Merry Christmas

I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from our house to yours. May the Lord bless you this wonderful season to remember His birth and all that He has done for us!!

Decorating

Mary and I had a lot of fun decorating for Christmas this year.

 

 She fell in love with nutcrackers this year because she will be performing in the Nutcracker ballet her in town.  So we went to the thrift store and found some really cute ones.  She hung them on the tree next to her ballerinas.

 

 

We also decorated the top of the bookcase with a nutcracker theme.

 

We also got into making coffee filter snowflakes.  Paper cutting for Christmas decorations is called Scherenschnitte .  It is a Pennsylvania Dutch craft.  I found some really great patterns on line and then we made up our own.  I really loved doing it and as you can see we filled our front window with them.

Jingle Bells

Mary loves to sing!  She sang Jingle Bells tonight and I recorded it.  What she lacks in pitch at this age, she makes up for in enthusiasm!  lol 

 

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
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Here is the link to the video: http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=129f67e3c7ad2dd4fec0e96&skin_id=1604&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

Gingerbread House

Mary and I baked and decorated a gingerbread house this year. A couple of years ago we made one but we used a kit that we bought in the store.  I decided to venture out and make our own.  We found a good recipe on Pinterest and did it.  Mary had so much fun helping me by rolling out the dough, cutting the dough and helping to decorate.  I think we will make this a family tradition and in a few years she can put it together and I will watch. Ha  It is amazing what kids learn by watching and helping.  She sure likes to bake and create so that makes it so much fun for all of us.

 

Making Cheese

Rich has started making cheese. He bought a book and supplies a few weeks back and has started making the easy stuff first.  The book recommended making cottage cheese first so he did.  It is really easy and fun.  He used a little bit of our sour dough starter in it.  So it is fresh and yummy and healthy with the great cultures in it.

 

 Next he made Mozzarella cheese.  Again this only took about an hour and it turned out delicious too.

He grated it and we used on a homemade pizza.

I made the sourdough crust.

Rich made the sauce with our home grown tomatoes.

It turned out hot and bubbly.  So fresh and so good for you!

Here is something Rich wrote about my homemade sourdough bread:

 My wife makes the most wonderful sourdough bread, and goodies.
Almost all bakers now days make breads with refined commercial yeast that only has one type of yeast in it, but it was not too long... ago that all breads were made with natural occurring sourdough culture that contains over twenty lactic acid bacteria, and several strains of yeast that are all beneficial to digestion, and intestinal health, and some of the beneficial bacteria even attack the harmful ones so that they become little "good guys" in our system to fight off the bad guys. This wonderful mixture of different yeasts , and bacteria create a symbiotic relationship that not only gives a unique flavor to breads, they actually process the more complex materials in the dough such as gluten, and make it safer for our bodies to process. Commercial refined yeast that they use now causes the breads to rise very quickly, and do not process the harmful materials, they are designed to get the breads out on store shelves as fast as they can to be sold. It is no wonder that our Lord likened the Kingdom of God to a woman that put some yeast in some dough until it had completed its purpose. I like how John Wycliff said it in the 1382 translation of the bible into Middle English:
 

Matthew 13:33
"An other parable Jhesus spac to hem. The Kyngdom of hevenes is like soure dowz, the which taken, a womman hidde in three mesuris of meel, til it were all sowrdowid".

 

 

 

 

Festival of Trees

This last weekend Mary had a ballet performance at the annual Festival of Trees. It is a fund raiser for Providence Hospital. There are gorgeous Christmas trees and wreaths are donated and then they are auctioned off. This year had a little lower attendance as we have had an Arctic air blow down from the north with lots of snow and ice. Snow has been on the ground for 5 days and the temps at night have dropped near zero. It is the coldest winter in 40 years. A lot of people did not make it out because of the icy road conditions. We drove straight through town to get there and it wasn't too bad. Here are some pictures of our day and the video at the end it of 2 dances done by some friends in the studio and then the last part is Mary's dance. She did such a great job. We were so proud of her!

 

 

 

 

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Here is the link to the video: http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=129b3fd5498ef91751b5904&skin_id=601&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

 

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend with sunny weather, visiting family and eating lots of yummy food. Here is Mary with her thankful turkey.  Each day she wrote something she was thankful for on a feather and put it on her bird.

Thanksgiving morning we watched the Macy's Day Parade and fixed the food we were taking to Rich's folks house.

A selfy with my cutie pies.

Rich cooked a 25 lb turkey in our covered roaster pan and every bit of it was juicy and delicious!

I made a pumpkin pie from Mary's 100 lb pumpkin

We watched some more of the parade.  The Rockets.  Brrr was is cold in New York.

Seeing the Hello Kitty balloon made Mary's day!

Mary wrote everyone's name on their place card.   My girl is getting so big.

Rich cutting the turkey while Dad supervises.

Some of the feast

On Friday we took Mary to see Frozen.  It was her first theater movie.

As you can see on her face, she loved it!  We had to sit up on the front row because it was so crowded but it didn't dent her at all.  She ate her pop corn and drank her soda and loved the whole movie.

On Saturday Rich worked so I made Mary and I homemade cinnamon rolls.  In honor of Frozen I used snowman plates.

I put some carmel on the inside and then topped it with frosting.  They were gooie and messy and super yummy!

 

Well that pretty much wraps it up.  Now on to Christmas!!