A simple Christmas, is the best Christmas!

Christmas...

such a magical and wonderful time of the year!   
I truly love it! 
(although, I do love Halloween the most!!)

However, it seems that every year it gets more commercialized...
Christmas is in the stores, sometimes even before Halloween stuff!

Christmas shouldn't be about having 
the most perfectly decorated house!
It shouldn't be about having 15+ strands of lights on your tree, perfectly adorned and shimmering with tinsel,  ribbons and balls and ornament!
It shouldn't be about having the most amazing centerpiece for your table!
It shouldn't be about how many perfectly wrapped presents you have nestled under your tree!
It shouldn't be about having the most lights on the outside of your house...
 and the list goes on and on and ON!!

I know how easy it is to get caught up in the commercialism of Christmas. 
Every magazine you read has pages and pages of what you need to "decorate with" and " buy" to have the most magical, wonderful Christmas ever!
Every store you go in has amazing and beautiful rooms jam packed full of trendy Christmas decor.

OH and don't even get me started with Pinterest... Christmas overload!

For many years, I had every square inch of my main house area decorated to the hilt! 
Every year, I added a few more strands of the lights to the tree (of which, my hubby, would not be the happiest with me..."Why in the world do we need more lights, dear?")
Every year it seemed like we added a few more gifts under the tree, because it "looked" better and you didn't want your kids to feel "ripped off" if they didn't have LOTS of beautiful packages to open up.

When Ethan was a baby, (11 years ago)
 I worked with a lady that talked about their Christmas tradition of the 
"4 gift rule".
I loved it so much, 
I wanted to add it to our own Christmas traditions. 
However, it's really hard to simplify Christmas 
down to just four gifts... OR, so, I thought.

This is the 4 gift Rule:
Something to Wear
Something to Read
Something you Want
Something to Read 

It's actually a win-win! 
The kids get something they WANT
They get some kind of article of clothing to WEAR
They get something that they really NEED
AND, best of all, you are promoting learning by getting them something to READ!

We decided to do this 2 years ago, 
because we wanted Christmas to be Simple 
and NOT about the gifts at all! 

So, we took some white pillow cases that we had got from some friends that own a motel and we made each of us a BAG to hold the 4 gifts in.

You can make them as elaborate as you would like.  
Stencil on the wording, or embroidery them on.  
Add glitter, 
use colorful fabric, 
whatever you want, it would work out great.

Ours were just made by Sharpie Markers.
(However, one of these years, 
I would like to re-do them and make them a little bit more jazzed up!)

As you can see, 
they look awesome under the tree 
and they are a BIG hit with the kiddos!

This sweet boy, really got us into 
the TRUE Christmas Spirit last year.

He wanted an Old Fashioned Christmas.
He wanted a REAL tree.
He wanted to string popcorn and cranberries for the garland.
He wanted a homemade star on the top of the tree!
He wanted ALL of us to help decorate it and not just mom, making it perfect while everyone was at school and work, with lots of glitzy ornaments.

He did NOT want fancy, or tons of decorations.
What he really wanted was TIME.

Time to decorate...
Time to sip LOTS of hot chocolate while we read Christmas stories.
Time to listen to Christmas music.
Time to make goodies together.
Time to watch holiday movies.
It really is true that the SIMPLE things are the REAL things that kids CRAVE and long for!


After 8 years of working on simplifying the holidays and scaling back, I can officially say that we have finally figured out how to SIMPLIFY Christmas 
to be like my favorite word
 "Lagom"... 
(not too much, not too little, but just the right amount!)

Here is our Christmas Holiday decor from Christmas 2012 complete with REAL Christmas tree, simple ornaments, homemade garland and a few holiday touches on the kitchen table and our buffet.

 

Home strung garland...
popcorn, cranberries and peppermint candies!  

Homemade 

Old Fashioned Tree Skirt 

It's amazing how a .97 package of Tinsel Strings 

can really add some 

SHIMMER and SPARKLE to the holidays! 

