2009: The Domestic Notebook's First Year

I started this blog in April as an outlet for my domestic endeavors. It has been so much fun and I love dreaming up new posts and sharing part of my life with you. My favorite part has been "meeting" so many wonderful people through the blogging world. Thanks for stopping by my site, leaving comments, and sending emails. I've learned so much from you and really enjoy hearing all of your ideas!

I figured I'd recap the year, well last nine months, of blogging with a look back to a few posts that are popular and/or my favorites.

The toy storage bag tutorial was my first sewing tutorial. It is the most popular post on my site which is funny because I definitely wouldn't have expected that. But I have to say, I love that bag and am planning to make more of them soon, especially to contain the Christmas accumulation of new toys!

I've spent a lot of time posting about our Jesse Tree so that's for sure been a favorite topic.

There's been no shortage of food posts here in the last nine months. I've posted several of my own recipes {Banana Nut Waffles, Tomato Basil Soup, Pavlova, and the Best Iced Sugar Cookies} and also shared several tasty finds created by others.

I love sharing about our preschool co-op, something that we've really enjoyed this year. My favorite lesson so far has been the Post Office theme. I'll be posting more of my lesson plans and learning time activities in the new year.

It's been fun to reminisce about the different things I've shared here this year. Thanks again for all of the support! Happy New Year! May God bless your 2010.

2nd Annual Gingerbread Jamboree

I mentioned recently that we started a new Christmas tradition last year of building gingerbread houses {with graham crackers} and having friends and family vote on their favorite. We gather 'round the dining room table with a huge pile of different candies and edible decor, bags of icing and stacks of graham crackers. Then, everyone begins working on their masterpieces...and the boys begin their sugar binge.

Instead of posting our creations on our private family blog this year, we decided to do it here. So, leave a comment and vote for your favorite.

1. Christmas Cone Cabin

2. Open Doors

3. Gingerbread Lane

4. SnowDen

5. The Sweat Lodge

And here's Boo's half-eaten creation...

Jesse Tree Wrap Up

Well, the month of awaiting and celebrating Christ's birthday has concluded. What a sweet time it was.

I've enjoyed hearing from you about what things you did to celebrate the Advent season, whether with a Jesse Tree or otherwise. And what a blessing to hear how your children have responded too.

This picture of the Jesse Tree from Worms Cathedral in Germany was sent to me by a friend and reader. Thanks, Ashleigh!

So many of you have such creative ideas and I thought it'd be fun to share those ideas with everyone. So, I've created a Mr. Linky below where you can link up to one or more of your own posts about your Jesse Tree or other Advent celebration. If you've never linked up like this before, all you have to do is go to the post that you created, highlight the url in your address bar for that post and then paste it into the Mr. Linky below. Simple! Please link directly to the relevant post(s), not to the home page of your blog. Thanks for joining in!

Jesse Tree Link-Up

To see all of my Jesse Tree related posts, click here.

Christmas Traditions

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I have been flat out exhausted and though I have several posts in the works, I just can't seem to finish them up and publish them already. So coming up soon: white chocolate orange brioche (I figured out a copycat to Whole Food's version), Christmas crafts from our preschool co-op lesson today, bread pudding, and a couple sewing tutorials.

Until then, let's chat Christmas traditions. Our family is still really young so we are adding new traditions each year. But there are a few we have started and plan to hold on to. On Christmas Eve we decorate gingerbread houses with all of the family. We use graham crackers instead of gingerbread and everybody does a creative rendition of a gingerbread house. It's a lot of fun and we get to admire (and pick candy off of them) throughout the week. Last year we posted pictures of them on our family blog and had people leave comments to vote on their favorite.

Christmas Eve evening {hmmm...redundant?} we watch The Nativity Story after the kids are in bed. It's a great movie that really sets our minds on what we're celebrating.

Christmas morning we have a big breakfast before opening gifts. I make a cinnamon swirl coffee cake that we put a candle in and we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, rejoicing in the special day of his birth.

Something new this year that we plan to add to our Christmas month activities is ice skating on the lake. We went for the first time last weekend and it was just gorgeous. Growing up in Texas, it's so foreign to me to think you can ice skate outside on a lake! Gliding around in the crisp Colorado air with the mountains all around was just idyllic. I loved seeing the kids playing ice hockey, men lugging their drills out on the ice to ice fish and families building ice forts.

And of course there is our Jesse Tree, which we use the entire month of December as our Advent celebration anticipating Christmas day.

What are some of your favorite traditions, either as a child or as a parent? I love traditions and look forward to adding to ours in the years to come.

