Homesteading: A Woman's Journey

A Blessed Season

12:46, Tuesday, December 26, 2006 .. Posted in Homestead Happenings .. 2 comments .. Link

This Christmas season has been such a wonderful blessing. For Joe and I, it is the first that we have celebrated. We wanted to be certain that we could celebrate the holiday without bringing into it the pagan and secular aspects of the holiday. We found that by focusing on the birth of our Lord, and not including the "Santa" part of the celebration, we could enjoy the holiday. We also don't go nutty and load up the tree with a ton of gifts under it. We each give 1 gift to each other. Mine were handmade, Joe's were purchased since he has very limited time away from work.

On Sunday, we went to evening Chrstmas Eve services at our church. We stopped by Joe's Grandparents' home to visit alittle before going on to church. It was so nice to be able to visit with them for alittle while.

The church service was beautiful.   They told the Christmas story through Bible readings, readings by members dressed up in costume and telling the various parts of the story from the perspective of the individual (Mary, Joseph, shepherds, magi, angel), and song. It ended with a candle lighting where each member had a candle to light, representing the sharing of the Light of Christ with each other.

If felt so good to attend church again. I have missed it terribly. I had rested up so that I wouldn't have alot of pain and could attend. I ended up being very sore and tired on Monday, but it was worth it to have been able to see the others at church and be able to attend the service.
I ended up taking a long nap on Monday afternoon right after we had dinner. By the time I woke up, it was about 8pm. After Joe went to bed, I made about 2 dozen little fruit pies. They are similar to the little snack fruit pies that you can buy. I'll include the recipe below.

Today, I am making a full holiday dinner. Since I wasn't feeling well yesterday, we had a light dinner. Today's meal will be more of what I would normally have prepared on the holiday. I am also making more cookies since we took nearly all of our Christmas cookies to the church service. LOL      I like to load Joe up with snacks for taking onto the truck while he is working.

If I have a chance, I am going to do some sewing. Now that the holidays are done, I am wanting to work on other projects. I have decided that I want to make a list of the holiday sewing for next year. There are a couple of people I am wanting give quilts to next year. So, I am going to choose the design and fabrics and work on them throughout this upcoming year. I also want to design some quilted ornaments for the tree next year. This year, we had very few ornaments, maybe at most 3 dozen, on a 7' tall tree. We want to eventually have nothing but homemade ornaments, with the exception of our nativity ornaments.

I am so looking forward to a winter of sewing. After the tree comes down, Joe is going to help me get the sewing machine set up in the front room where it is warmer near the wood stove and also I can sew while Abbie is playing in the playpen. This will help tremendously in giving me opportunity to sew during the week.

I hope that you all have had a blessed Christmas Season and that your New Year will bring you the blessings and peace of the Lord's spirit with you and your families.

Snack Fruit Pies instructions:

You will need your favorite pie crust recipe and fruit pie filling.

Make the pie dough according to the recipe. Roll it out and cut into rounds. I use a wide-mouth canning jar ring to do this. You will need 2 rounds per pie.

Place rounds onto a baking sheet. I line the pan with parchment paper to catch any pie filling that may leak from the pies.

Place a spoon of the pie filling in the middle of each round. Take the top crusts and make a "X" in the center to allow the steam to vent from the pie. This will also prevent the spilling out of pie filling from the seams. It also makes it easier to identify pie flavors if you are making more than one type.   Brush alittle water around the edges of the top crust to moisten the edges. Place moistened side down onto the bottom crust. Press down well to seal.

Bake the pies at 350* for about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

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good to hear from you

10:07, Wednesday, December 27, 2006 .. Posted by deedee06
Paula, we have similar thoughts about Christmas. We have never made Santa a part of our celebration. He never seemed to fit. We keep the gift giving simple too. Christmas church services are so precious to us too. I'm not surprised to hear that you have been doing a lot of sewing!. The sewing has come to a halt at our house. Both of our sewing machines need to be serviced. We will be going to Great Falls this weekend and I'm hoping the elderly man who worked on mine the last time is still in the repair business. Blessings from the Big Sky Country........Denise (prairiemom)

Sewing Machine repair

10:47, Wednesday, December 27, 2006 .. Posted by oklamouse
Dee,

We have the same problem around here. We live in an area where you have to travel quite a distance to have your machine serviced. The machine I use is a non-computerized one. So, Joe and I have talked about the idea of getting a repair manual for it. Then, whenever it needs serviced, we can do it ourselves. If we enjoy doing that enough, we may consider servicing other people's machines to earn alittle extra money.
Good luck!

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A Blessed Season

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