Holiday

Disclosure:: affiliate links are included below, but all of the books listed below are ones we recommend reading with your kiddos!  One of my strengths as a mom is reading aloud to my children. Searching for new titles to read aloud to our girls is one of my favorite things to do. We often read in the afternoons with a snack of popcorn and sliced apple or cookies as a treat. Sometimes we will gather at the table with hot tea, extra honey for the girls. I’m constantly on the hunt for more books and try to add diversity to our reads. I usually reserve big stacks of books from the library and pick them up in the drive through....

With all the Lego calendars and chocolate calendars and elves and toys, you may be thinking, "Really? I have to add another thing to my holiday season?" Well, first of all, no, you absolutely don't. But let me tell you why you may enjoy celebrating Advent. I’ve long been a lover of Advent. In the fullness of the Christmas season, Advent anchors me. The point of this simple practice is to build expectation as we remember the first coming of Jesus and as we look forward to His second coming as King of Kings. The word “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival” and if you look into the history of the church, Advent is celebrated with candles and scripture reading,...

Maybe you've seen the posable elves? One that can effortlessly climb the refrigerator door? And you wonder, just how those elves got blessed with magic while your elf has sitting magic. I'm here to tell you Elf Surgery is simple and easy! My little sister is an elf surgeon and performed surgery on our first elf. Last year I may or may not have found some on clearance to add to our outrageous elf collection but I needed them to be just as much fun as our original! So I put in a call to the Elf Surgeon and she walked me through, step by step--it was very Grey's Anatomy! And now we have 3 posable, magnetic elves to...

The holidays are here. Family gatherings are around the corner. For most of us, that means navigating difficult relationships that we are only obligated to navigate twice a year. “Eliminate toxic relationships from your life” has become a buzz phrase as of late. While the notion had great initial intentions, it has become overgeneralized. There are two problematic ways people have synthesized this: 1) Eliminate anyone who thinks differently than you from your life. 2) Remove perplexing relationships from your life and label them as toxic for validation of your decision, rather than growing as a person by learning to navigate the relationship. I hear people stamp the “eliminating toxic relationships” mark on difficult family members in particular. In comes the United States Supreme...

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Party Time. How to Host A Holiday Cookie Swap I don't know about y'all, but I absolutely LOVE watching the cooking competitions during the holiday season on the Food Network. I especially love the Holiday Baking Championship and the Christmas Cookie Challenge because I am always so impressed with the level of skill and creativity involved. While I am not necessarily as talented as the Food Network stars, it did get me thinking about hosting a cookie swap party in Baton Rouge myself. Have you ever been to one? Where everyone brings different cookies, either store bought or homemade, and you get to try them all?! Enjoying the sweets while sharing the labor across a...