It has been a  Merry Christmas at our house! I hope it has been so at yours as well. I always have mixed feelings about the Holidays. It is a time when I remember my Dad and now my Mother in Law. So, it is hard as I grieve but it is also a great time for family, fun and a chance to build new memories. We have been fortunate this year to have some time together with much of our immediate family.
These are our outside lights that were covered in the ice from the storm. The ice is almost gone by now as it was warm yesterday but they were so pretty covered in ice that I had to include this photo. We have neighborhood  free range Guinea hens that come by the house  nearly every day. They tend to get on the front porch and I have been wanting to take some close up photos of them but this is the best I have done so far. They can get loud and we have watched the flock grow from four to about 20 or more.
It has been an icy weekend here in Tulsa, OK. While we certainly weren’t hit the hardest with the ice it was certainly icy and cold.
My clothes line covered in tiny three inch icicles.
Our deck and a volunteer tree.
The oak tree in back was hit pretty hard.
It is a Shumard oak and drops it’s leaves in the spring. We will have to trim some branches back. It has been pretty cold and the dogs are hanging out inside most of the time. We are staying pretty cozy with home made soup and family games.
Do you ever get frustrated at the speed of life? I know I do, sometimes life seems to crawl along and other times it is moving at light speed. I wish that I knew the secret of keeping life at a steady pace. When life is zooming by me, I tend to feel like I am missing something important. When life is at a snails pace then I feel that life is passing me by.
Well, I think this all boils down to one thing contentment. Learning to  be content with our lives and not reaching for the one thing that is out of reach will help us to live in the here and now. When times are slow I need to prepare myself for the days when spare minutes are non-existent. When times are fast I need to learn to slow down enough to enjoy the ride. I feel that God wants us to learn to lean on him throughout all of the times of our lives. Thankfully life’s speed tends to ebb and flow like a river during the seasons.  It is ok for life’s speed to change we just need to be ready to work or rest depending on what our life speed is.
I started teaching my oldest (7) how to make toast in a toaster when a good friend told me that she was teaching her 7 year old to fry eggs on the stove. I was amazed here, yet again was a creative outlet for my then oldest (he was also 7) that would teach him needed skills. The pride he had when he finished frying his little egg was overwhelming. He quickly moved on to making cookies, spaghetti and other things. I, of course, supervised him closely when he was little. The harvest is great because now he is 23 and he can cook a whole meal for us (when he feels like it and has time)! Â His younger sister can bake cookies, bread, follow a recipe and make cinnamon rolls.
All of the kids have made mistakes, cookies running off onto the bottom of the oven, no salt in the cookies, etc..! In the meantime they have all learned to pay attention to what they are doing. :0) The middle son learned to make pizza crust from scratch. He is rather a particular eater and his interest is being awakened to try new foods. All four of the kids know how to cook basic food from scratch and to follow a recipe.
I would also add that we use regular cookbooks. I am on hand to explain anything so the kids cookbooks don’t work for us. I guess there is not enough volume of food! Having four teenagers or near teenagers it worked best for us to use a regular cook book.
I would suggest that you allow them to cook and then clean up after themselves. Allow them to pick the recipe, if they are interested in the food then they will pay closer attention to what they are doing. Edit their choices a little, if they pick a pastry shop style cake redirect them to a pound cake with whipped cream.
We love the Betty Crocker cook book for its wealth of easy recipes. We also like learning to use crock pot recipes and freezer cooking recipes. We will turn to www.allrecipes.com when we can’t find what we want in our home cookbooks.
Here are some Favorite recipes for young cooks:
Dip for veggies or fruit. (There are many recipes out there and no cooking is involved)
Chocolate Chip cookies, There are so many recipes out there for chocolate chip cookies. Just find one and follow the directions.
Spaghetti with sauce from a jar. Follow the directions on the package for the spaghetti.
Pound cake from scratch. There are many recipes on the internet for pound cake. It is really hard to ruin a pound cake.
Baked potatoes (I have the kids wash, prick and put the potatoes in a cold oven, that way they don’t get burnt. I also take them out if they are under 12.)
After they master some basics I would pretty much let them browse the recipe book, guiding them a little bit and keeping them from exotic ingredients that we didn’t have on hand.
Kids often need toy extenders as I call them. Things that extend their play in an imaginative way, props would be another word for it. There are a wide variety of ways that you can make a city for your kids.
The kids and I usually made our toy extenders out of cardboard covered with paper that they cut out and glued on. It took more time that way and they were practicing their fine motor skills. We would use the houses until they looked like trash and then recycle or put them in the trash. What things do you make to help your children’s imagination to grow?
