More Quotes for Christmas

I read this about entertaining...
"Your home is the canvas; your guests are the paint."
When entertaining, I want to be more focused on my guests than perfection in my home decor, food, and appearance.

Also I read a great reminder for my family and ME so that I have a spirit of thanksgiving and contentment every day and during the holidays...

"REFLECT upon your present blessings, of which every man has many..."
Charles Dickens

Thank you, Father, for our blessings.

  I just wanted to share with you the darling stationary company of my friend Dabney Herring Stevens. Dabney creates the design and will customize as well.  The products are wonderful, just wanted you to know.  Just for fun thought you should know that Dabney is a wife and mother of two darling boys, and is also the aunt of the McMullan quadruplets and Mollie and Kate McMullan for whom many of you have been praying.  

Mollie Pop Press 

Mollie Pop Press

Just what you had in mind.

Mollie Pop Press is a small stationery company in Alpharetta, Georgia. It was started out of a desire to communicate stylishly, whether by note, invitation or identification. For many people I know, Santa Claus brings a variation of the same gift every year; for my four sisters and me, it was stationery. As we got married, Santa continued bringing stationery with our exciting new names in print. Our husbands were soon included in such gifts from Santa because we loved seeing their names in beautiful print as well, sometimes just to distract from the actual handwriting! My mother is an AP English teacher, and she has mastered the fine art of writing, whether on a post-it note or fine linen paper. Thus Santa's gift. Each of us grew to love seeing our names in print.

 

Mollie Pop Press strives to create, manufacture and deliver personalized paper products that you will love as much as we loved the stationery we received for Christmas each year. Whether you are browsing our website for yourself or for someone else, our products will arrive neatly and beautifully packaged with a personal note attached at your request. And, as always, we offer a 100% money-back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied. Thank you for your interest in Mollie Pop Press.

A Few Christmas Thoughts

Merry Christmas! AM I really blogging? Okay, I have tried to put these tips onto the blog two other times, if this time doesn't make it, then you weren't meant to have the tips. They are not that profound anyway! I am just trying to encourage my friend by responding to her AWESOME Holiday blog!!!!!!!!!!! If these tips show up three times, I apologize.
1) Using cute ribbon, tie Christmas Cards on a Christmas tree each day they arrive. You can then pray for the families on the tree...and after taking them down...continue to pray for a few of them each day all year long by scrolling through them each morning during your quiet time.
2)Put out a holiday puzzle...I bought one on sale for half price after Christmas last year and can't wait for our family to sit by the fire and the tree and work it together. Isn't that why we are doing all of this?
3)Instead of saving entire catalogs, I buzz thru them daily and only keep the page I like with the gift idea I like circled. I put the name of who it would be appropriate for on it and I check to make sure there is a phone # or website address at the bottom of the page. Then I store it in my Christmas notebook. I am going to take a few of these to The Peanut Gallery tomorrow and make sure that they cannot order them before I go on-line...I really do feel it is important to shop locally if possible.
4)In response to Jennifer's question about something meaningful to have your kids do...I heard from Pete Newman (Kanakuk Kamps...go to their website!) that one idea was to give your child some money and have them find one person/organization to help over the holidays...I am going to try that this year. The International Justice Mission (IJM.org) is an organization to look into if you are seeking world justice...you probably will want to do something a little more hands on and locally tho for Christmas.

Calling for fun recipes

I think these little mice are the cutest and I think the Newmans are going to make these for neighbors gifts this year. (If you are a neighbor of the Newmans you must stop reading right now.)  If you decide to join us I have one little tip:  instead of dipping the cherries in chocolate that you have melted over your own stove in a pot that you will now have to wash including shortening that you had to buy just for this recipe and now you have a lot left over..... I suggest looking in the produce section of your favorite grocery store for the microwavable chocolate that I have used to make chocolate covered strawberries dozens of times.  There is NO mess and it is DELICIOUS!  

Do you have a simple fun recipe?  Send it over.  Another day we will call for classic holiday recipes, the ones for family looks forward to, the ones that mean Christmas.  

