A Christmas Affirmation
from worship at Highland Baptist Church, Louisville, KY

We believe that Christmas is more than a time for parties and ornaments; it is a time for remembering Christ and the coming of God's love in human flesh.
We believe there are gifts more important than the ones under the Christmas tree: the things we teach our children, the way we share ourselves with friends, and the work with which we set about reshaping the world in our time in the power of Jesus Christ.
We believe that the finest carols are often sung by the poorest voices, by hearts made warm by the wonder of the season.
We believe in the angel's message that we should not be afraid-that the child of Bethlehem is able to overcome all anxieties and insecurities.
We believe in prayer and quietness as a way of making Christmas relevant, that if we wait in silence, we will experience the presence of the One born in the stable, for Christ lives today as surely as He lived then.
We believe in going away from Christmas as the Wise Men went "another way." We want to be different when these days are past - more centered, more thoughtful, more caring, more Christ-like. And we ask for God to help us. Amen.

Although I have only once or twice been able to worship at my "home church" on Christmas Eve, I always look forward to that time of quiet with my family. Last night we set out, four instead of three this year, to a new church, in the snow, not knowing exactly what to expect. But I felt my heart soften as it always does. I felt tears prick my eyes as we all, as a congregation, lifted our lit candles, the Light of Christ, and sang these words,

"Silent night, holy night! Son of God, Love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth...Jesus, Lord at Thy birth."

May today dawn full of redeeming grace for you, and may your day be filled with family, food, and presents, as it seems mine will be.

Peace of Christ.

At my fifth grade "graduation," we sang a song that went, "When I grow up / I want to be / the very best that I can be / To do the work that has to be done / I'll find a job that's lots of fun." It was sort of like a rap. I don't know why I still remember all those words--maybe because we practiced it roughly 8,000,750 times. (We also had to memorize and recite Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled," with overexaggerated diction. I can still probably recite that, too, inflection intact.) But anyway, between stanzas, we each called out in turn what we wanted to be. I'm pretty sure I wanted to be a professional swimmer and an author. We see how well that has worked out for me. I don't remember many other jobs people wanted, but I distinctly remember one girl who said, "I wanna be a homemaker." I remember exactly who it was, even though I haven't seen her, let alone talked to her, since probably that same year. Probably some of you reading this blog remember it too, because we were all so floored by the concept.

While I am neither a professional swimmer nor an author, I would say that I've found a "job that's lots of fun!" Big picture, I very much feel like Second Mile is where God has called me to be at this time in my life. I am able to do tasks that I am good at, for a greater good, and I am also gaining invaluable experience and skills that will serve me so well in the future. I am also getting to know wonderful people and making all sorts of useful connections. I have no doubt that my season here may open doors to other opportunities later in life, as it even already is.

That being said, I also feel a yearning to be *drum roll please* a homemaker. I believe deeply that there are roles divinely designed for women and that we can find great fulfillment in living those out. I doubt the girl in my fifth grade class was feeling this yet, but I tip my hat to her for being honest in the face of the derision I'm sure we poured out on her (as only fifth graders can). Because I think there is great truth in her dream. Some of the day-to-day activities in which I take the most pleasure are my "wifely duties." I love doing laundry, folding and putting away the clothes just so. I enjoy planning and cooking meals, and my mind is often on things I would like to do when I get home. I like keeping our apartment neat and tidy. Less tangibly, I love perusing homemaking blogs and couponing. It is not yet my season to live this particular life, but perhaps the season will come.

I have also been granted a lifetime of opportunity to watch the way my mom has lived her version of this role. I've seen that just because a mom doesn't "work" doesn't mean she can't have an absolutely full and vibrant life. Another part of why I would love to be a homemaker is for the opportunities it affords away from the home! Filling my days with some combination of volunteer work, church activities, and household tasks sounds blissful to me.

I'm for sure not quitting my day job; it's not the time for that for me. But even though I spent years thinking I was an utterly liberated feminist, as I've matured I've grown to see the beauty in this other way. I may sound quaint and demure, but I would hardly classify myself as such. Rather, I think the 2010 version of a homemaker is entirely different and more enlightened than it ever has been, and I think it's educated women like me who choose to live this way that make it so. I'm not throwing back to the 1950s here, just trying to "be the very best that I can be" in the way God has designed me.

