Peace in the Everyday
For all the blessings of the year, For all the friends we hold so dear,
For comes the season of good cheer, We thank Thee, Lord.
For life and health, those common things, Which every day and hour brings,
For home, where our affection clings, We thank Thee, Lord.
Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends far and near.
(lyrics adapted from Hutchison & Quaile)
Growing up, Thanksgiving meant a whole weekend down at Papa’s ranch. Thirty or more relatives crowded together in the noisy ranch house for a huge feast of food and of family. I remember those weekends of getting dirty in the brush, jumping on the “trampoline” (an old rusty mattress) or swinging on the tire swing, shooting guns at the rusty cans down at the dump and exploring the caves and making forts with my sister and brother. Thanksgiving means a crowd and a lot of food, in my mind. So when I married Greg, I decided I’d start hosting Thanksgiving at our house, as the old ranch house tradition had died away. Now my family and Greg’s family gather here to celebrate our blessings. We cook together all day Thursday while the men watch football and pretend to watch the children. (To give them credit, they do clean up the after meal mess!) It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a little chaos and lot of creative cooking.
This year I just have too many things I want to make. On top of that, my standards have become too high. Do you know that every single boxed stuffing mix I looked at had high fructose corn syrup in it? Can you believe it? Now, I wasn’t shopping at my good ole Trader Joe’s because their turkeys aren’t big enough, so I’m thinking maybe their stuffing would be healthier, but I don’t know. I just couldn’t bring myself to buy the corn syrup kind. What have I become? Instead I bought some whole wheat bread, hawaiian bread, and will make cornbread tonight and I plan on merging these two recipes to make a stuffing for Thanksgiving. Shockingly, Paula Deen’s recipe has some horrible reviews! Say it ain’t so, Paula! I do love her (butter filled) recipes, as well as Tyler Florence’s, so I’ll merge the two and see how it goes. Does anyone have a wonderful stuffing recipe to share?
Of course, pumpkin pie is my favorite Thanksgiving food. It tastes best the morning after…cold pumpkin pie with whipped cream for breakfast can’t be beat. This year I’m making this recipe that my friend Holly brought to our church fellowship group. It was SO good! Even Greg (a non-pumpkin kind of guy) loved it. Holly said she uses half as much powdered sugar as Paula recommends. Like I said, Greg’s not a pumpkin fan, so his mom will bring apple pie, and I also have a pear cake recipe I like and some farmer’s market pears to use up. And with my sister and her husband spending the night, I’m contemplating making the famous lemon blueberry scones…we’ll see about that.
So I managed to fight the crowds today at the store to snag a 22 pounder (hope that’s enough!) and potatoes for mashing. (Another place my standards have risen…I just can’t handle frozen or flaked mashed potatoes anymore…sigh.) Oh, and some cranberries to make a chutney or sauce to go alongside the canned version. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. Fair warning: I am sure that at least one or two of these ideas will never come to fruition, but I do so love thinking about delicious recipes! Thank goodness we’re having all the cousins over the next day to help eat the leftovers! Can’t wait to catch up with cousins from New York and Oregon who won’t be able to come out for Christmas. I love November!
Here it is…Becky’s homemade backpack. My biggest handmade Christmas gift is complete. When cousin Becky saw Jake’s backpack in his first day of school photos, I’m not going to lie, she had to have one. Does it matter that she is thirty-one years old? I think not. Because really, if we could carry around a backpack like this, wouldn’t we? Each time I make a backpack (and yes, that is only twice now) I swear that I don’t know what I am doing and that I will never make another one. (that is a hint to say that it is very doubtful that I will ever create a tutorial for this!) But if I’m honest I can see many homemade backpacks in my future. One for me, perhaps? One for Tyler, for sure. But for now, cousin Becky will be the one enjoying her new stitched creation. At least she has a class of happy second graders to show it off to…after all, what’s a new backpack without an adoring audience? Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas (take your pick) to you, Becky!
Everyone needs a spot. A haven from the buzzing world. A getaway where legos and jelly and questions cannot enter. Even if she only gets to steal away for a few minutes here and there, she must have that spot. If a certain kitty claims that spot as her own, too, that’s okay…she can share with such a calm and quiet companion.
It doesn’t have to be neat and tidy because things are being made in this spot…things are happening, ever so slowly. Things that can be stitched together in minutes here and moments there. The spot is always waiting.
