New Year’s Devotion

I had an opportunity to write some devotions for an app over the Holidays, which is super cool.  Unfortunately, since they couldn’t get the necessary paperwork to me in time they have put off me writing for them until the after the New Year (fingers crossed this does work out).

In my eagerness for this job I had already written the very short devotion for New Year’s Day.  That leads to now sharing my work with you!  I pray 2018 is a year of healing and hope for you, whereever you may be.  This is a great time to stop, reflect and surrender anew to God’s good plan for you.  I have included a morning and evening verse and short reflection. Happy New Year!

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Morning

Resolution

Psalm 19:14

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Unsure where to start with that highly anticipated New Year’s resolution list? I propose you resolve to make your words and thoughts pleasing to Jesus.  Being intentional about living our best lives with Jesus starts with our mouths and our hearts. Start your mornings reciting Psalms to keep this truth central as you go through your day to day in the New Year.  There’s no better way to begin this new season than with the goal of pleasing our Lord.  

Evening

God is Good

Psalm 27:13

“Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living.”

Take heart as you embark on another year knowing that God desires to show you His goodness in this present moment.  Eternity starts when we accept Jesus into our lives.  We don’t have to wait for the end of our lives to know that our God is good. Pray that He opens your eyes in new ways to the beauty He provides us everyday.  

Easy Winter Mitten Craft Idea

Every Monday my kids and I facilitate craft time for Cartwheels & Coffee, a local coffee shop with a play land for the kids (awesome, I know).  My kids love getting to participate in making the crafts.  My son often helps me brainstorm ideas of what to make. It’s really a great gig.  Anyways, since I’m already coming up with the ideas, I should go ahead and share them.

This week we created a mitten with handprints.  Our mittens turned out to be totally easy to make and adorable! This is one you may actually want to keep.

The prep for this is super simple. I grabbed some construction paper, printer paper, extra large stamp pad, sharpie and glue.  I pre-cut the construction paper into the shape of a mitten and printer paper into the shape for the fluffy mitten ends.  I let the kids glue together the mitten and the white mitten ends.  Once that was complete we added the handprints and their names for a finishing touch.  Here is our completed product:

For my older son I had him write his name himself.  He loved stamping his hand. 🙂

I’m sure you could jazz yours up with stickers or jewels.  We wanted to keep ours looking clean and simple so the sweet handprints stood out a bit more.

Hope you and your littles have fun making this sweet craft.

Happy Holidays!

Amanda

Our Holiday Purge

We do Christmas BIG! We have a big family all close by, which is wonderful.  It means so much food, fun and lots of gifts.  Our kids receive a many exciting new things.  We all love the holidays in our home.

Over the past years, our kids have grown in number and age.   Consequently the stack of toys filling our home have grown too!  We are firm believers that too much stuff is overwhelming for our kids.  We want them to really be able to enjoy and appreciate the things that they have.  This led to implementing an annual holiday purge in our home.  On Her View from Home here I share all about our new tradition. I write about our experience last year:

 

So, last year, we started a new tradition: we began our first annual whole home holiday purge, and set a goal to donate 250 items from our home over Christmas break. We went through every room and made piles of things we no longer needed, used or wanted. I honestly thought 250 items would be a challenge; we don’t have a huge house and regularly make Goodwill runs. I was shocked to find how easy it was to meet our goal. This year we hope to up our goal to 350 items.

I encourage you to use our idea.  Clear those bins and share them with others who are less fortunate this holiday.  It will only make the gift getting a little sweeter for everyone in your home, knowing there is room to enjoy the new.

Love,

Amanda