When I list out my goals it tends to look a lot like a To-Do list of a type A incredibly organized person. I have needed to scale back on my To-Do lists and just write the most important items down.
Family
1. Make cookies with the kids
2. Pick up the college girl for Christmas break
3. Take youngest DS driving so he can get his license
4. Bake Banana bread
Home
1. Do a basic clean sweep of the house.
2 Â Organize the Laundry room
3. Touch up the paint in my bathroom
Studio
1. Get shipping ready every day
2. Pick up the clutter in the studio
3. Work on custom orders every night
Personal
1. Water Aerobics once this week
2. Read pinned information about blogging
3. Complete devotional times
4. Plan 2 Christmas dinners….and see what needs to be done!
5. Complete Christmas shopping
6. wrap gifts
Ok, I just need to stop. This list is huge already and I keep tacking things on.
I love giving and receiving homemade Christmas gifts. It just seems to add a little more heart to the season. It also means that I don’t have to spend time driving around trying to find the perfect gift.
It seems that Christmas comes earlier every year. I know by the calender that it doesn’t but sometimes it feels like it creeps up on me. I am going to try to post some Christmas gift ideas as I am hunting some down for my Christmas gift list. So, I will start with gifts for the chef, cook, or kitchen.
Make your own in your own favorite color combinations. This pattern is perfect at using up small half skeins of yarn. Here are a few I have made over the years!
I had great fun writing this pattern and I hope you have fun crocheting lovely scarves for your family.
The Yarn
People have been asking me what yarn brand I used in these photos. These scarves were all crocheted using Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice. The exceptional bright colors and easy care yarns are perfect for this pattern.
I have included affiliate links in this post and will receive a small percentage of any purchase you might make.
The great thing about having facebook is the links that people post are often interesting. This one really spoke to me, in fact it spoke so much that I have asked for the book for Christmas. It talks about the opposite of being fragile or Antifragile. The book is Antifragile:Things that Gain from Disorder is written Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I am taking my understanding of Taleb’s book from this website; http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/12/03/beyond-sissy-resilience-on-becoming-antifragile/
The article discusses the opposite of fragile. They discuss the fact that the opposite of fragile isn’t robust or resilient. As being Anti-fragile should put you ahead of where you started before the bad time happened. Instead of breaking during stressful personal or business times we should become stronger.
I have come through a time recently when I felt very fragile and I am continuing to feel fragile. So this concept is very attractive to me from a personal standpoint and as a small business owner.
The article touches on how large often equals fragile due to red tape, an inability to swiftly react to market changes, or icebergs in the case of the Titanic. Â It talks about being optimized to make use of every resource. In my case it would be a calendar with no extra time for the daily life occurrences that happen ie a flat tire, a sick child, medical emergencies that all play havoc with our calendar, budget and life. Â People try to reduce this randomness in life by planning it out. An example of this in real life are parents that try to keep their children from experiencing small hurts like Johnny doesn’t want to play with Jimmy. The author states that stress strengthens us and removing stresses from our children’s lives weakens them.
Resilience or the ability to bounce back while a great ability to have is useless if you do not grow from your experience. Growing means that you have moved beyond randomness or become anti fragile.
The great news is that Taleb feels that being small is great for being antifragile! Small business are more able to change direction.
You really should read the rest of it and gather some great insight but here are some insights that I gathered from this article.
1. What doesn’t kill your small business should make it stronger. Will you learn from your mistakes? Change your focus if it is needed!
2. Have a back up plan! Having more than one critical piece of equipment isn’t a bad thing, for my business this would be to have more than one sewing machine that works well.
3. Add some stress to your life! Â You can do this by changing your work schedule, or how you do things. See if there is a new way to do what you have always done. Stress strengthens you as it forces you to change.
4. Play it safe and also take risks. In a small retail business this might be continuing to sell your best selling items while you learn a new skill or sell something else just to see how it goes.
5. Don’t take advice from someone that doesn’t also do what you do.Why would you take advice from someone that doesn’t also run a small business?
6. Reduce the negatives. Remove things that are detracting from your business or life. Do you have bad habits or debt? Get rid of the debt and work on the bad habits.
7. Keep your options open. So,keep some money in the bank for the slow times. If your best selling item stops selling then stop making it and move on.
I am excited to get to read this book as it reinforces what I have always known; What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! We just have to decide that we are going to grow from what has happened and move forward or in a completely different direction.
