my blessed life

(image from Pinterest) Well, hello!   I hope you all have enjoyed the holidays as much as I have!  My family--me included--just keeps saying how this was our best Christmas yet.  It was just really wonderful!   My parents and sister came from Arkansas for a week and a half to celebrate Christmas with us and I can't remember when we've had more fun!  We wore ourselves out with all of the holiday fun, but it was so worth it.   I just have to share some of my fave holiday shots with you:   window shopping in downtown Paducah, KY   Hamming it up with the whole family at Patti's 1880's Settlement making gingerbread houses with our friends visiting the Gaylord Opryland Hotel     decorating gingerbread cookies while waiting to see Santa at Bass Pro in Nashville refocusing our souls at our church 's candlelight communion service the joy of a new puppy (my kiddos' first!)...

If you need an easy and yummy snack to whip up at the last minute, here's a good one for you.  It's definitely been a hit at our house! Elf Food 4 cups Frosted Cherrios 3 cups mini marshmallows 1 cup yogurt-covered raisins 1 cup "toasted marshmallow" Jelly-Belly's 1 cup white chocolate morsels 1 (10 oz.) box white fudge-covered mini pretzels ***** Mix all together in a large bowl and serve!   See how easy that was? Gotta love it:)

May you have a wonderful  and  blessed  Christmas  season this year!

It's been another week of holiday fun around here and I must admit that there was no *formal* schooling done.  Just lots of fun! We visited our downtown's tree lighting ceremony--isn't it a lovely tree? I whipped up some snowman pancakes for the kiddos (actually super easy!), they were a huge hit! We went to a production of The Christmas Elves and the Shoemaker at a local theater.  The kiddos loved the performance, it was really cute!  We enjoyed our first fire in our fireplace--whoo hoo! The Princess had her Girl Scout troop Christmas party.  She had a blast making an angel candy holder, an ornament and peppermint bark. And now...Nana and Papi and Aunt Kari have arrived!!  The long-awaited day is finally here!! We have lots of Christmas fun planned for this next week while they are visiting, so I won't be posting regularly.  I'm sure I'll pop in now and then, but we'll be out having fun most of the time.  I h...

Are you busy baking up some goodies for Christmas yet? So far I've only made one batch of cookies, for our homeschool group party last week. But this weekend I'll be starting to make more! My family will be arriving soon and there must be treats to eat, right? I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you today: 1. Buttery Spritz Cookies (works well for a cookie press as well as thumbprint cookies!) 2. Amish Sugar Cookies (Ahh...Mazing!!) 3. Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bread 4. Sugar Cookie Cut-Outs 5. Praline Bars (LOVE!) 6. Buckeyes (a personal fave!) 7. Sand Tarts What's a favorite holiday treat that you like to make?

Lately my kiddos have really been enjoying listening to Bible stories on cd from The World's Greatest Stories . They have always enjoyed audio stories and what better thing to listen to than God's Word? The World's Greatest Stories are a series of cd's made by George W. Sarris . Sarris is an amazing voice actor and has quite the impressive resume. He also has a passion for the Bible and has recorded quite a bit of it on cd. There are six different cd's: The Prophets , The Life of Christ , Beginnings , Joshua & Esther , Joseph & His Brothers and Defeating Giants . Each cd contains actual Scripture passages, not an abridged retelling of the Bible, and you can order them in either KJV or NIV versions. Our family got to review The Prophets , which includes passages from Daniel, I Kings and Jonah. It includes the stories of: The Blazing Furnace The Handwriting On the Wall Daniel in the Lion's Den Elijah and the Prophets of Baal The Prophecy of Jona...

Welcome to our house at Christmastime! As it's a new house for us, I am still changing things and learning where I like things best. So it's been fun decorating for the holidays with a fresh perspective. I was so happy to have a fireplace and mantel to decorate again! I realized this year that I haven't been able to use all of my mantel decor since 2005! So glad I saved all of that stuff because it was so fun to be able to pull it all out this year. Here is our family room tree. For the second time ever I decided to put up two trees. Our little 7' tree is just so FULL of ornaments :) This year it holds all of the ornaments except my vintage glass ones and other blown glass ornaments. It's still VERY full, but I love it that way! Rather than show you all of my nativities this year, I'm just highlighting a couple of them. This one is my favorite, made for me by a family friend. This is another one I just love. I bought it in Mexico City. If you would li...