Edible Arrangement

I made this for Steven's family for Easter!



I wanted to see how hard it was to do an edible arrangements, and it turns out it wasn't very difficult. I, of coarse, watch a few videos on youtube first (this one was most helpful)... but it didn't take long to do and I had a lot of fun being creative while making it.

I added in some cake balls in the shape of eggs... some were like peeps popping out (I got the idea from i am baker), some were just plain eggs and some were just plain peeps. I like the way it turned out, but next time I will make a nest (out of pretzels & almond bark) for the peeps (& eggs) to sit in while I do the edible flowers around the nest. I wanted to give a healthy treat, but I had to include something not so healthy as well :)

Here are some more pictures!





Here is another easter idea that I want to do next year... also from i am baker... are you guys starting to see a trend here?... cuz I love that lady!

Easter

After much discussion about bunnies, eggs, peeps & Jesus, we decided it's okay for John to participate in most of the culturally accepted things to do when it comes to Easter (like egg hunts, gift giving and indulging in sweets :) ). Now I'd rather not go into all the arguments about what we shouldn't and should tell John about Easter, but then general guideline we are going by is that we want him to associate Jesus' Resurrection with Easter and that it's fine if he hunts eggs and gives/receives gifts as part of the celebration.

Personally, I think some of the more culturally accepted things to do (like gifts and eggs) provide a great opportunity for sharing the gospel. And as long as Steven and I do a good job of telling John about Jesus then he will have the ability to 'deal' with the Easter Bunny. We hope to spend more time building into his little character than telling him whether on not the Easter Bunny exist.

On a lighter note...

Our friends were planning an egg hunt and I thought it would be fun if John participated too. We set him up...



And this is what happened...




The other kids were having too much fun looking for eggs so I decided not to push it. Maybe next year I'll get a better photo.

At least he was pretty studly for church!



Steven Mom gave John some Easter candy and I thought I would humor her with a series of pictures. I'm pretty sure Jelly Beans are the sweetest thing John has ever had, and some of his faces crack me up! Here's a slide show!

I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus this past weekend!

Valentine's Day

We had a wonderful Valentine's Day! We stayed in this year (we didn't even camp!) and I really enjoyed it.

Steven (& John, I guess) made this card for me...






soooo sweet!

And Steven made a yummy dinner. Coq au vin. It sounds more complicated than it actually was. It's a French dish that means chicken cooked in wine! The great thing was that he came home and cooked, while I sat on the couch and knit! It was truly perfection because John took a nap until dinner was ready.

While photographing the table, John crawled over with a sock in his mouth. I don't know who gave him the idea, but he realized that the mouth is a great storage place when darting across the room. What was he darting for, you ask? The table cloth, of coarse!



I love that kid!

Those Gold Aprons

I promised to update about the gold aprons so here ya go!



Steven's father has three sister. The Aunts are so much fun! I love it when we get together with them. They love to play cards. And coming from a family that also loves to play cards, I just soak it up. Almost every time we get together we play Shoot the Moon. It's great! and I always look forward to it.

Years ago, Steven's grandmother gave these aprons to her daughters. They have worn them while holiday baking most years. They may not be the first choice when it comes to fashion, but they unite the sisters and say "Holidays" in our family. And they are great way to remember Grandmother Geri.

This year the Aunts passed on their aprons to the three sister (including the married-in sisters). I hope every year the three of us are together we remember them and enjoy the humor.

Here's the picture from Thanksgiving. The thing that is a little off with this picture is that Ann couldn't make it for Thanksgiving. Cathy stepped in to receive her apron...




But, she did get to visit for Christmas and she claimed her apron...




And with the fun of editing, we have a photo with everyone in it!

New Years Resolutions

Aahhhh! Holiday projects are over and everyone is making new resolutions for this coming year. And I'm joining them! It's good to have goals.

Here are a few of mine. I say a "few" because I figure that if I make several at least on of them will stick, right? We'll see!