Although they did wear some pretty kickin' dresses in the 1950s...

Hubby and I hosted a Secret Santa party Saturday for some friends. Our gift exchange was very 21st century. I used a polling website called Doodle to set the date, e-vites to make it official, and collected everyone's Secret Santa questionnaires via email. THEN, Hubby wrote a program to randomly assign a person to each guest and automagically send an email with that particular questionnaire attached. Yeah. He is something.

I tend to get sort of obsessive when it comes to planning an event, so therefore I had a Google doc for the party going about a month in advance. I started trying to buy different ingredients for things on sale well in advance and make some things ahead of time, but the week before the party was just crazoid and I didn't really do much except for make a batch of sausage balls, which I froze. So Saturday rolled around and it was go time.

I started with these little pinwheel crescent roll-up things. I made one batch of pizza ones and one of spinach and cheese, which, happy coincidence of happy coincidences, are red and green, like for Christmas!

Then came the sweet potato biscuits. Sounds delicious, right? Well, I have never made biscuits before, so given that I was pleased with the outcome, but they did NOT rise. Hmmm. They were more like sweet potato circles of flat bread, which sort of killed my plan to make little ham biscuits. Luckily, I already needed to go to the grocery store to pick up fruit and veggies for the night, so I picked up some Hawaiian rolls for that purpose. And I am not utterly disheartened about the biscuits either; I think they're worth another shot.

I also made break-and-bake holiday chocolate chip cookies and a spice cake with cream cheese frosting. We had diet coke, cranberry gingerale, and apple cider in our sometimes malfunctioning crockpot. I figured it would do the job because it just had to be warm, not cook. I sort of combined about four different recipes for cider into one and threw in some cinnamon sticks, a few orange slices, and a tea bag. I couldn't taste much actual difference, but it was a neat concept! Needless to say, we had a lot of food. I tend to overplan as far as refreshments go.

I had also made jars of baking mixes for each guest to have as a favor. They were fun and easy, but boy did I make a mess the night before the party trying to pour flour into non-wide mouth mason jars! I can learn two lessons from this: 1) If I ever make those again, buy wide mouth jars and 2) Maybe Hubby and I need to purchase a funnel.

In the midst of doing all this on Saturday I got really stressed out and thought that I wasn't going to have time to finish everything, and I hardly even ate anything until about 3 o'clock (although I did get a vanilla latte when I went to the store that made my life very happy), at which point Hubby pointed out that we still had three hours until the party and everything was pretty much done. I guess I am not good at estimating! I'm also not good at making sure everything is hot all at once. (I even have trouble with this on normal dinners sometimes!) This must be an acquired skill.

We had a really fun time once everyone arrived, and we only have a moderately obscene amount of leftovers! People stayed until ELEVEN O'CLOCK. If you know me, this is highly unusual for me. So I'd say we can count my first sort of "grown up" party a success.

I would say that Hubby and I had a near perfect first Thanksgiving together, especially considering that even up until the night before I was not feeling super excited about it. We made the choice to stay at home and begin forging our own traditions together, and it ended up being lovely.

We slept in and had a pajama morning, which is one of my favorite things to do. We watched some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and poked fun at it. We Skyped with his parents and grandmother in Maryland. We chatted with my parents on the phone. After awhile, we went for a walk in the neighborhood on which I collected leaves and things for a centerpiece, which I think turned out quite well!

<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xXE3bTRRRcE/TO_gi0rfnpI/AAAAAAAAACk/1MC4vgz4P0E/s200/IMG_9085.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543896555177614994" />

It was REALLY windy while we were walking and unseasonably warm, which turned into a yucky, blustery day and evening, so I'm glad we got out when we did!

We had a small lunch and spent a quiet afternoon reading together before I commenced Operation Cook My First Ham.

