{"id":499,"date":"2007-12-02T23:03:13","date_gmt":"2007-12-03T04:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=499"},"modified":"2007-12-02T23:03:13","modified_gmt":"2007-12-03T04:03:13","slug":"Holiday Tips! and Advent!","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=499","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Tips! and Advent!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, a little bit late, but here they are.&nbsp; We had a tremendous speaker at our Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group in early November, Sherri Torelli.&nbsp; She was poignant, funny, and full of organizing tips from a &quot;sentimental packrat&quot; personality perspective.&nbsp; I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve been great at implementing them, especially the Christmas card one, but they are worth sharing!&nbsp; <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wrap as you buy your gifts!&nbsp; Wrap in white paper, embellish with wire ribbon.&nbsp; Wire ribbon was one of her favorite things.&nbsp; It&#8217;s cheap, you can decorate anything with it, including packages, wreaths, and vases.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>Put together a basket with a timer, your Christmas cards, address book, stamps, and good pen.&nbsp; Sit down for 15 minutes and write out cards.&nbsp; When the timer goes off, put it aside.&nbsp; Do other things, and come back to it.&nbsp; Do NO MORE THAN 15 minutes so you don&#8217;t get overwhelmed.&nbsp; Start now (early November) and you&#8217;ll be done by early December.&nbsp; **Hm.&nbsp; Maybe I&#8217;ll try this next November \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li>Centerpiece &#8211; Simple wide, round bottom vase filled with cranberries and long-stemmed roses (silk is fine) arranged in them.&nbsp; She used white roses.&nbsp; Beautiful.<\/li>\n<li>Any size\/shape of vases with cranberries and taper candles in them.&nbsp; I loved this!<\/li>\n<li>Cut a circle out of the top of red and green apples, place a tealight in the hole, and use down the center of your Christmas table.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>Thanksgiving centerpiece &#8211; clean out a pumpkin, plant a mum, including soil, in it.&nbsp; Use as centerpiece, and after you&#8217;re done, put it right in the ground.<\/li>\n<li>Glue leaves on top of pumpkins, like hats.<\/li>\n<li>Cut a circle in the top of little pumpkins for tea lights, use a simple garland of leaves (or fresh\/fallen) or berries down center of table interspersed with small gourds squash.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>Speed cleaning tips: <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<ol>\n<li>Put together a carry-all with everything you need so you can just take it with you from room-to-room.<\/li>\n<li>Things you need: gloves, all-purpose cleaner, glass cleaner (2:1 water to rubbing alcohol bc the alcohol dries so quickly it won&#8217;t streak), microfiber towels (can quickly be run through rinse cycle before cleaning so they&#8217;re damp), cleanser, paint scraper for getting gunk off floor or counters, wide paint brush for brushing out window sills, lamp shades &amp; keyboards, natural pumice stone (most unbelievable cleaner for toilets\/porcelin &#8211; completely wipes away stains &#8211; will shine like never before.&nbsp; She said, &quot;You&#8217;ll have to invite someone over just to show them how clean your toilet is!&quot;), Ostrich feather duster (bc the feathers trap dust &#8211; great for knicknacks, blinds, ceiling fans &#8211; shake it off outside), plastic bags for trash (leave them in the bottom of your trash cans so they&#8217;re always ready when you take the trash out).&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>Stay in the room until your done.&nbsp; Don&#8217;t take things back to other rooms&#8230; pile things outside the door, and put them away when you&#8217;re done.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Chargers are CHEAP (84cents at Hobby Lobby!) and make all dishes look even more elegant.&nbsp; You can get a plate clip that holds a tiny little taper candle to clip onto charger.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Implement a new tradition each year. &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Trimming tree &#8211; make it a big evening.&nbsp; Special food, music, memories, movie.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>Birthday tea party for Jesus!&nbsp; Serve birthday cake and cookies, tea, celebrate Him early in the Christmas season so it starts off with the right attitude!<\/li>\n<li>Keep a basket for Christmas cards received on the table.&nbsp; Read a card at dinner, pray for them. If they send a picture, after Christmas put them in a cheap little photo album and keep them handy so you can pray for them throughout the year at dinner. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Today is the first Sunday of Advent!&nbsp; It&#8217;s a wonderful way to celebrate the whole season of Christmas, and to build the anticipation of the Christ&#8217;s coming.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve got my pretty little homemade Advent wreath on the table.&nbsp; There are lots more Advent ideas, devotionals, crafts and resources here: <a href=\"http:\/\/advent4evangelicals.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Advent 4 Evangelicals<\/a>&nbsp; I attended a fun mom&#8217;s evening last week about celebrating Advent.&nbsp; Having grown up in the Lutheran church where Advent is a part of the church season, celebrating it as a family has always been something important to me.&nbsp; We light the candles (previous years only on Sundays, but this year we&#8217;re going to try to do it every evening after dinner), read a little devotional, and maybe sing a song.&nbsp; One idea is to use a chocolate advent calendar as motivation for the quiet time, and I&#8217;ve got to get a couple for my sweeties!&nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, a little bit late, but here they are.&nbsp; We had a tremendous speaker at our Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group in early November, Sherri Torelli.&nbsp; She was poignant, funny, and full of organizing tips from a &quot;sentimental packrat&quot; personality perspective.&nbsp; I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve been great at implementing them, especially the Christmas card one, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-83","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}