Early Christmas...fun

 Almost Christmas! I can not believe it! Nine days till Christmas! Are you ready? I am not anywhere near ready for Christmas. So far I have taken down all my Fall decor in the house and put up the Christmas decorations. I am not a person who goes out and buys expensive decorations. Instead, I buy from yard sales....that's where people sale their belongings they do not want anymore and in front of their homes people put unwanted stuff on tables and sale their unwanted belongings really cheap. Thats me! I believe in stretching every dollar. While putting up my Christmas decor I realized I was missing my Christmas cookie jar, that my sister gave me a couple of years ago, and my fake poinsettias from my wedding twenty years ago. My husband and I searched the house and to no avail nothing! My husband was being so gentle with me about the missing box because I wanted to cry. I told my husband I am not even going to think about that missing box. Even now I....well let's just move on! It's really no one's fault. It got misplaced or thrown away. We're not going to ponder about the box....even though I want too! 

I know a lot of us do not have lots of money to buy gifts this year. The whole world is experiencing inflation. Families are struggling to pay bills and to put food on the table. This is a time to get back to what the true meaning of Christmas is and that is about Jesus being born to save us. Christmas is also about family. As a wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, or ect....this is our time to shine! There might not be a lot of presents around the tree this year but there is so much more we can offer. We as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, daughter in laws, grandmothers, can really put some meaning behind Christmas. We can plan meals made with love to serve our family every weekend leading up to Christmas. We can plan fun activities such as making Christmas cookies one week or making Christmas decorations with our children to really make it magical. This weekend my daughter and I made ginger bread cookies and they were AMAZING! The house smelled of ginger bread and it made the house feel like Christmas! Last weekend my husband and daughter made her ginger bread house...which they do every year...and we keep the ginger bread house up on the kitchen island thru the whole month of December. Christmas is making memories with the people we love! My daughter will remember the memories of making cookies and ginger bread houses than what's under the tree. 

I had an epiphany about going and gathering my own small family. ( talked about this in my last two blog posts) I told myself I would reach out more to get my siblings together....and I hold true to that promise. This weekend I called up my brother to make plans to go see the Christmas lights and we set a date and time to go. It felt so good to be with family. I could hear in his voice he was so happy to have his big sister reaching out to him, his wife, (my sister in law), and his son to make plans to get together. We met and drove over to see the Christmas lights and it felt like Christmas. There are horses pulling buggies with people in them to ride around the neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights. It's so magical! Of course, my family and brothers' family are all tight on money and seeing the Christmas lights was FREE! 

All of us parents want to give the best gifts to our children and family...but this Christmas let's remember the best gift is family. I want to encourage every mother, daughter, sister, wife, and grandmother to have strength and love to prepare for Christmas the way you want your family to experience Christmas thru you. Throw your doors open to your house and bake and cook with your love overflowing like a cup of coffee. Buy you a Christmas apron and wear it for your loved ones. There is something about a woman wearing an apron preparing and loving her family....it feels like home. The homemaker makes it feel like home. 

*This is an apron I made when I was 8 or 9 years old. I take this apron out every Christmas.

I thought about mothers. Mothers who are single mothers. You are dad and mom. If something does not get done by you then it's simply not getting done. You get lonely and I'm sure tired. You are bringing in the bacon and on top of that have to cook the bacon. There are no true days off to rest. You are the glue to holding your family together. I want to encourage you to take fifteen minutes out for yourself. I want you to make you a cup of coffee or tea and get your favorite pastry and sit down and watch the sunrise or the sunset. You deserve that! Get your strength so you can leave a legacy for your family. I do not care if it's just a can of biscuits or cookie dough from the store to put in the oven is just as good! Christmas is how you want to present it. 

The stay at home mom's this is for you.Your around those kids all day with no break. You see the same walls day in and day out. You have the same chores everyday that never change...they are repetitive. You cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Life is a revolving door. It's hard to keep the thoughts at bay that you wish you could contribute financially to help your husband. With the kids around you all day you can still experience loneliness. I want to encourage you that being with those babies, you are doing the best for them and for you. If we want to bring goodness to America, well that starts at home with dad and mom. I want you to know you are important and to take a break and drink a hot cup of coffee or tea and have a slice of cake or pie, heck,  have two pieces! Make your Christmas as special as you want it. 

