Month: January 2015

The Easiest Way to Get Flaky

Posted on January 12, 2015February 2, 2015 by Mama

January is just one of those months that seems to get the short straw when it comes to celebrations and decorations. We just came off three straight months of holidays while wrapping up the old year with the granddaddy of all decorative occasions — Christmas. So if you’re feeling the winter blues and your home needs a quick splash of fun, try making these cute coffee filter snowflakes to decorate your home. Literally, this must be the easiest and quickest way to make flakes, but be warned: it can be a tad bit addictive.

All you need to cut out these cuties, are some regular coffee filters (not the cone variety) and scissors. Flatten a filter and then fold it in half four times, so that you have a wedge shape with the point being at the center of the filter. Now just start cutting. It’s so much fun to experiment with different cuts and shapes to create truly original works of art, but the best part is unfolding your flake. If you want to get rid of the fold lines, heat up your iron and give it a once over. Have fun!

Family Traditions — A Mom’s Responsibility?

Posted on January 6, 2015February 2, 2015 by Mama

When I recall my own family traditions from childhood, I’m instantly flooded with wonderful memories and good feelings previously pushed into the past. It’s these moments of reflection that motivate me to create current traditions for my own family. Ultimately, I want to give my son similar memories of wonder and innocence; but, God willing, when I’m 80 I also want to be able to conjure up the memories and good feelings of my own motherhood. So here is my question. Are the best traditions the ones that “just happen,” or are more deliberate plans the way to go? Sometimes I feel like my best laid plans seriously fall flat, but at other times those spontaneous family moments are the things that really stick.

This holiday season, my son, husband and I created a ginger bread train (anything train is a winner right now) that adorned the kitchen table. We had fun creating it and it was a lot less infuriating than I first expected it to be, but who knew the real joy would be destroying it.

On New Year’s Eve at dinner, my son asked if he could eat the train. This sounded like a gross request to me (I don’t like ginger bread trains, no matter how many weeks old they happen to be), but I told him to go ahead and get a taste because it was “going away” in the morning. To my surprise, both my husband and son immediately indulged in the little choo-choo. . . and claimed it to be tasty. I laughed out loud and snapped photos of faces full of the candy laced cookies.

The whole thing was great fun and I announced this moment as the beginning of a new family tradition — the eating of the ginger bread on New Year’s Eve. Of course this means we have to first make the ginger bread every year. Wow, two new traditions at once, but I quickly had to wonder if they would withstand the years. Do I need to be the one to push the event on my family every Christmas or is it okay to skip it every now and then? I mean, seriously, what’s a good mom to do? What did my own mom do? What do most moms do? Do you deliberately create and maintain family traditions or do they just seem to happen?

My 2015 Resolutions: A Step in the Right Direction

Posted on January 3, 2015February 2, 2015 by Mama

So it’s the season of resolutions, and I began these days of goal setting by focusing on three areas of life improvement. . . which quickly became five, no eight, no ten and so on. So I started thinking about how a girl who clearly doesn’t have it together can possible narrow it down to so few areas of change. I mean there is always do these things less, do these things more, finish this, be a better that and lose weight. Yes, the weight thing is always a given.

For example, the wonderful photo collage hanging in my living room was a great, yet slightly expensive, project of mine this year. The conglomeration of frames is nice, but when your four year old starts asking who all those people are, it’s probably time to fill them with actual family photos.

I have three partially started scrapbooks begging to be touched, but instead I keep creating cards because they take far less focus to finish. Of course if I wrapped up the remodel of my craft room, I might find more space and time to work on said projects. Oh, oh, I also want to create one of those cute little “Favorite Moments” mason jars posted all over Pinterest. . . for three years I’ve wanted to make one of those cute little mason jars.

Oh, here’s a good one. . . we have a bathroom light, heater, fan combo for our master bathroom that has been sitting in the floor of our closet for over a year. I can install it, but I can’t wire it because of it’s special needs, so instead of calling the electrician I just look at it longingly and wipe the steam off my mirror after every shower.

I bought a gym membership in October but I haven’t worked out in three weeks, and apparently I partook of way too many Christmas cookies and candy canes. So included in my list of “do mores” is to exercise more, along with read books more, study my Bible more, be a good mom more, finish projects more, scrapbook more, clean house more (that cleaning thing is kind of just an alternate goal). More, more, more, but when I’m already behind, shouldn’t I be more focused on less, less, less?

Ah yes, the “less” column, which includes eat less, procrastinate less, start fewer new projects, lose my cool less, bite my nails less, go to bed with makeup on less, watch TV less and how about go out for family dinner less. I mean these lists could just go on and on.

So after some thinking (which apparently doesn’t need to go into the “more” column — I find plenty of time for just that), I finally came up with a few life-changing resolutions for this year. Mind you, I’m not holding my breath that I will permanently be able to mark any of these items of my to-do list, but I figure if I’m at least headed in the right direction, that’s a good place to be.

My 2015 Resolutions:
• Put God and Others First
• Simplify
• Follow Through

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