Fitness
yes. I'm claiming this one... I know it's the most common and the most commonly broken, but I'm still claiming it. I did get back down to my pre-pregnancy weight after John was born, but my pre-pregnancy weight was definitely not my long term goal. And the pregnancy did strange things to my body. I carry weight differently now and it's not a very flattering different.

Another exciting reason to lose weight came up on Christmas Eve! A very beautiful sister-in-law of mine received a very pretty diamond ring from her boyfriend. We are excited to receive Manly into our family! He loves Jesus & John so he's off to a great start! The wedding date isn't finalized yet, but I know I would like to lose at least 20lb before it happens.

Owning the day
This one is something that I've kinda learned the hard way. When John was born I struggled with depression. I still do on bad days, but I've learned ways prevent this. Exercise is a big one. But another one that helps is if I wake up before John does. I like to get him going at 7am, weather he's up or not, it's just makes the rest of the day work really well. Sometimes he wakes up a little earlier, but he is pretty much like an alarm clock now. However, no one loves & adores their alarm clock! And I've been lazy and waking up at 7am when I HAVE to.

I do so much better on days when I wake up an hour before he gets up and get ready for the day. If I claim the day instead of the day claiming me things just work better around here. Reading my bible, hugging my husband and having a cup of coffee will go a long way toward improving my attitude towards John and myself.

(sorry if that sounds harsh towards John but that's real Mom talk! I promise I love my baby but somedays changing diapers and other Mommy duties get to me)

Etsy
Believe it or not I do have an etsy shop. Remember Thirty-one-Twenty-four? This year I hope to list more things. Most everything I've posted has sold so I really ought to bank on this. I have lots of ideas and friends and family keep the suggestions coming.

The short term goal is to just break even. The truth is that I love making things with my hands... quilting, sewing, crocheting, knitting, scrapbooking, just plan crafting! I love to do it all!!! So if I can break even then it wont hurt our budget.

The longer term goal is to make money to help boost our savings. I would love to commit to this but the fact is that I have an emerging toddler and can't ignore him. One thing I realized when my Mom was here was that I don't get in the floor and play with him enough. I tend to be all about business with John... feed him, clean him, etc. It's all about balance and I need to find it. I think once I find the balance I can focus on making money with a second job.

Gardening
Alright, last year I had a pretty good excuse... John. This year he's older and can play with himself (or some toys) quite contently. I really want to teach him about gardening and we need to spend more time in the yard together. The big hurtle with this is of coarse little critters. But I think I can get over it enough (or set plenty traps) to manage a small garden.

Currently we have spinach and lettuce growing in our boxed garden but that's not enough. Remember cotton and sunflowers (those were so pretty) and cucumbers and fall veggies (like pumpkins) and I need to give corn another try! Plus kids that grow vegetables are more likely to try a wider variety of food.

So those are the goals! I will try to keep you updated because after all this is our Swindell update site!

Happy Resolutions Making! And Keeping!!!

Christmas Morning

We had a lovely Christmas this year. We elected to stay home for John's first year in order to establish our family traditions. We did a pretty good job getting go those traditions. In the end we decided that even if we don't start every tradition this year it wont be the end of the world.

My Mother and youngest brother came for Christmas Eve & Christmas Morning. I'm so glad they did come because I was really needing a break from baby duties and it made it feel more like Christmas with my Mom here. We watched movies, went to church, baked & cooked way too much... so everything was just perfect!

Here's the short version of Christmas morning. The entire morning took about an hour because of the bible reading, hymn, general chatting and John not knowing how to tear into a present yet. If you really want to see the long version I guess we can arrange something.



I love Christmas! Maybe next year we can get Grandpa & Meme to drive up for Christmas Day.

Christmas Projects

I've been busy with Christmas projects and unfortunately I can't share some of the projects I've been working on because they are gifts... but I'll try my best to remember to take pictures to share with everyone later.

HOWEVER...

