A Hectic Month

This has been just an unbelievably hectic month, but a month full of good things like caroling with church family, a beautiful candle light service at church (my favorite part of the year)and baking cookies, cookies and more cookies. My parents just moved into town so that was a busy week preparing for that and then the craziness of moving day ~smile~. I can't forget all the shopping, planning and wrapping that have gone on but I must slow down and take time to refocus and take time to settle down and remember what we are celebrating.

It's about the cross...


Blessings,
Liisa

Cookies Cookies Cookies

Tomorrow evening we are having our annual cookie exchange and this year my neighbours are hosting it. I am really looking forward to it. It is so nice to get together with friends and family. A bonus is that I will bring 6 dozen of the same kind of cookies and bring home 6 dozen different kinds! It really doesn't get easier than that for variety of Christmas baking.

This year I will be making snowballs (recipe here)for it.

This cookie exchange will give me a bit of a head start on my Christmas baking. This year I will be making....

Snowballs
Double Chocolate Mint Cookies
Shortbread
Chocolate Peanut Butter Macaroons
Stained Glass Candy
Molasses Crinkles
Peanut Butter Cookies
Macaroons
Hello Dollies
Cherry Cookies
Thumbprints
Nonpareils
Peanut Butter Cookies
Russian Tea Cakes
Iced Spice Cookies

I like to start baking the beginning of December and make something almost everyday until Christmas but this year I am working outside the home for part of each day so I will have to see how it goes this time. Hopefully enough of each of these will actually make it to Christmas! My men tend to sample and sample and sample some more! Ok.... you got me, I do it too!

I bake alot of each kind of cookie because we deliver cookie plates around town at Christmas to let people know how much we appreciate all they do for us each year. We bring cookies to...
The Post Office
Our local grocery store
The dentist's office
Our doctor's office
The hospital emergency department and the first floor nurses station
Our bank
and
Our pharmacy

This year we will also bring cookies to the seniors home and to each of my housecleaning clients.
This means lots and lots and lots and lots of cookies will be made in my kitchen this year! ~smile~

I guess I better get baking!
Have a happy Monday!
Blessings,
Liisa

Picture from allposters.com

The Best Way to Clean an Oven

My mother in law is a little German lady who worked hard all her life and always had a spotless home. She taught me alot about house cleaning and I thought I would share the way she taught me to clean an oven.

The very first thing is to not let your oven get too dirty in the first place! If you are like me you just put off cleaning it as long as you possibly can, but if you keep after it and clean it often then the chore will be much less messy and will go quicker and easier.

When you do clean your oven be sure to lay out newspapers around the oven on the floor to guard against over spray, also remember to wear gloves. Take out the racks and spray down the oven well the night before with an oven cleaner (remember the door too). Place paper towels at the bottom of the oven door to prevent drips and close it.

In the morning wipe down the oven well using paper towels. Next fill an old container or a margarine tub (one you don't want to use for food or anything) with hot soapy water. Using an old rag wipe down the oven a few times to remove the cleaner residue.

Now spritz some paper towels with vinegar and wipe down the oven one last time to remove every last trace of soap and cleaner and you are done!

This seems like alot of extra steps but it eliminates the terrible smell and white streaks that can appear when you first turn on the oven after cleaning it. Your oven will be clean, fresh smelling and shiny...well worth the effort.

Now all this reminds me that I better get at cleaning my "black hole" of an oven!

Have a happy day!
Blessings,
Liisa

Picture from allposters.com

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Yesterday morning I woke up to the first snowy day of the year. Nothing puts in me in a more "homey" mood than a snowy day!
It was so very lovely, everything all fresh and white...so pretty! That is until I tried to leave my house and realized that I had put off buying winter boots a little too long! In the spring I had thrown out my old beat up ones and meant to buy a new pair this fall but I just kept putting it off. This meant that I had to go walking in a winter wonderland wearing just a little pair of flats, getting them full of the pretty white stuff, and freezing my feet all because I knew winter was coming and yet I was not prepared.

This holds a bigger lesson for me. There is something we all need to prepare for. The end could come at anytime, any day, any moment. It could be today. We are not told when Jesus will come back but even if He doesn't come soon we could meet the end of our earthly lives at any moment as well. Are you prepared? Have you made your travel arrangements before you take your final trip? Do you know without a shadow of a doubt that if you died right now you would go to heaven?

If you don't please look after that right now, be prepared! It is easy, simply pray asking God to come into your life, into your heart, confess your sins and turn from them. God is faithful and just and ready to forgive no matter what you might have done. He loves you and wants you to live with him for ever. So why not make that choice today. If you have done this please seek out a church in your area and let someone know that you have made this decision to be ready should your end come. If you need help with finding a church or would like to discuss this further please leave me a comment and I will be happy to get in contact with you!

I am now off to enjoy the winter weather!

Have a happy day!
Blessings,
Liisa

Picture from allposters.com

Unconditional Welcome

May a spirit of good cheer, devoted friendship and unconditional welcome be ever present in our home.

Unconditional welcome. I love the way that sounds, I love the idea of it, but do I practice it? Not always. :(

Unconditional welcome means to me being willing to open your home to others at anytime, without any notice and to anyone. (O.k. maybe not burglars and the like *wink* ) Hmmm....not as easy as it first sounds.

