Tag Archives: christmas

White-Silent-Night-Holy-Night-O-Little-Town Christmas

1 Christ is All, 7 Keep Christmas, , ,

The Garage at church is dark and very hip and cool.  So, the Christmas decorations won’t stand out if you do the usual woodsy-greens.

 

Enter my Silent-Night-Holy-Night-O-Little-Town-of-Bethlehem-all-in-white theme.  It came to me 2 years ago during church one Sunday morning – I saw silhouettes and sparkly huge cut-outs encasing the room.  Scott gave me the go-ahead this year.  He is so trusting.

Add in my friend, Pearl, who is not only very creative and artistic, but has always wanted to create “Bethlehem.”  Three years ago, she created Narnia at the church we attended then and it was the most magical thing I have ever seen for church decor!  She brought her love for “sculpting” with foam, her attention to detail, her heat gun, her very talented husband, Bryan, along with great ideas for back-lighting the town and we were off to the races.  Pearl did a lot of the detail work and “smaller” projects at home, then we worked at the church together some for 3 days.

  

  

There is a heavenly host of angels suspended from the ceiling over the stage, which is draped with light curtains.  Genius lighting tech, Alfonso Lopez added some amazing effects the other night to cause shadows to double our angelic group and it was beautiful!  He also spot-lighted the Star of Bethlehem (which Pearl carved and fit together from 2 star shapes of 2″ thick foam) to a brilliance I did not know you actually could achieve from white and silver glitter and a few hundred sequins.

Up high, over the entry doors, are the “Wise guys,” heading directly, on their noble camels, toward the star, which will lead them straight to the babe.

The stage is garlanded in crystally, poofy fabric wrapped around hundreds of lights.  Just below the garland are a small group of lambs straining to get a glimpse of the baby Jesus.

 

  

Bethlehem itself lines one wall leading to the stage, while the shepherds in the fields are overcome by the brightness of the host of angels on another.

But center stage?  The Nativity is illuminated on the main center screen – for the whole thing leads directly to Jesus.  His birth.  His coming.  Him.

As near as I can tell, the whole project took about 85 or 86 man hours (you can’t just cut the foam at your own speed, you know).  We went through a few pounds of glitter, quite a few sheets of 4 x 8 foam, yards and yards of fabric, many strings of lights, and a lot of help from our husbands!

The best part was my time with Pearl and getting to see the whole thing finally finished on Thursday night (even though we still had ideas and materials-you have to stop sometime) and “coming to life” while the worship team practiced for Sunday. 

On Sunday morning, just in time for the “unveiling,” we got a beautiful, wet, full winter snow outside.  Just like inside, it was white.  It seemed holy.  The four lambs on the stage right in front of the Nativity testified that, through Jesus: 

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”  (Is. 1.18 NIV) 

So this is what I have been up to…Jeanie

Big-time thanks to: Pearl and Bryan Younger, daughter Tara, daughter Steph and my little Guini-muggins, Laura Frye, Mike-the-maintenance-big-wig, Rocky, Alfonso, my longsuffering husband, Dave (he rolls with my flow),  and daughter Stormie

PICTURED:  top row ~ Stormie did the graphic so the big screen would be part of the whole design, a angel sampling;  second & third rows ~ (thumbnails, click to enlarge) more angels, a Bethlehem wall, wise men on camels (nearly 6 feet tall!) up over the entry way, one sparkly donkey, hard to photograph a spinning star!  It was 40-some inches “tall”;  final four shots ~ a vista (I may have to finish the fabric and lighting we had planned, hmmm…), shepherds in the field wall, Rocky leading, some of the band amongst the sheep.

Christmas Award

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

 

Audrey has bequeathed upon me the Christmas Spirit Award.  I am suppose to tell 5 things I love about Christmas and bestow the award upon 5 other people for them to do the same.

Five Things I Love About Christmas:

1.  The Christ of Christmas.  I am a Jesus follower, lover and worshiper.  Everything, and I mean everything is because of Him, about Him, to honor Him.  The reason I live is to worship You, Lord…

2.  Dave’s joy.  Dave IS Mr. Christmas.  Dave loves everything about it.  He comes alive in the shortest days and longest nights of the year and makes my life merry and bright.

3.  The five kids God gave me so I would understand the sheer JOY of giving them what they need to live (and get why He loves it so, too) and watching them, as they marry and have children, experience the same!

4.  The five grandkids, of course.  I did not know I could or would become one of those grandmas, but I guess I am.  And I LOVE doing Christmasy things with these amazing, wonderful, sweet, funny, charming, talented, and loving children.  They are beyond words for me, really.  They renew my Christmas spirit regularly!