A couple of days ago I made our stockings. I was going to just buy them (after all it was pretty close to the cost of materials to make them) but I couldn't find stockings that I liked. I wanted variety but I also wanted them to coordinate.

My sister came down for the weekend I couldn't pass up the opportunity to show off Lone Star Quiltworks. Unknown to me, they were having a 20% off sale of EVERYTHING! (for the whole month, btw) It was very hard to resist. And Steven was with us so I went ahead and got all the stocking fabric, with his approval.

I only spent $20 at Lone Star and I had the rest of the materials to make the stockings at home. If I would have bought everything to make the stocking it would have come out to around $10-$15 a piece... a pretty close price comparison. HOWEVER, I love the way these stockings turned out and I couldn't find anything like it online. (Don't laugh, we don't have a mantel yet so these are attached to the wall with push pins... yes, next to the light switch... they may be moved befor Christmas)




I'm still debating if I will embroider our names on them. I like they way they look just plain and I'm not sure if it would take the stocking to the next level... or not. Jury is still out.

On a funnier note, we started looking at the Christmas fabric when choosing fabric... but we ended up in the Civil War Repo section. I laughed! But we did find fabric we liked. There is not much I don't like in the CWR section at Lone Star. John's was the only one that came out of the Christmas fabric.

Steven's...

Mine. I LOVE my body fabric!... every time I see it I smile!

And John's! We love his top fabric.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a wonderful day with the Swindell side this year! Here's the four generation photo... Jim (Grandfather), Calvin (Great-Grandfather), Steven (Father), and of course John!



Here are the Sisters (Jim's) with their gold aprons... I've got more on the gold aprons to post for a later date, but until then you will just have to wonder! :)



John was the star of the show. Everyone wanted to hold him and play with him. He just smiled and showed off his almost-crawling-but-mostly-rocking-on-all-fours skills. I'm sure it will be like this for the next couple of holidays...

With Mimi & Grandpa



some play time with Grandpa Calvin



Our dinner was delicious, of course, but John got his first turkey this Thanksgiving. The poor kid probably had 20 sets of eyes staring him down while he was trying to eat. I think he liked it, but you can be the judge (there is a video at the end).

John's Grammie (my Mother) made a great bib for John for Thanksgiving... it got a lot of compliments! We actually forgot the high chair so we had to "strap" John to a chair... see if you can find Steven's belt holding John onto the chair.

Operation Christmas Child

Our church is big on Operation Christmas Child Boxes. I think we've done them every year we've attended our church... and we even did one this year.

Some friends of ours do one box for each one of their children. We thought that was a great idea, so we did a box for a boy in the youngest age group, 2-4 years. I think it will be more fun when John is old enough to pick out toys and stuff to go inside, but this year Steven and I picked out everything. I even hope to have John write a letter or draw a picture for the receiver. You can even track the boxes now... such a great teaching tool!

When I was packing our box I decided to grab a few photos (mainly for John's scrapbook) so I thought I would share them with you!

Here's the loot!



Partially Packed...



All inside...



Wrapped up and ready to go...



John gave it a taste for good measure...



And ready to give! What a cheerful heart you have John!...haha...



The collection dates were 11/12-11/22. If you didn't do one this year, you can do it next year!

Our church collects all of them and one homegroup delivers them to Samaritan's Purse. We actually make a celebration out of it. Every homegroup brings a banner... and with a church full of college students it can get pretty interesting... and when we present our boxes we carry our banners in front of our homegroups. We worship, have the Lord's Supper, give the boxes as an offering, pray over them and have baptisms (we only have baptisms twice a year). It's a lot of fun and hopefully our box will bless some little boy!

back on track... Thanksgiving!!!

Okay, okay, I admit it... I jumped the gun. Can you blame me? The day after Halloween I went grocery shopping and saw employees stocking Christmas merchandise. And I can't count on two hands the number of Christmas commercials I've already seen. HOWEVER, I promise I haven't forgotten about Thanksgiving.