There are shelves of fabric: nicely folded brand new fat quarters, rumpled remains of my projects and hand me downs from others, thrifted fabrics, reproduction fabrics, fabrics that may never be anything but inspiration. Fabrics that are loved and can be made into things like this, which I will reveal tomorrow…
Our choice to homeschool this year had nothing to do with how it would affect the holidays, but I’m seeing it as a great perk of homeschooling! Just think, all those fun projects I used to do with my students when I was teaching can now be brought home and done with my own kids! The art projects! The crafts! The gift making! And to all that I can add stories and crafts and projects and teaching that celebrates our family’s desire to hold Christ at the center of Christmas. We’re already pretty loose homeschoolers (unschooling is the philosophy I most identify with for these early years) and I imagine it will get even less structured in the coming weeks. The singing, the baking, the ornament making! Oh, I can envision it all!
Which reminds me, I’ve got to get going on those last homemade presents if I want them to be done this week. The boys’ last presents should be arriving via UPS in the next few days and then I can get everything wrapped and breathe a sigh of relief. We only have one homeschool class in December (besides Jake’s weekly hour of computers, which he loves) so there should be plenty of time for celebrating the season through our homeschool activities together. I’m kicking it off next week when we’ll drop our regular schedule and spend our days with a Simple Science unit in which we’ll explore magnets, bouyancy, and matter (solid, liquid, gas, evaporation, etc.) I know Jake will be thrilled, as “not enough Science” was one of his biggest complaints before we pulled him out of kindergarten.
The second activity on my list for next week is to make pilgrim and indian costumes out of paper grocery bags. Just because I had one when I was little and I think they are super cool. And yes, I realize that “Native American” is the more politically correct term, but my aunt who’s a docent at a local museum informed me that “Indian” or “American Indian” is making a comeback. So I’m sticking with it.
Oh, and we’ll be doing some more baking next week. Paula Deen’s Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake which a friend brought over a few weeks back and I’ve been craving every since. Okay, I’m rambling. I’ll sign off now before I get myself too worked up. Good night.
The second part of my “assignment” for the Holidays In Hand class I’m taking at jessicasprague.com is to turn my Holiday Values into concrete Holiday Goals. Does it mean that I’m a complete dork that I get excited just thinking about an excuse to write another list of goals in my life? Yes, I know it does.
Woodard Family Christmas Values & Goals:
Today I’m thinking about what my goals and values and intentions are for Christmastime. What matters most to me? What do I want to do, focus on, teach my kids? I’m taking a free little class online at jessicasprague.com (a great place for digital scrapbooking and photography classes, by the way) and our first assignment is to write down our holiday values. I like the idea of living intentionally, so this fits right in with my mindset.
Woodard Family Christmas Values:
I’ve always been a goal maker, a list maker, a priority maker. I find it easier to make decisions about commitments when I know where my priorities lie. These five Christmas Values fit nicely into inward (Anticipation, Togetherness and Home), outward (Reaching Out) and upward (Anticipation and Educating) values. I may be tweaking them as the days go by, but for now they seem to feel right. Today is the last day to sign up for this free Holidays In Hand class at jessicasprague.com, so head over there now if you’re interested in joining me. Now I’m off to enjoy some freshly baked bread…the house smells so yeasty good!
I love getting ready for Christmas. A few years ago we had a MOPS speaker who encouraged us to have all of our gift shopping and wrapping finished before Thanksgiving. That thought just resonated inside of me, and although I didn’t get it done in time that year, I have made a huge effort to accomplish that for the past two years. We have a tradition of doing a fun Christmasy activity every day in December, so there’s already an abundance of Advent merriment in December. It’s nice to feel relaxed about the gift giving side of things. I have some handmade gift ideas I’m working on right now (yikes…Thanksgiving is fast approaching! I better get cracking!) and the boys’ presents are already bought. I really like taking the time to purchase early and wrap non-Santa gifts in cute matching paper and ribbon, then I use the gifts as part of my Christmas decorations in our entertainment center above the t.v.. There’s no way I’d be able to wrap anything artfully if I waited until the last minute to buy and wrap it! One other idea we adopted last year was to take all toys out of their boxes/packaging and put batteries in before wrapping. Christmas morning is so much more fun for Greg now! We can all immediately play with the toys without struggling to release the toys from their death grip packaging. (Who creates that impossible packaging, I don’t know.)
