December is here and so is my free December printable! There are so many fun things the church celebrates this month. We start with St. Nicholas' Day and we will end with Christmas Day and New Years' Eve! Can you believe Christmas is almost here? Either print up the list and hang it by your calendar or gather as a family and add the dates yourselves. Then follow along as I share the history, traditions, and recipes that go along with these special days. I hope this helps you and your family in the celebration of the seasons of the church within your home!

November is here and so is my free November printable! There are so many fun things the church celebrates this month. We start with All Saints’ and we will end with the first Sunday of Advent! Can you believe Christmas is almost here? Either print up the list and hang it by your calendar or gather as a family and add the dates yourselves.Then follow along as I share all of the history, traditions and recipes that go along with these special days. I hope this helps you and your family in the celebration of the seasons of the church within your home!

The Christmas Crib has become one of the most meaningful Advent traditions for our family. I love the tradition because it emphasizes thinking of others and doing good deeds. Before the first Sunday of Advent, gather together a small basket or the manger from your nativity set, a small cup or dish, raffia or straw cut into 2-inch pieces, and a baby Jesus figurine. On the first Sunday of Advent, right after evening devotions, set the small basket or manger out on your kitchen or dining room table. Next to the manger, place the small cup or dish out. Fill the cup or dish with the pieces of straw and place the baby Jesus figurine next to it all. Explain to your family that Advent is about preparing our hearts for the coming of our Savior, Jesus, and that during Advent we try to do as many good deeds for others as we can. Tell them that the straw in the cup is for baby Jesus’ manger. From now on, whenever they do a good deed, they should get a piece of straw from the cup and place it in the manger. Explain to your children that the goal is to get the manger as full as possible before Christmas Eve so that baby Jesus has a super soft bed. My family takes this tradition very seriously! I can’t tell you how touching (and surprising!) it is to see my children doing as many good deeds as they can. They love to know that baby Jesus will be surrounded by their love and good deeds made visible with the straw. It is such a sweet tradition that creates a spirit of selfless love and generosity.

Advent is about slowing down, waiting, and preparing our hearts for the coming Lord. But the world pushes us in a different direction. It tells us to rush, to worry, to frantically try to find that perfect gift. Gift-giving has always been such a stressful thing for me during Advent. I couldn't figure out how to slow down and be more contemplative when I had to find the perfect gifts for people who already had everything! Last year I decided to do something different and it changed everything for me! Right before Advent began, instead of buying gifts for the adults* in our lives, my husband and I made donations to a ministry that is making a life and death difference. We gave to purchase clean water and goats for the people of Montrouis, Haiti. This year the situation in Haiti is even more dire than it was last year and our money will go to an emergency 2-week winter camp to provide food, clean water, and a safe place for children to go. Now, I am done with buying gifts before Advent begins so I really can slow down and focus on the things that matter and I actually feel like our gifts mean something now. If you are interested in the ministry that we support, you can find them @konbithaiti *Special Note -  I only do this for the adults in my life, not for my children. Or, if I do it for my children, I do it in addition to the gifts they asked for.

Advent is only nine days away, giving you plenty of time to order The Liturgical Home - Advent and get it in by the first Sunday of Advent! The guidebook gives you everything you need to celebrate Advent in your home. What you will find in the book: 🕯 What are the seasons of the Church? 🕯 What is Advent and why do we celebrate it? 🕯All of the beautiful traditions from around the world that help us celebrate the season of Advent. From Advent Wreaths to Christmas Stockings, you’ll learn the reason why we celebrate these traditions and how to celebrate them. 🕯All of the special days throughout Advent. From St. Nicholas’ Day to Las Posadas, you’ll learn why we celebrate these special days along with all of their history, traditions and foods. 🕯Family devotions for every day in Advent, including the special prayers for the Advent Wreath. 🕯Traditional recipes from around the world to celebrate these special events. I hope this book will be a huge blessing to you and your family!

