I'm very thankful for.....

........ a warm fire on a cold day.



.........that my children are best friends.



...........that no carpet and a clothes basket entertains babies for hours.



...........sweet kisses.



........Jessie's cheesy grin.

Advent, Family and God's Amazing Mercy

Nona and Mommy---- repairing our advent calendar. We've said for two years, we just need to get out the glue gun and repair all the little pieces of ribbon that have come loose and reattach all the velcro. Yes, hot glue and velcro. That's how I sew. We love our calendar. It's all 31 days of december. The first 15 days are old testament prophecy pointing us to the coming Messiah and the 16th on is prophecy fulfilled. We went ahead and fixed her all up this year because for some reason, we were missing about 14 of the felt covers for the windows. We made new covers and finally our repairs.I'll probably find them all tucked away in some safe place within the next few months(heehee) We started a few days late but Richard caught us all up in one day. This is a great family devotion by Wanda Sanseri.

Here is the book containing all the patterns needed for the calendar.

I love hearing these stories again this year from the man I love snuggled on the couch with the children I love. I love that Jesus humbled Himself to become a lowly man. That is so amazing. I love that He saved me from God's wrath by sweet redemption. His merciful plans are so amazing.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

For awhile I've thought about trying homemade laundry detergent. My only obstacle has been needing to go to more than one store to get the ingredients. So, yesterday in Publix, I was on the detergent aisle about to pick up some Tide, and I spotted all three needed ingredients: Borax, Washing Soda and Fels Naptha. Here is a picture of all three. I should have taken a photo before ripping into it all, but I was totally out of detergent, so I got busy: )

Here is my homemade laundry detergent. It took about 10 minutes and that time includes finding containers that would work.
Here is the recipe. You can add essence oils but it has a really fresh scent without. So, I'm not going to add any. Oh my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who are professional laundry people, love this soap. I knew when I found out it passed their requirements that it must really be good: )

Homemade Laundry Soap
1/3 bar Fels Naptha .99 per bar
½ cup washing soda 2.99 per box
½ cup borax powder 3.99 per box
(It makes 2 gallons or 64 loads for regular washers or 128 loads for front loaders.)
Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. I used a medium sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into a larger sauce pan. It will need to hold 2 gallons. You could do this right in the 2 gallon container you use to store it. I used several smaller containers. Now add your soap mixture from the first sauce pan and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load for regular washers and ¼ cup per load for (HE)front loaders.
You can do the math on it. I think its about a half penny per load for front loaders. That sounds free to me compared to the cost of detergent. I’m not a tree hugger(even though I do love trees) but much better environmentally because lots less packaging waste.

I'm reading.....

I'm reading this book that I've only scanned before. I really like the Bluedorn Family.



























I'm reading this book because we all love it so much. It's the first year we've read bartholomew but we've read the first book in this series every year for probably the last five years. Everyone is a little bothered that we might not work Jotham's Journey into the Season. I think we will, though. We might just have to do it in a couple of sittings: )

Accidental Tradition but I love it.....

Here is my sweet Jess being mesmerized by the pretty lights. I love Christmas and I love babies! It's a very pleasurable combination for me.

It used to bother me that my Christmas tree, and Christmas decor in general, was

way less than magazine worthy. Not anymore. I am totally over it. A beautifully decorated tree

that stays that way all season is so far beyond what I can produce and maintain that I have embraced our ugly trees and other decor that looks like maybe thing 1 and thing 2 got loose in my house and were in a merry mood. I'm actually blessed with a team of 8 people who descend on my home and decorate it for me in about 45 minutes flat. Talk about a cool service!!!!! They are available for hire: ) And yes, number 8 really does help. Her main job is to constantly rearrange the ornaments on the tree. Also, if you notice the stockings hung by the chimney with care in the top photo. You'll see that they are not exactly distributed evenly. I do go behind the little helpers and make some adjustments sometimes; ) Also, I have not been corrected yet, but I know my older children would like for me to clarify that most of this "type" decor can really be attribued to the Brown children who are 9 and under!!!

Funny Christmas Tradition #1

This is an absolutely beautiful morning. It is pouring rain, and I'm up all by myself. I didn't sleep much last night. Normally I don't have any problem at all catching some rest but occasionally I wake up in the middle of the night perfectly rested. It might actually be because of all that Coke I consumed last night at Moe's. I decided a while back when this happens not to lay there hoping forever to go back to sleep. I get up and spend some time with Jesus and then catch up on whatever needs catching up on(there is always something) This morning I also spent some fun time looking online for Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers and I found the cutest site called Vat19 They call themselves purveyers of curiously awesome products, and I do believe its true. This is so cute. If you have time, watch this little advertisement but don't let the kids watch cause they almost say a bad word and it's pretty obvious what they're about to say: ) We like gummy bears(pretty much any candy) here at our house, but Kimmi is the real gummy lover. When she was about three years old, we started a tradition where Kimmi gets one extra present behind the tree. She gets a little basket of gummy bears very well hidden waaaay behind the tree and she forgets that it might be there until waaaay after all presents are opened and breakfast is eaten and stockings are un-stuffed. Every single year she forgets! I think she actually might be pretending now for my sake. I'm not sure why we started this tradition. It seems unfair to the other seven children. I'm thinking its because she was the baby at the time and if you remember Kimmi way back when, you know that she wasn't very easy to get along with....she was actually pretty darned grumpy. She stayed in quite a bit of "trouble". I'm imagining I was looking for a way to make her feel special...set apart. That's silly to do that with a little red basket of gummy bears, but it sure did work. I don't remember any of the other children ever feeling offended by it or expecting anything different than Kimmi should get her gummies. It's just a fact of life here. I was thinking it might be funny to put that giant gummy bear in her basket this year just to keep her on her toes. It actually might scare her(heehee) Here she is with baby Jessie. She sure makes up for all that trouble she used to cause. She is a real blessing, and I don't know what I would do without her.

I am not crafty. I have an aversion to crafts. I actually hate doing crafts. I decided one year that I would conquer my little issue by purchasing a kit(from a children's company) to make beaded ornanments. We made them but it was not fun, enjoyable, or the sweet memory making activity for which I had hoped. We still have them and they are very pretty and they do bring back memories but those memories still make a couple of my children curl up in the fetal position and cry.(heeehee) Actualy, it wasn't that bad...we just laugh about it now. Anyhow, when Christmas season approaches I always want to do some sort of craft with my peeps and this year, only 2 days after Thanksgiving, I can go ahead and check that little chore off my list. It was so simple and really alot of fun and no one cried. I'm at my mommy's house now and maybe that's another reason I enjoyed it. There are no major chores hanging over my head here and I had my sweet mommy right beside me as back up when I sewed a ribbon on backwards. She talked me thru it and helped the children too.(heehee-again-but I'm serious.

They are not fancy. Just some straight lines and simple hand stitching and even Nona Klare caught on to it. It was fun doing it with Nana and we even were able to bless her with six new ornaments for her tree that we helped put up. Who in the world would be so thrilled to "beautify" their tree with these except for a doting grandmother???

Now that we know we like to hand stitch maybe we'll add in some embroidering and other simple projects since we won't be watching TV anymore...since we cleaned our house out of those evil boxes. It's been about a week and no one misses it. I'm so glad they are gone. We've been TV-less a couple of times before in our lives and we're always the happiest, growing closer to the Lord, most productive that way. I could talk about that for quite awhile so I'll save it for another post: )