The Christmas season is a wonderful time to find a church home if you don’t already have one. You can do better than showing up at Christmas and Easter. Find a church family that feels right and dive in! Get involved.
If you aren’t already reading books at bedtime, this is a great tradition to start. It’s great for your infants, toddlers, pre-readers, young readers, advanced readers, and tweens! Here are some great Christmas titles for the season: The Night Before Christmas: The Heirloom Edition Christmas in the Manger Board Book The Polar Express Gingerbread Friends [...]
If you are going to give gifts for grownups, give something consumable. Gifts to charities, gourmet foods, event tickets, are all great gifts for grownups. As an extended family, we’ve decided to forego gifts for the grownups this year. We have just about everything we want already, unless you count big ticket items. We have [...]
Today, let’s take some time to check our progress. How are you doing with the first 50 days of preparation for Christmas? Do you know where you’re spending Christmas this year, or are you playing host/ess? Menu? Guests? Have you scheduled a family portrait sitting and selected/ordered Christmas cards? Are you handmaking gifts this year? [...]
November is a great time to take the family out to a weekend Fall Festival or Arts and Crafts Fair. You can find all sorts of homemade gifts and decorative items. If you’re at a really fancy festival, there might be kids’ activities, music performances, storytellers, fine art shows, and food stands. Photo courtesy of [...]
Christmas has traditionally been a great time for movie watching with the family. There are already a couple of movies out for the whole family, but Christmas will have some new releases for your viewing enjoyment. I took the kids to see High School Musical 3 on Friday, and I thought it was a really [...]
This is a novel but necessary concept for many people in this economic climate. Forced by circumstance (lay-off, bankruptcy, foreclosure, health problems, other catastrophes,) many Americans will be having a “Buy Nothing” Christmas, or at least a “Buy a WHOLE LOT LESS” Christmas this year. Even if you aren’t under tremendous economic pressure, there are [...]
Take time out of your schedule today (and hopefully every day) to pray. The easiest place to find time is early in the morning. Set your alarm for 10 minutes earlier, get up, and get on your knees. If you need music, play music, if you need silence, bask in the sound of the sunrise. [...]
Now that you’ve decided to host Christmas dinner at your place this year, it’s time to think about your tablescape. A great tablescape adds a lot to the atmosphere of your dinner when done well. My favorite way to serve the food for a big dinner is buffet style. If you choose to do that, [...]
A little calligraphy goes a long way to adding that special personal touch. During the holidays, I immediately think of using it on place cards for the holiday table, gift tags, and handmade Christmas Cards. For kids, a little calligraphy practice will improve their regular everyday handwriting! Calligraphy doesn’t have to be perfect or follow [...]