Comfort and Joy

Every year, our family reads a devotional book called Christ in the Carols. It is such a blessing to read our beloved Christmas tunes with fresh eyes and cause us to consider the words that we re singing. They are typically doctrinally rich and worthy of a deeper treatment than is often available when we sing them.

I go on Christmas Carol kicks. I find one that resonates with me and that's the one that I play most. And then I will scout around for all the variations of the song I can find. Which is why I own eleven versions of O Come All Ye Faithful (last year's favorite). This year, my carol is Veni, Veni Emanuel. I'm up to five versions of it. And it brings me to tears-not that this is a big surprise to anyone that knows me. It automatically sends me to places where the scriptures promise that HE would come. And not only would He come, but He would to choose to come in the meekest estate, and know pain and poverty.
C.S. lewis put it this way:

"The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. . . .

In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity . . . down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created.But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him."  

(from: Miracles)

"Say to those who have an anxious heart, "Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you."
Is. 35:4

I hope it's magical!

Let them eat cake

Selah really looks forward to Wednesdays when she can play with other kids her age at preschool.

So, when I was asked to make Jesus' Birthday cake for the class Christmas party, I couldn't have been more thrilled. I really wanted to make it special.  I dug up a easy & yummy chocolate cake recipe, which is always a pleaser...

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/too-much-chocolate-cake/detail.aspx

I wanted to add special embelishments, but since I didn't have the ingredients to make modeling chocolate, I  decided to go with fondant. I have messed around with fondant before, but I didn't want to buy a  whole ten dollar tub when I only needed a little bit of it. So, I went online and used this recipe, and was grateful that it only required three ingredients that I always have on hand.

Here ya go...

http://candy.about.com/od/fondantcandyrecipes/r/basic_fondant.htm

~just a word about this recipe, I kept dusting my hands with powdered sugar because it gets rather sticky the more you handle it.

Hard to believe this will be opaque and pliable, but it will.

We poured our fondant onto a pan and let it set. When it was tempered enough to touch, we made a figure eight motion in the pan and sure enough, it started turning white & forming a ball. Don't worry if it's crumbly,

just knead it like bread dough and allow it to rest.

Moldable. Now knead in food color.

Gabe made baby Jesus.

Ice cream cones make wonderful trees!

Graham crackers would have worked better for our manger but, since we had none, we improvised with gingerbread,

it was heavier and took longer to dry, but it worked. We used toasted coconut for hay.

We made gifts by covering mini wheats in fondant and making ribbon with fruit roll ups.