Archive for October, 2008

Welcome to the second A Homemade Christmas! This is week Two of Ten (you don’t have to enter in each one). I hope you’ll join us in sharing about homemade gifts that you have received or made — past, present, and future!
You can click here for the Introductory post.

Who could resist a nice warm mug of Hot Cocoa? I know I couldn’t. This is an eagerly welcomed gift, and one that just might end up asking for a refill. A Ball jar, with an added label gives this easily made gift extra charm.

On a cold winter’s night a mug of hot chocolate is the perfect touch for a cozy evening. Here is a delicious recipe for a nice jar of homemade cocoa mix.

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Hot Cocoa Mix

YIELD: almost 4 quarts

8 qt. box powdered milk
8 oz. coffee creamer
2 cups powdered sugar
1 lb. box Nestles Quick

Mix and store. Use 1/3 cup mix to 1 cup hot water.

As an extra treat for my darling readers, I have created labels for you to use on your jars of hot cocoa! You can click here for information on downloading the file.

Have you made or received any homemade gifts? If you’d like to make a post about your homemade gifts, you can sign Mr. Linky below. You can add one of my Homemade Christmas icons to your blog by clicking here. Each Thursday (until the end of December) there will be A Homemade Christmas post! Hope you’ll join in the fun as we learn, inspire, and encourage one another!

Categories: A Homemade Christmas, Family, Food, Inspirations, The Home | 7 Comments »

Categories: Handmade, Inspirations, The Home | 4 Comments »

This week has gone quite well, though very busy! We visited with family from out of town, got our heating system up and running, and I have been very inspired in the department of creativity.

Autumn weather is starting to feel more like winter, and we are expecting snow in the near future. It is getting into the 50°s through the day, and was getting chilly in the house. Needless to say, we had been bundled up for several days since we had no heat.

A friend from church offered to install our new boiler for us for free in his spare time. We are very grateful to him for using his time to work on our house. It took three weeks to finish (it was only worked on in the evenings a couple nights each week). He and Daddy stayed up until 2am on Friday morning and got it all finished.

Now it is all warm and cozy in the house, perfect for a nice long nap.

Friday afternoon we went to the home of a friend for tea. It was a lovely little event.

Her husband and little boy went out to do some manly things, her baby slept in the living room, and her daughter (who is three) joined us for tea.

There were scones and tasty Ginger Peach tea. Jam and cream were served alongside the scones, which made for a delicious side.

She is a very crafty Momma, and we were greatly inspired by the little things she has made for her home and wee ones.

We’ve had several people over this past week, including both family and friends. When having company it is easy to focus on what the house looks like, and making sure everything is just right. But is that the reason why we have people over? So they can see our nice and clean house?

Most likely they are coming to visit with our family. We want the house clean enough to be peaceful, but also messy enough to be happy. It is hard to find an in between.

My hope is that our company can find joy at our home, feel at home, and see Christ’s work amongst us.

Today is Miss Amanda’s 19th birthday! I encourage you all to go to her blog and wish her a happy birthday! We originally met through blogging, and then actually met in real life. She is a sweet young lady, and I am glad to call her friend.

I have been working on some digital goodies for you all, and they should be finished soon for your enjoyment!

Categories: Day-to-Day Life, Family, Handmade, The Home | 9 Comments »

Welcome to the first A Homemade Christmas! This is week One of Ten (you don’t have to enter in each one). I hope you’ll join us in sharing about homemade gifts that you have received or made — past, present, and future!
You can click here for the Introductory post.

This calendar will last a very long time, which makes it a great gift. Since it is perpetual, it just keeps going. There are lots of things you can do with the idea, and it’s pretty easy to make.

It has a bit of a vintage look to it. Each date is the tin lid of a fruit concentrate can. I used scrapbooking paper for the background of each date. The numbers I printed out on card stock and then cut out with an exacto knife. The background is a wood board that was primed, spray painted, then distressed (sanded and stained).

Each date is put together with decoupage glue (we use Mod Podge) with the scrapbook paper in the background, and the numbers stuck down on top of that.

To make the holes, I took a piece of vellum and cut it out the same size and the background paper. I used vellum so that I could see where to put the hole. Near the edge (about 1/4 inch from the edge), I punched a hole in the vellum. This was used as the hole template.

I laid the vellum template on top of each finished date, and marked (with a permanent) the spot where the hole was to be. In this way all of the holes were located in the same place on each one.

My wonderful daddy put holes in the tin lids, and cut out the months.

The months are actually cut-outs from the sides of large tin cans (you can slightly see the ripples in the middle). After Daddy cut the tin out, I decoupaged them with scrapbook paper. Four large nails were added to the top to hold the months.