For me, Thanksgiving is up there in my top three favorite holidays. I think I enjoy it because it's a time of year when everyone is "counting their blessings." Have you counted your blessings lately? Doesn't it put you in a ridiculously good mood? A thankful heart is a very enjoyable heart to be around.

More than teaching John about the Pilgrims or the Indians (which are an important parts of Thanksgiving) I want him to learn to give thanks to God for all he has. And, of course, I have a couple of ideas for this season... again, we'll see if they pan out as well as they came together in my head.

All of my ideas center around writing down our Thanks. The funny thing is that this week's MOPs was about "counting your blessing" and we made a craft to help us do just that. I promise I wrote this post first... but more on that later..

I like the idea of doing a Thankful Tree for when John is a bit older. You make a tree out of craft paper to put on your wall (or a door). Then each kiddo gets a different color of paper to make their leaves (they can trace their hand to make a leaf). On each leaf, the kids write/draw what they are thankful for and puts it on the tree. The parents write their thanks on the trunk of the tree... I like the symbolism behind that. On Thanksgiving you can take the leaves down one by one reviewing each thanksgiving.

A couple of days ago I heard a similar idea on the radio, maybe better for older kids. All through the month of November you write what you are thankful for on a piece of paper and place it in a festive storage container. On Thanksgiving you go through the pieces of paper and share your thanksgiving with everyone. Of course, I have the perfect pumpkin in mind! We could use that wonderful pumpkin now for Steven and I. Later we can store the construction paper hand print cut outs in it for when John wants to do the tree.

Well, the people at Mops must listen to KSBJ because that is pretty much what we did this Thursday. They provided the boxes and we decorated them. I really like the way the top of my box turned out so I think we will be using this until we can finance a beautiful Jim Shore Pumpkin. The speaker was great and I definitely came back feeling refreshed. I really like MOPS.






On the decorating front, I need to make a banner/wall hanging to display Colossians 2:7,

"Let your lives overflow with thanksgiving for all He has done."

My decorating style tends to lean toward the traditional side... I do prefer simple lines, but in general I can thoroughly appreciate the traditional style. I LOVE the idea of rotating quilted wall hanging. The only problem is that I need to get on the ball when it comes to making said wall hanging... sigh. When I do get around to it, I hope to design a Thanksgiving one around Colossians 2:7.

Lots, lots to do! Happy Thanksgiving!

Thinking about Advent. Yep, already!

Thanksgiving is on it's way and that only means that Christmas is right on our heals. Halloween may have stumped us, but for Christmas I'm just oozing with ideas for traditions for our little family. My favorite idea is the Jesse Tree! This seems like such a great way to teach our children about advent. I love the season of preparing our hearts to receive Christ.

For a Jesse Tree you read an Old Testament story every day of December building up to Christmas. Each story leads up to the birth of Christ and has a corresponding ornament you place on the tree. The "tree" idea comes from Isiah 11:1, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit."

The hope is that our kids will look forward to the excitement of placing a new ornament on the tree each night, and Steven and I will look forward to sharing with our children all that God did to prepare the world for the best gift of all!

The are soooo soooo many ideas online for setting up a Jesse Tree. Here are just a few.

First, here is a pretty detailed explanation of the Jesse Tree and a chart (at the bottom of the page) of the readings and symbols. This is a great reference for establishing the tradition.

This blog is my favorite so far. It seems like last year she was almost done perfecting her tree, so maybe this year she will have some more ideas. Her ornaments are really nice and coordinate well. I also LOVE the idea of the bags under the tree, just like little presents. This is kinda my "goal."

This blog is less matchy-matchy, but still quite solid. She reads from the Big Picture Story Bible for their daily reading... convenient, we already read out of that book!

I don't quite have time to get everything together for a well coordinated tree. I think for this year it may be some paper symbols I print on card stock, color and string up on a ribbon. John won't have a memory of the ornaments so I still have some grace time.

