Merry Christmas!
We've been in Christmas "mode" for a couple of weeks now,
gathering greens, making wreaths, baking for early Christmas gatherings, and making gifts for our LARGE family. I'm sitting by a fire with Christmas carols softly playing...ahhhhhhhh!
I was sitting here this morning sipping my green tea, enjoying the fire, and listening to the Holy Spirit teach me during my Bible time when He showed me something....something that has encouraged me and I pray will encourage you too.
I've been studying through the Christmas story with our family using Gather Round Homeschool's Christmas unit study Steve is teaching us this year, and we all love his comments and rabbit trails! In this study we've looked at each character in God's plan and contemplated how God used them in His great plan...and I've looked at WHY they are useable.
When looking at Zacharias' role in the Christmas story in Luke 1, I put myself with him in the story as our Pastor encourages us to do. I can't fully relate to Elisabeth and Zacharias's long prayed for desire to have children that was semmingly "denied", but I've seen the heartbreak in other's lives. By the time of Zararias' service in the temple, Elisabeth is in my stage of life...all hope is gone for that long prayed for child.
When we see Zacharias going into the Holy of Holies to light the 
incense, an angel told him his prayer for a child was answered! He and Elisabeth would indeed have a child...a very special son that would be used by God the Father to "go before Him (Jesus) in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Luke 1:17.
I've been looking back at my prayer journal these past few weeks as
I pray for my family. Many of my prayers are oft repeated, and seemingly year after year they are denied. Lately this has been a discouragement until the Holy Spirit comforted me this week through Zacharias' story...God doesn't look at time in our limited way...just as He heard Zacharias' prayer, He hears mine! They're "tucked away in the anals of time" to be answered when He will get the most glory from the situation. His plans aren't as cut and dry as my imaginations!
Do you often bring your heart's desires to Him in prayer only to wait and wait for the answers? We can REST in the FACT that God DOES hear us, and His plans take time to orchestrate. When that time comes God will get MAXIMUM GLORY!
While we await God's hand to move in our lives we must BE blessable...what? We must live in such a way that God can bless us. Zacharias and Elisabeth were recorded as, "righteous before God, walking in the commandments and ordinaces of the Lord blameless". This moved me to closely examine my own life in light of this praise. Blameless here doesn't mean sinless, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" Romans 3:23. It means they consistently followed God. They had a testimony of obedience to God Almighty. Do I...REALLY? I am righteous only because one night back in February of 1972 I saw myself a sinner that needed forgiveness. The burden of my sin was too heavy for me to bear alone. I was confused, hurting, and Jesus reached out His nail-scarred hand to tenderly wash away my sin. He didn't leave me alone, but came inside and has never left me. Becasue of His sacrifice on the cross I can stand boldly before the Father forgiven! Now daily I have His strength to follow his commandments, the greatest being to love Him with all my being, then secondly to love my "neighbor" as myself. There are many many lessons in living out those commands, but He has been my patient Teacher.
He didn't save me (or you) for us to remain the same! He desires us to grow in our obedience, our service, and our love for Him and others. Am I and are you growing? Are we blessable?
My heart will still cry out to Jesus in prayer as this crazy year winds down, but I am encouraged that my prayers are poised to be answered in God's perfect timing!
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."
We began making decorations for our bird's Christmas trees. These lil' ornaments and the large ring below were fun to make!
Bird Seed Ornaments
8C. Bird Feed Seed
1 1/2 C. Hot Water
2 T. Gelatin
1 1/2 C. Flour
Combine water and gelatin in a large mixing bowl, whisking until the gelatin is dissolved. Add flour, stirring again. Add seed, stirring after each cup.
Spray tiny muffin cups or Bundt pan with Pam type spray. Fill cups/pan half full with seed mixture. Add a string loop, pressing it firmly into the mixture. Continue to fill the muffin cups (I used a small cookie scoop) and press down firmly with a silicone spatula.
Let dry at least 24 hours. Gently release from the pan and let dry on a cookie sheet a few hours more before hanging on your bird feeder tree.
( I wouldn't reccommend hanging these ornaments for the final drying as ours fell apart. Maybe a support is needed in the middle of the Bundt pan size to give it structure? At least let it dry flat thoroughly .All was not lost though as we can put the pieces in a bird feeder this winter.)
I also made a few more lighted arrangements beside our fireplace and on our porch.
