blessings – Page 159 – hugsnblessings

Life in Color!

Published on January 2, 2016December 13, 2017 by Dawn Marie17 Comments

As 2016 begins our family prepares for a full year of celebrations!

There will be bridal showers, baptisms, a daughter’s wedding, a golden birthday for me, and Cuppycake & I will celebrate 30 fun-filled years together.

And this is just in our immediate family of five! You cann0t imagine all the other hap-happiness that will be celebrated in our extended families as well!

Through all the party-planning to be done, surprisingly Cuppycake has become sentimental on me! It’s not uncommon, in the last several months, to receive an endearing photo instagrammed or emailed to me with a sweet or funny message.

I am loving his out-reaches to remind me just why & HOW we have thrived, (or is it survived??? Giggles.) happily together. And admittedly all of this has been great…until these types of photos started showing up!!

Yes, I know I am about to enter the golden years with him, while celebrating 30 wonder-filled years together but seriously…WE ARE NOT READY FOR MATCHING JERSEYS (yet!)

I mean we are still living life ‘in color’ not black & white!

Plus we still have a hop, skip, and a 36-inch box jump left in us!! (With of course a lot of giddy-up and go behind it…or a tidge of liquid courage.)

“What is all of this about??” I queeried.
“Well, we ARE grand-parents now.” he reminds me. “Growing older together has officially become inevitable.”

He’s got me there.

And so I do what I usually do. I follow his lead, I trust his wisdom, as head of our home, and I become sentimental along with him.

I just haven’t broken it to him yet that we’ll be doing ALL of what growing older together entails….

IN COLOR!!!!

hugs & color-filled blessings!

last bite!!!

Published on December 30, 2015February 1, 2016 by Dawn Marie6 Comments

nibble, nibble, nibble…

crumbs on the plate.

nibble, nibble, nibble…

it’s almost too late!

Hurry-Up!

Or you’ll miss the last bite

of something that is great!

“Merry Christmas,” greetings are quickly changing to “Happy New Year!”
Even holiday parties are transitioning from the celebration of Christ’s birth & the twelve days of Christmas to New Year’s preparations.

But I’m holding on to the last crumb!

I’m savoring the final nibble.

I’m lingering within the joy of our Saviour’s birth!

The celebration of Christmas and the joy which comes from welcoming others into our home, as a communal participation in the celebration of the birth of a savior, adds a BOUNCE…and a skip, to one’s step.

OH, joy! OH, joy! Let us prepare for Him!

And today I’m reflecting back on those bounces, and skippity-skips and allowing them to just sink in to make imprints on my heart. Imprints I may run my memory over from time to time as the New Year approaches, to remember He is to be celebrated not just during the Christmas Season but the whole year through!

And with this personal revelation, this God inspired moment, Helen and I have decided to make this year…the year of more Cookies!

Helen guarding the cookie -cutter jar from potential Ebeneezer’s!

We may save baking The Dawn’s famous red-truck Christmas Cookies for the Holiday Season; however,

A collection of Red Trucks decorate the kitchen each Christmas.

A Red Truck Christmas Cookie Cutter purchased in 1995 celebrates a 10 year tradition this year at North Star!

All that is needed is your favorite cut-out-cookie recipe & an ample supply of red, green & chocolate sprinkles!

Cut out & ready to be ‘sprinkled’ on lightly greased cookie sheets!

It’s *Sprinkle-Time*…my **favorite** part!!

First batch fresh from the oven! Yum-yummy & so darn cute!

there will be cookies to be made & shared throughout the year, as a reminder of the continual saving grace of a God who loves us!

Please stop in around the 25th of each month to discover the cookie Helen and I will have been inspired to bake together!

Perhaps even share a nibble with us!

Don’t be shy…Helen is good at picking up the crumbs off the floor!

Helen Kowalska-Cookie Baking, Crumb Catching Wonder Dog!

warmed baked hugs n’ blessings until the very last nibble!!

Season of Giving.

Published on December 24, 2015November 30, 2016 by Dawn Marie9 Comments

“Crash!” My eyes immediately squinched together, tightly shut. I knew as soon as I openned them I would need to pause my Christmas Tree decorating to mourn and pay homage to what laid shattered below.

Sniff-sniffle it was the Sheep & Shephard Porcelain Ornament I had purchased the year I discovered our last name meant ‘Sheep’ in German.

German: metonymic occupational name for a shepherd, from Middle High German schaaf ‘sheep’. In some cases it may have been a nickname for someone thought to resemble a sheep, or a habitational name for someone living at a house distinguished by the sign of a sheep.

Most of the ornaments on our tree have a story. It’s a miss-match-mosh-bash of ornament stories and we have a barrel of monkey laughs, along with a few tender sniffles, every year we begin the task of hanging them.

If trees could talk I would love to hear what ours would say…I’m certain it would involve a giggle or two.

The Blessed Mother blue ribbons have hung on the tree for almost 30 years.

Cuppycakes & my very first ornament!

The Christmas Tree is probably the most suggestive holiday symbol, next to Santa and his reindeers. Its history is sprinkled with great moments, did you know?

The first decorated Christmas tree was in Riga, Latvia in 1510.
Small candles used in lighting the tree date back to the middle of the 17th century.
Edward Johnson, Thomas Edison’s assistant, came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees in 1882. Since 1890 the tree lights are mass produced.
The Christmas tree tradition at Rockefeller Center began in 1933. Since 2004 the tree got a new top – a 550-pound Swarovski Crystal star. Since 2007 the tree is lit with 30000 energy-efficient LEDs, powered by solar panels.
President Franklin Pierce placed the first Christmas tree in the White House.
Teddy Roosevelt banned the tree from the White House for environmental reasons.
President Truman spent Christmas at his home in Missouri from 1948-1951, and lit the National Community Christmas Tree by remote control. In 1952 he lit the tree personally.
98% of all Christmas trees are grown on farms, preserving as much as possible the wild life.
In 2012, 46 million Christmas tree seedlings were planted by U.S. growers – to ensure enough trees for harvest growers plant one to three seedlings for every tree harvested.
Trees require shearing to attain the Christmas tree shape. At six to seven feet, trees are ready for harvest. A tree has to go through six to ten years before reaching maturity.
To get to the retail outlet and then finally your home, the trees are cut weeks before, this means they need thorough watering – in the first week the tree in your home will consume a quart of water per day.
The first artificial tree was made of green dyed goose feathers, in 19th century Germany.

The Catholic tradition of using an evergreen tree to celebrate the birth of Jesus spread throughout Germany, and German immigrants in the eighteenth century brought the custom to the New World. Although there are many stories, legends, and myths surrounding the founding of the Christmas tree, including the claim that the custom originated with Martin Luther, there is only one story rooted in a real person and a real event: Boniface, converter of the Germans.

“This little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree tonight. It is the wood of peace… It is the sign of an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child; gather about it, not in the wild wood, but in your own homes; there it will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.” St. Boniface

Where-ever you hang your twinkling lights this year, on a fancy plastic one or on a live Christmas tree, may you create a fir-fabulous story for your tree to share!