Gingerbread Neighbors

This week we decided to make some gingerbread cookies. We're handing them out to some of our neighbors as we distribute our Christmas cards. I've never made gingerbread before - it's not my favorite cookie. But based on how quickly the cookies disappeared after we baked them, I'd say they turned out pretty well. My boys {including Daddy} were hovering around the cooling cookies all afternoon.

We used Martha's recipe and personalized each cookie for the recipient. I used her royal icing included in the gingerbread recipe. I'm not used to working with such a runny icing so they didn't turn out as pretty as I'd hoped but they're still cute.

We also used a straw to punch a hole in the top of several to hang up as ornaments later {see the mitten above}.

Boo had a blast decorating...and tasting all the decorations.And so did The Good Doctor. Like his gingerbread ninja?He always has such creative ideas when we decorate cookies. I love it!

Are you baking for friends this Christmas? What baked goodies are your favorites to give?

Train Conductor Pretend Play

We let Boo use my hole punch a while ago and noticed how much he enjoyed it. The Good Doctor suggested I have him pretend he's a train conductor and punch train tickets. So last week when it was FREEZING cold here, I set it all up.

We have a Thomas the Train pop-up tent that we got on Craig's List a while ago. I grabbed some paper out of our recycle and cut out a few tickets. I also cut out some paper to be money so we could pay for our tickets and any snacks along the way. Boo had fun pretending first to be a passenger: buying his ticket, boarding the train, getting his ticket punched, stowing his luggage, and then traveling through the house with a few pit stops to buy snacks, etc. Our destinations included the Magical Forest {our living room where our Christmas tree is set up and we also have a ficus} and Office Land {you can figure out where that was}. He really liked being the conductor too. It was a lot of fun.

To extend the role playing activity, you could also do the suitcase craft from No Time For Flashcards. We did that craft before traveling for Thanksgiving. Boo had fun picking out things he needed for the trip and we used our Cozy Coupe to pretend like we were driving the long drive to Mimi & Pop's, complete with stops for gas.

What are some of your favorite role playing activities to do with your kids?

Homeschool Preschool Christmas Party

We had a little get-together tonight to celebrate Christmas with our preschool friends. It was fun celebrating together with our entire families. One of the girls put together a DVD slideshow with pictures of the kids at preschool over the last year. It was really fun to look back on how much they've changed and remembering the different activities we've done. The kids got a kick out of seeing themselves on screen too.

We hosted and I wanted to keep it low-key since it was a busy weekend. We decided on Mexican food. What's easier than that? I provided the meat and fixin's, and the other girls brought homemade beans, homemade Mexican rice, sauteed veggies, and dessert. I love easy dinner parties like that. And I always make way more than we need because I figure I'd rather relax the night after and eat leftovers than fix another big meal after such a busy night. Isn't that one of the bonuses of hosting? You get the leftovers. :)

Yes, I totally encouraged the kids to jump off of the couch. {Not something we normally do around here.} They were so funny.

The kids decorated cupcakes for dessert and we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. We are so blessed by our preschool co-op and look forward to another great year.

Jesse Tree Update

How is the Jesse Tree going for those of you doing it? We're really enjoying it. I love how much Boo looks forward to it everyday and I love the visible reminders to us of God's love for us in sending his son.

I ended up not finishing a few ornaments and plan to work on them in the New Year. I figured it wasn't worth scrambling to make thrown-together ornaments. So for the devotion on Abraham trusting and following God, we hung up the camel from the kids' Fisher Price nativity.

For the door for the passover devotional, we had originally bought a wooden dollhouse door from Hobby Lobby and were planning on using that. But the Good Doctor and I decided it was kind of funny putting up a fancy wooden paneled door. We thought we could make a more rustic one...but never found the time. So I drew the door symbol on a note card and we tucked that in the tree.

And can you believe I never found a trumpet ornament for the Joshua/Jericho devotional? You'd think trumpet ornaments would be easy enough to find, right? Instead we're using a small wooden flute the kids have.

As for the devotionals themselves, they're going pretty well. We look forward to doing it before bedtime every night, though we've taken to putting the Noodle to bed first most nights. He has a hard time sitting still the whole time and is usually ready to hit the hay by that time anyways. Boo is really drinking it in and enjoys putting the ornaments on and looking at the tree throughout the day.

I'd love to hear how your Jesse Tree is going and how your children are responding.

World of Aprons

That's where I've been the last few days. I've been sewing a bunch of children's cooking and art aprons for a little market we had at MOPS today. It was a lot of fun but I have quite a bit left over. In the next few days I'll be setting up an Etsy store to sell my surplus. Stay tuned if you're looking for some last-minute gift or stocking stuffer ideas. I'll resume regular posting now that I'm not spending all my free time with my sewing machine.

