outback — and the parking lot was overflowing so we didn’t even go in. We tried a new nice restaurant — and they couldn’t get us in for 45 minutes to an hour. Being both a Friday night and close to Christmas, a lot of people were eating out! At one point Jim jokingly said, “We could go to Wendy’s,” but I was seriously thinking of suggesting it! I hadn’t eaten much during the day and was starting to get a headache: my desire to eat something soon won out over my desire to eat at a nicer restaurant. So we ended up at Ryan’s, a buffet place that serves steak. Not that Ryan’s isn’t a good restaurant — it’s just not where people would normally got to celebrate anniversaries, I don’t think. 🙂 But I had been wanting to try this one out as it was new, and the food was good, and we had time to spend with each other, which was the main point.
I have been bookmarking some really neat crafty posts from various blogs. I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually have time during December to do anything crafty. A couple of my favorite ornaments and decorations were made last year after Christmas. So I am going to do the same this year: it might just become a tradition. 🙂 The week or two after Christmas everyone’s usually off and our regular schedule (school, homework, etc.) is still pared down, and I am still feeling Christmasy, and many of the supplies are still available (and even marked down!)
These are some things that caught my eye. I hope to do some of them in the weeks ahead.
Sew, Mama, Sew! has been hosting a Handmade Holiday series for many weeks with tutorials from different bloggers featured every day. You can peruse the various craft items by topic.
Melissa Goodsell at One Crafty Mumma or Day to Day (not sure which is the actual blog name. I think I discovered it from Sew, Mama, Sew! but I can’t remember) posted some tutorials for cute denim Christmas tree ornaments, table setting mini bags, and Christmas mittens (tutorial for the last at disdressed.)
Through Kisses of Sunshine’s Homemade With Love event I saw these cute gingerbread man ornaments at I Have to Say.
One of the things I made after Christmas last year was the button wreath shaped like a heart and a button ornament that I’ve shown many times: shimandsons posted a tutorial of how to make button wreaths here. Hers is in a square shape, but you can make it any shape you want. I found a heart shaped template last year just by searching for “heart shape” in Google images.
While we’re talking about buttons, there are some adorable button trees here at inspire.com and Gingham World showed another tree covered in felt and buttons.
There is another set of adorable mitten oranments at A Feathered Nest.
Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home showed ways to make beautiful tags out of old Christmas cards.
Artsy-crafty babe showed how to make a neat potholder from a dishtowel — nice for gifts — or for yourself. 🙂
And, these are more for fall, but whip up has some cute multimedia leaves.
Such inspiration — I love to see what people come up with! This ought to feed that creative urge for a little while.
Theme: Light | Become a Photo Hunter
I spent much of the afternoon and evening thinking the theme was “Red” and pondering what to do and finally come up with an idea I was really excited about…only to realize this evening the theme for today is “Light.” “Red” was three weeks ago — and I even did that one. Yep, those brain cells are serving me well…
So, on to Light! I borrowed these picture from my son (with his permission) of our downtown area decorated for Christmas.
My entry for BooMama‘s Christmas tours of homes is a few posts below — or you can click here. I have enjoyed the ones I have seen so far and have even found a couple of cute decorating ideas.
Last week we had something going on just about every night. Monday evening was our church ladies’ group Christmas party where we also revealed our Secret Sisters for the year — lots of fun! We have several places in the area that you can drive through all done up in holiday lights, so we chose one and went there Tuesday night. Jason’s girlfriend was here for a few days before going home for Christmas break, so it was especially fun to take her. The place we went was one of those drive-through zoo type places and at the end they had an area where you could get out and get refreshments or visit a petting area. Jesse got to feed a bottle to a baby goat.
Wed. night was regular prayer meeting; Thursday night was Jesse’s piano recital.
They have kids from early elementary age all through way through twelfth grade, so there is a variety of pieces and abilities. It’s an enjoyable time.