Putting up the 27' plus beams was a family affair! We're making precious memories!
There is sooo much help online these days for preschool activities that we didn't have in the past. One of my favorite sites was Modern Preschool.
Matching the colored popscicle sticks to the pockets
If we look a bit confused here it's because this is our first ever artificial (aka fake) Christmas tree ever! It arrived in a narrow box, and had individual branches that needed fitted into the right slots...then 3 hours of fluffing....I think it's easier to cut a real tree down on the backside of the farm! (Only we sold that farm and only have hardwood trees here!) How I'm ever to get it back in THAT box is a mystery to me!
This is where we like to do school lately...in front of the fireplace! Along with our Christmas unit study we have Christmas journals/scrapbooks that we write in daily. We have been putting pictures in of our projects, recipes, and the kid's artwork is precious on their pages. (Don't tell them it's English Composition!)
During this time we're reading Two From Galilee by Marjorie Holmes. (A mature jr. high or high school level book.)
We've had snow and temperatures in the 20's the past few weeks, so I went out to cover my cabbage with straw. The hay bale was frozen solid, so I harvested 14 while covering two to see how this variety took the cold. The secret to harvesting in the cold of winter is 1. Plant cold hardy vegetables. 2. Plant in the late summer/fall so they'll grow to full size before the number of hours of sun deminishes. Then the cold will preserve them into the winter with minimal protection.
We've grown and now are "storing" vegetables in the garden under frost blankets. Weekly I go "shopping" in the garden to get what is needed for the coming week. See the leeks above....
Beets and their greens
Swiss Chard
Lettuce, Mizuna, Tatsoi, etc.
Parsnips
Abundant Blessings,
Cutting practice
Decorating Christmas Trees and Basic Counting
Letter sounds with matching letter clothes pins
and sooo much more!
I also made lil' dresses for the grand-girls.
GINGERBREAD COOKIES
We love this recipe for gingerbread cookies that came from Rebecca at gatherroundhomeschool.com last year and is included in our unit study. I hope it's a blessing to you too. Don't be super careful with measuring the flour...it's a child's recipe. Scoop out your flour for correct amounts.
Dry Ingredients:
2 1/4 C. Flour
2 t. Ginger
1 t. Baking Soda
3/4 t. Cloves
1/4 t. Salt
1/4 C. Sugar (put in a seperate bowl)
(We use Monk Fruit sweetner.)
Cream Together:
3/4 C. Salted Butter
3/4 Sugar/Monk Fruit (separate from above)
1 Egg
1 T. Water
1/4 C. Blackstrap Molasses
1. Mix together your dry ingredients, reserving the 1/4 C. of sugar in a separate bowl.
2. Cream the next set of ingredients together with either a hand or stand mixer.
3. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients, and mix thouroughly.
4. We separated our dough at this point and wrapped the two bundles in plastic wrap. We froze one for another day and thoroughly chilled the one we were to cut out soon.
5. The original recipe calls for rolling the dough into 2" circular balls, then flattening them slightly before dipping the tops into sugar. 5b. After chilling the dough we dusted the counter with a lil' flour and carefully rolled out the dough with a dusted rolling pin. Dust the cookie cutters also in flour before cutting out your favorite shapes.
6. Place onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment (that's the secret!) and bake for 8-10 minutes.
7. Let cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes (unless you overcooked them!) before removing to a cooling rack. They'll harden more as they cool.
8. Frost cooled cookies with COLD Royal Icing (recipe found easily online) using Dollar Tree squeeze bottles for the most control. (We tried frosting bags but the freshly made Royal Icing was hard to control.) Once we put the same icing into the squeeze bottles and allowed them to cool in the frig we were suddenly Pros!
9. Store in air tight containers.
These make great gifts and freeze well (raw dough as well as baked cookies.)
We've baked cookies a couple of times for church events. Again Cerina joined us, this time for a cookie party...before we really knew how to decorate cookies well! We'll begin in earnest once the kitchen floor is finished being tiled...yes!!! I'm getting new floors in our renovated farmhouse for Christmas!!
Brussels Sprouts
Parsnips
Charity and I are sewing and making gifts in and out of the kitchen, and enjoying every minute of it together. I've gone from a houseful of children to two...I'm going to enjoy the last years of child raising while looking expectantly for my prayers to be answered!
Abundant Blessings,
And Merry Christmas,
Val Colvin
