Could God be the ultimate Magic Eraser?

Photo courtesy of Mr.Clean.com

If this post makes no sense, forgive me. I have been in a cleaning FRENZY today. We are having company tomorrow (my mother-in-law) and are VERY excited for her to visit. On Thursday, we will have Christmas dinner for 14 in our home. I know this is fewer than many of you host over the holidays, but it's a full 10 people more than what WE'RE used to. I have written before about my dislike for cleaning and my HATE for clutter. I do, however, like to have a neat and clean house when people are visiting us. So..........I emailed DH today at work and asked him to pick up some Magic Erasers on the way home. I wanted to tackle the smudges in the stairwell (as well as many, many other cleaning tasks, lest you think those were the biggest of my cleaning woes).

When he got home, I immediately asked for the package, ripped it open and got to work. I ended up totally using up a whole Magic Eraser just on our stairwell. There were only flimsy little pieces left when I was done. I am also going to admit that I haven't been in a very good mood today. Cleaning and clutter make me grumpy. I know I need an attitude adjustment about it; however, that hasn't happened yet (unfortunately). So even though I was determined to Magic Erase the stairwell, I was less than happy about doing it. And then as I was about halfway up the stairs and thus 3/4 of the way finished, it hit me.......HARD! God's mercy and love are just like the Magic Eraser. God is able to swoop in and clean up the subtle, yet insidious mess that is our spiritual selves and make it clean again. I say subtle mess because I fully realize that outwardly people don't always show their hidden "dirt". That is the dirt that instead rears its ugly head around the people who know us best....our families and closest friends. (In my case, my dirt is that I sometimes have less patience than I should, I snap at the people I love instead of speaking gently, and the list could truly go on and on, but I'll spare you. I usually hide these ugly behaviors when I am in public, however.) Similarly, I am pretty sure that anyone walking up my stairwell prior to the Magic Erasing may not have seen all the little dings and drips and stains. Yet they were there in plain sight. I was also struck by the fact that just as the Magic Eraser leaves behind little bits of itself in the cleaning process (thus the disintegration), so does God leave bits of Himself behind when he cleans us up. All this revelation didn't necessarily make me enjoy the cleaning more, but it humbled me tremendously. I am certainly in need of some good Magic Eraser power today as well as any other day on the calendar. So my wish for today is that I learn to appreciate the cleaning powers of God and that I try to create less of a mess for Him to clean up!!

Handmade Christmas--Part 3

For my three cousins who are in their 20s, I usually give gift cards. I wanted a clever way to package the gift cards this year, so I decided to whip up some little stockings using the same pattern I used for my Stocking Advent Calendar. When browsing the ribbon drawer in my craft room recently I saw this groovy red pom-pom trim and thought it would look great on a white stocking. Luckily, I had also just bought a couple of sheets of white glitter felt at Hobby Lobby. The photo below shows the finished stockings.

One little problem: I'm not sure the opening at the top of the stockings is wide enough for the gift cards!! I haven't tried it yet.

I also decided this year to give tins of Homemade Granola to a few family members. I learned that it actually often pays to wait until the last minute, because you can get some great deals. I found some really cute Christmas tins for 60% off that I used to package the granola. This granola is SOOOOO yummy and it makes a really big batch. I love it stirred into Yoplait Thick 'n Creamy vanilla yogurt or just plain for a snack. My oldest son loves it with milk. The recipe I use is in this post on my other blog.

Here is one cookie sheet of granola ready for the oven. This recipe makes two full cookie sheets of granola. It is SOOOO good. I used whole pecans, dried cranberries, maple syrup, and vanilla extract for my recipe. You can vary it a lot according to your tastes.

Here is one of the tins filled with granola. I cut waxed paper to cover the inside of the tin and I also put another round piece on top and tucked it in to keep in the freshness.

Here are the four bargain tins filled with granola. I like the idea of giving a gift in a container that can be reused instead of tossed out.

Handmade Christmas--Part 2

Just the other day I decided I wanted to make new pajamas for the boys to wear on Christmas Eve night. I'm psycho like that, coming up with involved projects at the last minute when my house is a complete disaster, mother-in-law is flying in to visit in two days, and I'm hosting Christmas dinner for 14 at our house. Yeah...........it's nuts. Anyway, I stayed up late last night working on some more handmade Christmas gifts. This is the girl who was going to be ALL DONE by the end of November. Sadly, even as I set that goal I feared I wouldn't attain it. Oh well........on with the show and tell.



This is what the PJs look like. These are my little boys pajamas. I had to buy a pretty large t-shirt at Hobby Lobby so the shirt will be kind of huge. And the photo makes the pants look like doll pants. I just wanted to show the whole ensemble. I freezer paper stencilled the stocking on the front of the t-shirts. I wrote a post/tutorial about this on my other blog, so click here if you would like to read it. It is SOOOOO easy with great results. And you could even pull it off before Christmas.



I LOVE the white stocking on the red. I chose the stocking after finding the flannel with a stocking print.




And for two boys, I love the blue background on the flannel. I think these will be so cute and cozy. They are all wrapped up and under the tree right now with a label saying "Open on Dec. 24".


The next two photos show some patchwork dish towels I made for my cousin and aunt. I used this tutorial. They stitched up really easily. I would like to do more of these and want to find the waffle-weave towels next time. Target didn't have those when I bought the ones I ended up using.

These didn't photograph as pretty as they are in real life. Oh well.........I'm not a great photographer OR I have a stinky camera OR BOTH!!