Tracy and I stayed up late 
and made a homemade glitter star for the top of the tree
 that we hung from our tall ceiling to be right above the tree!

 My simple, yet beautiful 
dining room table!

 The Stockings were Hung...

 Favorite Santas...

This years Nativity

I made many batches of Cinnamon Roasted Almonds, Carmel/Chocolate Dipped Pretzels 
and other dipped chocolates!

Holiday Treats! 

Christmas Eve Dinner... 

Christmas morning breakfast... 

The DAY after Christmas breakfast 
with Tracy's parents

Complete with Orange Rolls...

After Christmas was over,
 all of my favorite tree ornaments fit in a large boot box!!
THAT is what you call SIMPLE!

(cute little couple in our ward that acted out the Nativity last year at our YW party)

I'm looking forward to enjoying another 
SIMPLE Christmas this year 
that's easy to put up and easy to take down...

 Where we focus on the true meaning of Christmas!
Where we do NOT add unnecessary clutter and junk to our lives
 from over spending and over consuming, 
and where we create this year's memories as we enjoy 
all of the traditions, goodies and FUN
 that come with this most 
"Wonderful Time of the Year"!

Unfortunately, my holiday Christmas decor, will not be gracing our home until November 30th,  (the Sunday after Thanksgiving)
because, unlike many of my wonderful friends that have Christmas decor up right now,
 THANKSGIVING
cannot be forgotten about at my house and until we have enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast, there will be fall leaves, pumpkins, turkeys and pilgrim decor at the Smith House!

A Wise Man Once Said...

A funny thing happened to me that gave me cause to stop and pause for a moment and think.

Actually, it had me thinking all day long. 

A job opening for a secretarial position came open and I wondered for a brief moment if I should jump on it and apply, because jobs like that in a school district hardly ever come around, because people stay at those kinds of jobs until they retire.

I sat and wrote a list of the pros and cons 
of my current position and the new one and slept on it.  
I asked Tracy the next morning
 if he had saw my list and what he thought.

He then pulled up a note on his phone with the following quote:  

“One of the most terrible losses man endures in his lifetime is not even noticed by most people, much less mourned. Which is astonishing, because what we lose is in many ways one of the essential qualities that sets us apart from other creatures. 
I’m talking about the loss of the sense of wonder 
that is such an integral part of our world when we are children. 
However, as we grow older, that sense of wonder shrinks from cosmic to microscopic by the time we are adults. Kids say “Wow!" all the time. Opening their mouths fully, their eyes light up with genuine awe and glee. The word emanates not so much from a voice box as from an astonished soul that has once again been shown that the world is full of amazing unexpected things.


When was the last time you let fly a loud, truly heartfelt “WOW?"
 Not recently I bet. Because generally speaking wonder belongs to kids, with the rare exception of falling madly in love with another person, which invariably leads to a rebirth of wonder. 
As adults, we are not supposed to say or feel WOW, or wonder, or even true surprise because those things make us sound goofy, ingenuous, and childlike. How can you run the world if you are in constant awe of it?…

The human heart has a long memory though and remembers what it was like to live through days where it was constantly surprised and delighted by the world around it.”
Jonathan Carroll

He said, keep inspiring kids to have a sense of wonder 

and inspired to be physically active 

and keep doing something that you LOVE so much....

 AND also 

keep doing something that will give you plenty of time 

to keep making Zucchini Quiche for your family! 

(It will also give you future options for evolving your life/career 
into something that you would be more passionate about than being a secretary).

My husband is amazing, supportive and 
I love how much we're a TEAM in our marriage and in life!

As we talked throughout the day we kept saying: 
"I would rather need less..."
"Less is more..."

Sure more money would always be nice, 
but TIME is truly where our goals are all heading
 to for the long term as we're on the fast track to becoming debt free!!

