Light the World 2017

This year my church has put out the new initiative to light the world. It is a challenge to become more christ-like during this holiday season. In an effort to help my children, I have created this word strip PDF that I can print out and cut and make a chain. Each day we can rip off a strip, read the verse, and discuss is a family how we can complete the challenge. I'm sharing the PDF with you today so that you might be able to do this with your family as well.

Click here to view and print the PDF.

I hope you all have a fabulous holiday season.

Love, Morgan

Christmas Schedule

Hello to all you lovely folks out there! Sorry about the hiatus. It turns out having 4-5 projects going on simultaneously, trying to work full-time, keeping the house clean, Christmas shopping, and still keeping my head above water is proving difficult. I don't know how other blogger mommies do it. (!!!!!)

I have been working on a lot of really fun projects lately, but I've failed to document, even though the thought to take pictures crosses my mind all of the time. I'm going to be honest and say that when I started this blog I had high hopes of it (eventually - I know full well something like this takes oodles of time) turning over some income at some point. I've never been motivated by money, though, and it actually seems to be a de-motivator, as I've had less of a desire to blog since I hit it hard back in September.

I have (in my humble opinion) some great things to share at some point, but for now I'll leave you with this useful idea.

Since my husband and I were married we've tried really hard (sometimes too hard) to please both sides of our families and share our time with them equally. It hasn't always happened, but that's always been our goal.

Between my husband's family and my split-family (both parents remarried) it's hard to coordinate schedules sometimes! This year, to try to make things a little more organized, I put together a schedule that I emailed to all of our siblings and parents so that they would know when we would be where.

I used Excel to create the spreadsheet and used a few free fonts to make it look Christmasy. I'm sharing them with you today if this is something that you'd like to use, too!

Head over here to download the workbook and find the two fonts I used below:

Commercial Script font (Script font used)
Budmo Jigglish (Marquee font used)

***A quick little tip for multi-line text in excel. The key combination Alt + Enter results in a new line within a cell. That's how I'm able to create the list in the key section.***

Happy Christmasing!

My Fall Simmer

When I was young I remember my mom putting some things in a small foil pie plate and setting it on the stove to help our home smell like Fall. When I saw Becky from CleanMama.net's post a few weeks ago I wanted to try it out for myself.

I didn't have any fresh cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, or sage leaves at my disposal (and I wouldn't have a use for them outside of this activity) so I just faked it. I simmered this all morning and when I came out of my room to grab a drink (I work in my bedroom while a nanny sits my kids for a few hours) I was so happy to smell deliciousness wafting through my home! Here's what I did:

1/2 water
1 tsp vanilla (I just did a lidful)
1 slice lemon (it was even old)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

I placed that in a glass oven-safe dish on LOW on my back burner for several hours. I'm pretty sure that Pyrex isn't 'stove safe', but I have done this with wax melts and haven't seen any issues because it doesn't get very hot. I was able to move the dish off the stove with bare hands, but if you're uncomfortable with it, you could probably just throw this in a pan like CleanMama does.

Here's the thing. It's not near as pretty as fresh herbs and spices........

My husband says that it smells like Christmas, which, if you're like me (and not ANTI Christmas until after Thanksgiving), that is a great thing!

What are some cheap ways you like to scent your home? Let me know if you try this!