But I digress…Cards! Ever since I started stamping a few years ago I’ve made my Christmas cards, and this year I love the color scheme I discovered: pink, light blue, gray, and glitter! These cards are so beautiful in person that I hesitate to post pictures. (Why is glitter so hard to photograph?) I won’t have many of these to send out so I’ll also send out lots of others I’m using as samples for my stamping club. 
Doesn’t glitter just get you in the mood for the holidays?
My title today comes almost directly from Leo over at mnmlist.com, one of my favorite new blogs. I’ve spent the morning (the day already, I guess I should say!) cutting back my craft supplies. On my road toward minimalism, crafting is my biggest obstacle.
Artists are keepers. We see an interesting pattern or a new tool or the perfect paper or some other such thing (even what seems like trash to someone else!) and we can visualize what it will become when we take the time to create with it. The problem is, there’s always something new that catches my eye and I forget all about that other project I have waiting in the wings. The wonderful things I bought/found/collected/saved are forgotten when I find that perfect something new. I’d like to alter this cycle a little bit.
I’m trying to go through my art studio/office with the ultimate clutter buster questions in mind: Do you use it? Do you love it? If not, it goes into the giveaway pile. I emailed my crafty friends and I’ve already had four women drop by today (with two or three more coming later.) We had nice chats and caught up as they went through my freebies, and I was happy to see my neglected supplies go to good new homes. It makes it a bit easier to let go of them. They kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to give away such nice and usable things and I told them yes but please don’t ask me again or I might reconsider! When you’re hanging onto several one dollar rolls of organza ribbon from an invitation business you shut down five years ago, you know it’s time to let go and move on!
…a day later… I’m now in the process of putting things back into my studio and am so thankful that some of my newer fine art supplies (paints, lino carving tools, watercolor papers) will fit nicely into the spaces left behind from the big clean out. They will be glad to get out of their big tupperware tub that was sitting on the floor in the corner of the studio, and I will be glad to avoid looking at that eyesore anymore! Even the boys’ art tub found a spot on the bookshelf and I’m putting some more of their craft supplies into nicer boxes leftover from the clean out. Why is it harder for me to pare down their art supplies than it is for me to pare down mine? I just feel like there’s so much possibility in every empty tin canister or strawberry basket or egg carton. Sigh. I guess I’m not as far down the road towards minimalism as I think I am. It’s all a process, I remind myself. Now I’m off to tackle my mountain of beautiful rubber stamps. Wish me luck…I’ll need it!
Down this curving path lies a beautiful place to rejuvenate. Laughter, stories, crafting, eating, walking, drinking, relaxing and renewing with rich womenfolk. Rich in memories and wisdom, each of us with our own questions and our own stories, becoming ever richer in the sharing.
In this fading stone manor we find connections through time shared…
…wisdom shared…
…and new memories created together. Who could forget the banana cream pie stalker? And what other group of women would not hesitate to pick up owl pellets for later dissection? Memories like these plus a few twilight evenings of this…
…and a pecan encrusted french toast for breakfast. Heavenly.
A sunrise walk in our pajamas and bathrobes exploring the dunes in the cool early morning desert air…
…with plenty of time for laughter along the way.
Desert dwellers even find art in the weeds.
When generations of women take the time to join together, something beautiful happens.
Family.
The middle of nowhere became somewhere this weekend, if only because it hosted our 5th Annual Berg Girls’ Weekend 2009. We missed you Debby and Michele!
There are very few activities that I’m willing to sacrifice our home time for…but baseball is now one of them. Keeping our life pace sane is a top priority to me, so with that in mind the boys didn’t join Little League (too many practices and games) but we found a great little baseball class through the school district that is for ages 3-5 so they both can play. Every Thursday we meet up with their best friend and about eight other boys and a VERY patient “coach” and watch our boys run around acting silly. I’m so glad we can start their sporting life with such a light-hearted group where scads of kids from both teams chasing a ball is not frowned upon, and dogpiles of giggling children are common. None of the kids seem to know that if you’ve hit the ball, you shouldn’t be the one to chase it down. Or if there’s already someone on second base, you shouldn’t go there, too. In fact, three players on second base is not unusual. The most important thing is that the kids are running, giggling, chasing balls, rough-housing a bit, hitting, fielding, and having a ton of fun. I know sports will slowly become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, and I’m okay with that as the boys grow. But I’m very thankful today for our little baseball class where it’s okay to shout across the field about how cool the clouds look today or to simply walk off the field to cuddle with mom for a minute before heading back out. It’s very relaxed and fun and we’re all having a ball.
