Our Glorious Days: Simple and Good.

Well, true to my word here are a few of the sweet things we did for Jordan on her fun birthday-'day' last Wednesday:

We started the day out with the traditional "you can have anything you want for breakfast" routine. Here is what she chose...

That's right! 'Color cereal' (aka Sugar cereal =) How funny, when I was growing up I would have given anything to have something other than cereal. My kids have it on their birthday wish list, ha! Well, I guess it could be worse.

It was a no chore, no computer, no workbooks, have fun and be silly day. So the first thing on the menu was... Christmas ornaments.

Oh my goodness, what a delight. What is so special about these ornaments is when Jordan was being born, Alli our oldest daughter went to stay with good friends of ours, the Aglers. While there they made Christmas ornaments which still hang on my tree today.

This might be a total shocker to you =) but there was a day when our TV was on every waking moment we were home, tuned into the Disney Channel. I preferred working rather than staying home, everything we ate came from a box with directions and I did not do the whole hands on kid thing :-) HA! can you believe that?

Anyway, so when Alli came home with homemade Christmas ornaments from a place other than daycare, I thought Bethany was a mom goddess. Before they moved away she made me a cookbook and enclosed was a recipe for Christmas ornaments. This year was the first time I actually made them.

IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN THEY WERE SO EASY!

Here is the recipe:

2 cups flour, 1/2 cup salt, 3/4 cup cool water

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Mix all ingredients together, roll out 1/4 inch thick, cut to design, adding a hole at the top for a ribbon to hang. Place in oven @ 300 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Bottoms will be golden brown. Wait until completely cool then paint with acrylic paint.

We mixed it up, rolled it out, cut them out and then popped them in the oven.

While they were baking we moved on to our next project, White Christmas Snow:

What a blast!

Recipe:

1/2 cup lukewarm tap water, 1/2 cup grated fragrance-free white bar soap (I used IVORY), holiday stencil, clear tape, cut-up kitchen sponge.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on low speed, beat together the water and soap until just blended. Increase the speed to medium height and beat until the mixture forms stiff meringue-like peaks, 3 to 5 minutes.

Tape up your stencils, then take the sponge and dab the soap over the pattern openings. Carefully remove the patterns while the soap is still moist. Let the designs dry.

For the girls, a paint brush and rag did the job just fine. =)

For Judah, his hands worked best =)

The kids and I had a great time making designs on the windows.

While we were decorating, the Christmas ornaments finished up.

Now, if you are lucky like me, when you finish doing Christmas snow and mixing ingredients for Christmas ornaments your kitchen will look like this:

Then if you are as lucky as me, you will put on a crazy fun song with the kids and you will all run around like crazy people trying to get everything picked up before the song ends.

Then, if you are as lucky as me, when the song ends your kitchen will look like this:

(it's crazy what you can do in 4 min 23 seconds)

Then, if you are again as lucky like me, you will go looking for your kids and find them peeking out from under the table like this:

(If you look at the picture above this one, of the clean kitchen, you will see little Judah squeezing under the table as quick as he can)

Then you will get it together, get the children at the table and finish these little darlin' things:

How cute are these? Now when they have dried, just put a string or ribbon through the hole and you are set to go! They would make great little homemade Christmas gifts.

After all our crafty fun we settled down for rest time. Now normally during rest time the little ones take a nap then Alli and I do some chores together, play a game, or do any left over one on one school work. But on this day, I took a nap with Jordan. She loved it.

I just kept thinking back to when she was first born and how many sweet naps we took together. Do you remember that? All of the little naps you take with your little one right after they are born? That is just one more little thing that we stop doing as they get older. =( But on this day I stopped, snuggled, and slept. I talked to her about what it was like the first day she was born and what it was like to snuggle a sweet new baby.

After naps we just goofed off, took silly pictures, played some games and then went to church that night.