Checking In!

Just checking in here on the blog scene! I am alive!
:-) It's been a little while since I posted...I've just been busy with life!
This week we get to celebrate Luke's 3rd birthday!! The party itself will happen after the fact, but we'll be heading to Grandpa and Grandma's farm for the day - something the birthday boy has been hoping to do for awhile!

MITs

MITs of the day:

Dinner preparations
Prepare for leading Bible study tomorrow/email my group
Fold and put away laundry!

Listening to...

I'm currently listening to and being encouraged by this audio file by Carolyn Mahaney! If you're a mom to little ones you'll want to check it out.

A Beautiful Christmas

Here are a few glimpses of our Christmas season:

Merry Christmas!

Blessings and Merry Christmas!
Last night we made and decorated sugar cookies using America's Test Kitchen's recipe. It was very yummy but also very tedious! But hey...it was worth it! You know it's good when it calls for 2 sticks of butter. We doubled the recipe and ended up with enough to give some away and some to enjoy for ourselves. Chilling the dough is definitely a huge help when making sugar cookies. As far as the other secrets..they definitely helped though I did not go to the added expense of buying parchment paper. I had pretty good results with rolling the dough out on wax paper and then transferring the cut out cookies directly to baking sheets as long as the dough was nice and cool. It would have been less mess with parchment paper, but my awesome husband helped me do all the dishes! :-)

Today I'm hoping to have a chance to work on the stockings I'm making for the kids!!
Merry Christmas!

Be Inspired

- Meredeth's creativity always inspires..what a beautiful party!

- A reminder to get started planning for and making food gifts for Christmas!

- A neat snowflake craft (best for older kids..borax is toxic!)

- Handmade holiday master list!

- More handmade fun!

Housekeeping..

Today we've been busy - we delivered taco soup (so good and so easy!) to a friend who had a baby recently and then enjoyed a fun playdate with some other friends.

We've accomplished a few odd jobs as well...
cleaning the tea kettle, sanitizing cutting boards and the dish drainer. Isn't it amazing how those little things tend to never get accomplished? After spending what seemed like forever cleaning out my yucky fridge recently, I vowed to concentrate harder on housekeeping. I've been inspired reading Home Comforts : The Art and Science of Keeping Houselately. It's just one of those books I love. It has so many handy tips on everything you might need to know about keeping house but it is also inspiring..it encourages you to make your house a home and to love doing it.
On to the next tasks of our day...most importantly playing with baby, making yummy fajitas for dinner, and giving a piano lesson!