Tag Archives: gifts

peaceful christmas: week 6

Posted on by
2
Wrapping ideas with personality!

Wrapping ideas with personality!

Week 6: Create a Family Tradition

I had a good conversation with my friend Claire the other day about remembering to incorporate activities that John and I want to do, not just the ones we’ve “always done”. It is easy, especially when faraway family necessitates spending the holidays in someone else’s home each year, to forgot that the two of us are a family too.

The day is coming when we’ll be able to wake up Christmas morning in our own house and shape the day together, but for now we take part in what our extended families do, and we have to be intentional in defining our little family in these years. Continue reading →

Peaceful Christmas: Week 10 & 9

Posted on by
1
christmas08

Christmas 2008 at our place

So far I have figured out our Christmas budget, and how much we can spend on each person, and have figured out what mailings we’ll do and to whom. As far as setting up the mailing, we have our addresses in place and have designed our photo card we just need to print them. I’m hoping to handle that this weekend so we can get our cards and Christmas letters ready to go by the end of next week.

Onward and upward.

Week 10 of Simple Mom’s 12 Weeks to a Peaceful Christmas is all about starting your Christmas shopping. I’ll admit I have been on the fence about this one. I know in theory that finishing my shopping before the holiday season is suppose to help me save money, be less stressed and enjoy Christmas. But I enjoy being out among people this time of year, drinking an egg nog latte and feeling the collective cheer. I’m concerned that I’ll miss out on the fun if I skip the holiday shopping.

However, it is true that being in stores with the music playing, the beautiful displays and a festive mood in the air makes spending too much money seem like it might not be that big of a deal. This year we’re serious about not overspending (and following our budget more closely in general) so I’m willing to try staying out of the stores this year. I won’t know until I try.

That being said, I have made a list of everyone we want to buy for and a gift idea in the agreed upon price range. Now my goal is to purchase whatever I can online and whatever is left before December.

Still playing catch-up with Simple Mom’s weekly plan so I’ll do a second one this week again.

Week 9′s assignment is to make plans to give back. Well I know right away what we’ll be doing this year. I’m a huge fan of charity:water and all that they do and have already set up a mycharity:water campaign to raise money for wells. I’ll be talking about it a lot this Christmas because I am trying to raise $500 in place of receiving gifts, cards, baked goods or anything that costs $$!

I support charity:water because 100% of public donations directly fund water projects in developing nations. I love being able to make the campaign my own instead of just sending in a cheque. So visit my Christmas Water campaign page, sign up to follow me, donate, help me get this campaign off the ground and give back this Christmas. I’ll post more on that soon.

Follow charity:water on Twitter
 Follow Scott Harrison on Twitter

As long as I do get those photo cards printed this weekend, some online shopping and some promotion of my charity:water campaign I’m on track. How are you guys doing with your Christmas plans? What’s causing you stress already and how are you trying to tackle that?

(belated) birthday present post

Posted on by
2

I forgot to share my cooking joy with everyone a couple weeks ago. John told me on my birthday back in July that he was buying me a KitchenAid mixer. He had found one on Craig’s List that was in great shape and a fraction of the price for a new one.

It ended up taking another 2 weeks before we connected with the seller and went to their house to pick it up. I had to wait a month but it was worth it, I’m finally the proud owner of the sweetest mixer on the market.

As a bonus it turned out the seller goes to our church. Small world (but big church, hence why we had no idea).

mixer3 mixer2 mixer1

3 years behind us

Posted on by
1

Today was our third wedding anniversary. It was a pretty low-key day, I mean I remembered to say something to John when we got up this morning but then I forgot to tell anyone else until the afternoon. It’s a Tuesday so we didn’t have anything wild and crazy planned. We both agreed we are tired and have been going in and out of town all summer and what would make us most enjoy this day is to take the pressure of ourselves to celebrate in a any certain way.

I tried to buy a card for John but for some reason they were all just so bad this year. Heavy, velvet appliqué, five pages of poetry about how your husband/wife is the glue that holds the whole universe together and your only reason for living… and the whole thing ways more than my purse. None of them said “John” to me, that’s for sure.

