How to make Christmas crackers

If you want to know how to make those Christmas crackers this is a good video to watch . Dave Kelly is always a blast . You can find Allison Orthner's blog here and Christy Riopels here

A CONTEST

LuShae Jewelry is having a CONTEST! Go HERE to enter for your chance to win $5000 cash to spend anywhere you want and $200 monthly to a random winner. All you have to do is enter your name, email address and blog URL and also display one of their jewelry badges on your blog, website or social profile page and you will be automatically entered each and every month. I thought they were kinda fun , you can see some of the badges below . So if you are curious about the button I will be sporting on my blog ,  this is what it's about . ... with this kinda jewelry I might reconsider getting married ! j/k.

This giveaway is open to all countries. Everyone who enters will also receive a 15% discount off the entire LuShae Jewelry range!

Dorin's Fudgy Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

I was watching Stephen and Chris yesterday and they made a half-made homemade recipe for these delicious cookie bars.

Because I am going to a christmas party at Trail Bottle Depot on Sunday I thought these would be good to make . They are so easy and I loved watching Stephen and Chris' show yesterday , so I am making them for christmas and for the party. I stuck the recipe in a nice recipe card to print off .

You can find this delicious recipe and more from yersterday's show here.

Our Door Decorating Contest .

Our building had a door decorating contest . I won a $20 gift card to Wal-Mart yay! Out of 21 people who entered we were second place . So thank you for that .

To come up with a theme for our door , we chose to call it after the name of our street: Barberry Walk. I thought of just having a christmas tree with 'Berry Christmas' somewhere on it . So this is what we did. I kind of left out the greenery on the right side . I didn't have anymore of it I think. oops :P

For the stump I stuck a picture of our building . It says "Berry Christmas"

The Alphas on the Tree (not the stump) come from cmas alphas from Giggle Scraps at gigglescraps.blogspot.com
Here is our door sideways cause it wouldn't all fit in one frame

We couldn't use paint but it could probably use some more berries and more garland around the door frame .The berries I got at the dollar store. I couldn't find a decent door matt and I didn't know how to make one with letters on it . So the wreaths will have to do . At least it's Christmassy.

We also hung a banner in the hallway

We aren't supposed to cover the emergency info there on the wall lol  Anyway, it's a good thing cause today the fire alarms went off and rang for over an hour . Apparently there was a flood on the 3rd floor . The elevators weren't working either , and there were a lot of perturbed people to say the least , who couldn't use the stairs for one reason or another. A lot of them have medical conditions :(

Veni Veni Emmanuel!

Enjoy a nice advent meditation song.

A Christmas Ornament

This year I had the privilege of entering a christmas splendour ornament exchange . We received a lovely mercury bird clip-on ornament . It was beautiful but my boyfriend dropped it and it broke as he was putting it on the tree that we have .

Thank-you to Beth, who sent her blog address , I contacted her about it and told her we would be willing to pay for one if she were to get another one for us because we liked it so much . I never thought to check out Pottery Barn here in Calgary until after . So , we did. Yesterday. Guess what? We found the EXACT same one we had broken to smitherines!! I was so happy, and so was Phil , that we bought TWO mercury
clip-on birds...
 


See how nice they are sitting in our tree.

Anyway I like to decorate this tree since we have no room for a Christmas Tree . Actually I like those plants . They work perfect as a Christmas tree IMO. Here is our Christmas tree/plant from last year:

and here is this years.

:) It’s perfect for the two of us .

What is Christmas?

Here we are talking about the salvation of mankind and of the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of God, who became the new Adam, assuming all that is human, and by this assumption saved and deified man. He came to reconcile us to the Father after the Fall. He became man in order to deliver us from death and corruption and make us the sons and daughters of God and gods by participation. So why did God become man which He was not before? It was to make man god. God desired this so much that Jesus came out of the bosom of the Father without separation, and descended and came to earth for that reason.

He did not come as a Judge to judge the world, not yet, but He came to save it after the Fall. So through the Incarnation of Christ, we, who are corruptible matter are able to partake in His divinity and of His Kingdom if we observe His commandments and His Law. Thus the Word became flesh.

So let Christmas take its real place in our heart and out of respect for our priceless ransom let us love our Lord and Master who paid it. Let us welcome His love and we will know that if He had not wanted to save us after having redeemed us, He would not have descended on earth at all. He would not have been sacrificed because of us. But he did it by His own free will and because of the infinite Love He has for each one of us. But man has distorted the meaning of Christmas. This is what the Lord said once on the 24th December 1991, the eve of Christ's birth...

“...today I come with peace-terms and a Message of Love, but the peace I am offering is blasphemed by the earth and the Love I am giving them is mocked and jeered in the Eve of My Birth; mankind is celebrating these days without My Holy Name; My Holy Name has been abolished and they take the day of My Birth as a great holiday of leisure, worshipping idols...I have warned the world...”

In this message Christ shows us how much He is offended by our indifference and by our deviating His Birth into trivial things, celebrating Christmas in the wrong way and without remembering the real reason. For many people celebrate the Christmas tree instead , and the exchange of gifts, and the food, eating until sick, going on holidays and amusing themselves to folly, instead of adoring Jesus as the first shepherds did in the manger.

The Lord says:

“...Satan is deceiving the world once more with the same lie he deceived Eve ... that they too can be God (1) and are self-sufficient and do not need Me...” June 1, 2002

The world today, our Lord says, refuses the glory of God and prefers to live as if there is no God, for the world is paying no attention to God's Law or precepts. The world refuses to give glory to God and instead glorifies itself, playing God.

Jesus said:

“...they are doing all these things because they have never known either the Father or Myself...all they do is wither their soul for they snapped their navel string attached to Me and that nourished their soul...they are heading willingly into the eternal fires...” July 25/26, 1989

As you see from these messages, God is not pleased, especially when it comes to Christmas time when one should be living Christmas the right way and giving glory to God and remembering Jesus as our Savior who redeemed us.

The article is by Vassula .

(1) 2 Th 2:4, Ez 28:2

Merry Christmas!