Ms. Elaine Kneeous
Jennifer is a one in a million stay-at-home mom. (More like one OF a million stay at home moms!) She graduated from a liberal arts college but there is nothing liberal OR artsy about her. She is married to Kevin Fischer of This Just In, and together they have a beautiful toddler daughter Kyla Audrey. In no particular order she loves dogs, wine, a good bargain, her family, pizza, and entertaining. Follow her blog of all things miscellaneous including but not limited to cooking and baking, entertaining and party planning, being a mommy, and homekeeping.
Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus!
While I’ve been telling Kyla that Santa comes on Christmas Eve while she is sleeping, I’ve also told her that today, we are going to church to celebrate Baby Jesus’ birthday. She doesn’t fully comprehend the birthday celebration concept but I think it’s important to reinforce none the less. She is, however, extremely excited to hear the choir and organ music. (Please, Kyla, don’t try to dance in the aisle like you did at the last mass!)
Christmas Your Way
Several years ago, I found a lovely post on one of my favorite blogs, BrocanteHome. I printed it out and put it in plastic sleeve, and placed it prominently on our refrigerator. That itself tells you how important I found it to be. You see I hate, absolutely HATE papers and the like cluttering up the front of our ‘frige. It makes me crazy. In a year or so when Kyla is old enough to create daily crayon & fingerpaint works of art, they will either go on a designated bulletin board or in one of those cool hinged photo frames that you can open up and stack lots of creations inside.
Her post made me pause and reflect on how I was beating myself up to have a Norman Rockwell edition of Christmas every year. I realized I needed to just thank my lucky stars that I had all that I did. (This was even before our beautiful daughter Kyla was born. Now I really “get it.”)
So thank you, Alison May, for your Christmas reflection and thank you for a reminder that we all need from time to time…
If, for even one moment, we can stop and take a breath or two in the run up to Christmas, we can as Sarah Ban Breathnach suggests choose to do Christmas our own way: we can, if we so desire, refuse to get stressed about all that we are too exhausted to face and embrace all that we are capable of doing, bringing to our chosen table a degree of quiet elegance and cosy charm we could not manage if we overestimate our resources…
Here's To A SUNNY Christmas
My wonderful mother-in-law Audrey was the baker in the Fischer family. Christmas was a particularly tasty one for the Fischers because not only were there dozens of cookies to munch on throughout the weeks, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were also filled with delectable desserts. It has always amazed me that in simpler times, bakers like Audrey could crank out spectacular tortes and cakes… it seems like they had one bowl, one spoon, one spatula and a hand mixer. There were no KitchenAid stand mixers, fancy-schmancy candy thermometers, and oodles of pans that you would use once every five years. Their recipes, handed down for generations, were less than an exact science. “Just add more if you need it” and “You’ll know when it’s done just by looking at it” were common instructions. I can’t boil water without a recipe so how this worked for them, I will never know.
Santa Sends Cyber-Love
This year, Kyla “gets” Santa. She understands who he is, and that he will bring her toys if she is good. We haven’t done the sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall thing this year, however. She was fantastic with all the characters at Walt Disney World but that was because Mommy and Daddy were with her the whole time. I can guarantee you, if I plunked her down on the lap of a bearded man and then walked away while her photo was taken, it would not be a pretty sight.