“For everything there is a season” (Eccl. 3:10—I am sure you know the scripture well. We are all familiar with it and yet it is so often misused. People will often quote the verse in response to a bad thing that has happened or a hard time that you are going through. But if you look back at the verses in Ecclesiastes 3, a world is depicted that involves not only the bad but the good, “a time to mourn” AND “a time to dance” (Eccl. 3:4). The passage goes on to say (and I love this!), that God has made “everything beautiful in its time” and that “He has set eternity in our hearts" (Eccl. 3:11). There is so much more going on here than the mere passage of time with all of its joys and sorrows. Here, in Ecclesiastes, we find a call to something more, a call to rise above the everyday passage of time and to embrace God’s time. As a mom with four kids, I feel more like an Uber driver than someone enjoying the holiness of each moment! We rush, rush, rush from doctor’s appointments to football practice to pole vaulting lessons. There is rarely a night unscheduled, much less a weekend! It’s like we are all on an amusement park roller coaster that has reached the first giant peak and for the next three months, life is all breath-taking speed and loops ahead! To make matters so much worse, we are also entering the busiest holiday season of the year. Christmas decorations exploded into our local stores on October 1st this year (October 1st, people!). We are roughly pushed around from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas with no space to breathe. We move along with frantic, grasping people who are being jostled, like me, to the next event or the next thing to buy. In the midst of all of this craziness, I am not enjoying the holiness of anything! I feel overwhelmed, anxious and that I have no time to do all of the things that I need to do. We need an Advent reset. So I ask myself, “Why am I letting the culture tell me what time it is? Shouldn’t I let the Church tell me what time it is?” The culture is telling me it’s time to rush, rush, rush. It is also telling me to consume as much as I possibly can over the next few months. But the Church is telling me that it’s Advent and that it’s time to slow down and to meditate in every way on the mystery of what is getting ready to happen to us on Christmas Day, the Incarnation, God made flesh, the birth of our Savior, Jesus. I need a reset, a shift, a way to slow down. Advent is the way. Advent helps us to hear that small, still voice saying, “prepare ye the way of the Lord." During Advent, my family and I make commitments. We commit to celebrate Advent rather than a frenzied holiday season. We commit to carve out time for meaningful interactions with God and each other. The idea is not to add more to a “to do” list that is already overwhelmingly long. The idea is to shift our priorities around and to intentionally set aside our time for new things. We remind ourselves that our culture does not dictate the way we live our lives, God does. One of the things we really try to do more of is to eat together as a family. I have found that this is one of the easiest ways to incorporate Advent into my home. The dinner is nothing fancy. It could be a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, but it is not the food that makes the night special. What makes the night special is that we have carved-out this time together. We make it special by saying, “this is important and this is what we are going to do. We are going to eat together. We are going to talk to each other, we are going to experience holy time.” We don’t allow phones at the table from the children or the adults. There are going to be no distractions for the next hour. This is God’s time. We play an Advent playlist softly in the background. We light candles at the table and we turn off all of the other lights. The effect is magical. My children love the atmosphere, especially the candlelight and it immediately says to us all, “this is a different time now, this is holy time”. For the next hour, we talk, we laugh and we eat. As I look around, the light of the candles cast a soft glow and every face is filled with a newfound sense of wonder. This is what celebrating Advent does, it takes the chaos and the frantic rush of our lives and it forces us to slow down. We are given, as a family, time. And not just any kind of time, God’s time. When I realized the church had already created a way for me to enter into God's time (what the writer of Ecclesiastes was talking about), I got excited. By reordering my family’s life to follow the seasons of the church, everything became full of intention and meaning. Now, when I make a meal for the people in my life, it is no ordinary meal! It is a foretaste of the banquet table that God has prepared for us in heaven. Now, when I decorate my home for the season, it’s not in response to the latest fad, it’s a celebration of the life of Christ. Now, the everyday moments of my life aren’t just everyday moments anymore! They are shaped by the seasons of the Church. And so they are holy. And God is making everything beautiful in its time. If you'd like to learn more about Advent and how to celebrate it with your family and friends, check out my book, The Liturgical Home - Advent.

My guidebook on Advent is now available! The Liturgical Home - Advent provides everything you need to celebrate the beautiful season of Advent in your home. Now that Halloween is over, the world is telling us that it’s time to rush. It’s also telling us to start consuming as much as we possibly can over the next few months! But the Church is telling us that it’s almost Advent and that Advent is the time to slow down and to meditate in every way on the mystery of what is getting ready to happen to us on Christmas Day, the Incarnation, God made flesh, the birth of our Savior, Jesus. We need a reset, a shift, a way to slow down and Advent is the way. Advent helps us to hear that small, still voice saying, “prepare ye the way of the Lord”. Celebrating Advent takes the chaos and the frantic rush of our lives and it forces us to slow down. We are given, as a family, time. And not just any kind of time but God’s time. The Liturgical Home - Advent is a guidebook to help your family walk through this beautiful season. What you will find in the book: What are the seasons of the Church? What is Advent and why do we celebrate it? All of the beautiful traditions from around the world that help us celebrate the season of Advent. From Advent Wreaths to Christmas Stockings, you’ll learn the reason why we celebrate these traditions and how to celebrate them. All of the special days throughout Advent. From St. Nicholas’ Day to Las Posadas, you’ll learn why we celebrate these special days along with all of their history, traditions and foods. Family devotions for every day in Advent, including the special prayers for the Advent Wreath. Traditional recipes from around the world to celebrate these special events. I hope this book will be a huge blessing to you and your family!

