Christmas!

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."  
Luke 2:11


Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year! Hope you get spend some time
with your family during this special season.  May God bless you all!

 Below are my six of my greatest blessings. We had Christmas at our house early this year.  These little people made it so much fun!  From left to right, Ethan, Isabella, Emily, Alexa, Calleigh and Caitlyn.  God has blessed us with beautiful grandchildren!

Decorating

We are going to have Christmas with the children and grandchildren on the 10th, so I started decorating Saturday.  I love having them all together here, so much fun. We are blessed with a wonderful family!  I hope everyone has a wonderful time with all the family events planned through Chirstmas. We have several school programs and church programs to attend, I love this time of year!

My mantel, I found the large square wreath at a thrift shop for $5. I knew it
would be perfect over the mantel.

Our tree with my new treeskirt.

I bought a new Christmas tree this year and decided I needed a new tree skirt.  My husband suggested I use my stash of Christmas material I bought after Christmas last year to make one.  I think it turned out pretty good!  I like to keep my holidays separated, so I won't put up my tree till after Thanksgiving.  However, we are having Christmas with our children and grand children at our house on December 10th.  So the tree will go up pretty quickly after Thanksgiving.  It's hard to get everyone together on the same day once they grow up and have families and family obligations to both sides on holidays.  I always try to be understanding, because I know how hard it is to juggle all the get togethers!

Making gifts!

 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.  She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.  She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.

Proverbs 31:10-31

It is finally feeling like Fall! So I have started decorating, here is the front door.

I have also started on my gifts for Christmas, I usually give the adult children money, but I also like

to include a little handmade item. I have already done some dishtowels and plan on doing some potholders to go with them.  I also found some new linen napkins at the thrift store, a stack of about 40 of them and I bought them to embroider for gifts.  I have also been hand embroidering pillowcases.

These are some of the dishtowels I have been decorating with machine embroidery and also a stack of napkins that I monogramed with a Christmas alphabet.

This is one of the pillowcases I am hand embroidering. I love to do hand embroidery while I am watching television at night. I also embroider when my husband is watching a game, I  get bored! 

My oldest granddaughter found some dragon scale fingerless gloves that she would like me to make for her. I have found a pattern and I think I am going to give them a try, please wish me luck! 

"He who gathers crops in Summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son."  Proverbs 10:5


I  am off this week recovering from surgery.  I am doing well and I am thankful to the Lord for an easy recovery period and for my family who have been so good at taking care of me!  I went to the garden and picked some okra and a few tomatoes this morning.  It is extremely hot here in Arkansas and the poor garden is tapering off now.

Yesterday, I made two loaves of Zucchini bread from our zucchini, the recipe is from Paula Deen and it makes two loaves. It's delicious.

Lastly, I wanted to show off my cute little stepladder chair that I ordered from Amazon last week. I am not a very tall person and always need to get up in a chair for my top cabinets, my husband found this and it reminded me of my childhood when a dear neighbor had one in her kitchen and I loved to sit in it!

I hope everyone has a wonderful blessed day!  I am going to try to get  some sewing done now.

Days of Summer - canning time!

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. 
Genesis 8:22



We have a garden every year, my husband puts a lot of work into it.
The good Lord blessed us with a lot of rain early in the Spring and the heat did not turn on until a few weeks ago, so our beans have done great! I  help with picking , shelling and then canning the fruit of his labor.  We have been busy the last couple weeks canning green beans and pinto beans. I also made apple jelly and orange marmalade. It's nice to open a jar of home canned veggies in the middle of Winter and enjoy them!

Pinto beans

Apple jelly and orange marmalade

Fried zuchinni

                                                    Green Beans

It is very hot outside, so I worked inside today!  I put up 10 half pints of apple jelly!

And I finished a pillow for my youngest granddaughter's birthday in August.  She loves pillows, and she is a little girl with a big attitude!  I thought this saying on her pillow was perfect!

Our garden so far has been good this year.  The Lord blessed us with enough green beans to can 60 quarts. The squash and zucchini are coming off the vine now.  We have pinto beans just waiting to fill out and be picked and peas blooming. The tomatoes are coming along and we've picked some peppers too. It's a busy time of the year!

Our chickens have started laying!  We are really enjoying our fresh eggs.  The grandkids are all just enjoying the chickens.  It's beautiful here in Arkansas and I am counting my blessings the Lord has given me!