Author - Kishona

Nobody Is Grading Your Holiday

December 7, 2015

Tis the season! Time to gather with loved ones, make cherished memories with your children, and celebrate the birth of our Savior! Yea for Christmas!!!

I love, LOVE, LOOOVE Christmas!

Yet this time of year can get overwhelming. Very overwhelming. I was talking to a friend a few days ago who already seemed tired just anticipating the celebrating and dealing with the pressures to do ALL the holiday things and do them all well.

I knew exactly what she meant. As moms, we especially feel this pressure to pull off a Pinterest-perfect, Instagram-worthy Christmas. We want it to be “sparkles in the air” exciting for our children, with joy, laughter, and precious memories being made daily.

From decorating our tree and home, baking Christmas cookies and treats, sending holiday cards, attending numerous Christmas events and gatherings with friends and family, shopping for “just the right gift,” not to mention making sure that the season is truly meaningful for our families by doing Advent calendars or Bible readings with our children every day, December can be a busy, stress-filled month.

Well, it can if we let it.

I mean, who says we have to do it all? Who says we have to do any of it?

Don’t want to send Christmas cards this year, or can’t bake cookies to save your life?

Then don’t do it.

*Gasp*

I know. It’s revolutionary.

But seriously, if you’re zapping the joy from your holidays (and probably of those around you) by striving to live up to all the expectations you think someone has for you or that you’ve put on yourself, let me tell you what I told my friend:

Nobody is grading your holiday.

Nobody.

Not your family.

Truly, your children won’t miss half of the things you think they might. Sure, you want to do the things they love if you can, but they don’t need a lot of activities, crafts, goodies, or even presents (yes, I said it!) to have a wonderful, memorable, meaningful Christmas. Besides, sometimes we have them so Christmas-saturated that it’s no wonder they have trouble seeing Jesus amid all the chaos and noise.

Pick the things that are the most important to you to do as a family during the holidays, and do those. Everything else can fall by the wayside or make the list to do another year.

Not your friends.

We all have things that make our holidays special. What is an important tradition to my crew may not be special for yours. Just because another family is celebrating a certain way doesn’t mean that we need to be doing it, too.

(For example, my friend liked the idea of St. Nicholas Day, something that my family began observing last year. However, she knew that she wouldn’t be ready this year to introduce it to her boys.)

Not even Jesus.

If all your Christmasing is exhausting you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or financially, I honestly think Jesus would probably tell you to chill.

Think about it: Sometimes all our wonderful holiday doings actually make it harder for us to focus on Him and all His coming means to us.

That’s the whole point of the season, isn’t it? Focusing on Jesus. Remembering that moment in time when God “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And if you miss a night of reading your family’s Christmas devotional (it’s happened in our home once or twice), breathe.

God isn’t impressed with how much we DO to observe Christmas. The Bible tells us that “man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

If your heart is toward Him, God knows.

We could run ourselves ragged keeping up with all the best traditions for Christmas, but if our hearts are NOT on Him in the midst of those activities, what are we really celebrating anyway?

So, cut yourself some slack this year. Let go of some of that holiday to-do list. Give yourself and your family some time to truly enjoy each other and reflect on the One you’re doing all this to celebrate.

My advice: Even if you don’t make it to see “The Nutcracker” this year, at least make sure you see Jesus.

How to Make Salted Caramel Cream

December 3, 2015

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Life in Lape Haven: How to Make Salted Caramel Cream - An easy recipe for making a salted caramel cream for hot chocolate, tea, coffee, or for drizzling over ice cream and other treats.

This post contains an affiliate link, which means that at no extra cost to you, I may receive a small commission if you use the link to make a purchase.

When the weather gets cold and blustery, there is something truly special about a cup of delicious hot chocolate to warm you up, and when I want to make it an extra special treat, I stir in a generous splash of homemade salted caramel cream.

Luscious, sweet, and just a touch salty, this tasty cream is rather easy to make, but it instantly transforms the simple into the decadent.

I adapted this recipe from one for Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate that I found last year on Pinterest (where else?). However, I already make a decent cup of cocoa (using the recipe on the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa box, but doing half regular cocoa and half cocoa). I just needed the Salted Caramel Cream part.

I like having the cream available to add to other things in addition to hot chocolate. It’s perfect in some sweet cinnamon tea (this tea is one of my new favorites, and it’s such a yummy combination with the cream), over warm apple crisp or apple pie, or even on ice cream. Honestly, it’s so good, you might be tempted to just drink it all by itself, and I wouldn’t blame you (probably not the healthiest option, though).