Friday night was the last night before Jason’s girlfriend left, so we all went out to eat at Red Lobster with gift cards just received from my stepfather. Then, they had been watching our DVDs of the Lord of the Rings films through the week, but we didn’t have the last one, The Return of the King. I had Jason get the extended version of it that day and we watched it that night (though I confess I dozed off a time or two — it’s very long!! We had seen the regular version before, so I knew what happened).
Saturday evening was our adult Sunday School class’s Christmas party. We didn’t make it to this last year — we tend to be homebodies anyway and had been out a lot with other activities and were just too tired. Plus the year before it was at this event that I received news that my mom had passed away, and I was a little too emotional to go and have those memories stirred up. I wasn’t feeling really excited about going this time for the same reasons, but I am glad we did — it was a lot of fun.
Last night was the Christmas cantata at church. It’s always enjoyable. This year we didn’t have any participants from our family: at various times in the past we’ve had one or two of us in choir, and a couple of times one of us (not me!!!) has had speaking parts. But this year we just observed and enjoyed. It was a cantata I had never heard before: with all new songs it is a little hard to take it all in, but there were some lovely pieces in it. It’s events like that that help us stop for a moment and reflect on what Christ did for us by coming to earth to live and then die for us. Not that we don’t do that at home or at other times, of course, but these events help keep us focused.
As I mentioned in the last post, Jason had two wisdom teeth out this morning. Everything went well and he’s asleep upstairs, getting up every now and then to change the gauze. On one side where the root was close to a nerve in the jaw, the doctor said he didn’t encounter it during the surgery, so it should be fine — he might have some tingling there. I’m off to get his antibiotics and pain medication in a little bit.
Tomorrow night is Jesse’s Christmas program at school, Thursday night he has a teen caroling party, and Friday night is Jeremy and Jason’s college and career class Christmas party. Friday is also our 28th wedding anniversary. ♥
After that we’re back to our regular life schedules except for Christmas and New Year’s and vacation days. :p But the special events will be over. Though sometimes all the activities do leave me exhausted (one year in the past we had kids in two recitals and two school Christmas programs in the same week!), this year I have been really enjoying them.
I spent a lot of last week getting most of the last of the missionary Christmas packages out. I still have a couple of stragglers — people who signed up to bring things but haven’t gotten them in. Thankfully these packages are going to folks in the States.
My goals for today:
1) Mail out one more package.
2) Look on my family’s Christmas lists to see if there is anything else I need to order and take care of that.
3) Edit our family Christmas letter and print it off. I finished it last night but wanted to let it sit overnight before reading over it one last time and tweaking anything necessary.
4) Print Christmas pictures.
Here’s the one I think I’ll be using for Christmas cards:
Jason’s in a bit of a shadow there, but in the ones where I used my flash, there’s a glare on Jeremy’s glasses.
This…is real life: 😀
5) Work on getting Christmas cards ready. I say every year I am going to get that done earlier — I actually had most of the letter done Dec. 2 and the boxes of Christmas cards have been sitting here. But there have been other things going on…
6) When my family came up in October they brought a ton of pictures for us all to go through. We took some of the one-of-a-kind ones to scan and put on a CD. Jeremy has been scanning and editing them (and I am amazed at how much clearer he’s made many of them!) I’m going to work with him some time today to choose which ones to put on the CD (many are my baby pictures and I figure the rest of the family won’t be as interested in those. 🙂 ) and rename them so they know who the people are in some of the older pictures. Then hopefully we’ll get that CD made and I can get them ready to send out.
Then maybe I can get some Christmas shopping done….
Karla at Karla’s Cottage is having a “What do you love about your holiday home?” party and BooMama is hosting a “Christmas tour of homes.” I’m using this same post for both events. 🙂 All of these have appeared on my blog before — I don’t think we have added anything new this year. Yet. 🙂
So come on in…
Have a slice of Harvest Loaf Cake.
Even though its name sounds fallish, we like to use it for the holidays. I don’t make it at Christmas because we have all those pies then, but usually some time in early December I make some for us and some for gifts.
