2009 November | Simple Mom

by Tsh on November 20, 2009 • 31 Comments Unused

5 Weeks Till Christmas: Address and Order Your Holiday Cards

About six weeks ago, we talked about gathering your mailing addresses and exploring holiday card ideas. So because those things are already done, this week’s task is a simple one — address those envelopes.

If you can whip out the envelopes in one sitting — preferably with a mug of cocoa and while watching a Christmas classic, then you’ll have more time later to individually write your messages inside your cards.

And if this task only takes you a few minutes, then you can use your extra time to finish up some of the other tasks in our 12 Weeks to a Peaceful Christmas series.

If you still haven’t decided on cards yet, here are some of my favorites.

Custom Photo Cards

• Dayspring has a new line of custom photo cards out, and they are Christian themed. If you use the coupon code CHILDREN15, you’ll get 10 percent off your total and they’ll donate 6 percent of your purchase to Compassion International.

• Tiny Prints, though a bit pricey, offers extremely delectable photo cards — I love browsing their website.

• PhotoWorks also has a good selection of holiday cards this year — and they’re also a good source for gifts like calendars and photo books.

• There are a number of Etsy sellers creating custom photo cards — here are just a few. I’ve done this in years past, but I can’t this year, with my book deadline.

• Photo Card Design has the most unique layouts and customizations. I really love their work.

Make Your Own Photo Cards

If you’ve got a knack with Photoshop, you can whip out your own photo cards and have them printed at places like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Costco, or Target. Most of these places offer premade holiday layouts as well, if that’s easier.

I’ve also had good success with Vistaprint; they’re especially great if you need larger quantities.

Handmade Cards

Get the kids in on the action, and have them paint or draw a holiday scene. Then scan their artwork, adjust the size, and print your cards on simple cardstock. Make sure you buy envelopes before you create your cards, so that you know what size to make.

Email Newsletter

The tried-and-true paper newsletter is a favorite, and you can fill in your family and friends about your entire year. But the costs can add up with the printing and the paper.

An alternate newsletter idea is to email a newsletter, making it a bit spiffier than a standard email. My favorite newsletter service is MailChimp, and they make it very easy to create a custom layout.

Personally, though, I love receiving Christmas cards in the mail and then donning them as holiday decor around the house. Then after the holidays, we keep the ones with photos on our fridge, remembering to pray for these loved ones all year.

What are your plans for holiday cards this year?

by Tsh on November 19, 2009 • Giveaways

A Holiday Giveaway: Lisa Leonard!

This giveaway is now closed.

I‘ve got a special treat for you today. In light of the holiday season, we’ve got a giveaway from my favorite jewelry maker, Lisa Leonard!

I’m a longtime fan of Lisa’s, and I’ve written about her several times before. Any time I wear any of her necklaces, I get comments. I love that her work is both feminine and natural, without being overly girly.

And I love some of her new pieces, like this paper lantern necklace. I think this is so unique! That’s the best thing about Lisa Leonard jewelry — every piece is a one-of-a-kind, since she hammers each piece of silver by hand. Most of the selections are customizable as well.

So this week, three Simple Mom readers will win a $50 gift certificate to Lisa Leonard Designs! Just in time for the holidays.

Here’s how to enter:

1. Check out her store, then come back here and leave a comment. Tell me — what would you order if you won the gift certificate, and who would it be for?

2. To get a second entry, tweet about this giveaway — use the “retweet” button at the bottom of the post.

3. To get a third entry, post about this giveaway on your own blog, and make sure you link to this exact post (not the home page, SimpleMom.net), so that it will leave a trackback.

This giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian addresses. It will end this Saturday, November 21 at 11:59 p.m. EST. I hope you win!

by Aimee on November 18, 2009 • 68 Comments food & drink

How to Host a Memorable Holiday Cookie Swap

Enjoying homemade Christmas baking is highlight of the season for many families, but making everything from scratch can be time consuming and a lot of work. So how does you stock your freezer with a delicious assortment of cookies and bars without spending several days in the kitchen? By hosting an old-fashioned holiday cookie exchange!

The Concept

Invite a group of bakers to come to your home and have each one bring 10-12 dozen homemade cookies. Bake up a big batch of your family’s favorite holiday treats and exchange baked goods together in a cheery, festive environment. Everyone leaves with a variety of goodies to stash away for Christmas entertaining – and perhaps a new recipe or two.

Is a swap really as great as it is made out to be?