Okay, so how does one make their own container of Salted Caramel Cream? It’s not hard. It might get a little boring even because it does take a little bit of time.

Basically you are mixing water and sugar, and reducing it down to caramelized sugar – that’s the part that takes the longest. Then you mix in some warm cream, salt, and vanilla. This step takes some patience, too, because you have to get it all thoroughly combined. The cooling sugar hardens quickly and needs dissolved back into the cream.

: 5 Ingredients are all you need: Cream, sugar, water, salt, vanilla.

: Allow the sugar and water to reduce.

: Caramelize sugar to an amber color.

: Salted Caramel Cream goodness, cooling and ready to enjoy.

However, once it’s all mixed, you’re done, and it’s delightful.

Having this on-hand for the holidays is a must around here now. The little extra oomph of flavor that the cream brings to hot cocoa, teas, and treats makes it feel even more festive and celebratory. I wouldn’t be surprised if it tasted good in coffee, too.

This Salted Caramel Cream would also make a nice addition to a homemade goodies gift basket…if you can bear to part with it.

(By the way, it works great in a squeeze bottle. You can get them at most stores or through Amazon.)

Okay, here are the real, far-more-detailed instructions so you can make your own batch. Whether you choose to share it or not is up to you.

Why We Started Celebrating St. Nicholas Day

December 1, 2015

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Why We Started Celebrating St. Nicholas Day - Life in Lape Haven. While our family doesn't "do" Santa Claus, we do observe Saint Nicholas Day, because honoring the true story of St. Nicholas helps keep the focus on Jesus throughout the entire Christmas holiday season.

A few years ago our family added a new tradition to our Christmas celebrations: the observance of St. Nicholas Day.

If you’ve never heard of St. Nicholas Day, don’t worry. Neither had I until my sister-in-law shared about it a several years ago, and it wasn’t until a few Novembers ago that I really started looking into the day to find out more about it. (It’s a big deal in European countries, but not as widespread in America. While it seems to be more prevalent as a Catholic holiday, since Saint Nicholas was a priest and bishop of the early Catholic Church, in my researching, I have found that Christians of all denominations celebrate the day honoring the real-life St. Nick.)

(This post contains affiliate links, which means that at no cost to you, I may receive a small commission when you use the link to make a purchase. For more, see my full disclosure.)

Growing up, our families didn’t focus much on Santa Claus at Christmas time, even though we didn’t completely shun the idea. Now that we are parents, Brad and I don’t want our children to be overly obsessed with the story of a jolly elf bringing them lots of toys either. We’ve not encouraged our boys to make Christmas lists or write letters, mainly because we don’t want them to think that that is the main point of Christmas. In fact, when Elijah was little, it wasn’t until random people (at the store or church) started asking him what he wanted from Santa that he even thought to ask for specific things at Christmas.

Of course, again, we don’t avoid Santa. We watch Christmas specials, sing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and if we see a Santa and Mrs. Claus while we’re shopping or at Christmas events, our boys say, “Hi,” just like they do with other costumed characters and maybe get their picture taken (if it’s free or I can take it. Haha). Elijah has never been fooled by people in costumes or thought that they were real. He just sees them as playing dress-up like we like to do, so we didn’t even need to pretend with him. Josiah was a bit more shy, so while he might not have been sure if they were real or playing, he wasn’t as likely to be as anxious to see them either way.

So for our first few Christmases with kids, we just kept Santa on the sidelines, acknowledging him as one of the back-up dancers to the holiday, along with Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, and even good old Charlie Brown, while Jesus – of course – always took center stage as the true Star of the season.

However, knowing what I did about the real Saint Nicholas, and then learning more as I investigated his holiday, I wanted my boys to see beyond just the Santa stories and learn the truth about the man behind all those Christmas legends because THAT Saint Nicholas clearly points to the heart of Christmas and the Savior.

(There’s also a really great fictionalization of the story of Saint Nicholas by Christian author Roseanna White, which, while more for adults, is a great read and helpful in understanding the times in which he actually lived.)

After talking it over with my hubby, we decided that we would add celebrating December 6, St. Nicholas Day, into our Christmas traditions.

First we all watched the Veggie Tales version of his life, Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving, which is a great way to share with little ones about where “Santa” comes from. Then Brad and I talked to the boys about the real Saint Nicholas, a Christian man who helped the needy and gave to bless others. We told them about how he had even been in prison for serving God and how his story eventually morphed into the tales of Santa Claus that we hear today.