5.  The symbols, the lights, the music and sounds, the smells, the meanings, the good wishes, the cookies, the friends, the laughter, the gifts I get to give, the Gift God gave to me, I love it all!  All this and more…

Five People Who Also Get the Christmas Spirit Award

Because it is Christmas, I am keeping this a secret and not giving my 5-selected-blogger-friends the award – so that they may get their shopping and baking and all else Christmas done. :)  Really, I am not just trying to keep the award for myself!…

May YOUR days be merry and bright…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  All this focus on Chrismas…am I forgetting other stuff???  Oh well, who cares? :)

Half Baked

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

It was Christmas baking day!  It was a mad flurry of flour and sugar, creamery butter and sprinkles. 

  

We had sent 63+ e-mails back and forth over the past two weeks (this may or may not be an exaggeration) in anticipation of Baking Day.  This is why I now know that approximately half of our concoctions are actually not baked at all.  It is amazing how many of the things we like are dipped in melted chocolate or blended and rolled into balls or cooked on a stove top before adding a certain snap, crackle and pop ingredient to a non-bake cookie.

Better-than-Girl-Scout “Thin-mints”/chocolate-dipped pretzels/peanut-butter balls/caramel cookies (can you possibly go wrong with a cookie that encases a Rolo and is topped with bits of Heath Bar??)/caramel popcorn balls/cookies-on-sticks/butter cookies/raspberry ribbons/decorated sugar cookies/peanut brittle (we always and ever have to throw the first unsuccessful batch out-what is up with that??)/Strawberries (which actually aren’t at all – not even in flavor)/royal icing/butter-cream icing/peanut blossoms-with-kisses-instead/almond bark/chocolate chips of every persuasion/peppermint/vanilla/almond/mini-cheesecakes/brownie assortments – all these and more threaten to throw us all into sugar shock.

  

Sadly, it was a balmy 108-degrees outside Saturday (another possible exaggeration), so we were shedding layers and had the doors and windows opened wide, drinking ice water like the dog days of summer.

  

In the end, even though my grandfather was a baker extraordinaire and owned a bakery for many years, and even though my other grandpa’s last name was “Baker,”  I don’t think I am one and I believe only 1 1/2 of my girls actually are bakers.  Maybe next year, we’ll let the 1 1/2 of them have a pre-baking day to really bake and we’ll have a non-baking Baking Day to eat their stuff and roll our tidbits in chocolate and that will be better.

  

Ended the day with the guys and kiddos joining us for the biggest pot of chicken and dumplings I have ever made in my life, because you know, we needed more flour and eggs. ;>[

Cup of coffee and some cookies, anyone?…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Get more Rubbermaid-pronto!

PICTURED (all thumbnails, click to enlarge): Top row ~ raspberry ribbons and other cookies; second row ~ some of the cookies in front of the homemade ornanament “memory” tree, the kids and Grandpa decorating cookies; third row ~ Gemma, Averi and Hunter with the biggest Santa in my collection; fourth row ~ Gav with Santa, niece, Elise with Averi and Stormie konks out after a long day of baking and fun.

Baby, it’s cold outside

5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

Woke up to 14-degrees below zero today, but it may make it all the way up to the 11-degrees promised because of the sunshine.

Meanwhile, some one stole my husband’s beloved and treasured snow shovel (it is like 12 years old, but it was a goodie!) and he is in mourning.  Left on our porch, the thief knew a good thing when he saw it!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr…Jeanie

Casting Wreaths

1 Christ is All, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

Christmas is everywhere!

Even this morning as I was reading about how Solomon was building the Temple for the reknown and glory of the Name of the Lord and to establish his own house, I read this, surely a precursor to our Christmas ornamentation:

“He made wreaths of [gold] chainwork, as in the inner sanctuary, and put them on top of pillars; and he made one hundred pomegranates and put them on the wreaths of chainwork.”  2 Chronicles 3.16

I sigh wearily of hearing Christians who attribute all the symbols of Christmas to ancient pagan traditions.  The tree, my brothers and sisters (created in the Garden where God walked first), the lights (Jesus IS the Light of the World, after all), the gift-giving (must I mention John 3.16 and the inspiration to all-gift-giving ever for all times based on this, THE most amazing gift ever?), and all the rest seem to be up for scrutiny every year.  If I act a wee bit too joyous they remind me, like the father-in-law at Clark Griswold’s Christmas Vacation, “The little lights aren’t twinkling.”  The bah-humbuggers want to drop-kick the joy and the meaning we have tried with our little human efforts to capture right out the door.