I won’t get into it too much because I have neither the time now the memory to recall all the details but my card search resulted in some pretty funny suggestions by myself and a couple of my co-workers for something we liked to call “Biblically accurate Christian cards”. Many ideas were hatched, including “I will love you forever, unless there’s no marriage in heaven” or “I will stay with you through good times and bad, pre- and post-trib.” You get the idea.

I almost went for a Christian card in the bookstore at work that had a terribly mis-quoted verse from Song of Solomon about springs of water which could have at least gotten a laugh.

What I did end up doing was coming home and meeting John and our friends, who are visiting, for sushi at Sushi Garden. John showed up with a big bouquet of flowers and a card. Then we all got bubble tea and John and I came home and I did what I always do when he gets me flowers: take the bouquet apart and create a bunch of little flower arrangements. This is the way to go with store-bought bunches, break them up by types or colors and they will fill your house and look like you picked them all out individually. Currently I’m really into using glass milk bottles and mason jars to hold casual bunches of daisies and brown-eyed susans.

I’ll put pictures of the flowers up another time, today I’ll do what I’ve done before: I  like to surface some wedding photos each year that haven’t previously been on my blog or Facebook. Enjoy. And happy anniversary babe.

Click on the pictures to see them full-size.

The details of my dress…

wedding1

My mom showing off the necklace my dad bought her for the wedding: it had the August stone in it to commemorate our wedding for her…

wedding2

Our wedding rings and my “something blue”: my shoes…
wedding3

Just us…
wedding4

the big 2-7

Posted on by
Reply

Today was my birthday. I feel like it went by pretty fast but it was actually a great birthday, for no extraordinary reason but more because it was just, happy.

I should back the story up and say that since John joined Campus Min it is a fact of our lives that he will never be home for my birthday. It sadly falls in the middle of a mandatory Campus training time for which one must have a copy of their own obituary to be excused. This is a sad thing not to have John home but for the last two years it has worked somewhat in my favor. You see everyone feels sorry for me when they hear I will be home alone and they all join forces to make it up to me. And John feels worst of all so he usually tries to celebrate me before and after the day.

That’s the background of why my birthday started last night and went all day today. John was able to get away from the training time last night and come home to take me out to Cactus Club for dinner and drinks. Then we relaxed at home and he said I could choose our activity and I decided I wanted to play Tiger Woods on the Xbox. We haven’t played video games together in so long and plus it was my birthday so he let me cheat by moving his controller when he was trying to swing. I still lost.

So hanging out with John was fun but he was gone by 7am, back to captivity. I had to work at home in the morning so I could go to a doctor’s appointment (not a bad thing, everyone there knows your personal info so they were wishing me happy birthday all over the place).

Then at work in the afternoon I got lots of “happy birthdays” from everyone. Tomorrow I get my birthday cake at work too. (Dairy Queen ice cream cake with the gel icing!!) After work my sister-in-law picked me up and we went for Starbucks and some shopping for baby clothes for her and then supper. We had a little cheesecake at the end and called it a day. Now I am all cozy on the couch because they let me sleep over. I told you I get the royal treatment.

I don’t think I have any great revelations about getting older this year. I didn’t have any thoughts of what I planned to be doing at this age or where I saw myself by now. 27 seems similar to 26, though it has much more of an almost 30 ring to it than I’d like. It was reassuring when my doctor remarked, “I mean, you’re only 27, you’re young.” Thanks Dr. H.

So thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday with phone calls, texts, Facebook wall messages, skypes, cards and gifts. Thanks to Mom, Dad and Charity who sent early gifts and cards which I love. The jacket you gave my is beautiful, sis, it’s too warm now but I can’t wait to wear it to work in the fall. Thanks to everyone who made my day special by making me feel valued.

It’s a good time for me to be reminded that I do have people in my life who care about me. It’s sort of become a joke based on truth that I don’t like most people. Selectively sociable the personality tests call it. You won’t notice it at first introductions because I learned to adapt and find common ground in any conversation at a young age, but I can count my real friends on one hand.

The reality of our lifestyle the last few years (and probably, for me, for many years before that) has caused me to be cautious about putting down roots. I never expect it to be long before we move on, they move on or both. There are so few people who’s presence can be counted on for years to come but as I look at my life, one year older, is this how I want to it to be in 27 more years? I wonder, will I still find it hard to put down roots and invest in people at 52?