: Elijah put out his snow boot for St. Nicholas Day.

: Josiah was excited that his boot had a Twix in it!

Then we gave them the exciting news that we were going to celebrate a special day in his honor, and as part of that celebration, they would leave their shoes out overnight, re-enacting one of the most famous stories about Saint Nicholas.

As St. Nicholas Center shares it:

“One story tells of a poor man with three daughters. In those days a young woman’s father had to offer prospective husbands something of value—a dowry. The larger the dowry, the better the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry. This poor man’s daughters, without dowries, were therefore destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home-providing the needed dowries. The bags of gold, tossed through an open window, are said to have landed in stockings or shoes left before the fire to dry. This led to the custom of children hanging stockings or putting out shoes, eagerly awaiting gifts from Saint Nicholas.”

Leaving shoes out to be filled with little treats was the way that my sister-in-law always celebrated the day as a child growing up and the way that she and my brother do now with their children.

Elijah was quite excited to have yet another day in the month to expect something special. However, mixed in with his anticipation of a small surprise and goodies, instead of thinking of flying reindeer and sacks of toys, there was an appreciation for someone else who loved Jesus and used what he’d been given to minister to others.

That’s a pretty good take away any time of the year.

St. Nicholas Day is December 6, and if you’d like to find out more about who he really was, you can find lots of information at St. Nicholas Center and all over the web.

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The Legacy in an Apple Pie Recipe

November 30, 2015

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The Legacy in an Apple Pie - A Delicious, Easy Recipe Four Generations in the Making, Life in Lape Haven. This simple, delicious apple pie recipe combines one of my great-grandma's apple pie filling with another great-grandma's pie crust recipe.

A Delicious, Easy Apple Pie Recipe, Four Generations in the Making

This past week, for Thanksgiving, I made a homemade apple pie from scratch.

Now while that might sound tasty to you, it probably doesn’t sound significant, and maybe in your family, it’s not.

However, for me, this apple pie represented four generations of good cooks (yes, I’m counting myself in there. Trust me – this apple pie earned it for me).

My Great-Grandma Leora (my maternal grandpa’s mother), whose pickles I learned to make this summer, used to make apple pies. It was one of the many recipes for which she is remembered. She often made apple pies ahead and froze them, so that she would have them when apples weren’t in season.

Amazingly enough, when she died, my grandfather found some of her apple pies in the freezer. Since I was pretty young at the time, I don’t remember how many there were, but I do remember my mom telling me that Grandpa had the last of her pies about a year after she’d passed.

How cool is that?

Now I don’t know if Great-Grandma expected her legacy to be her baking, but at least part of it is. Not only was she still feeding her family a year after she’d died, but her recipes have become an inheritance for her grandchildren, great-grandchildren (my cousins and me), and even her great-great grandchildren.

From her pickles to her pies to her cakes and cookies, she’s still at all of our family gatherings.

Of course, Great-Grandma didn’t give out all her secrets. For example, my mom’s apple pies didn’t start tasting exactly like Great-Grandma’s until she figured out that the apples that Great-Grandma used in her pies, the ones from the tree in her yard, were Cortland apples. It made all the difference.

With that knowledge, my mom makes some delicious apple pies!

: Roll out your first half of dough

: Place pie dough into the pie pan

: Add the apples to the prepared crust

As for me, well, I’ve always struggled with getting my pie dough just right. I can slice up the apples and toss them with the sugar and cinnamon and freeze it in batches ready to fill a pie. But my pie crust has never gone well or been “as easy as pie.”

However, knowing that I CAN make pie crust from scratch, I refuse to buy it. I have kept trying out new recipes to find one that works well for me and tastes good.

When I was at my grandma’s learning how to make the lime pickles, I talked to her about my frustrations with making pie dough.

Flipping through her recipes, my grandma found a recipe from her mother, Edith, titled “Never Fail Pie Crust.”

“This is the one I always use, “she told me.

Scribbling it down, I tucked it away with several other family recipes that she gave me that day, anxious to try them all out.

Of course, I waited until the day before Thanksgiving to try out the pie crust recipe.

Thankfully, it was the easiest pie dough I’ve ever worked with. I mixed it up and rolled it out in one take! Yea!!!

As I was laying the dough into the pie plate, it occurred to me that I was making an apple pie with one great-grandma’s filling recipe and another great-grandma’s pie crust.