I don’t think the Advent wreath on which I light a candle is some all-holy-get-me-into-heaven thing.  Nor do I believe God is displeased that I annually string lights and drag out the Nativity set and wrap gifts for the people I love.

What is a wreath after all?  It is something woven into a circular shape and hung purely for its beauty.  Or placed on the head of some one royal.  It is part of my Christmas, my Christ Mass, my worship of the Christ (Christmas=Christ worship).  While I am living to proclaim the reknown of the Name of the Lord on the earth, I am also establishing and decorating my home at Christmas.  Solomon did it for the love of God. And so do I.  His were real gold, heavy in richness.  Mine are simple branches woven and beribboned.

Someday, the wreath of my life, the things I have feebly woven together in honor to God will be the crown on my head.  But like the twenty-four Elders in Revelation

“[they] fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives until the Ages of the Ages and they cast their wreaths down in front of the throne…” Rev. 4.10 wey

The traditions we keep aren’t sacred.  They are just our ways of celebrating and enjoying the story of our redemption, God’s plan, a Savior!  They just mark our deliverance from darkness into His marvelous light.  They are only the symbols we use to try to depict a God so great that even our words fail us.

Let me have my wreath and worship with it, too…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Weave golden moments and bejeweled treasures together into love-wreaths for people all around-even and especially the bah-humbuggers.

pictured: the front door one night last year…

I Need a Silent Night

1 Christ is All, 5 Songs I am Singing, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, ,


Thanks to Amy Grant for my favorite new Christmas song this year.   I DO need one!  How about you?

I’ve made the same mistake before
Too many malls, too many stores
December traffic, Christmas rush
It breaks me till I push and shove

Children are crying while mothers are trying
To photograph Santa and sleigh
The shopping and buying and standing forever in line
What can I say?

I need a silent night, a holy night
To hear an angel voice through the chaos and the noise
I need a midnight clear, a little peace right here
To end this crazy day with a silent night

December comes then disappears
Faster and faster every year
Did my own mother keep this pace
Or was the world a different place?

Where people stayed home wishing for snow
Watching three channels on their TV
Look at us now rushing around
Trying to buy Christmas peace

I need a silent night, a holy night
To hear an angel voice through the chaos and the noise
I need a midnight clear, a little peace right here
To end this crazy day with a silent night

What was it like back there in Bethlehem
With peace on earth, good will toward men?

Every shepherd’s out in the field
Keeping watch over their clock by night
And the glory of the Lord shone around them
And they were so afraid

And the angels said fear not for behold
I bring you good news of a great joy that shall be for all people
For unto you is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord
And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace

I need a silent night, a holy night
To hear an angel voice through the chaos and the noise
I need a midnight clear, a little peace right here
To end this crazy day with a silent night
To end this crazy day with a silent night

Re-purposed artificial trees, some cereal boxes and fence posts, and a few thousand twinkling lights

7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

  

Two years ago I was sitting in the “Garage” at church (the “edgier” venue at Northern Hills) and suddenly envisioned a very cool silhouette, “crystally” bright Bethlehem scene with a giant star hanging from the middle of the 30-some-feet-high ceiling.  Didn’t have the time nor $$ to do anything with it, but filed it away into my thinking.  Couldn’t work it out last year, either, but this year, Scott, the Worship Arts pastor asked me to decorate both venues, The Garage and The Celebration Center.

 

Last week we decorated the Celebration Center.  We put out a call for old, artificial trees in the church bulletin to be recycled.  I got some there and picked up a few via Craigslist.  With 8 old trees in hand, we cut the branches off and created, on wooden fence-post 1 x 6s, 3 large wreath forms and wired on the tree branches.  The middle wreath is actually over 7 feet in diameter.  The two flanking wreaths are 5 1/2 feet.  There are about 4000 lights on the three wreaths combined.

Three red damask tablecloths sewn together for a combined size of 5 feet x 25 1/2 feet were draped over the wreaths.

The rest of the tree beanches were wired to create 50 feet of “garland” across the front of the stage.  We wrapped it with over-sized 24″ wide sparkly red floral wrap and lit it up.  Next, we placed foil-wrapped and beribboned cereal and pop-tart boxes into the garland as “gift ornaments.”

The 9-foot pre-lit tree was lit some more (seriously, people: lights are key!) and a giant bow placed at the top, swirling down the branches in a carefree manner, tucked in here and there amongst giant glittery ornaments.

