And Like A Good Neighbor!

Well I got this idea in prayer on how to be a better witness to our neighbors, but it still took a little preparation to put it all together. What came to me was to make some goody baskets and hand deliver them and hopefully get to know them (neighbors) a little bit better. So my husband and I put together the baskets to deliver them today. What we started with is this simple ordinary basket we picked strawberries in last year (Below)

I did some baking for part of the goody baskets as well. Here we have little loaves of apple bread. I also made some banana nut bread as well.

Here are the loaves after I put on the topping.

Then we put together bags of Pecans, White Chocolate covered pretzels and chow mien noodles, and plum preserves from over the summer (Below). Oh and I almost forgot we put in some candy canes too!

Then I took the baskets and covered them with burlap material and tied the top with Raffia with the help of the Jeff's thumb to hold the knot. Next I used multi-colored tissue paper and laid it inside and I started putting in the goodies. And here is a close look at the final product.

I had an idea that I would put together five baskets for the five places we wanted to bring them to so below is all five of the baskets and off we go to deliver the goodies.

We were able to deliver 4 of the 5 baskets this afternoon and the neighbors all loved them. We we had some good conversations and a guided tour of one of our neighbors houses. My husband was also able to volunteer his help to one of our neighbors that needs a few things done around the house and are unable to do them. I remember a statment from a while back that we heard and that is "it takes so little to be above average" and I am glad we could do something like this for people we live around everyday. We also are seeking to exceed the expectation of a good neighbor this year!

Homemade Winter Centerpiece

Since Christmas 2009 has become a memory I had to take down all our Christmas stuff, and in doing so I had to remove the Christmas centerpiece I had on my table; however, since it is still going to be winter for quite a while I took a little bit of time and some left over items and I was able to make the winter centerpiece shown below. Maybe this will inspire you to take something and make one of your own. If you do reply with a picture if you want and we can see how many creative people are still out there. I know some of you reading this wont be able to resist the challenge...lol

First we started with some logs cut and screwed together in different sizes.

Then you take some pine cones

And glue them into different places.

Then add some greenery

And some berries

and then get some snowmen or whatever you have for winter and set them around on the logs .
(The snowmen we didn't glue in place in case we wanted to use something else later)

Finally the finished product.

Anyone want to venture a guess at where this wood came from? (Thank you Sister Judy!)

Let it Snow!!!

Well we sure woke up to surprise this morning didn't we? As soon as we knew there was snow on the ground we went and got out the camera to take some pictures. Of course Jeff had to turn the lights on because they look so much better in the snow, don't you agree? Seeing that Jeff is from the North, hence the name of this blog, it is nice for a little of the north to reach us down here.

Here is a few more pics of the snow around the house.

Here is one looking down our street.

There was enough to cover the car too!

Then since there was snow we had the bright Idea to get a family picture at 7:30am on Saturday. So off Jeff went to get the ladder to set the camera on and use the timer to take the picture..........

Ok well as you can see above a 2 second timer just isn't long enough! lol

Yes a 10 second timer is much better!

On the way back inside we thought we would write a message in the snow.

Stockings Galore

Well, I'm going to be joining some friends who are doing DPP , so to start that out today I made stockings at Kimi's house. We had a great time and lots of good laughs. This year we have two new children I needed to make a stocking for, Joey(chasity's husband), and Heidi( Jud's wife). I was very pleased with the way they turned out. Tanner of course had to have a giant stocking, because he is the baby (even though he is 17 now). He still thinks he should get what ever he wants, he calls it the baby syndrome, I call it spoiled.It turned out to be a wonderful day and was very productive. Wish you could have been here Tammy I know Kimi would have really liked that. Well can't wait till tomorrow to see what everyone is doing, including myself. God Bless!!!!

This is some of the different material we had.

Here are our sewing machines, were ready now!

We used a newspaper for the pattern and it worked very well.

Here is Kimi working on the hangers for them.

Here they are all finished. I haven't hung them yet, but that will come soon.