Warming up…the giggling has already begun. You can see them watching whatever antics Tyler has thought up (he’s usually the instigator of the silliness).
Tyler bats both lefty and righty…the coach asks him before each at bat which way he wants to bat. It cracks me up.
Jake has a true love for the game. His expression as he rounds second shows it!
This one reminds me how big my boys are getting. I love the late evening light.
Sometimes they forget which “team” they’re on. This time I think Tyler actually did run to third rather than chase the ball with Jake. Generally they like to be on whatever base their friends/brothers are on.
I know this will be one of the treasured pictures years down the road. And baseball begins.
Did you laugh at me the other day when I mentioned our first fireplace fire of the season? Faraway folks might find it funny when southern californians find weather in the mid 60’s to be an occasion for a wood-burning fire. But when the temperature the day before was 89, mid 60’s are something to note. Fall is here! Well, what we like to call fall, that is. This is a somewhat non-comittal season which begins somewhere in late October and hangs around for five or six months. For a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas we pretend it is winter, donning scarves and gloves at the slightest chill. Somewhere in Aprilish we celebrate spring, if only to make Easter seem a bit more appropriate. Then, although we’ve been playing outdoors and encountering short heat waves for months, we declare summer to have arrived sometime in June or July. Californians are a funny bunch, aren’t we?
To celebrate the impending arrival of “winter,” I’m beginning my December daily scrapbook. I first used this idea (courtesy of Ali Edwards) two years ago, and I so loved it that I’ve done it each year since. The idea is that the holidays become so stressful sometimes that we fail to enjoy them and think of them as work, especially the memory-keeping that piles up into January. Rather than feeling guilty and forced in the new year to record the season’s memories, we make a scrapbook beforehand. Every few days or weeks in December, we print out our holiday pictures and paste them into an album that we’ve already created sometime before Thanksgiving. We keep some embellishments handy to paste overtop of the pictures and jot down our thoughts and joys as they happen. It transforms the memory-keeping process of the holidays into one of purposeful joy and celebration. And when Christmas is over we have a completed album and are ready to move our focus onto other projects. What release!
This year my December daily is startlingly simple. I just used a Simply Scrappin’ kit from Stampin’ Up! and made a 5×7 book into which I’ll paste 4×6 prints along with 5×7’s of my favorites (these will become their own pages in the book.) The kit includes cardstock stickers I can attach overtop, and I’ll journal as I go. I may have to buy some smaller embellishments (most of the kit embellishments are pretty big) but this is the basic idea. Below you’ll find this year’s (blank) book along with the past two years’ books, completed. If you like the idea, visit here, where they’re just starting the process of making this year’s December daily. Bring on the holidays!
my december album 2007
Inside the 2007 album…4×6 pictures were the base of each page (backed by patterned paper or another picture) and I put the embellishments and journaling right over top.
I even turned the album either way so that vertical pictures fit in, too.
2008 December album…I went with a 6″ x 12″ format because I wanted a little more room for decorating the pages and having multiple pictures of events.
I used shaped papers (like the arch on the left page) and regular papers mixed together.
I like adding crafts and mementos right into the books, too.
The cover of this year’s december album. I love the red, olive, chocolate, ivory color combo. The book looks so skinny now, but it will fatten up quickly!
The inner pages are just patterned paper or plain textured cardstock from the scrappin’ kit from Stampin’ Up!
Here are the supplies waiting to embellish the pictures as I go. I think I’ll probably add a few more supplies that coordinate.
And the back cover. Maybe I’ll add a little journaling block in the lower right hand corner with the Christmas highlights?
Just a note: I call these december albums because they don’t just document Christmas day or the parties surrounding it. We spend the whole month of December celebrating and anticipating Jesus’ birthday. Each day we open (several) advent calendars with the story of Jesus’ birth and we do an activity from our activity calendar, just like I did with my family growing up. It makes for a whole month of merriment and celebration and most importantly, thinking about Jesus and his ministry on earth. We love December. Do you have a favorite way of keeping the memories of the season each year?
