If you are looking for a delightful dessert for any occasion, this chocolate red wine cake is sure to satisfy your craving!

If you are looking for a delightful dessert for any occasion, this chocolate red wine cake is sure to satisfy your craving. Make it to share with the one you love.

Simple Gestures

I still remember our first Valentine’s Day as husband and wife as if it were yesterday. We were so young, just babies really…pregnant with our first, baby, actually. Josh was working full time and going to school part time while I juggled two jobs…not very well, I might add. Throughout my entire pregnancy, I suffered badly from morning sickness from the moment I woke up until the time I went to bed, and I was just so tired all the time.

On Valentine’s Day, Josh managed to get his schedule down to a half day, while I worked a full eight hour shift. I remember walking into our tiny 600 sq ft apartment and almost squishing a walkway of colorfully wrapped chocolate candies. There was soft music playing, the table was set with a beautiful bouquet of red roses, and as I turned to my right, I saw Josh in the kitchen preparing dinner.

Christmas is about moments. Slow down this season and bake these delicious popovers with your children as you soak in the season.

There seems to be a consensus right now that everyone is busy (shocker!). School rehearsals and finals, winter break activities, never-ending sports, Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, last minute errands…more Christmas shopping. Not to mention all of the Christmas traditions you want to enjoy with your family before the holiday season is actually over. It seems as though there is just not enough time to breathe the moments in, enjoy and treasure them…and instead we’re all just skating through them, trying to make sure we don’t miss one and inadvertently missing most of them.

Simple Christmas

Our house isn’t fully decorated for Christmas yet. We’ve got lights up outside, some of which we keep meaning to replace because they are burnt out – we’ve decided that at this point we’ll just address that issue next year.  We also opted to take a simpler approach to our tree this year, each choosing 5-6 especially meaningful ornaments apiece, which to our littler kids seemed like cruel and unusual punishment at first. But our tree is adorned with about 30 ornaments, each of which has a story, some ribbon, and a star…and it feels perfect to me.

Who doesn’t love scrumptious pumpkin bread? This simple but wonderful recipe is the perfect thing to bake on a crisp fall day!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love fall baking?

Oh, how I do. I prefer to bake with pumpkin, cinnamon, chocolate, and autumn spices over the ingredients of any other holiday – though I do have a soft spot for Christmas baking, too.

To me, baking is a lot like reconnecting with an old friend.

No matter how long it’s been (it’s usually not very long for me!), the reunion is always sweet, always worth doing, and always a blessing.

Every fall for the last six years, I’ve retreated into the kitchen to make a batch of this pumpkin bread recipe, which yields three scrumptious loaves of simple autumn goodness.

I can’t claim to have very many “family recipes” passed down to me from the ages. This recipe however, feels as cherished as a recipe that’s been handed down from generation to generation.

I first met Cindy in first grade.

I was the “new” girl, having just moved out to the country.

What a fun and festive variation of this fudge that you may enjoy if you like eggnog!

I had to stop myself from getting a little sad as I helped assemble the artificial Christmas tree at our church the other day.

This past Sunday, all the kids, teens and us older adult like people (the 20-31 1/2 yr olds) set out on a mission to turn the room in which we have our church service into a winter wonderland, and I was getting a little weepy at the thought of how short the Christmas season is.

The very tree we were putting together was going to be taken apart in just a few short weeks and Christmas would be over, the holiday spell would be broken, and the numerous remarks about how long the never-ending months of winter are would begin.

It breaks my heart just thinking about it, because I love this time of year!

The smell of fresh cut Christmas trees, the (admittedly repetitious) Christmas songs on the radio, all the houses getting blinged out by lights and crazy decorations, and all made so much sweeter by the reason we celebrate the season.

How can you bless your children’s father for being that amazing dad?

As soon as I saw him interact with his younger brothers and sisters, I knew, I just knew, that one day he was going to be a great dad.

Wait, I take that back.

I knew that one day he was going to be an amazing dad to any future kids he had.

I was just hoping they would also be mine.

But back up. I wasn’t even married to him or engaged for that matter. I had only known my now-husband for about a month then, and already I was dreaming about marrying him and starting a family someday!

Lucky for me, he felt the same way.

But I’m not sure he felt that way a month after we had known each other. He took his time promising himself to me, while I was ready to jump right in and marry him, like yesterday and at 19 years old.

There was only one problem.

I had been informed by one of my doctors that it would be difficult to nearly impossible for me to have children.

