Category Archives: Home & Kids

Canvas print giveaway for my readers!–WINNER ANNOUNCED

Giveaway is now closed!

I used the random number generator to pick a number. I did not count duplicate comments from people, or my own replies, so it was between 1 and 20.

Random.org results

 

And the 12th (different) commenter was (badoom badoom) . . .

. . . Jenny from Words on Wendhurst!

Congrats, my sweet red-headed friend. I’ll be emailing you the code to redeem the print shortly.

Love you all and thanks for participating!

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Hey guys!

So . . . I don’t think I’ve ever hosted a giveaway. And considering I’ve been blogging for going on 4 years (!?), that’s kind of . . . a crime. So when the folks at Printcopia offered to send me a canvas print in exchange for a product review, and also offered to give my readers the chance to win a free canvas print, I was really excited. I had actually been thinking about getting some family pictures printed anyway, so the timing was perfect.

For my canvas print, I decided to order one of the family pictures that our good friend Zane took of us last November, right after Alice turned 1. Their website is pretty easy to use–basically I just uploaded the image I wanted and chose a color for the wraparound part of the canvas.

It just arrived, and I am super pleased.

Alice helped me investigate.

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She was quite thorough.

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Hey . . . it’s Dada!

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Here’s how it looks on our bookshelf . . .

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. . . and a living room shelf. I’m not sure where to put it yet.

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By the way, I love the brick color I picked for the wraparound part of the canvas.

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I made the decision to veer away from black or white without being sure if I’d like the results, but I love how it turned out.

The only thing I didn’t like was that I did have to pay extra to include wall mounts. So I paid $1.60 to have that included . . . and then it turns out that they come in a little baggie instead of being already attached to the canvas. I guess not the biggest tragedy in my life. But there you have it.

So now on to the good stuff! Printcopia will give one of you lucky people (U.S. only–sorry to my internationally located friends) a free canvas print the same size as mine, 8×10 (or 10×8–you can change the orientation, as I did). In order to enter, just answer the following question in the comments below:

What do you do to combat the post-Christmas blues? Or do you even get them? If not, what makes you so awesome?

See, I managed to elude the blues until now. I had a trip to Arizona last week to visit my sister Erica after the birth of her new little one, Joshua Richard, and then I was on a women’s retreat for church, so those two big events kept me emotionally propelled forward after the New Year. But now that the excitement is dying down I’m like, “um . . . what? Life? Work? Cooking meals on a regular basis? Huh.”

But enough about my emotional blahitty-blah and back to the giveaway thingy. On Monday I will use a random method (TBD) to determine the winner. I will announce the winner here and also contact them by email with the code to redeem their print.

Good luck, my peeps!

Christmas morning: cake for breakfast

It’s time to dredge up a post from a few years ago for two reasons:

1) Everyone deserves to have cake for breakfast at least once a year.

2) Making angel food cake is a Christmas tradition that I stubbornly adhere to, world without end, amen, amen. And I encourage everyone else to stubbornly adhere to it, too. It’s fluffity, it’s puffity. It will kick off your Christmas morning with a cloud of whipped cream happiness.

3) It has a Word document attached (click here to skip to it) that I think is a beautiful summary of Christmas readings.

So from the archives, here is Christmas cake!

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We spent this past Christmas with my in-laws in Indiana. It was such a relaxing time–we temporarily got to push the pause button on this whole ‘being adults’ thing and simply chill out. Be fed. Be taken care of. I love passing the adult baton when staying with parents. It’s so nice.

The manger scene had, as usual, been invaded.

If there weren’t little plastic army guys around, it just wouldn’t feel right. It’s tradition!

At least the Hulk didn’t make the cut this year. He was a little . . . distracting.

The other staple in my in-laws’ household is this Christmas tree. They swear it’s the last year for it–the tree is at least half a century old, and is held upright by a string attached to the corner cabinet.

And every year, it’s covered in ornaments. Plastered. Coated. This is necessary in order to cover the old and bare branches.

Another holiday tradition is this fruit salad.

It’s been in the family for years, and it’s always the guys’ responsibility to make it. Or so I gather. Or choose to gather.

A potential Christmas tradition in the making–playing games. My parents gave me both Dominion and Blokus for Christmas, and the fun-loving violence they generate is a holiday must. Have I mentioned that I’m competitive?

Oh, there’s my stick of Burt’s Bees! If you see some Burt’s hanging around, you can bet your bonnet I’m somewhere closeby.

However, my absolute favorite Christmas tradition is eating angel food cake for breakfast on Christmas morning. I make it Christmas Eve, and leave it to cool overnight, hanging upside down over a beer bottle.

It all started when we were young things. To get us little tykes to focus on Jesus’s birth instead of just the enticing pile of presents, my parents would make a birthday cake for Jesus, and we would sing him “happy birthday.”

In the words of my Mom, “Having a candle and singing Happy Birthday is something young children can relate to, and helps keep the ‘real meaning of Christmas’–Jesus’ birthday–in the picture for them even if they don’t get all the theology.”

The angel food cake is white to represent how God created us in his image, perfect beings in a beautiful garden.

Dad would read from Genesis:

God saw all that he had made and it was very good.  (Gen 1:31)

Then we smeared the cake with raspberry jam.

This represents sin entering the world and tarring humanity, so we would read about Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Genesis chapter 3. There’s probably a deep metaphor underlying it all about sin tasting delicious, but let’s leave that for future ponderings.

Finally, we top the whole thing off with generous poofs of freshly whipped cream. We put the metal bowl and mixer attachments in the freezer for maybe 20 minutes prior to the whipping process–I’m told it helps the cream poof better.

Slather on that cream! We have to cover every bit of that raspberry jam! This repesents Jesus coming to earth and making us righteous and pure through his perfect life and death.

We read from Isaiah:

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”  (Is 1:18)

And then we serve it up!

Over the years we have stopped singing happy birthday, but we continue to make the cake and read the Scriptures. If you’re interested, my diligent mother typed up a Word document with the complete passages we’ve read throughout the years. Thanks Mom! Now I don’t have to scratch my head every year and ask myself “Now what is it exactly we read?”

I leave you with a picture of my husband with his brother and dad. I just love Christmas, and I just love these guys!