Operation Sanitation--Giving to the Underappreciated

Once again, our church has come up with another great idea to give back to our community.  They provided plastic buckets with a sticker attached, and each family in the church filled a bucket with the goodies of their choice to be given to the workers from the Sanitation Department.  Now since there are three families from our church that live in my neighborhood, we are giving ours to our mailman, and the third family is giving their bucket to the workers to clean the leaves out of the street.  So here is what I put in my bucket:

• a bag of Honey BBQ Fritos
• 3 bags of microwaveable popcorn
• a bag of trail mix
• 3 packs of peanut butter crackers
• 2 Reese's Trees
• pens and mints with our church logo and contact information on them (provided in the bucket by the church)
• I also plan to grab a baggie of the Chocolate Bark from the freezer to pop in there when I give it out.

This was really fun to put together and is a great idea that any family can do by just running to their local Dollar Tree, snagging a bucket and filling it with goodies for one of the under-appreciated workers in your life.  And as you can see you can fit a lot in those buckets.

 

Now, go out and give back to YOUR community workers.

Ho Ho Hos and Mistletoes

The pastor of our church is a big fan of the Hostess cakes--Twinkies, Ho Hos, the whole shebang.  So, I decided to play on his love of Ho Hos and give his family a Ho Ho Ho Christmas gift.  I grabbed a box of Ho Hos from Wal-Mart, but then I decided to get something that his wife could enjoy as well.  So I scooted on over the health and beauty aid and grabbed a bottle of nail polish, polish remover, and toe separators.  This decision morphed my gift into a "Ho Ho Hos and Misletoes" gift.

I had spied this adorable free printable that said "Ho Ho Ho" over at Dixie Delights, so I grabbed a red bag and printed the label.  I wrote a personal note at the top, and then I added the words "and Mistletoes" under the "Ho Ho Ho."  I stuck it all in the bag and took it to church to leave on the pastor's desk.  He told me later that he has been hording the Ho Hos!  haha

There is nothing like having a good pastor whose whole family you love.  We have been blessed to have more than one pastor in our church history with sweet families that we have just loved!

Christmas Parade

Last night was one of the local Christmas parades.  Our family participated and had a blast.  The Hubs drove his State Championship winning girls golf team in the back of his truck in the parade.  C rode with him in his truck while B and I walked with our church's float.  For the last two years, our church has set up a booth and given out glow necklaces for kids and rolls of tape (to help with gift wrapping) for adults.  It has proven to be a surprisingly effective ministry, and this year there were kids coming up to the float asking for the glow necklaces because they remembered our church from previous years.  What an amazing ministry to be remembered for giving to the children of our community!!

So our float theme was the three kings, and we had an enormous star on the back.  There was music playing with a telling of the Christmas story mixed in.  B and I had a blast walking behind the float giving out glow necklaces.

I will leave you with a shot of B playing some sort of strange version of horseshoes or ring toss with his glow necklace while waiting for the parade to start.  It was a fun time, and he is already talking about doing it again.

Teacher Christmas Gifts {Chocolate Bark}

Last night was the last Wednesday night of church until the new year.  And I like to do little something for each of the church teachers and nursery workers for Christmas and other times throughout the year.  But Christmas can be a fairly tight time financially speaking, so I wanted to do something affordable that would work for men or women since we have both working with the kids at our church.

I decided to go with a super easy Chocolate Bark that I saw Sandra Lee make on her show eons ago.  The recipe is the below and it could not be easier.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Bark

2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups of white chocolate chips
2/3 cup of chopped macadamia nuts (or almonds)

Line a cookie sheet with wax paper.  Melt all but 1/4 cup of the semisweet chocolate, pour it on the prepared cookie sheet and spread to cover the entire surface in a thin layer.  Melt all but 1/4 cup of the white chocolate chips and drizzle it over the layer of semisweet chocolate on the cookie sheet.  Use a toothpick, skewer, or knife to swirl the white chocolate into the semisweet for the marbled effect.  Sprinkle the reserved 1/4 cups of semisweet and white chocolate chips and the nuts over the melted chocolate.  Lightly press the chips into the melted chocolate and then place the cookie sheet in the fridge to harden.  Cut or break into bite-sized pieces, and package for gift giving.

This is a picture of the finished product before I broke it into pieces.

And this is how it looks all packaged up.  I found these sweet printable tags here.  This one says 'friend' but the link has tags for 'neighbor' and 'teacher.'

I will confess that I have nibbled on some of the left over bark since making it, and it makes a really yummy little snack.

Thank you! Thank you!

I won something!  I can't believe it!

I am an avid follower of Amanda over at Dixie Delights--and if you have read my blog for very long you have probably seen some of my copy cat imitations of things she has done with her adorable boys.  Well, she was having a give away for a laminated copy of her Christmas Truth or Dare game, and I was the big winner!!  I am totally ecstatic!  Thank you so much, Amanda!

You can order your own game from Amanda's etsy store.  Just search Dixie Delights, and all of her adorable creations should pop up for your perusal.

"The Next Noel" Children's Christmas Program

Last night was our church Christmas program, and I could not be prouder of the kids at our church for putting on a remarkable show.  And I am so proud of my sweet B for being the cutest little cow to ever grace the stage of a church Christmas program.

The play began with kids getting assignments for a play being directed by main character Leon.  Leon begins as a humble director, but slowly, he starts getting the big head.  Then he is faced with having to play the part of the sheep when a cast member breaks her arm.  Will he be humble again or will he fight to maintain his 'leading roll' as director?

The kids did such an amazing job.  I was so impressed with all of them for learning their lines and showing off their amazing acting, singing, and dancing talents.

Rudolph's Favorite Train Ride

Recently, we had a friend from church give us a gift certificate for all 4 of us to ride on the SAM Shortline which is a local train that has a small route through some of the small South Georgia towns in our area.  Knowing how much our kids--B especially--love trains, we knew we couldn't pass this up.  And as a bonus, she gave three other gift certificates to three other families in our church, so we all went last night as a group.  What fun we had!

The night started with an early dinner at a local pizza place, then we caravanned to the train depot about half an hour away.  We turned in our gift certificates for tickets, met the conductors, and boarded the train.  The kids were SO excited.

The ride was short, but with eight kids--six of which were five-years-old or younger--it was just the right amount of time.  The train was decorated for Christmas complete with lights, and there was Christmas music playing onboard.  We disembarked at the depot station in town where there was a small amount of shopping to be done.  There was a room with lots of Thomas the Train stuff that kept my kids, particularly B, quite occupied during the hour we were there.  There were also people selling baked goods, jams, and jellies, a Santa with elves, and the conductor read The Polar Express to the kids.  Then we hopped back onboard for our return trip.

Once we arrived back at our starting point, I must have snapped 20 pictures of the kids in an effort to get a decent one.  This is the best I got--and it leaves much to be desired.

It was a really fun time with friends both old and new.  And it was a new experience for both of our kids--I don't think either of them had ever been on a train before, and they had a blast!