I thought about all the family holidays, church potlucks, and special gatherings that each of those ladies had baked for and brought dishes to. I imagined them as mothers, working in the kitchen while their children (my grandparents among them) played in the next room or helped them with a chair pulled up to the counter. I could see my mom as a little girl, learning how to roll out pie crust from her mother and her grandmothers so that one day she could teach me.

Suddenly I related to my great-grandmas in a way I hadn’t really done before, as wives, moms, and women. It was kind of like that moment as a child when you realize that your parents are people, too. (Haha) I could see the legacy they passed down beyond just wonderful recipes. They both took good care of their families, loved God and serving Him, and shared their gifts with those around them.

I imagine they would both be quite pleased to know that their recipes were continuing to fill the tables (and tummies) at our family festivities.

To top off my great-grandma pie story, at our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, my grandpa reminded us that the day would have been his mother’s (my Great-Grandma Leora’s) birthday.

I was definitely giving thanks for Great-Grandma Leora, Great-Grandma Edith, and their baking legacy as I bit into my first piece of delicious homemade apple pie.

Want to enjoy some tasty apple pie of your own? Here you go – my Great-Grandmas’ Apple Pie recipe. (For good tips on how to roll out your pie crust, read here.) Yum

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Tried It Tuesday: My Kitchen Hack for Mashed Potatoes

November 24, 2015

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Life in Lape Haven: Tried It Tuesday - My Kitchen Hack for Mashed Potatoes. Baked mashed potatoes make dinner preparation easier for me.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that, at no additional cost to you, I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase using the links.

Some days, dinner is my nemesis.

As much as I like cooking and baking and concocting in the kitchen, some days I just don’t want to. It’s like a culinary version of writer’s block. You know you have to feed your family, but eh. (Do we have anything quick, easy, and healthy?)

Sure I could do crockpot meals, if I remembered to start it in the morning, and sometimes I do. Those are good days. Other times, I don’t, and we’re back to deciding what to do for dinner.

I’m pretty sure it was one of THOSE later afternoons that I stumbled upon my new favorite way to make mashed potatoes.

I’d gone through the effort of prepping a whole chicken to roast. Ok, not ALL the prepping – I didn’t have to go out back, kill it, gut it, and pluck it. But I DID thaw it and get it out of the annoying packaging while trying not to drip chicken ew all on my counters and sink to avoid salmonella-ing my family. I also managed to get it into the roasting pan, seasoned well for roasted chicken goodness, and into the oven early enough for it to be done in time for dinner.

But we couldn’t just eat chicken, by itself, for dinner…I guess. So, sides.

Mashed potatoes are great with roasted chicken, and all three of my guys devour them. But the peeling, dicing, boiling – I just didn’t want to. (I sound like some incompetent infomercial actor trying to chop with an appalling lack of skill – “Oh, the peeling and dicing!” Haha. Yeah, it’s not hard. I just didn’t want to.) Plus, my boys were being a little unruly that day, if I remember correctly, so I decided to try something out.

I grabbed the potatoes, about 6 or so, washed them, rubbed them with a little oil, and popped them into the oven on the rack around the roasting pan.

And I was free to move on to corralling my boys for about an hour.

By the time the chicken was done, the potatoes were baked through.

While the chicken rested, I sliced the potatoes in half, then holding them in my Ove’Gloved hand (my Ove’ Glove is one of my favorite kitchen items), with a scoop or two, and sometimes a little squish, I added cooked potato to a bowl in no time. I did a little happy dance when I realized how little time it took me to scoop out the cooked potato flesh versus the time I would have spent peeling and dicing them. My plan was working!

From there I made mashed potatoes the same way I always had: mash them; add butter, milk, and salt; and whip them up well.

The verdict: My guys LOVED them!

The taste is like a baked potato, and while the texture can be a little less fluffy than conventional mashed potatoes, using my good mixer helps get them close enough for us.

Plus, you retain more nutrients baking the potatoes versus boiling them (or so I’ve read), and instead of throwing out the skins, as I would if I peeled them, I save them because my guys love to add a little ketchup (or a LOT, right, Brad?) and eat them.

Since then, this has been my go-to method for making mashed potatoes, especially on those days when I don’t really feel like cooking but want to eat like I have.

Do you have any unique prep or cooking methods that you’ve developed in your kitchen? Have you ever made mashed potatoes from baked potatoes?

The Thought Box

November 23, 2015

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How a Vacuum Cord (& God) Sparked a New Way to Encourage My Child

Last week as I was getting ready to vacuum the house, I began to unwind the vacuum cord and then stopped. The day before Elijah had had to sweep up a mess he’d made, and I had shown him how to wrap the cord onto the back when he was finished.

