still a work in progress
Each year on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, we throw a party to kick off the season. You can read about the 2018 party here. We make Christmas and Advent wreaths, decorate cookies, drink cocoa, watch Christmas movies, and write letters to Santa. Continue reading “Cookies, Cookies, Cookies”
Over the years my kids have made it their mission to find the most beautiful, ugly Christmas tree they can find each year. You can read about our experience last year here. This year was no different. Except that maybe the ugly beauty came more from perseverance than from the tree itself. Continue reading “Oh! Christmas Tree!”
This year we made Thanksgiving easy. Really easy. Thanksgiving weekend is always busy for our family. Kids come home from college, sometimes with friends in tow. There’s the Turkey Bowl in the morning (a football game my “boys” play in every year), the actual Thanksgiving meal, Black Friday Shopping, the Civil War football game, and our Annual Wreath Party/Open House. I love every bit of it. Every single bit. But it is a lot of work. And sometimes I have to remind myself how much I love it when I’m up to my eyeballs in my to-do list. So I decided to do it different this year. And make it easier.
Advent is definitely one of my favorite parts of the pre-Christmas season. Advent is the part that helps me slow down and remember. Advent is the part where we get to prepare, anticipate, and wait to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Advent means coming. The coming of our Savior. Continue reading “Advent Countdown”
To all my children,
On this Mother’s Day as I get to enjoy being extra celebrated, I feel like I should be celebrating all of you. I want to sincerely thank each of you for truly bringing out the best in me, for giving me life, and purpose. For teaching me what God’s unconditional love looks and feels like, and for teaching me what patience and forgiving seven times seventy looks like. (And then how to do it all over again the next day and the next.) Continue reading “Mother’s Day: A Letter To My Children”
The fourth week of Advent started on Christmas Eve Eve this year. If I’m completely honest we forgot to light the candle on our Advent wreath. We aren’t perfect. And even Advent is unmastered some times. But we did light candles. Lots of candles. First at the candlelight service at church and then on top of a birthday cake while we sang Happy Birthday to the Savior of the World. 
Continue reading “On the eve of Christmas Eve”
Dressed in their Christmas jammies time stands still. It’s as if they always lived under this roof, instead of just breezing in to visit from college, or life in the real world. In their Christmas jammies next to the tree, they are little children again, festive and happy and excitedly waiting for Christmas. Continue reading “Family Jammies”
“All the little kids waiting for pictures with Santa were wearing their super fancy Christmas outfits. We shoved two people in a sweater and called it good.” ~Nina Continue reading “Going to See Santa”
The Saturday after Thanksgiving is a holiday in our house. Every year, for the past dozen or so years, we have a Wreath Party and Open House. Family and friends come from near and far to make their own Christmas or Advent wreath, decorate some Christmas cookies, write a letter to Santa, drink hot cocoa overflowing with marshmallows and candy canes, and just kick off the Christmas Season. Our house is packed to the seams with happy people bustling around chatting, laughing, creating. Continue reading “Kicking off the Christmas Season”
All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. ~2 Corinthians 4:15 NIV
Thanksgiving morning dawns early. We are blessed in the Mastrantonio house that Grama and Papa, even though visiting and staying with us, want to prepare and cook the turkey!! Hallelujah!! Come to my house and cook the star of the Thanksgiving meal?! Yes, please! C’mon over. Continue reading “An UNMASTERED Thanksgiving”
Unmastered 