Ok, this might seem like a copout recipe but I promise you it’s not! YOU might know that making homemade popcorn is easy but I had no idea until I had kids! I grew up with prepackaged and easy to make everything: cake mixes, Cool Whip, microwave popcorn, the list goes on and on! And I always assumed that because my family bought the easy, quick to make versions of foods, that to make anything from scratch must be way too hard! I was astounded when I found out that making homemade popcorn was so easy! And not only is it easy, it's cheaper and so much better for you! All you need are popcorn seeds, oil, salt and about five minutes. You will love the taste and your kids will be so excited to help! Ingredients ½ cup Orville Redenbacher's white corn popcorn seeds ⅓ cup vegetable oil Salt Melted butter (optional) Fill a large pot with oil and turn to medium high heat. Pour in the popcorn seeds and shake the pan to cover the seeds in oil. Place the lid of the pan at an angle to allow steam to escape as the popcorn seeds start to pop. Venting the lid is very important otherwise your popcorn will get soggy. Do not leave the pot as the popcorn seeds pop! The seeds will start to pop quickly and the pot will start to fill up. When you notice that the popping is slowing down, pull the pan off of the heat, uncover, sprinkle with salt and melted butter and stir. A note on why I specify Orville Redenbacher popcorn seeds - I've tried the cheaper kinds from Walmart and Target and they do not taste as good. Plus, you can usually find the Orville Redenbacher brand on BOGO at your local grocery store which makes them cheap.

Roasted root vegetables are so easy to make! They really should be a staple side in my home! I made this turnip, rutabaga and carrot mix the other night and they were a huge hit. Ingredients 2 rutabagas 2 turnips 1 large bag of baby carrots Peel and cut up rutabagas and turnips. Lay them out on a baking sheet lined with foil along with the carrots. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Enjoy!

“Only Luke is with me.” I read this line a few days ago and it has haunted me ever since. The words are from Paul in his second letter to Timothy. He is in prison and we know now that it is the very last letter he will write before he is martyred. He ends his letter listing off many who have recently abandoned him and he shares that, “only Luke is with him.” I don’t like this Paul. I like the Paul that is a glorious hero of the faith. I like the Paul who wrote around half of the books in the New Testament and is a really big deal with some really great lines like, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Yeah!I like “Conqueror Paul”! He did it, he fought and won, he finished the race, he kept the faith! But here’s the thing about that awesome line from “Conqueror Paul”, it’s taken out of context. It’s written after he says that he’s been poured out like a drink offering and right before he says that only Luke is with him. So, the question I ask myself is this, “do I really like Paul?” If I were reading the last part of that letter and I only knew that it was from a Christian leader,  how would I feel about him? Would I want to go to his church? Would I want to partner with him in ministry? I don’t think I would. Based on the standards that we set for a successful ministry or a successful pastor, Paul sounds like a LOSER. He’s in prison, most of the people in his life have abandoned him and he is about to be killed. He does not sound like the kind of guy who has a blue check mark by his name and a large following on Twitter. And yet, there is Luke. Even though everyone has abandoned Paul, Luke is still there. Even though Paul’s following has only gotten smaller, Luke is still there. Even though Paul is yet again in prison and even though he is about to be killed, Luke is still there. Lord, help me to be like Luke