Now this is for the working moms. You work everyday to make a living. You have to get everything ready the night before so things can run smoothly in the morning or if just in case everyone wakes up late. You have a thought in the back of your mind that you wish you could stay home with your babies. You feel like your babies are missing out because mom is not able to stay home. You are always playing catch up on the chores. The weekends are to catch up on everything. There never seems to be enough time to get what needs to get done. You are seen and you are loved! Take time out for yourself even if it's fifteen minutes. Sit down and have a cup of coffee or tea and have your favorite cookies to dip them in and relax! You are so important. Christmas is on the way and make your family's Christmas special by you just being present. 

Women make everything multiply. Anything we touch multiplies. It's up to our husbands to sustain the abundance. We make food for our families....we multiply it to feed a small army. Mothers you are seen, herd, and you are loved. I want to encourage every mother to keep going and never stop. You are the glue for your families. God loves all of us and we are so loved! 

I am a mom who works nine hours a day and I work every Saturday. It's a rough life and there are days I just wish I could give up my job. God provided my job, the strength to go to work, and he protects me to and from work. I just have to show up for work and make an honest day of working. The trials and tribulations will always come and right now I and my husband are sacrificing hard. I can see in the horizon I will be able to quit my job soon but that's not today. I think of the time I am missing out with my baby. No one can make the necessary sacrifices for me and my husband. With Christmas coming soon I still want Christmas to be special. I can promise there are not a lot of presents under the tree but I have made Christmas special so far by baking, cooking, and quality time. It's almost like getting back to basics. A good dose of what is really important is family. Giving our time to our loved ones is the best gift we can give. My Christmas present to my family is acts of love. Conversations of I'm here and I'm listening, but i would like to be heard too. I will bake a lovely pie or maybe some cookies to present to the people I care about. That's Christmas! 

As a little girl I remeber at church there would be a Christmas play. The church was all dressed up in beautiful Christmas wreaths, red garlands everywhere in the sanctuary. Gosh! It was beautiful! Every time you walked into the sanctuary you got a burst of Christmas! It was all so breathtaking. December was in the air and the church was getting ready for our annual Christmas play. I do not remember the gifts that were under the Christmas tree all those past Christmases but I oh so remember the Christmas plays and Christmas parties. The night of the Christmas play the church lights in the sanctuary would be dimmed. The lights on the stage would be turned on and the story of Jesus's birth would start. I remember seeing Mary and Joseph looking down at the doll that represented Jesus. The wise men and the Shepards looking on the nativity scene. That feeling would well up inside of me of how blessed I was to be raised to see this every December. These are my Christmas memories and I love to embrace them because they are mine. I am blessed! 

Christmas is around the corner and Christmas is about making memories with our loved ones. Moma's make those memories with those babies. Take care of your self and rest when you can. Jesus loves all of us. You are seen and loved. Merry Christmas to each and every one of you! Be blessed! 

As a busy mom like the rest of the moms I wanted to share a tried and true recipe for Christmas. This is from my kitchen to yours. This recipe is ginger bread cookies. You will need to buy Christmas cookie cutters but this recipe is so good and the cookies are so soft. Word of the wise do not bake the cookies longer or the cookies will be hard. Also, when you cut out the cookies with the cookie cutters do not lift out the cut out of the cookies instead take out the excess around the cookies. 

When you cut out the cookies use parchment paper so you can move all the cut outs to a cookie sheet. With all my love, MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

Ginger bread cookies

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

12 tbs softened butter

12 tbs light brown sugar

2 egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup molasses

1st add in a bowl the flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, salt, and baking soda and mix all together. Set aside

2nd in a bowl add butter and brown sugar and mix with mixer and then add the two egg yolks, vanilla, and molasses and mix for about one minute. Continue to mix and add slowly the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix until a dough forms....it will look like pie crust dough. Take the cookie dough out and put into a plastic wrap and put in fridge for an hour. 

3rd after an hour take dough out and put dough on parchment paper and then put another parchment paper on top of dough. With a rolling pin roll dough out to desired thickness and use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Do not lift up the cookie shapes instead lift up the excess cookie dough and put the excess all together and roll again to cut out more cookies. Place the cookies back into the fridge for one hour. 

4th preheat the oven at 350 degrees and put the cookies to bake for 10 minutes. Make sure not to over bake. If the cookies are really thick then bake until you use a toothpick to poke cookie and make sure nothing shows on the toothpick. 

I hope you enjoy this recipe and I share this recipe with love from my Kitchen to yours. 

Risen Acres

Sonya