More TIME to do those passions and things that we love most.
More TIME to enjoy each day to the fullest!
More TIME to spend with our kids, family and loved ones.

I'm so grateful to be married to such a Wise Man 
and for his depth and wisdom
 that he abundantly shares and fills our home with!

May we all try to be more child-like and have a rebirth of wonder and notice, appreciate and enjoy all of those wondrous, happy things that make up this adventure called LIFE!
Remember, you're never too old to say WOW!!

20 Weeks...No Major Shopping...Wrap up!

 WOW...we made it and what's even better, 
is I'm finally getting this blogged about!  


For those not familiar with this challenge...
 our challenge allotted us $20.00 each week to spend on produce
and a gallon of milk every other week... 
the rest of the things we ate, came from our food storage.
 If you would like to see 
what meals we ate for 5 months and what produce we bought,
click HERE and scroll through the posts...
there are LINKS in each post to the recipes I used
and HELPFUL TIPS for what we did to make things stretch.

While I initially wanted to be done with this Challenge 
the first part of September, here 
  I still had another months worth of the staples such as butter, sugar, flour, yeast, cheese, etc... and so I decided to go until I ran out of butter.

This took us a little under 20 weeks from start to finish with no major shopping and you know what, we didn’t really feel deprived at all!
Other than the fact that I was down to the last cube of butter and roll of paper towels and I had ran out of BLEACH, raisins and gallon sized freezer bags, we survived going 20 weeks with no major shopping.

  (here are links to click on to to see 

what we ate/did week by week)
week 1  week 2   week 3

  week 4    week 5   week 6 

week 7   week 8    week 9

weeks 10-11   week 12   week 13

weeks 14-15    week 16  week 17 

weeks 18-19

Call me strange, but, I really do enjoying challenging and “stretching” myself…
it’s something that is in my blood and something that is SO enjoyable to me!
Preparedness truly does bring peace!

Here are the things I learned this year...

The CASES of canned beans, canned tomatoes and canned chilies we don't go through that much for how many cans we have in our food storage.
I will never again buy a case of 48 of anything, unless it is tomato sauce, OR, Tuna Fish.  We realistically can't go through them before the expiration date.

You go through A LOT of dish towels cooking every meal from scratch.  While I have a large supply of kitchen towels and dishcloths, 

I did laundry twice a week just for washing dish towels!! (usually go through 5-7 a day and sometimes more), depending upon what I'm cooking.

I realized that it would be REALLY nice to have a few cans of cooked chicken on hand, for those hectic afternoons when all of a sudden it's dinner-time and I am scrambling to throw something together!
(excited to pressure cook up some chicken breasts this week after I get my Zaycon Chicken order)

POWDERED MILK makes wonderful summer-time treats (here)
I used this to make homemade Fudge Pops, Chocolate peanut butter milk shakes and peanut butter energy balls. (here)

We also enjoyed a few batches of HOMEMADE yogurt made from powdered milk as well.  (here)
Love this recipe and LOVE that it uses things I always have on hand.

Artisan bread is one of our new favorite breads (here)
AND it is the perfect thing to make up if you don’t have any crackers on hand.
Bake it, toast it and it is perfect

 Homemade Hoagies are now officially a staple at our house!  (here)

We use them for everything and the versatile thing about my French Bread recipe, is you can make up a loaf of French Bread AND 6-8 Hoagie buns, so you can make the most use out of the dough, if you don’t wall all hoagies or all bread loaves.

Homemade Tortillas are also a staple at our house as well! (here) I haven’t bought store bought tortillas since the first of the year (when we purchased some for Tracy’s scout campout breakfast burritos).     
They were wonderful to make up and use our garden veggies and make wraps/roll ups.  They were perfect to line a bowl and fill with taco salad.  They were wonderful to fill with yummy things to take hiking and they were wonderful made into Enchiladas, Quesadillas or Breakfast Burritos.