This was one of those charmed weekends…when everything just falls together and works out to be enjoyable for everyone. We had applesauce canning, cookie making, costume finishing, carnival going, maze exploring (in the coolest maze at a local church carnival…boxes taped together for preschoolers to crawl through with flashlights…filled the whole auditorium…the boys were in heaven), trick-or-treating, candy eating, party going and even ended the weekend with a family movie and some card stamping time for me. What could be better?
As for the boys’ costumes, they both wanted to be knights after visiting Medieval Times a few months ago and reading a lot of King Arthur since then. I used two women’s hoodies ($10 from Target) and covered the hood and arms with duct tape. They each chose a crest which I drew and they colored. I used two of my brown belts to make sword holders for them (plus a $5 sword for Jake from Target and an old foam sword from our toy bin for Tyler). Using some foam and electrical tape, we made lances for each of them, and we already had shields in our dress up box. I thought this was plenty but apparently you just can’t be a knight without a helmet they cried. You have chain mail I explained. But the tears would not fade until we made some papier mache helmets (with Nonna’s help, thank goodness) and covered them with duct tape, too. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t want to wear them on Halloween. They had too much gear to carry around with them anyway, but they’ve already gotten plenty of dress up opportunities with the extra stuff. They even won Most Creative Costume at Jake’s homeschool Halloween party on Friday. They were thrilled, as was I!
I hope your Halloween was full of family, fun and frights!
Yesterday I could not control my need to create. With our focus on other things lately, it’s been too long since I simply made something. So during rest time when I usually discipline myself to ignore the other pressing needs and focus on some quiet prayer time, I felt the creative urge take over. I had to sew. So I made this:
My sister and I had gone to the fabric shop a few weeks back, looking for some fabric to match a quilt she’s working on, and a large pile of fat quarters came home with us. They’ve been begging to be made into something pretty. It’s been so long since I made a bag that I sewed the handles in totally wrong but was too lazy to rip out the seam so I just covered it with some leftover lace, which I actually love! Sometimes the mistakes and their coverups are the best part of a piece of art, don’t you think? When I finished that bag, I felt myself being pulled back to the sewing room after the boys went to bed and I made this:
“What are they for?” you ask. They’re for my sanity. Oh, you meant what would I carry in them…well, that doesn’t really matter much to me. I’m sure they’ll find a purpose. I even managed to cut out the fabric for my cousin’s Christmas present and stitch a little bit on that. I’m hoping to do a few more homemade Christmas presents this year than I did last year. We shall see. What are you creating these days?
It has been a week of doing and making and going around here. We’re trying to establish a homeschool rhythm, only to discover that irregularity is the rhythm of a homeschooler, I think. The bustle of an upcoming holiday adds both excitement and chaos to our days. We’re all about pumpkins and fall leaves and costumes and such. Yet there are days when it takes a purposeful effort to turn my heart away from the troubles of the world and towards the blessings of God. Days like today when the day seems overtaken by the things of life (errands taking longer than expected, a lunch with unruly little ones and an uncooperative grandmother, too many hours away from home, a papier mache project waiting to be done while the supplies for said project have mysteriously vanished, the resulting mess from the papier mache, the prospect of pumpkin carving and yet another mess to be made…)
When Greg arrived home tonight, what I really wanted was to get out, alone, for an oversweetened and overpriced coffee, but with pumpkin carving as the activity of the night, I was forced instead to purposefully change my cranky attitude into an attitude of thankfulness. What could I be thankful for? The first fire of the year warming the hearth. (I clear the ashes and light the logs and listen to their crackling.) Hot chocolate for the whole family. (I take the time to heat milk and make Trader Joe’s sumptuous sipping chocolate to be sipped from the cutest little miniature cups in the cupboard.) Observing the closeness of family. (I sit back in my cozy chair and watch Greg carving the pumpkins as the boys engage in some knightly swordfighting wearing parts of their halloween costumes over bare buns.)
Such small, purposeful actions to change the course of my day begin to warm my heart, until I’m refreshed and renewed, ready to enjoy the joyful shouts as we light our jack-o-lanterns for the first time (one mad pumpkin and one giggling one, as requested.) Today is a good lesson for me. Be the change you want to see in the world, Gandhi once said. Maybe I never realized before that if I want to change my attitude, I need to get up and act. Light that fire, set the mood for a positive attitude, make it happen. And although it is more directed towards thoughts of salvation, scripture brings wisdom to my mind today: For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. -Romans 8:5-6
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