A few weeks ago I wrote about things that were restoring my heart. I shared some really amazing books, a podcast and a journal. Surprisingly, the post has been my most popular so far. It seems like most of you are in the same boat as me and are also seeking things that are heart restorers. So what’s restoring my heart right now? Wendell Berry! I know y’all are like, “Wendell Berry again?” I’m sorry but I can't help myself! I am just such a huge Wendell Berry fan right now! I’ve already shared Hannah Coulter and Jayber Crow, two books from his Port William series which are two of my favorite books I have read lately. But did you know that he also writes poetry? My sister, knowing my love for him, just gave me “The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry” and I am already loving it! Here is one of my favorite poems so far - The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Social media can be a tricky thing. There are accounts that make you feel terrible, like you are never enough or that you want more, more, more. There are ones that leave you so heavy and filled with discontentment. But there are also those bright lights that stand out and when you find them they are so welcome! Hearthstone Fables is one of those accounts. Kristin’s blog is just enchanting! Her passion, like mine, is how to help families celebrate the seasons of the church in their homes. She creates the most beautiful write ups as well as the sweetest printables for families to use. Ok, so, I am team Jonanna and Chip Gaines in a major way! They used to stress me out and I avoided them at all costs. I thought they were doing way too much and I feared for their marriage and their family! LOL But seriously, I did! When they decided to walk away from their hit show to have another baby, I was so relieved. It seemed like they had struggled with the whole fame/empire building thing and realized what was most important in life. Two things that I absolutely love that they produce are there magazine and their network. I love their magazine, Magnolia Journal. It is peaceful and thoughtful and it calls us all to higher things. One of my favorite sections is where they take a theme like “strength” and they showcase people from all races, ages and walks of life on their particular story of “strength”. It’s really encouraging and inspiring! I also can’t recommend their channel enough! It might seem like your run of the mill home makeover/cooking show channel but it is not! Each show is visually stunning and has this sense of goodness about it. There’s no gimmicky cliffhanger before the commercial, no high anxiety problem to be fixed. It’s just beautiful, meaningful and peaceful. My husband and I watched Lost Kitchen during the pandemic and I know this is weird to say but we teared up with each episode. There’s just a loveliness and a goodness about these shows that is so unique. The cost is only $4.99 a month which is so worth it for the feeling of restoration that you get after watching it! (this is not an ad in any way!) I hope you love all of these things as much as I have! They have definitely been a source of encouragement and restoration for me. I'd also love to hear what's restoring your heart right now!

I am in a place in my life right now where my cup empties fast. I am really longing for and trying to spend any free time with things that are holy, peaceful and good. I thought I would share the things that I have been reading, watching and listening to lately that are restoring my soul. A Curious Faith by Lore Wilbert. I love that Lore is encouraging curiosity as a spiritual habit. So often we are taught as Christians that it is not ok to ask questions but Lore’s book shows us that the bible is full of people asking, including God himself! The book is divided into three sections: questions God asks us, questions we ask God, and questions we wish someone would ask us. The section on questions we wish someone would ask us kills me; “What are you looking for? Do you Want to Be Well?”, etc. An entire book based on the questions asked in the bible and what it means for our lives is just so brilliant and so moving. Living Freely and Lightly by Emily Lex. I love everything that Emily Lex does. I used to follow her when she was a blogger. Since then she has shifted directions and is an author as well as a watercolor artist. Living Freely and Lightly is a guided journal to help you live freely and lightly in the Lord. She asks you to accept Jesus’s invitation to “recover your life, experience real rest, and learn His unforced rhythms of grace”. I appreciate the questions she asks. They are kind of in your face (LOL) but I need that. For instance, her chapter on control asks, “I am particular about ________ because ________. When it doesn’t go how I want, I _________ and the impact is __________.” Wow, those are good questions! Anything from the Wendell Berry Port William Series. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I am reading through the Port William series as we speak. I don’t know how to adequately describe the beauty of Wendell’s books. When someone says “book series”, I get nervous like they’re going to be these melodramatic, cutesy stories about living in a small town. These books are anything but. They are not sequential so you can read them in any order but they all relate and interweave in such a lovely way. These books seem agenda-less, the author is merely telling stories about people and their everyday lives in a small rural town but they are challenging me with this alternate way of living that involves community, goodness and what is really important. I’m reading Jayber Crow right now which explores the idea of calling and wow, what an incredible book! A podcast that I listened to the other day and absolutely loved was Business with Purpose and her interview with Liz Bell Young. I recently discovered Liz Bell Young and love following her. She is a contributing writer for Magnolia Journal and has the coolest Instagram account. She edited and created this amazing journal that Anthropologie carried called Haven which celebrates through incredible photographs and prose what it means to find home. I won the magazine in an Instagram giveaway she did and it is just as lovely as I hoped it would be. I found out that she was doing a podcast interview and was so excited to hear more about her. I had no idea that she is a Christian! Her whole interview was so inspiring about the creative process, following the promptings of the Holy Spirit and just going for it. I highly recommend it! I hope you love all of these things as much as I have! They have definitely been a source of encouragement and restoration for me.