As I looked at the precise job he’d done of wrapping the cord, I made a mental note to tell him later that

I had noticed his effort. With his curious, active personality and stubborn, independent nature, there are some days when he gets “noticed” more for less-than-positive reasons (bossing his little brother around, getting into things he’s not allowed to, talking back), and I wanted to make sure I pointed out this “something good.”

The more I thought about it, the more I wished I could just send him a little note so he would know that I was thinking about him. Had it been my husband I wanted to acknowledge, I’d probably just shoot Brad a text message, but Elijah is only 5. He’s not going to have a phone for quite a while.

Then I had an idea.

I’d write a note and leave it for Elijah to read when he got home from school. However, rather than just hand it to him or tape it to the refrigerator, I’d make it fun and special.

Grabbing an empty cracker box, I cut down the sides, tucked three of them down in, and left the fourth as a flap that covered the opening.

Ta-dah: a miniature “mailbox.” (All my Pinterest browsing has kept my creativity very active.)

I wrote out an easy-to-read note for my little man and slid it into the box.

This would be a special place where I could put notes of encouragement and praise throughout the day to let him know that I had thought about him often while he was away.

I dubbed it his “Thought Box.”

While I was in the note-writing mood, I went ahead and made one for Brad because, you know, husbands like be appreciated, too.

Once I had Elijah back home from school, I showed him the cracker box. I had every intention of digging out some wrapping paper and making it all fancy, but as it happened, the day flew by before I could.

However, Elijah didn’t mind at all. He was thrilled to have a special note just for him, delighted that Mommy had seen his careful work, and overjoyed at the prospect of getting more messages from Mommy and Daddy in his Thought Box.

He immediately wrote a letter for his Daddy’s box, too.

The next day, Brad was off work, so he picked Elijah up from school, and as Elijah came running into the house, the first thing my little boy said was, “I want to see what’s in my Thought Box!”

And I winced. I HAD thought about writing his note, but then got distracted by a phone call, and HADN’T WRITTEN ONE.

I said, “Oh, honey! I didn’t write one yet.”

Elijah’s face went from radiant to rejected in a heartbeat, and I felt like the WORST MOM EVER!

I apologized and explained that I had started to write his message but didn’t get to it right away and forgot later that I hadn’t done it.

Thankfully, he’s a sweet, understanding boy, and he was fine with Mommy writing it out right then. (Whew!)

But seeing how important it was to him made me determined not to let him find an empty box again.

It also confirmed in my heart what I felt when the idea first sparked in my mind.

This was more than just a good “Mommish” idea. This was God once again directing me to a unique way to love my child. Just like the book I wrote for Elijah, this “Thought Box” idea would minister to his little heart and help us to encourage and affirm who he is growing up to be.

This weekend we finally decorated the boxes, and Elijah changed his from a cracker box to one that used to hold teabags and has a lid. It now holds all the notes from last week.

Life in Lape Haven: The Thought Box - How a vacuum cord (& God) sparked a new way to encourage my child.

Clearly, I live in a house full of boys: Star Wars, blue, and Spiderman.

We made one for all my guys, although Elijah didn’t see the point in Josiah getting notes when he can’t read yet. (The plan is to draw pictures or read them to him.)

As if encouraging my family wasn’t enough, this idea has another facet that illustrates just how efficient God is when He does even the smallest things.

Following the example of Philippians 1:3, “I thank God for you whenever I think of you,” I have purposed to pray for my guys and thank God for them every time I write a thought about them for their boxes.

Clearly, He had all of us in mind from the start of this. It’s a nice reminder that we are always in His thoughts, too.

Author - Kishona

Nobody Is Grading Your Holiday

Nobody is grading your holiday.

Not your family.

Not your friends.

Not even Jesus.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

How to Make Salted Caramel Cream

When the weather gets cold and blustery, there is something truly special about a cup of delicious hot chocolate to warm you up, and when I want to make it an extra special treat, I stir in a generous splash of homemade salted caramel cream.

Why We Started Celebrating St. Nicholas Day

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

The Legacy in an Apple Pie Recipe

A Delicious, Easy Apple Pie Recipe, Four Generations in the Making

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

Tried It Tuesday: My Kitchen Hack for Mashed Potatoes

Some days, dinner is my nemesis.

The verdict: My guys LOVED them!

The Thought Box

How a Vacuum Cord (& God) Sparked a New Way to Encourage My Child