 It truly is the best feeling in the world to be able to make 95% of the things your family eats from scratch all by yourself! 
Everyone is happy when the food they are eating, 
was made with love by YOU!!
 

We also realize the more we hike that my basic Oatmeal Cookie recipe (here) with LOTS of raisins, dried cherries and walnuts make PERFECT energy bars to take hiking and it is SO much cheaper than purchasing CLIF or ODWALLA bars.

Here is a list of the major things we went through 
in our 5 months of no shopping.
With cooking every meal from scratch, we went through A LOT of the staples...

(BTW...we have chickens that we get eggs from, so we didn't have to use egg powder)

(staples)
150 pounds unbleached flour
50 pounds sugar
18 pounds brown sugar
5 pounds powdered sugar
12 pounds RAW cane sugar
18 pounds honey
20 pounds raisins
4 pounds dried cherries
22 pounds wheat
2 pounds corn meal
2 pounds SAF yeast
1 pound baking powder
3 pounds baking soda
4 pounds salt
8 pounds rock salt
35 pounds steel cut oats (this is our mainstay for breakfast Mon-Fri…here )
12 pounds rolled oats
16 pounds powdered milk (4 #10 cans) (here's how I make our milk stretch here)
10 cans Evaporated Milk
5 cans Sweetened Condensed Milk
9 pounds dried beans/legumes
8 pounds rice
1/2 pound wild rice (made this yummy soup here)
12 pounds pasta
4 pounds popcorn kernels
7 pounds raw almonds
3 pounds walnuts
1/2 pound pecans
3 pounds Almond Cluster Nut Mix (here)
1 large bag of DARK Chocolate Peanut M&M's
1-1/2 pounds sunflower seeds
1/2 pound flax seeds
1/2 pound cashews
1 pound coconut
1 large jar lightly salted peanuts, 1 package of mini marshmallows and 1 pkg. peanut butter chips (these combined together to make Salted Nut Rolls here)
34 ounces unsweetened cocoa powder
4 pounds Stephen’s Hot Cocoa powder
25 boxes of STASH brand Peppermint Blend tea
48 oz. REAL maple syrup
½ bottle of Mapleiene Extract (made homemade syrup here)
12 ounces molasses
12 ounces corn syrup
3 packages marshmallows
1 pound coconut
3 quarts applesauce (this along with whole wheat flour turned into muffins here)
3 boxes of pectin (made homemade preserves)
1(4 pack) box of Gelatine (used to make homemade yogurt here)
1/2 pound Citric Acid
4 bottles Lemon Extract
(6) 8.2 ounce bottles REAL vanilla
3 liters Olive Oil
72 ounces Canola Oil
4 pounds cornstarch
72 ounces Nestle Semi-Sweet chocolate chips
3 pounds Ghiradelli Double Chocolate Bitter-Sweet chips
10 ounces white chocolate chips
(5) 40 ounce jars peanut butter (we went through so much of this as we made a few batches of granola bars (here) and peanut butter energy balls (here)
4 cans non-stick baking spray
5 pounds cottage cheese (we ran out the last 6 weeks…we need to try making HOMEMADE cottage cheese for times like this)
2 pounds sour cream
(5) 8 ounce packages Neufchatel Cream Cheese
.5 ounces of freeze dried mushrooms
(we also used quite a bit of Cajun seasoning, lemon pepper, taco seasoning, cumin, chili powder, granulated garlic, beef and chicken bouillon, buttered flavored salt, dried parsley oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and poppy seeds, sesame seeds)

(cheese/butter)
12 pounds Monterey Jack Cheese
5 pounds sharp cheese
1 pound Mozzarella Cheese
48 pieces of string cheese
32 pounds butter
2 pounds lard

