Sunday, December 13, 2009

Family Photo - Christmas Edition





Since my camera was stolen this summer I haven't blogged much, and haven't uploaded any pics. But Wanda took some great "family photos" tonight, and I borrowed her memory
card before she deleted stuff. So here we are, the Stevens House (Valerie, Noel, Wanda, Katie, Holly) and Theresa!


This is maybe the first photo of Holly, wow!









Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Christmas-y Links - Justice, Gifts, Emotional Health and COOKIES!

Hope your advent is going well.

I haven't blogged much over the past month I've been otherwise distracted ...

... speaking of, Richard has started his Christmas list of organizations to support as a gift to him this season. Which I think is an awesome idea. I need to do some thinking before I create my own list.

But on Sojourner's today, I learned that you can add non-profits and charities to your Amazon Christmas wish list. It doesn't even have to be from the Amazon website. Any online giving site anywhere on the web can be added to your wishlist. AMAZING!

Lynne Hybels wrote a description of what I think is a really emotionally and spiritually healthy take on Christmas.

I've started making Christmas cookies, starting with two VERY different food blogs.

"SnoWhite" is a friend of mine from High School who blogs anonymously. She is in her final year of a PhD program in Biology Education, married, active in her church and has the most detailed, organized cooking/menu planning blog I have EVER SEEN! She is sort of amazing. These cookies are the bomb! Mint chocolate cookie crunch.

101 Cookbooks is really cool too - vegetarian. But again these were AWESOME - Sparkling Ginger Chip Cookies. Yumm!

My sister is coming over today to help with Christmas baking part 2. Today is the day I get in touch with my ethnic heritage - krumkake (Norwegian), almond rusk (Swedish), potica (Slovenian, which I count as close enough to Croatian to count) and candy cane cookies (Candy Cane cookies have more to do with getting in touch with my [Great] Aunty Ann, who is really really tiny and quite old and adorable, not so much our ethnic heritage).