I'm kinda undecided whether I'll buy (and slightly modify) the ornament or make them. All I know is that I want them to coordinate and look nice. And of course they have to be durable because we have a little boy who will be doing the "placing" of the ornaments. If I decide to buy them, I'll hit up some after Christmas sales to find the nicer ornaments. I will just swap out the paper copies as I find or make better replacements.

I'll probably start with this website. They have good printable symbols, but I don't think John will get much out of the devotions, yet. So, we will probably use this website as our reading guide. I'm thinking we will read the story out of The Big Picture for John, place the ornament and put him in bed. After he's down, Steven and I can go back and read the parental devotion. I hope it works out that easy...

Anyway, there are, of course, a plethora of ideas on the world wide web... and now it's just a matter of deciding on a permanent option and establishing a tradition. My goal for this month is to get the symbols printed and colored. And to print out all devotions to read. That should be a good enough start for this year.

Happy Tradition Making!

Halloween

I meant to do this before our camping trip, but I didn't have time so... I rushed to find a pumpkin as soon as we got back! I didn't want to forget!



We had a hard time finding one because most places had sold out. When we finally decided to go check HEB, John looked like this.



We actually had a little drama at HEB. Sometime during the process of trying to decide if the pumpkin was going to big enough to fit him, we dropped Steven's wallet. With the help of the super nice HEB staff we found it again. I love the people at HEB.

Once at home, we headed to the back yard. Pumpkin carving is my FAVORITE part of Halloween.

















I knew the pumpkin had been at HEB a while because one of the seeds had actually sprouted! Kinda fun.


After we cleaned it out we tried if first without making holes for the legs. It was kinda difficult to try to explain to a 5 1/2 month old to sit with his legs crossed. It took a while, but I got him situated.





I love this face!


We tried it with the hat... John just wanted to chew on it so it didn't last long as a hat.









I let him explore the pumpkin lid while I cut out the holes...



Back in for what turned out to be my favorite picture. However, there were a lot of not so great pictures because he was a little upset that I took away his new toy.



"Come on, Mom, get me outta this thing."



We didn't want to waste the pumpkin when we were done so we tried to put the leg holes back in and carved something simple.



I love my Hubby!



I got to work on what makes pumpkin carving my favorite part of Halloween!



Steven got some "treats" set up for any visitors.



Which brings me to an interesting topic.

How to celebrate Halloween.

This was our third year to go camping on Halloween, and I really like that tradition. Here in Texas the weather is just perfect for camping around Halloween so it's very hard to pass up a camping trip when just about every family in our church goes. We both hope to continue the tradition, and this year we took some time to discuss Halloween... having John kinda made me want to pin down something.

We both get a little stumped when it comes to this holiday. It's not that we are totally against Halloween (obviously) but we aren't a fan of the evil stuff that goes along with it. It's easy to see how it developed into vampires, witches and other scary things. It was originally a holiday to celebrate the end of summer... harvest was over and longer, darker nights were ahead. The Celtics believed that the boundary between the death and living blurred and made a holiday around it. Later, with the spread of Christianity, Catholics started celebrating saints and martyrs to replace the Celtic holiday.

When discussing this with our friends this weekend, someone brought up this passage in the bible. Paul was explaining that you aren't going to be better or worse from eating or not eating food sacrificed to idols... but that you should exercise caution so that you didn't cause another brother to stumble. So, we have grace to participate... but we don't want to cause anyone to stumble.

I always like the idea of turning something bad into something good... so we took advantage of the four trick-or-treaters at our house and gave out tracts with our candy. I think we will kinda continue that attitude with our developing traditions as John gets older. My Mops table leader emailed me this prayer to do while carving pumpkins... but John was a little young for it this year.

We don't have a solid idea of what Halloween will look like for our family, but I don't want to shelter our kids from the world. So, we hope to take opportunities like these to teach our children to honor our Lord Jesus in all we do.