See ham:
<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xXE3bTRRRcE/TO_gxOFQ2YI/AAAAAAAAACs/tVUXWGFK5yA/s200/IMG_9074.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543896802514753922" />

See ham get glazed:
<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xXE3bTRRRcE/TO_g7ovPVrI/AAAAAAAAAC0/cpzF_PXuZP8/s200/IMG_9078.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543896981468829362" />

It turned out absolutely delicious. The glaze was from my Fannie Farmer cookbook: brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and dry mustard powder. Nomz. Hubby did a much better job carving it than I would have, although the bone proved a bit tricky to get around! Next time, though, we will be experts.

Here's everything else ready to go:

<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xXE3bTRRRcE/TO_hNY6m9YI/AAAAAAAAAC8/Ahs9A4AJhw4/s200/IMG_9080.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543897286459192706" />

We had stuffing (Pepperidge Farm, my family's secret recipe), smashed potatoes, and broccoli with olive oil and garlic. Nothing super fancy, but everything tasty.

Here we are ready to enjoy our spread:

<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xXE3bTRRRcE/TO_hkU_JcuI/AAAAAAAAADE/yCCOv-Gqtrk/s200/IMG_9123.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543897680541479650" />

We could have fed about 5 more people with all the food we had. But luckily, my parents are coming to visit this weekend, so they can help us eat the leftovers! Plus, a hunk of ham is frozen away to use for a get-together we're having next week. I think it was well worth the cost and the moderate stress of having inadvertently bought an uncooked ham...whoops.

But all's well that ends well! And here's how we ended our evening:

<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xXE3bTRRRcE/TO_iOcjGWYI/AAAAAAAAADM/itA01WBkqPs/s200/IMG_9127.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543898404125825410" />

Pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing, which we accompanied with raspberry wine and a movie. Doesn't get much better than that!

Okay, I am not calling myself a Plumpkin. If you haven't seen this video you are missing out! Well, sort of. Anyway, I like his word "plumpkin." But that's beside the point. The point is that I got this:

for FREE the other day.

I've started to get into couponing lately. For awhile, I lurked around a couple of money saving blogs but didn't really experiment too much. However, about a month ago I switched from shopping at Wal Mart to shopping at Kroger and oh boy! The savings were so exciting! First of all, they have a great variety of options that are store brand, aka cheaper to begin with. Secondly, with a Kroger card you can get all kinds of deals automatically. You can log on to their website and create a shopping list from their weekly ad of what's on sale AND you can load digital coupons onto your card. Plus, if you print (or clip) and use a manufacturers' coupon, Kroger will match it with a "bonus coupon." So I guess you could say I've been bitten by the coupon bug, even though I am not yet as skilled at it as some people.

So, all that to say, on Monday I was browsing some blogs and came across a coupon for $1.50 off Coffeemate holiday flavored creamers and a match to a sale at Walgreen's for BOGO creamer, making each bottle $0.50. I printed the coupon and thought I might get around to stopping at Walgreen's, even though I really didn't need two creamers. (Whether or not I even needed one is up for debate, although I certainly did WANT it, because I have refrained from buying any yet due to cost.) However, I saw later on another site that the creamer was on sale at Target for $1.50, making it FREE after the coupon!

I ran by Target on my way home from work and was successful. And man does that free creamer taste good. Consider this my PSA for coupons.

You can check out some of my favorite coupon/deal sites here:

swagbucks.com - I am just starting to learn about this one, but you can browse the coupons.com coupons here and if you print and redeem one your account gets credited with 10 swagbucks, which can be used later to "buy" things from their store.

Money Saving Mom - The first savings blog I started following. Not only does she post deals from multiple stores, she also shares great stories about managing time and money while still having fun and spending time with family and friends.

And of course, coupons.com, redplum.com, and the aforementioned kroger.com. I don't think you have to be a cardholder to use the shopping list feature, but you do need to be in order to load digital coupons. We don't get the newspaper, so these sources replace the weekend paper inserts for my coupon clipping needs.

There are so many great sites out there that post deals and coupons that I don't feel like I can compete (or even that I have the time to be ABLE to), but I might share the occasional great find or two on here! Sure, this saves us money, but I also do it because it's fun and satisfying, and I'd love to introduce you to the joys as well!

Only don't call me a plumpkin.