I am a Christian and believe Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ who came to die for our sins. I’ve been saying “Happy Holidays” for years, though, to include Christmas and New Year’s Day, so I am not trying to be “PC” by saying Happy Holidays. 🙂
Decorations on the piano. I did the calligraphy about 20 years ago in an adult ed. class — but I haven’t done any calligraphy since then.
My mom gave me this several years ago. I has a button in the back that you can push to hear Christmas music and watch the lights flash. The boys have loved this. Since my mom passed away almost exactly two years ago, these gifts from her are even more treasured.
This is something else my mom sent: a Nativity musical figurine.
This is one of my most special treasures, also from my mom. I collect Boyd’s Bear figurines, and somewhere she found this Christmas tree with little miniature scenes all though it.
Here are a couple of close-ups:
On the other end table are these snowpeople. I got the three snowboys because they reminded me of my three sons. 
Then the boys got each of the bigger snowmen in a crane game. So we put them all together as our family representatives. I should get a little feminine hat for one of the bigger ones to represent me.
I have pastel colors and a lot of pink in my home. That’s a bit of a dilemma at Christmas with all the reds: some of my ornaments and things that were given to me have red in them. In recent years I’ve leaned toward the maroonish bluer reds and dark pinks that would go better with the rest of the decor. But, as I said in the earlier posts about ornaments, I want this all to be family-friendly more than “designer” decorating, so for the most part I just don’t worry about it. However, I was delighted to find this little snowman in my living room colors:
One of my favorite decorations is this little mouse. If you light the candle in the back it looks like a fire in the fireplace.
Here is the fireplace in the family room with the stockings. I made the plaid ones after we were first married and a dear friend knit the others for each of the boys as a baby gift after they were born. The rest of this room is in blue, tan, and off-white, so the red doesn’t clash with pinks in here.
I need to redo the white fluffy parts on mine and my husband’s stockings and maybe appliqué something on them.
Here is our tree with a few favorite ornaments:
These are some felts ones I made early on in our marriage, I think from a kit. I love the little sheep.
This is a Boyd’s Bear ornament my dear friend Carol gave me:
This is from a set of Victorian ornaments that I love which includes a ball and a teardrop shape with the same little flower cluster:
This is a nativity ornament which clips on to one of the light bulbs so it shines through. Someone gave this to someone else at a Secret Sister Christmas party at church, and I liked it so much I went out and bought one for us. I think it is the only Hallmark ornament we have.
This is one I made early on. It has about 1/3 of a toilet paper roll inside and is wrapped in a strip of red felt. White felt circles go over the ends and cross-stitch floss is used to sew the tops and bottoms on in that drum-like pattern. Then little strips of felt are rolled around the end of toothpicks for the drumsticks, and they are glued on. This is made to sit on a branch, but you could use the same floss to make a loop through the edge of the top white felt circle.
This is from a cute little felt snowman set I liked. I bought it rather than made it, but I made the little plastic canvas candy cane.
This one is special to me because it is one of the first ones I ever made. I found the little circle, stained it, found the little miniature tree, dipped the tips of its branches in glue and then it different colors of glitter, then glued it into the circle and added a gold thread loop.
This is one of our newer ones, bought last year at the Christian bookstore. Having all boys, I’ve loved cards and ornaments with little shepherd boys.
This is one of my two attempts at One Stroke painting.
This is one of several cross-stitch ornaments I made several years ago. I think these were the first things I cross-stitched. Sorry this one is a little blurry.
I made this ornament last year — after Christmas, actually — after seeing various button wreaths on a few blogs:
I realized afterward that the little Christmas tree is a charm rather than a button, but that’s ok. 🙂
Thanks for visiting! I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.
Infant holy, Infant lowly, for His bed a cattle stall;
Oxen lowing, little knowing, Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Swift are winging angels singing, noels ringing, tidings bringing:
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping vigil till the morning new
Saw the glory, heard the story, tidings of a Gospel true.
Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow, praises voicing, greet the morrow:
Christ the Babe was born for you.
Christ the Babe was born for you.
Traditional carol, translated from Polish to English by Edith M. Reed, 1921.
Graphic courtesy of Anne’ Place.
Stray Thoughts 
