Holiday Countdown winner is...

 

 

A couple of days ago, I posted about a giveaway for this cute holiday countdown. Today was the day to pick the winner, and the winner is...

 

 Yay Jill! Be sure to send me your mailing address to kymk99 at yahoo dot com. I know your family will enjoy this!

 

I really enjoyed reading everyone's Christmas tradition, so now I am going to share one with you. Years ago, I read in an article in a Family Fun magazine about wrapping up your Christmas books each year at Christmas. Each day, the kids choose a 'present', open it, and then you take the time right then to read the book. Over the years, I have accumulated quite a few Christmas books! Our Christmas books are always packed away and only come out at Christmas time, which makes reading them each year quite special.

 

 Now that my kids are older and our schedule is sometimes a little busy, we don't always have a chance to 'open' and read every book that has been wrapped. These were the leftovers from last year.

 

 Since Matthew was at school today, Kelsey went through and picked these books to read this year.

 

 These are the extras! This is the result of lots of after Christmas half off sales.

 

Our stack of books is wrapped and ready to be read! I wonder which one the kids will pick in the morning?



Snowflake Window Decoration Tutorial

I am not really a winter person, but I do really like snowflakes. And as much as I love decorating for Christmas, I love having decorations that can be up past Christmas. The house always looks so bare after Christmas when all the decorations are put away, so to be able to keep some 'winter' decorations up, helps me to keep the 'winter blues' away.

 

One of the very first things I pinned on Pinterest was a window decoration using ornaments. This year, I have been pinning some crochet snowflake projects and thought I could use the same concept as the ornaments, but use snowflakes instead.

 

So I used this snowflake pattern, but instead of making the garland, I made single snowflakes.

 

 Then I gathered some pom poms, fishing line, a needle and a pair of scissors.

 

 I tied a knot at the end of a length of fishing line and put this through a pom pom.

 

 Then I threaded the fishing line through one of the snowflakes. To kind of keep the snowflakes and pom poms from slipping down the fishing line, I looped the fishing line around again and put the needle through the same spot. You can add as many pom poms and snowflakes to a length of fishing line that suits you. Then I made a loop at the top of the fishing line.

 

 I placed tension rods in the window frame

 

 Then using ornament hooks, I hung the lengths of snowflakes and pom poms onto the tension rods.

 

 You can add as many lengths to your window as you like.

 

I just love the way it looks!

 

What projects are you working on?

Holiday Countdown Giveaway!!

Have you seen this '12 Day Holiday Countdown' from DaySpring?

 

I happened to purchase 2 of these last month, thinking that one of my blog readers might like to win one of these to share with their family during Christmas. What is really neat about this countdown is that you can use it during Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving!

 

The numbered drawers have different pictures on each side for the three holidays.The countdown also comes with a devotional book to read with your family as you countdown to each of the holidays represented. You can read one of the sample devotionals here.

 

Would you like to win one of these for your family?

 

Here is what you need to do - tell me in the comments what is your favorite Christmas tradition in your family?

 

Entries will be accepted until Wednesday, November 28th at midnight pacific time. We will draw a name from the comments left on Thursday and announce the winner on Thursday.

 

Taking a bit of a break

"Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.

Serve the Lord with gladness;

Come before Him with joyful singing.

Know that the Lord Himself is God;

It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving

And His courts with praise.

Give thanks to Him, bless His name.

For the Lord is good;

His lovingkindness is everlasting

And His faithfulness to all generations."

-Psalm 100

 

dwelling on these verses this week

 

have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

 

blog giveaway coming next week, so be sure to come back for a visit

Photography Class Field Trip

A couple of nights ago, our photography class met downtown in the nearest 'big city' to take some night time photos. Our focus that night was using a tripod and using a slow shutter speed while shooting pictures. Because we were using a slow shutter speed, we didn't need to use our flash while taking these pictures. Out of the almost 30 pictures I took that night, here are my favorites:

 ISO 100, 35mm, f/5.0, 0.5 sec

 

 ISO 100, 18mm, f/4.5, 1.0 sec

 

 ISO 100, 44mm, f/5.3, 2.0 sec

 

 ISO 100, 18mm, f/4.5, 1/3 sec

 

 ISO 100, 32mm, f/4.8, 1/6 sec

Good reminder that 'The Hobbit' is coming out next month!

 

ISO 100, 40 mm, f/5.3, 0.4 sec

 

When using a tripod and a slow shutter speed, our instructor gave us a good tip. If you have a self-timer mode on your camera, set it for about 2 seconds. This way, once you have set your focus and pressed the shutter, you can take your hand off of the camera and not have any camera shake (basically, this will help to eliminate blurry pictures!)

 

This lesson will be fun to put into practice next month with all of the Christmas lights up everywhere!