25 days of Christmas (give or take)

I am so excited about Christmas and so are my kids. I have so many things that I want to do with my family for the season and hopefully I will get to all of it. Pinterest has given me so many more ideas (which is where I got the idea for 25 days of Christmas). We'll see what we get done. My plan is to do something special for Christmas with my kids everyday. I was going to start on December 1st but we've gotten a little bit of a head start.
On Saturday, we put our Christmas tree up. Caitlyn & Clay loved this. On Sunday, they decorated some more. I think they've added decorations to our tree everyday. Monday we sang Christmas songs, Tuesday we made breakfast, complete with Christmas tree shaped biscuits, sang Christmas songs and watched Cailou's Holiday Movie. Today we made a cake and have played. Lots of memories being made. I think they have added ornaments to our tree everyday, but I love it. The excitement and happiness they have is so wonderful to see and it's quite contagious.
I wish I had taken pictures of the biscuits and cake but didn't. I am so looking forward to Christmas. With Caitlyn 3 years old and Clay 20 months old, they are at a great age to keep it fun. I am ready to do lots of crafts, bake lots of goodies, do tons of activities and most importantly, make many, many memories.

Turkey Fruit Tray

Yesterday was the Thanksgiving Feast at Caitlyns preschool. The kids were precious. I was asked to bring a fruit tray for the feast. I wanted to do something fun that Caitlyn could help with. She loves to help in the kitchen. I have seen several fruit & veggie trays  on pinterest that were made like a turkey but I put my own spin and this is what I came up with. We made the eyes from a cut up raisins and for the beak we used the tip of a cut up clementine.  Here are some sites that I used as my inspiration.

 

 

 

My Hope is Built

I love the Hymn, "My Hope is Built". I am So glad that my help is from above. With the storms that we face in our personal lives, at our jobs,  our country and everywhere in between, it's good to stand on a solid foundation and know that he is the rock, the anchor and he will protect you in all things.

So many times we put our hope and our trust in people on this earth. While it's good to trust and have friendships, those people will let you down. They are human.  Humans make mistakes, they mess up, they do things out of spite. People may betray you, talk about you, hurt you physically or emotionally or leave you, but the Lord, he will never leave or forsake you. He is the one and only one that can be completely trusted.  He is perfect and good. On Christ is where my hope lies, where I will stand and in whom I trust with all my heart.

My Hope is Built

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

Refrain

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

Refrain

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

Refrain

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

Thankfully Blessed

I can't believe it's November already. It doesn't seem possible. Yet here it is. I love this time of year. November & December when we start to prepare for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Planning for what is to come. And my kids, the joy and happiness to hear them talk about Christmas and what's coming up. Today my daughter, who is 3, started singing Jingle Bells. I couldn't help but smile. Even tho it doesn't seem like it should be time to sing Christmas carols yet, I thought how blessed I am.

How blessed am I? Well, if you look at material things you may not think that I have many blessings. But you can't go by looks. I have the Lord and the wonderful salvation that he gave me, my wonderful husband and beautiful kids, Gods love, mercy, grace & forgiveness, a great family, a roof over my head, food and the list goes on. I wouldn't trade anything for my blessings.

I am not bragging. Just thinking about how truly thankful I really am for all that God has done for me. We have gone thru, are going thru and probably will go thru many happy times, trials and struggles. Through it all the Lord has always been there. It's not always easy and there is so much I don't understand, but I always have someone to walk with me and help me thru. For that I am so very thankful and feel so very blessed.

All the blessings that I have been given come from above. He has trusted me & my husband with so much. After all, isn't that what blessings really are? They are things that God has entrusted us with. Things he has given to us. Even the trials, God turns into blessings. I can't begin to list all that I am thankful for, there isn't enough space. The Lord knows my heart tho and he sees what I can't always express. I owe everything to him. For all these things, these gifts, I am truly thankful.

A while back I wanted to curl my daughters hair, but, didn't have any curlers. I experimented by twisting sections of her hair and putting it up on her head and letting her sleep overnight. It worked! She had curls the next day. At that time I had not heard of this, tho I figured that it had been done before. Since then, I have seen it on Pinterest. I had not tried it in sometime so I thought I would try again. So here is what I did.

I took portions of her hair and twisted onto her head and put hair bands to hold them in place. She slept overnight like this.

 

When she woke up it was really curly and a little frizzy. So I calmed the frizz down some and pulled part of her hair back to keep it from being so big. I probably would've worked with it more and gotten it to not be so much but she had to get to school and we were running behind. In the end, I think it turned out very pretty.