An addition for the calendar (which I haven’t made yet) would be making dates for holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries.

It does take quite a while to make, so if you’re thinking about making one, you better get to work saving all those juice can lids!

Have you made or received any homemade gifts? If you’d like to make a post about your homemade gifts, you can sign Mr. Linky below. You can add one of my Homemade Christmas icons to your blog by clicking here. Each Thursday (until the end of December) there will be A Homemade Christmas post! Hope you’ll join in the fun as we learn, inspire, and encourage one another!

Categories: A Homemade Christmas, Handmade, Inspirations, The Home, Vintage | 24 Comments »

We’ve received homemade gifts, and we have given homemade gifts – and this year is going to be especially homemade!

What is a Homemade Christmas?

A Homemade Christmas is where you give gifts that have been made with your own hands. It is sweet to receive a gift that you know the giver spent time making, so why not pass that sweetness around?

There are all sorts of things you can make for others! Aprons, scrapbooks, paintings, quilts, bags, wall decorations, foods, etc. The list could go on and on.

Not all the gifts you give away need to be homemade (there are some things you just can’t make!) to have a homemade Christmas. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or made from expensive supplies. One of the nice things of making something yourself, is that it will save you money.

I encourage you to make something (or a bunch of different somethings!) to give away this Christmas.

So . . .

. . . are you going to have a homemade Christmas?

This is a great place to share your ideas! I’d love to see what you’re creating this year!

A Homemade Christmas begins this Thursday. Each Thursday until January 1st, I will post about a homemade Christmas gift. There will be a Mister Linky there for you to sign, linking to your post. Not only can you post about the present gifts you are making, but also the past ones and ideas for future ones! Or even homemade gifts that you’ve received! Make sure you don’t post them all at once – there will be 10 opportunities all together!

If you want an icon to put in your post or on your sidebar, just click here (there are a couple to choose from).

You are welcome to spread the word about this, and I hope you participate!

BTW, There will be a couple giveaways coming up soon!

Lord willing, this will be an annual event. Next year’s will begin near
the beginning of October and last until the end of December!
I’d love to have you come back!

Categories: A Homemade Christmas, Inspirations, Miscellaneous | 10 Comments »

Bently Scribbles. A bit of an odd name, yet it has a lot of personality. We came up with the several weeks before we had met or even heard of him.

The name Bently was inspired by the children’s book Bently and Egg. Scribbles just came along with it.

His original name was Diesel. Some of us liked it, others didn’t. But Bently Scribbles just seemed to fit. And thus, his name was changed.

Categories: Family | 4 Comments »

This apple crisp is easy to make (the recipe is pretty easy to remember too!) and is even better than apple pie!

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Apple Crisp

BAKE: 40-45 minutes | COOL: 10 minutes | SERVINGS: 6

1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup butter, melted
6 to 8 cups apples (we use our home-frozen apples, thawed, which were packaged with 1/3 cup sugar)

Cover the bottom of an 8×8″ pan (or pie pan) with apples. Mix oats, flour, brown sugar, and butter in bowl. Sprinkle over apples. Bake uncovered at 400°F for 40-45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Categories: Food, The Home | 4 Comments »

For Maggie’s birthday, we bought her a domain name. She now blogs at www.painterofwords.com. The reason I haven’t blogged for the past few days is that I’ve been designing the theme for her. I find WordPress themes very enjoyable to work with, and that was part of the gift – her own custom template.

It no longer looks much like the original theme I edited to make it. Above is what the site has turned out looking like. I edited it in Dreamweaver. The texture in the background is the back of a photo I scanned, and the photo in the header is one that I took while doing a photo shoot of a few of my old books.

I encourage you to visit her blog and leave her lots of comments.

Categories: Family, Inspirations, Portfolio, Vintage | 5 Comments »

This past weekend we went to a historical reenactment, which was very enjoyable. A beautiful warm day it was! There was a battle. There were food vendors. There were shops that sold old fashioned goods from the reenacted time period. Overall it was quite a vintage affair.

The most exciting part was getting to meet a few other bloggers! We had the wonderful opportunity to meet the eldest four of the farmgirls.

Left to Right: Maggie, Breezy, Cassia, Leah, Susannah, Jessica, and myself.

They are very sweet and encouraging young ladies, and I look forward to getting together with them again!

While sitting on a hill in the sun we watched the battle which lasted for about about thirty minutes. We all walked around the grounds looking at the different shops and visiting with one another.

Taking pictures was another fun part of the day. If you’d like to see some of the ones that I took, please click here. I would enjoy hearing your feedback!

For the weekend, Marie’s family stayed with us. We had a campfire that evening and they got to spend the night in our pop-up camper.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Categories: God's Creation | 6 Comments »