Christmas Eve Mice

SERVINGS: 24

METHOD: Chill

TIME: Prep: 25 min. + chilling

Ingredients:

• 24 double-stuffed cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies
• 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 teaspoons shortening
• 24 red maraschino cherries with stems, well drained
• 24 milk chocolate kisses
• 48 sliced almonds
• 1 small tube green decorative icing gel
• 1 small tube red decorative icing gel

Directions:

Carefully twist cookies apart; set aside the halves with cream filling. Save plain halves for another use. 
    In a microwave or heavy saucepan, melt chocolate chips and shortening; stir until smooth. Holding each cherry by the stem, dip in melted chocolate, then press onto the bottom of a chocolate kiss. Place on the cream filling of cookie, with cherry stem extending beyond cookie edge. 
    For ears, place slivered almonds between the cherry and kiss. Refrigerate until set. With green gel, pipe holly leaves on the cream. With red gel, pipe holly berries between leaves and pipe eyes on each chocolate kiss. Store in an airtight container at room temperature. 

From Jennifer:  "Something I would like to do and would love to get ideas for is an activity/ies that my children could do over break that would serve the community, the church, the underprivileged . . . I am looking for something a little different and a little more involved than doing a Christmas Angel from the mall (although I do think that is a great thing).

Please post ideas/input in the comment section below.  

Also, do you have a question for our group? Send it to laurienewman@mac.com or post it in the comment section and it will be transfered as a post.

Good morning everyone!  Is everybody off and running on this cool and sunny beautiful Saturday morning?  Hope you will take time this week to get your December 1st goals down on paper and on our blog so we can enjoy encouraging each other.  I have found that because I listed in writing what I plan to get done, my brain, which doesn't normally work very efficiently, sends off a little reminder bell when I am out to grab _____ for Christmas. (For example, I was in Reeves Saine buying strawberry cake and saw beaded cross ornaments made by senior citizens in Mississippi, my home state, and I picked them up for Sunday School teacher gifts.)  

Would you please:  1) send me your favorite online resources for gifts, cards, anything that would be helpful to our group.  Tell me a tiny bit about the site, what is great about it.  Either email them to laurienewman@mac.com or post in the comments section.  

2) send favorite scriptures, quotes, poems pertaining to Christmas.  Reading these things is inspiring as well as helpful when planning Christmas cards, scrapebooks, etc..

Finally, I just discovered something wonderful I want to make sure you know about.  Sara Groves, a favorite music artist of many of us, is releasing a Christmas CD.  On it is a lovely song she has written called It's True about the fact that the fantastic fairytale like love story of Christmas is true in the birth of Christ.    I heard her sing this song at Andrew Peterson's Christmas concert last year and have searched for it in CD since then. You may pre order it at saragroves.com or I am sure it will be on itunes when it is released on the 23rd.

"But it's true

kingdoms and crowns

a God who came down to find you

it's true

Angels on high

sing through the night alleluya"

Sara Groves ~ O Holy Night

A few questions......

"Now that my child is in middle school and has 7+ different teachers, how do I handle Christmas gifts?"

"Any new ideas for group teacher gifts?"  Individual?  Could the teachers out there please offer some wisdom?

"We have already done the photo calendar, what else can we make for our grandparents?"

My own additional question:

What are some creative gifts for sunday school teachers, piano/guitar teachers, mailman, garbage man (do not laugh, the garbage man at our house works VERY hard!) , etc... ?

Looking forward to hearing your ideas in the comments below!  

 We hope this page will be a place that we can post ideas and encouragement for one another, recipes and tips.  Please leave comments at the bottom of the posts and we will incorporate them into the blog as as we go!  Please forward this blog to anyone you think might like to join in!  The more the merrier!

Topic 1:  What are your goals for this 6 weeks?  Please reply in the comments section below.  It is fun to read the goals of each person to get ideas and inspiration.  This does NOT mean you need to take on all of them.  This is about helping your family and yourself, NOT being perfect.