Christmas Projects :)

I love this time of year!! I am getting really excited to spend this Christmas in Minnesota with family and with SNOW on the ground! I can't wait to show Kahlan the snow and see her reaction :) We don't get much of the white stuff in the Seattle area. Which, the rest of the year I am TOTALLY fine with!! But, the days around Christmas, I find myself longing for a little white fluff on the ground... must be my mid-west upbringing ;)

Anyway, I have been sneaking in some little projects when I have the time. Which, with an almost 9 month old, is hard to come by! My first project was making some Christmas gifts for our life group friends. We love them all and are thankful for them in our lives and wanted to give them a little something. So, we made up a double batch of our favorite salsa. We thought about doing cookies, but I think everyone gets enough cookies this time of year!! So, we thought salsa would be a nice change up. Here is what we did. We saved up all our pasta sauce jars throughout the year and filled them with our Salsa... recipe to follow ;)Then topped them with a piece of scrap cloth, tied to the lid with a ribbon and then put the recipe on a little card and put it on the ribbon. I also made it a little more festive with a cute Christmas tree stamp! It was so fun to put together and a good little joint project for Matt and I (he helped make the salsa!).



Firehouse Salsa
This makes a HUGE (about 1 gallon) batch.

1 can tomato sauce (15 oz)
3 cans Rotell original
1 can yellow and white corn
2 cans black beans
1 small red bell pepper, diced
½ cup red onion, diced
½ cup Italian dressing
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Mix ingredients together in a large bowl
and enjoy with tortilla chips!

My next little project was gift tags. Honestly, I usually buy gift tags and I even have some leftover from last Christmas, but all of us lifegroup girls were getting together for a craft night, and I wanted to come up with something to work on that was simple and not too time consuming, and I thought of gift tags! I used my Christmas tree stamps, some scrap paper and ribbon and a little jewel to top one of the trees and... Wha-la! Easy peasy craft for me to work on :) Here is the finished product:



Now all our gifts are bought, wrapped, tagged and ready to go under the tree.

That, my friends, is what I have been up to lately. You know, in my "free time" ;) Now for the next week or so all my spare moments will be filled with cleaning and packing and getting ready to fly to Minnesota!!!! Man, I just can't wait to see my whole family again!