Maybe that was a revelation after all. Happy birthday to me.

a quarter century, done

Posted on by
1

Sarah's first birthday Today is my 26th birthday. I have officially completed a quarter century on this earth and I am feelin’ good. I think every birthday after 21 has been really good. I don’t know why but it seems like the birthdays before 22, or maybe between about 13 and 22, are just lame. I mean you either feel too young for stuff you wish you could do or too old for stuff you secretly still like to do.

Then you get to 16 and you can drive, or if you were like me you were always grounded in high school so you didn’t get to drive. Then 17 hits and you aren’t 18 yet so you can’t vote or sign yourself out of school without a parent or legal guardian.

Then you’re finally 18 so you can vote and buy cigarettes and porn, but you find out your vote doesn’t do much, cigarettes get lame and you’re a girl so the porn purchasing power is kind of lost on you. 19 Is okay because you’re out of high school and can legally drink in some Canadian provinces – but not in the US.

I liked 20 because I wasn’t a teenager anymore and there was something cool about being able to say I was in my twenties.

21 Gets old real fast because every time you say how old you are in the States people have to comment on how you can drink now. La dee freakin da we’d been doing that since we were 15. Now we can do it in public and pay 5 times more.

Which brings me to 22. No more comments about milestone birthdays but you’re still far away from the days when people will remark about being over the hill and give you birthday cards about menopause, false teeth and the Grim Reaper. As I said before, I have enjoyed each year after 22 more than maybe any before. Probably also because between then and now I met my husband, moved back to Canada, got engaged, got married, started ministry, moved to BC, watched my little sister get married and my little brother start to become the guy I knew he could be… with stuff like that happening who wouldn’t enjoy life?

Showing you all the big 2-6 I am excited about 26. Granted, I’m still in my twenties so anyone over 30 will roll their eyes if I say anything about feeling older, and 30 is the new 20 so I guess to some people I’m like a 16 year old. But too me it means a few things: I can rent a car without the extra daily fee, I can adopt a child in most countries except China, I am closer to 30 than 20 so the 30-somethings might cut me some slack, and no matter how old I get I think I might always look like a little kid so I’ve got that on my side.

What did I do to celebrate the big 2-6? On Sunday my mother-in-law was in town so I went out to lunch after church with her, John and my sisters-in-law Janna and Adrianne and her husband Gordie. I got a chocolate ganache with a sparkler in it but as the tradition from last year continues, no camera worked in time to capture the moment (sad story, ask me some time). Adrianne and Gordie gave me a bar of cool lemon soap and a giftcard from Lush and John gave me like the best birthday present ever: he has fulfilled my lifelong dream of seeing Dave Matthews Band live at The Gorge in Washington State. It is Dave’s favorite venue so it is guaranteed to be sweet. We’ve got to 2 tickets for August 31st and I almost peed my pants when he told me.

Today, the official anniversary of my birth, was filled with a regular work day, broken up with opening cards from Grandma Harder, Uncle Paul and Aunt Marlene and my co-workers. Claire bought me a coke and then Janna surprised me by showing up at the end of the day with a chocolate cupcake and cards from her and my in-laws. The one from Mom and Dad Hau has Michael from The Office in it saying something about reverse psychology and it told me not to have a happy birthday. Hilarious.

On the way home I treated myself to a Starbucks honey frappuccino and got my nails filled (got a manicure for Charity’s wedding, decided to keep it for awhile because I’m 26 now and need mature looking hands). I got home to find a bouquet of gerber daisies, chocolate and a new scarf from John. He has to be away from today until Friday and he felt bad for missing my birthday for the second year in a row. He is so sweet, he totally made me feel thought of even though he couldn’t be around.

So now I am enjoying the quiet of our apartment and a chance to catch up on things. At this crazy point in our lives a night home alone is exactly what I want, and need.

I find birthdays feel a bit bittersweet to me. I think about how past memories are getting further away and some things will never be the same. But right now I’m seeing the sweet so I’ll just enjoy that. 26. Happy birthday to me!