A cookie swap is a social event with a practical side. For me, it marks the beginning of the holiday season and brings friends together for more than just cocktails and chit-chat.
A cookie swap also…

• Saves valuable time during the busiest season of the year. It is much faster to make multiple batches of the same cookie, than to track down ingredients for 7 or 8 different recipes and prepare each one.

• Provides you with a wonderful selection of homemade baked goods to serve your guests over the holidays.

• Introduces new types of cookies to your palate and unique recipes to your repertoire.

• Provides a fun, casual social event that is easy to host – the guests bring the goodies!

• Offers opportunities for a charitable outreach. Guests can be asked to bring non-perishable food items to donate to a local food bank.

What are you waiting for? Pull out that organized holiday calendar and pencil in a tentative date. Then use these simple and fun steps to plan a festive cookie swap your guests will remember well into the new year.

How to Host a Cookie Swap

christmas cookie variety
All photos are by Aimee

1. Invite Guests

• Go digital to save time, effort and money. I typically use evite or Facebook for my invitations.

• Invite double the amount of guests that you feel you can accommodate. This is the busiest time of the year and not everyone will be able to attend.

• Ask invitees to prepare 6-10 dozen of their favorite or ‘most requested’ cookie or bar to swap, and an extra dozen for sampling pre-swap.

• Suggest that the cookies be well suited for traveling and freezing; meringues may not make it home, let alone being jostled around in the freezer.

• Request the swap be ‘nut free’, if this is a concern for you. I have done this in recent years as so many of my girlfriend’s children have severe allergies.

2. Bake Cookies!

christmas cookie piping

• Prepare a tried-and-true, favorite recipe. You probably already have a family favorite in mind as you read this post. You know, the one that garners the most requests for the recipe, the one you couldn’t imagine celebrating Christmas without. Now you can share it.

• Make them pretty! Don’t be shy about showing off if you are gifted with decorating skills. Maybe you have a bit more time on your hands than some of your guests and the opportunity to exercise a piping bag. Trust me; guests will appreciate you making the extra effort to dress up those gingerbread men.

• Store the cookies in an airtight container in the freezer if you have made them in advance. Try and maintain their freshness until the big day.

3. Prepare to Host

christmas cookie swap

This may be the easiest party to host over the holiday season; the guests bring the treats; all you have to do is put on a pot of coffee and open your home! Sounds simple? It is! If you’re the Martha Stewart type, here are a few extras touches you can add to make the event even more special:

• Plan a door prize. A cookie cookbook, a pretty apron, or a cookie jar — you decide how simple or elaborate you want it to be. One year I asked each person to bring a cookie cutter. They showed up with all different sorts of shapes –mittens, stars, and angels—which I placed together in a gift bag. At the end of the swap, I drew a name and one lucky lady went home with the whole collection of cookie cutters.

• Provide tea, coffee, and a festive drink such as hot cocoa or mulled apple cider. My guests have come to expect a pot of apple cider and spices simmering on the stove and it’s my most requested beverage.

• Make labels for the cookies. This is a practical ‘extra’ that identifies everything on the table and can inform guests who contributed which cookie.

• Set up a packaging station where guests can assemble and wrap small boxes of goodies to give away as presents. Provide Chinese take-out boxes (available at craft stores) for holding the cookies and items for dressing up the boxes such as tags, ribbon, and felt-tipped pens.

4. 1-2-3 SWAP!

Taste

christmas cookie tray
Once all the guests have arrived and the table is laden with hundreds of cookies, invite guests to enjoy a hot beverage while you prepare a tasting tray. If each contributor brought extra cookies for tasting, you should have ample baking to serve up to your guests –and any husband that may have ‘happened’ to stroll through the kitchen.

I love the stories that emerge during this time of sampling and socializing; tales of failed batches of cookies, recipes handed down from grandmothers, and confessions of having felt the need to impress with their cookie contribution!

Swap

The formula to actually exchange cookies is simple, with guests taking home as many cookies as they contributed. Start by everyone taking a dozen each, rotating around the table so everyone has a chance to access all the cookies. Continue with another dozen and another until all the cookies are gone. This usually takes about two minutes!

Smile

Observe and enjoy the smiles all around as guests cradle tins stuffed with gorgeous baking; baking which they in turn will bless others with. It’s the holiday event that keeps on giving!