Advent Activity--Day 20--Sugar Cone trees

For our 20th Advent activity we made sugar cone Christmas trees. I just saw that they made these over at Flipflops and Applesauce and posted about it today too! We just bought the sugar ice cream cones and added green food coloring to plain white frosting in a can. The boys were both really careful about spreading the frosting to cover the cones. And we all found out how yummy sugar cones are just plain!

Kind of a blurry photo. I swear some days I hate my digital camera. It is such a clunker. Oh well, this is my older son frosting his cone.

And the little guy working on his cone.

We just used M&Ms to decorate the tree, but red licorice laces would make great "tinsel".

After they were done we put them in the frig for a while to harden them up some as the frosting was very soft and gooey.

Handmade Christmas--Part 1

I LOVE to make gifts for people at Christmas. Hopefully they love receiving these gifts as well! :0) I wanted to share what I made to give my sons' teachers this year. We also gave one of these to our daycare provider.

First, I chose 4 photos I've taken around our home this past year. These were nature photos, not kid photos. I uploaded them to Shutterfly and had them made into greeting cards. I was very impressed with the quality of the cards when I received them in the mail. The photo below shows the 4 cards I had made up.

I had planned to sew them each a Gratitude Wrap using Amanda Soule's free pattern. However, I guess my sewing skills weren't up to par because I couldn't get it to come out looking very good. So I scrapped it and made up my own pattern using the pieces I had already pre-cut for the Gratitude Wraps.

Basically I just came up with a little pouch lined with cream colored linen with ribbons to tie it closed. In the above photo you can see the inside of the pouch.

Here is what the pouches look like when they are tied closed. Into each pouch I placed the four greeting cards tied with a cream ribbon along with a card my son hand-drew for each of his teachers and a personal note from me. I was pleased with how these turned out and I wish I had bought more of the outer fabric. I got it on discount at Wal-Mart this summer.

Advent Activity--Day 19--Paper Garland

For our Day 19 Advent Activity (done on Day 20), my oldest son and I made a cut paper garland to decorate our Christmas tree. I saw this activity in the Crafting Fun book I bought a few months ago. I was drawn to it for its simplicity, but knew my boys would enjoy the "magic" of seeing what could be created from a single piece of paper.



I purchased a few sheets of Christmasy scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby. I had to buy the 12X12 inch size, but I cut it down to 8 1/2 by 11-inch since that is the size called for in the directions.



After you have the 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper, you fold it into thirds lengthwise. I have tried to show that in the photo below.



Then you make alternating cuts along the folds of each side as shown in the photo below. I drew the lines with a pencil to help my son know where to cut, but when I made one by myself, I just did it without the lines and it turned out fine. The key is to cut close to the fold (about 1/2 inch from it) but not through the fold.



Below you can see my son cutting on the lines. I had him cut all the lines from one side first, then we turned the paper and he cut the other side. Afterwards, I cut a few of the lines a little longer where he didn't cut all the way to the end of the line.



Next is the fun part. Unfold your paper carefully. At first it will just look like a piece of paper with lots of slits in it!



But when you pull gently on the ends, you can stretch it out like a spring and see the pretty pattern. We looped one end to a branch near the top of our tree and stretched it out, then looped the bottom end onto a lower branch.

Although my youngest son hasn't made one of these yet, I think he does have the cutting skills needed to do it. So, I think you could try this with children as young as 3, depending upon how well they can cut. I would probably help him hold the paper as he cuts. Also, go ahead and try this even if you don't have "fancy" paper. I think this garland would look just as pretty with plain white printer paper.

Advent Activity--Day 18--Handprint Santa Cards

We actually didn't do our Day 18 activity on the 18th day for various reasons. To be honest, the boys' excitement about our daily Advent activity has diminished somewhat recently. My oldest son used to wake up every morning really excited to check the stocking and now he sometimes doesn't remember to check!! Still, they are usually interested in doing the activity once I initiate it. And we're having fun doing projects together. I am rethinking next year, however. I'm wondering if we'll just do a 12 days of Advent starting on December 12th instead of December 1st. We'll see.

For this activity we made Handprint Santa cards. I first saw this idea on the FamilyFun website. My mom just subscribed to this magazine for me and I'm so excited. I had a subscription several years ago and let it expire. So it will be fun to look forward to again. And now since the boys are older, we will probably try even more of the activities than before.



My youngest son, in particular, enjoys having his hands (or feet) painted. We made a really cute Halloween wreath in October with the boys' hand and footprints. So now whenever I say I'm going to paint his hand, he is totally all over it. We also made some really cute handprint trees recently in my Montessori preschool class. To see how we did it, click here.



Here my little boy is getting ready to use his fingertip to paint pom-poms and trim on the Santa hat.



This is my older son's hand covered with paint.



And here he is pressing it onto the card. I can't believe his hands will be so big soon that they will hardly fit onto a card this size!! WAHHH!!! He's growing up too fast, but I love seeing him grow and change with every age. I remember when I was little asking my mom fairly often whether or not she wished I was still a baby. I think I realized somehow that older children come with annoying challenges, and I was always afraid she would prefer me as a baby over me at my current childhood age. I also remember that she always answered me in the same way. She would say something like, "Every age has its' joys and I have loved being your mom at every age." Now that I am a mom, I agree. I am sometimes wistful for those cuddly baby days, but I also really love seeing my boys grow and change.



Here are a few of our finished cards. Each boy painted 3 cards. I think both of these are my older son's cards. We will give these cards to our family members who spend Christmas day here at our home with us.