Homemade Chocolate Pudding

A while ago I ripped out a chocolate pudding recipe from my Better Homes & Gardens magazine. I tried it recently and it was really good, so I thought I'd share.

I like having recipes like this one that uses ingredients I always have on hand. All this one takes is a few hours of forethought, but no extra trip to the store. Plus, it's delicious!

The recipe is at bhg.com.

Handmade Gifts: Luggage & Diaper Bag Tags

Today's handmade gift is another inexpensive and quick favorite: personalized bag tags for luggage, diaper bags, or any ol' bag you want to hang a pretty tag on.
What you'll need:
Patterned scrapbook paper
Solid colored paper
Ink pad
Eyelet kit
Hole Punch
Eyelets
Grosgrain ribbon

On the solid paper, print out your label, whether it's a name, address, phone number, whatever.
I like to use fun fonts like the one above with the crown. This site has a great variety of stylish and fun fonts for free. Fun fonts for free. Say that 10 times fast.

Cut out a larger piece of scrapbook paper. I like to rub the edges of both papers with brown ink. It adds a little something extra I think.
Lightly apply the printed solid papers to the scrapbook paper with a glue stick or double-stick tape.
The next step is to take the tag to be laminated. I take mine to Office Max where they can do a whole sheet of heavy laminate for only a couple dollars. I tend to make several at a time so I can get them laminated together. You can fit quite a few on one sheet. Be sure to choose the heavier lamination to make them more durable.
Once laminated, cut around the border of the tag leaving approximately 1/8" border.
Punch a hole in the top of the tag. Using an eyelet punch affix eyelets in the punched hole. Thread grosgrain ribbon through the eyelet hole.
Finito!

And about that tag with the crowned letter J. It's been hanging on my diaper bag for 3 years. Held up well considering how much it's been slung around.

The other set of tags is part of a wedding gift that {gasp} I never sent. The couple moved overseas and I never got around to mailing it to them. The whole change of address thing made it sort of pointless too. {Christina, if you're reading this and you guys ever move back to your old address in Texas, I'll send these to you!}

If you missed my previous handmade gift posts, check them out here and here.

The Jesse Tree All Gussied Up

Here is our Jesse Tree all decorated for our month of Advent.
Last year it looked like this...Big change!

For our tree we use an artificial tree we bought when we first got married. We put all of our family ornaments on a bigger tree in another room. Here is our other tree in case you were curious.

It's a big pre-lit artificial that I got for free on Craig's List two summers ago. Can you believe it was free?! Ignore the nest of red scarving at the top. I haven't finished fiddling with it.

Back to the Jesse Tree. I bought ribbon on deeply discounted clearance after Christmas last year and bought two packs of blue ornaments at the dollar store. That's it for decorations besides the ornaments we'll add each day that correspond with our devotionals.

For the bottom, I grabbed a piece of remnant blue linen fabric I had in my fabric stash and tucked under as a tree skirt. I wrapped up each ornament in a numbered bag.

Jesse Tree: Shepherds Ornament

I'm cutting it down to the wire, but here's another ornament for our Jesse Tree. It corresponds with Day 23's devotional about the angel appearing to the shepherds to proclaim Christ's birth.

I found the sheep at Cost Plus World Market. For the shepherd's hook, I got a small wooden letter "j" from JoAnn's. We cut off the end a bit, drilled a hole in it and I painted it black.

To see all Jesse Tree related posts, look here.

Children's Advent Book

Several people have asked me recently about a recommendation for a children's advent book. Honestly, I don't have one that I'd say is the end all be all. For our Jesse tree we use several books together including two children's bibles we have.

There is one book that we love for the kids during Advent but it's not a book of devotionals. Instead, it links Christmas traditions to the season of Advent and gives the meaning behind a lot of the things we typically do this time of year like hanging up stockings, sending Christmas cards, decorating with candy canes, etc. The book is called The ADVENTure of Christmas by Lisa Welchel.

It's filled with colorful illustrations relating to each topic. Some of my favorite topics include the Christian symbols behind the Twelve Days of Christmas, the Legend of the Candy Cane, the history of displaying candles in windows, and the Advent wreath. One that we refer to often during Christmas is the story of the original Santa Claus, Bishop Nicholas from Turkey. After much wrestling with whether to allow Santa into our Christmas celebrations, we decided to stick with the story of the original Saint Nicholas that showed Christ's love to the poor and needy. That's the extent of who Santa is in our house. In keeping with his legacy, we hang stockings on our mantle that "Santa" tucks small gifts in. I still sometimes wonder if we should cut him out altogether but our children are very clear on the reason for this special season and that's the focus in our home the whole month. So for now, Santa stays... just barely.

What about you? Any good Advent book recommendations? Or children's Christmas books in general? Do you "do Santa"?