One of my “helpers” loaned me a beautiful 2-ft Nativity set to display at the baptistry opening, which is stone-lined and just looked “Bethlehem” to me and voila!  Done.  Simple.  To the point.  Well-there will be a couple of new touches this next Sunday….

Think large bank or mall-sized stuff.  Simple lines, giant ornaments, basic Christmas shapes, twinkling lights-everything way over-sized, but not looking over-sized because they are in such a large room.  They just fit.

And it turned out nice.  It turned out festive and maybe even a bit elegant, but if nothing else: green!  Everything was recycled! 

Now all the women’s teas and homeschool kids programs and packed-out Christmas Eve services will have a beautiful backdrop.

On to The Garage!  Just wait!!…Jeanie

MY DEEPEST THANKS TO: my long-suffering, and very talented husband, Dave; Stormie, Rocky & Jovan, Tredessa, Laura Frye, Pearl and Bryan-the amazings!; my nephew Zach; the patient and helpful maintenance staff (Mike, Sebastian and Charles) and all the people who donated their old trees for the celebration!

pictured-Dave got a few shots Sunday…I’ll be adding more!  Click on thumbnails for bigger image.  Obviously, btw, the sermon series changes this week!  Ha!

Heard on High

2 Mi Familia, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

A large, loudly-squawking flock of geese flew over the backyard early this morning, heading south with a fury.  There is a snow moving in on us from the north today, I hear (even though it was nearly 70-degrees yesterday).  Apparently they had missed the announcement that 22 days before Christmas is kinda late for the travel plans they should have made.

   

Another “free gift” for you: fun times in December with the kiddos!

 

A downloadable book with teaching and cut-out decorations for creating a tree that teaches the true meaning of Christmas:

www.jesustreedecorations.com

Crafts and fun times with the kids and advent activities:

http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/christmas_crafts.htm, http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/christmas_advent.htm

A cool teacher’s site:

www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/christmas/christmas-symbols/index.html

This is one of the most fun websites ever: 

www.familyfun.go.com!  Check out the Christmas page and the Arts and Crafts page.  Great card-making ideas and how-to videos.

I don’t know how I ever raised my children without all these great resources.  Aren’t you excited about all the free gifts I am giving out? *smile…

Hope you’re having a holly jolly day…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Tomorrow is grandkid day…plan fun stuff!  And…this is post #400, odd as it is.

pictured: last year’s hand and foot prints (before Averi was born).  I may have to subject them to this annually, hehehehe…

What Started in a Manger…

1 Christ is All, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

The first time I ever remember crying over simple words strung together in a book was as I was reading a selection aloud to Dave from Max Lucado’s God Came Down back in the 80’s.  I think I was reading the chapter written as Mary, the mother of Jesus, sort of pondering and praying in her heart about her newborn son, and, being a young mother myself, was impacted deeply.

Parts of “Mary’s Prayer”  by Max Lucado

GOD. O infant-God. Heaven’s fairest child. Conceived by the union of divine grace with

our disgrace. Sleep well…

Rest well, tiny hands. For though you belong to a king, you will touch no satin, own no gold. You will grasp no pen, guide no brush. No, your tiny hands are reserved for works more precious:

to touch a leper’s open wound,

to wipe a widow’s weary tear,

to claw the ground of Gethsemane.

Your hands, so tiny, so white-clutched tonight in an infant’s fist. They aren’t destined to hold a scepter nor wave from a palace balcony. They are reserved instead for a Roman spike that will staple them to a Roman cross…

O eyes that will see hell’s darkest pit and witness her ugly prince . . . sleep, please sleep; sleep while you can.

Lie still, tiny mouth. Lie still, mouth from which eternity will speak.

Tiny tongue that will soon summon the dead, that will define grace, that will silence our foolishness.

Rosebud lips-upon which ride a starborn kiss of forgiveness to those who believe you, and of death to those who deny you-lie still… 

That Max has a way with words (www.maxlucado.com) and you can access a special, downloadable selection of Christmas writings put together as “It Began in a Manger” right here.  It is a 15-page gathering of writings he has done in various books with 6 short, but thought-provoking and inspirational “chapters” including “The Arrival, ” the above-mentioned “Mary’s Prayer” and “Gabriel’s Questions.”

I love to read this every year as I “prepare Him room”…again.  Check it out!  Enjoy “my” (Max’s) FREE gift to you on this first day of December!

He came as a baby to save me, even me!  I’ll be contemplating that and celebrating my deliverance from the law of sin and death for the next 24+ days!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  God loves to see us celebrate and rejoice.  Spread the word!  JOY!  To the whole world!  Repeat as needed!