Do you ever wonder what Paul’s thorn in his side was (2 Corinthians 12:8)?

I wonder all the time. Did he have this thorn before he was a believer? And, if so, how long had he had it? Or, did his thorn enter his life after it changed forever on the road to Damascus?

All I know is that Paul does not say what his thorn was. How mysterious of him!

I think we all have thorns that we’ve wished we could pray away. I know I’m guilty of it.

How many times I’ve come before the Lord and asked him why he’s allowed certain things to happen in my life.

How many times I’ve promised I would change my sinful ways if he could just alter time and space and change certain events in my life.

How many times I’ve convinced myself that I would have been a better person had I not gone through these challenges.

While God is more than capable of erasing history, He doesn’t.  Why doesn’t He make exceptions…?

I think it’s because He calls us to be strong and courageous.

I know I just shared a “Mexican” dish with you all last week.

What can I say? I LOVE Mexican food! #cantstopwontstop

This layered taco dip is perfect for this time of year because a lot of people spend their time watching “The Big Game.” Monday night, the big game in our neck of the Oregonian woods was the Duck game!

To tell you the truth, I would not have even known about the game had it not been for Facebook. I’m never on Twitter (my hubby handles all the Twitter feed stuff) and I don’t really listen to the radio much . . . and I never watch live tv.

So I didn’t really even know which night it was on! It was the lady who was ringing me up at the grocery store who asked, “Are you going to watch the Duck game, too?”

My reply, “Is that tonight? Then, no.”

So, there you have it. Basically, I live under a rock.

BUT, if I were to watch “the big game,” I would make this layered taco dip and invite everyone I know over.

It’s okay to keep things simple so here is an easy spaghetti recipe to help you do just that!

The year 2020 will inevitably go down in history for many reasons, but one of the things we’ll remember is that it was the year we had to pivot from many of the plans and ideas we had intended and simply stay home instead.

Like a lot of women in the early spring of 2020, with nowhere to go, I relaxed and wore mostly loungewear (i.e. sweats!) because I wasn’t going anywhere, it was comfortable, and I got lazy, to be quite honest. 

This attitude of laziness crept into our mealtimes, too, in different ways. On Sundays, we made an effort to sit down together at our kitchen table, order out from one of our local restaurants, and play a board game. (Sushi Go was one of the all-ages favorites among our kids, in case you’re curious.)

On weeknights, more often than not, our dinner table became the coffee table and our entertainment…the TV.

We did make it back to our dining room table right before the holidays erupted.

I’m thrilled to share this delicious candied yams recipe with you!

It’s been a stretching year, wouldn’t you say? I know there are a lot of words we could use to describe this year, but I really like the word stretching in this context. 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines stretching (v) thus, and I really connect with it:

“to cause something to reach, often as far as possible, in a particular direction.”

A Year of Stretching

Don’t we all feel a bit like we’ve been stretched as far as we can possibly go and…yet…we’re still continually being stretched more? We’re alternately (or simultaneously) scared, fearful, frustrated, and weary – perhaps desperate for things to go back to normal. The little ordinary everyday parts of our lives have been turned upside down. Some of us have had to change what our kids do for school, some have lost jobs, or, far worse, loved ones, gotten sick, felt isolated and confused…stressed. Maybe our marriages and relationships have suffered.

There is always hope and clarity for us, though, as Christ-followers, because we’re given charges, direction, and a call of duty.

Fall is my favorite season, but Christmas is my favorite holiday! For the last three years, though, I’ve had a hard time getting excited about Christmas. Well, I guess not just Christmas, but fall and winter in general. Christmas just happened to be a casualty by falling into the wrong set of seasons.

When I was pregnant this last time around I just began to feel very overwhelmed with life, and those feelings of being overwhelmed manifested into not looking forward to any of the seasons that produce clouds (i.e., fall and winter)…and all of the holiday decor that comes with those seasons.

In fact, after our fourth baby was born,  I went through all of my holiday bins and basically donated everything. That may be a slight exaggeration, but I got rid of anything that felt like clutter and made me feel suffocated. In the end, that panic of clutter and feeling overwhelmed left me with only the basics for fall and Christmas, those seasons that used to be my favorites!

That comparatively extreme process honestly helped me reevaluate the items I had kept and was to purchase in the future, but more importantly, how I wanted my home to feel during the holiday season…

…which can now be described as cozy, inviting, with a whisper of the season!