(meat)
4 pounds chicken breasts
2 whole chickens
2 pounds chicken thighs
6 pounds hamburger
2 beef roasts
1 pound stew meat
2 pounds bacon
2 pounds sausage
(7) ½ cup packages of ham and one ham bone (that we had cut up in our freezer from our Easter ham here for how I do this)
1 pound Tilapia
6 pounds Salmon
1 pound crab meat
1 package Chicken/Spinach sausages (here for how we put them to use)
2 packages Nathans ALL beef hot dogs (had these in our freezer…we stock up on these in the spring to have on hand for summer barbeques...here for 2011 fun)
30 cans tuna
2 packages of Smoked Salmon and 2 large bottles of artichoke hearts
(we made 2 different batches of  Salmon and Artichoke dip here)

(misc.)
(many limes, citric acid and Lemon extract turned into this here)
6 packages Pink Lemonade Kool-Aid
1 box of Tangerine Emergen-C (Kids take this in their lunches to drink)
(3) 46 ounce jars pickles
(2) 24 ounce bottles ketchup
(3) 30 ounce jars Mayonnaise
(3) 30 ounce jars Miracle Whip
4 jars Ragu Spaghetti Sauce
10 cans stewed tomatoes/tomato sauce
1 pound frozen peas
2 bottles salsa
2 boxes Sunbelt brand Fruit & Nut Granola Cereal
2 boxes ZOOM cereal (this is what we used for breakfast when we went backpacking)
4 packages dry Ranch Dressing Mix (used to make Ranch Popcorn here)
31 packages Doublemint Gum
2 bags of 200 Menthol cough drops
4 bags Tortilla chips (we ran out the last 8 weeks…wish we had a way to make homemade tortilla chips
(1) 28 package individual chips
50 pounds of onions
25 pounds of potatoes
1/2 bag charcoal briquettes

(we also went through a few cans each of pineapple tidbits, olives, diced green chilies, canned beans, Tomato and Cream of Chicken Soup, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and chow mein noodles...ALSO, a few packages of Ramen for our backpacker meals).

(I lost track of how many pounds of frozen fruits/berries we used for our smoothies,)

(cleaning/toiletries)
(6) 56 ounce containers Soft Soap
(1) 56 ounce container Soft Soap for our bathroom dispenser in our shower (here)
66 ounces shampoo
66 ounces conditioner
52 ounces hair gel
99 ounces hair spray
1 box of hair highlighting kit (here how we use this)
6 bottles of deodorant
10 tubes of Chap stick
(2) 20 ounce bottles Curel lotion
40 rolls paper towels
76 rolls toilet paper
5 boxes PUFFS tissues
72 count box of tampons/(1) 18 count box maxi-pads
2 boxes of each sandwich and snack sized bags
4 boxes of each gallon and quart sized bags
(1) 100 count box of bread bags
(1) 75 ft. box aluminum foil
(1) 75 ft box waxed paper
½ box Plastic Wrap
1 box Q-tips
1 large bag cotton balls
1 package small Dixie Cups for the bathroom
32 oz. mouth wash
3 tubes toothpaste
(3) 100 ounce jugs laundry soap
1 gallon bleach
30 ounces Spray and Wash
2 boxes Borax
165 dishwasher soap drops
46 oz. Jet Dri
64 ounces Glass Plus
1 large can AJAX
18 ounces 409 cleaner
22 ounces hardwood floor cleaner
60 ounces Bathroom/Toilet cleaner
60 ounces Shower Cleaner
72 ounces Hydrogen Peroxide
10 gallons vinegar (we went through so much as I use it in my dishwasher since we have hard water)
1 box Bounce sheets
120 kitchen garbage bags
45 outside garbage bags
2 gallons CAR oil
Oil filters (for changing car oil)
2 gallons windshield washer cleaner

YES, you can eat REALLY well on your food storage...

YES, you can live on your food storage and LOVE it! 

So grateful to have had another opportunity to “Stretch” and to put this wonderful quote by Percy Cerutty to the test once again…

"You only ever grow as a human being

if you're outside your comfort zone”.