Do you burn out over the holidays trying to get everything accomplished? How important is homemade baking to you?

by Tsh on November 16, 2009 • 132 Comments Beauty You

Natural Beauty: Clean Skin, Teeth, and Lips

So we’ve talked about going shampoo-free, and we’ve talked about using oil to clean your face naturally. But a few of you have asked — what about the rest? What about soap, toothpaste, lotion, deodorant, and the like?

I’ll be the first to admit that going natural with my toiletries and cosmetics is new to me. This isn’t something I’ve done for years, and am just now dispensing my experiential wisdom. Switching to homemade or natural is something I’ve been doing just over the past six months, so I’m learning as I go.

I do know that the more I learn about what ingredients are in conventional toiletries, the less comfortable I am in spreading them on my largest, most porous organ. But I’m not an alarmist, so we’re doing this gradually, as we run out of the stuff we’re already using.

Here are the remaining product choices we make in our family, tweaking and adjusting as we go.

Soap

Typical ingredients for conventional shower gels are detergents, preservatives, fragrance, and foaming agents. None of these things are toxic in very small quantities, but they do enter the bloodstream from our pores, and they’re technically not necessary to get clean. So I figure — why bother using them if I don’t need them? And they’re extremely dangerous in larger quantities.

dr bronners soap

Many people make their own soap, but I don’t. I just don’t have the time right now. So for us, we use Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap. It’s concentrated, so just one bottle will last ages. There’s nothing in it but pure castile soap and essential oils (if it’s scented).

Once you start using pure and simple castile soap, you’ll realize the film that traditional shower gels leave. Dr. Bronner’s is cost-effective, long-lasting, and serves many purposes. My husband actually washes his hair with this instead of the baking soda and water rinse that I use.

Not only can you wash your body and hair with castile soap, you can also use it as a household cleaner, as dish soap, as a produce rinse, as laundry soap, and even as toothpaste.

Toothpaste

Most conventional toothpastes have dyes synthesized from petroleum, sodium fluoride, foaming agents (also used in engine degreasers and strong household cleaners), and a myriad of other toxins.

There’s something about the fact that it’s used in the mouth that makes me squirm when I read about the nitty gritty ingredients in toothpaste. If you’d like to learn more, head here for more information.

I recently started making our own toothpaste, and I’m still tweaking the recipe. My husband isn’t crazy about the baking soda flavor, but I like it. Admittedly, if I had access to natural toothpaste brands like Tom’s of Maine, I’d probably stick to buying that. But since I don’t, here’s the recipe I’ve tried.

Basic Homemade Toothpaste

2 Tablespoons of coconut oil
2 to 3 Tablespoons of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of Stevia powder
a few drops of pure peppermint extract

Mix it all together until it resembles toothpaste.

Coconut oil has a melting point of 76 degrees Fahrenheit, which means this toothpaste feels more liquidy during warmer weather. It doesn’t change its effectiveness, though.

The Stevia provides a bit of natural sweetness, making the toothpaste palatable, as does the pure peppermint extract. You could try a variety of flavors to your liking.

Right now, I’ve got this toothpaste in a small lidded jar, and I scoop out a tiny bit with a tea spoon onto my toothbrush. But you can also get empty squeeze tubes, often found among camping supplies at stores.

Lotion and Moisturizer

handmade lotion
Caramel Pecan Double Vanilla Bean lotion from Verbena Custom Blends on Etsy.

Body Lotion

Right now I’m using a deliciously divine lotion a friend here made from me. I watched her melt the ingredients together in just a few minutes over the stove, then whipped together in the blender to make a rich, creamy lotion. She used lemongrass and lavender essential oils together, and it smells heavenly.

There are a wide variety of homemade lotion recipes; it just requires the ingredients. Most ingredients are easily found in health stores or online, so don’t let finding these things stop you. If you’d like to make your own, Brambleberry is a popular and reliable source for lotion ingredients.

Lotion is simply a mixture of water, oil, emulsifier (which blends the water and oil together so that it doesn’t separate), a thickener (the most common is stearic acid, found in cocoa butter), and a natural preservative.

You could also support homemade and buy from an Etsy shop — there are thousands of options there.

Facial Moisturizer

In warmer months, I don’t need a moisturizer with the oil cleanser I use on my face. But as the weather cools, I find I do need a touch of moisturizer in the morning. I use straight up coconut oil, easily found in major stores. A tiny bit goes a long way, and since it’s also a common ingredient in other natural toiletries, a jar of this stuff really comes in handy.