Do I throw open the doors and welcome my son's friends into our home and treat them as welcome guests? Do I invite new people at church home for lunch after the morning service? Do I welcome people into my home and make them feel comfortable when they pop by with no notice and my home is less than spotless....sometimes MUCH less than spotless? ~blush~ Do my family and friends know that they can always come by and receive an unconditional welcome at our home?

Definitely something to work on!

There are a couple of other things to keep in mind that I should mention. If your husband does not like having company, or having people drop in unexpectedly then you must honour his wishes. He is the head of your home and it would not be right to go against him for the sake of others.
Also we must keep our priorities in order. God first, husband second, children third, home fourth and then outside interests. We can't let our families and homes suffer because we are constantly busy with company.

Perhaps what I should really strive for in my home is a spirit of conditional welcome. If my priorities are in order and my husband is alright with it then open my doors and my home to others and hopefully be a blessing to them and a light shining for God. ~smile~

Blessings,
Liisa

Picture from allposters.com

Devoted Friendship

In the last post I mentioned a sign I read which says "May a spirit of good cheer, devoted friendship and unconditional welcome be ever present in our home."

So today I wanted to look at a spirit of devoted friendship and whether that is present in our home.

I looked up friendship in the dictionary and it said it involves intimacy and mutual attachment.

I started thinking about ways to increase intimacy and attachment. This is what I came up with....

- Be honest. You cannot be close with someone if you cannot be honest with them. Be careful about the things you share though. Respect the need for privacy in your marriage. Your friends do not need to know intimate details about your husband or personal information he wouldn't want you to talk about.

- Be real. You cannot be friends with someone who is putting on a show all the time, someone who is fake. Your friends should like you for you not who you are pretending to be.

- Listen. I don't know about you but when I get together with friends we can get on quite a roll chatting about everything under the sun. I need to slow down a bit and be sure I am really listening, so I don't miss it if they are expressing a need, or sharing something really important.

- Take time to connect even if it is by phone or email when you can't get together physically. Even just a few minutes to catch up and let them know you are thinking about them and that you care can really go a long way. By doing this you won't miss it if they need help with something or just support. I just ran into a friend that I was very close to when our children were small and I realized I hadn't seen her in over a year! That is terrible! I need to be sure I don't let that happen again!

- That brings me to my next point which is to be there when they need you and share their burdens (while being sure your priorities are in order) I recently missed helping out a dear friend after she had a medical procedure....I am quite ashamed to admit that I didn't even bring a her family a meal or anything. ~sigh~ I feel just awful! I can't let that happen again either!

- Keep what you share together, conversations, prayers etc. between the two of you. Never share confidences with anyone else. Respect their privacy, be a good friend!

- Be sure your conversation and activities stay in line with being a Christian. Do not say or do anything that you wouldn't if you were face to face with God. By uplifting each other and having God honouring fellowship you will both feel refreshed by your time together and not have anything to feel bad about afterwards.

- Be the friend you would like to have! The Bible teaches us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you and that is the best advice for friendships!

So I am going to be striving to put these things into practice and hopefully there will be an increased spirit of devoted friendship in our home!


Blessings,
Liisa

Picture from allposters.com

Spirit of Good Cheer

One of the homes I clean has a sign posted in the entryway which says "May there be a spirit of good cheer, devoted friendship and unconditional welcome ever present in our home.

Each week as I dust that sign I read it and yesterday I really took a moment to think about what it means and I wondered if that was true for our home. I thought I might explore this in the next few posts.

Is there a spirit of good cheer ever present in our home? As a wife and mother I set the tone for our home. If I am happy and cheerful then everyone else is too but if I am grouchy and in a bad mood everyone else will be too. The old saying "If Mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy" is true! That is because I hold the ability to cheer my family up or bring them down.

It starts at the beginning of the day. Do you greet your loved ones with a smile and kindness in the morning or are you grumpy and unhappy causing them to respond in kind? When they come home at the end of the day do you greet them with a hug and a smile or take out your days frustrations on them?

If you picked the second choice try being happy and loving and see how the whole atmosphere of your home changes. Even if our families have a bad day they will look forward to coming back home if it is filled with the spirit of good cheer!

So how do we fill our homes with good cheer when we don't feel particularly cheerful?
Only through God is this possible. The Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness and Temperance. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit these things will be evident in our lives. We have the ability to possess joy in spite of our circumstances because we have the Lord in out lives and know everything is in His control. There is wonderful freedom in realizing that everything is in His control not ours!

So is the spirit of good cheer ever present in my home? Sadly the answer is no but I am working toward that goal as I strive daily to be a blessing to my husband and to my son!

Happy Saturday!
Blessings,
Liisa

Picture from www.allposters.com

Outdoor Evergreen Decorations

These planters are from Presidents Choice. They are so lovely! I was very tempted to purchase one last year but then I thought I might try to make one myself. It was very easy and the best part is that I was able to find everything I needed at the compost yard! It doesn't get any better than completely free and beautiful decorations for your home.

What I did was go and get various kinds of evergreen branches, red sticks and pine cones. I simply used my big pots that I had flowers in this summer on my porch and deck. They still had the dirt in them so I stuck the branches into the dirt in a nice arrangement, put the red sticks in the center and wired on pine cones throughout the greenery. I will add big bows to the front and there you have it - quick and easy!

If you like you could spray paint the sticks and pine cones gold or silver and add a co-ordinating bow. You could also add in berries or any other decoration you like.

The arrangements I made last year made it right through the winter and still looked lovely.

Happy Creating!
Blessings,
Liisa