Lip Balm

lanolin
Photo from Diaper Ware

There are also lots of easy recipes for homemade lip balm and salve, but I use 100 percent lanolin. Yep, it’s the same stuff you use while breast feeding. In fact, I’m still using the tube I used when I was nursing my son a year ago! This stuff lasts forever.

It doesn’t dry out my lips like manufactured wax-based products, and a little lasts me almost the whole day. Lanolin is simply an ointment secreted by wool-bearing animals to protect their coats from water. So yes, it is essentially sheep sweat. But it’s not gross, I promise.

We’ve got a guest post on the way about making your own deodorant, and later, we’ll discuss using natural makeup, so stay tuned.

What tips do you have for making homemade toiletries or using natural ingredients?

by Tsh on November 13, 2009 • 89 Comments Unused

6 Weeks Till Christmas: Create a New Family Tradition

Traditions are great around the holidays because it bonds the family unit, it gives you something unique to look forward to, and it invites a shared past that children can pass on to future generations.

But there’s no reason to purposely create a tradition if it doesn’t fit with your family culture, or if it doesn’t mean anything to you.

This week’s project in our 12 Weeks to a Peaceful Christmas series is to plan a new family tradition, or to get ready for your much-loved holiday tradition already in place.

So here are a few ideas to create a new tradition this year — if any of them spark an idea for a unique twist that reflects your family, run with it.

1. Jesse Tree

A jesse tree is a simple tree that holds one ornament per day for a set amount of time, leading up to the final one on Christmas day. Each ornament is a symbol of a particular part of Scripture, starting with creation and leading to the birth of Christ.

This is a simple, powerful way to introduce the chronological epic of the Bible to younger children, since there are many short daily devotions that you can do each day as a family. My favorite is Ann Voskamp‘s “The Glorious Coming.”

You can tweak your jesse tree to reflect your family’s style and budget as well. It can be a separate Christmas tree, of course, but it can also be a craggy branch planted in a flower pot, with lots of branches for hanging ornaments. It can even be a simple construction paper tree cut-out, taped to the wall.

And the ornaments themselves range from heirloom-style quality pieces to simple free printables from the Internet. My favorite ornament collection is this simple one from a friend of mine, but there are also plenty of ways you can make your own. Some families collect ornaments from the store as they find some that fit the devotional topic.

2. Pajamas on Christmas Eve

Many families have a fun tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve, and that present is always the same — pajamas. The kids always know what it is, but it’s still fun to see what kind of jammies they’ll don on Christmas morning.

3. Baby Jesus under the Tree

This simple tradition is great for little ones. When you put up and decorate the tree, include a simple empty manger at the base. You can make one out of wood, or you can create a makeshift manger out of a crate, a basket, or even a doll’s cradle.

Each evening, after the kids are in bed, add a little bit of “straw” in the manger — raffia from a craft store works well. Then on Christmas morning, among the gifts, will be the most significant gift reflected in the season — baby Jesus was born. Use a simple, unadorned doll and place him swaddled on top of the straw.

4. Christmas Eve Surprise Cookies

zimtstern
Photo by Matthias Rhomsberg

The day before Christmas, deliver cookies to those who have to work — firefighters and policemen, nurses at the hospital, even airline employees at the airport. It’s a small, simple way to cheer up their day when they would probably rather be with family than at work.

Check with these places ahead of time to make sure they’re allowed to accept such gifts — many communities these days have placed restrictions on what they can receive.

5. An Annual Ornament

Choose an ornament for each child, each year until they leave the home. See if you can have the ornament reflect something about the child’s personality, an accomplishment they achieved that year, or something else unique. If your daughter was a mouse in The Nutcracker this year, pick a ballerina or a mouse, for example.

Give this ornament on a set day each year — Christmas eve, or Christmas morning. Then when they leave your home and start their own, let them take their box of ornaments with them.

6. Christmas Play

Your kids don’t need to sign up for the community theater or your church’s Christmas pageant to have fun acting out the Christmas story. Some families have a tradition of all the kids in the extended family — all the cousins and grandkids — reenact the first Christmas, complete with shepherds, animals, and wise men.

It’s not difficult to create your own simple script, but you can find plenty online to download for free. I’m impressed with this collection.

There are also the myriad of more “traditional” traditions — caroling around the neighborhood, driving around to look at the lights, watching your favorite movies, and the like.

The most important part of family traditions are to keep them simple, keep them lighthearted, and keep them fun. Their purpose is family unity, not a perfect holiday season.

What’s your favorite Christmas tradition in your family?