Emmanuel, God with us

'Speak LORD, for your servant is listening.'

Open the eyes of my heart to see your beauty.

Open the ears of my mind to hear your voice.

Fill me with your goodness, 

your loving presence, with grace and truth.

Here I am LORD, waiting, open, 

yearning for the advent of You.

"So the Word became human and made his home among us.

He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness."

John 1:14 NLT

This Christmas season I am filled with gratitude for the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit. God is at work and has invited each of us to join Him. How amazing that He asks me to collaborate with Him and that He wants to be with me because He loves me. I am overwhelmed with His loving-kindness. 

Thank you for stopping by my blog. I appreciate it. You are important and your input means a lot to me! 

May your Christmas be filled with the peace, hope, and joy that the love of the Father, the gift of the Son, and the powerful presence of the Spirit brings.

text & image copyright Valerie Sjodin 2011

A Grand Life Adventure & Another Beginning

It always boggles my mind a bit when an event is planned for, worked on, and them the big day comes and is gone in such a short time. Big vacations are like that, and life changes, like weddings etc. It is good to remember those times and record them so we don't forget. I am looking forward to the seeing the photographers' pictures.

The wedding was sacred and celebratory, eclectic and somewhat non-traditional but with all the elements of making a covenant with another before God and community.

I am posting a few photos from the wedding. To be honest, my photos turned out terrible. I must have had the wrong setting on my camera because at least half of them are blurry. So thank you Annika Dixon for these first five photos shown here that you posted on facebook!

Sean and Merri's had some new ideas that made the day "just them" such as cracking of the creme brulle (made by Merri's good friend Mari) instead of cutting the cake. It fit well with the dessert potluck too.

Another thing was during the ceremony instead of a unity candle, communion, or similar traditions they had all the parents put a message in the blue bottle shown below for the bride and groom to open on their first anniversary. Messages were also put in the bottle before the ceremony by the couple who did their premarital counseling and officiated the ceremony, and the members of the bridal party.

We ended up putting two rows of icicle twinkle lights behind the bottles so they looked like they were filled with light.

The wedding is over, the bride and groom happily beginning their life adventure… and for me, the mother of the bride it is a new beginning also, a season with its own adventure and dreams. Like with any change there is a sense of loss that goes with it, but I am filled with joy for Merri and Sean and hope for 2012.

Oh, I feel some creativity coming on…

Cookies, Community, and Culinary Collaboration…for Wedding Dessert

The plan for the wedding dessert evolved over conversations with people over a period of about a month. I had gone to coffee with a young friend of mine who told me about her and her sisters' plans of having wedding potlucks for their food since food is such a big expense for a wedding. And she pointed out that food, especially potlucks, brings people together. Weddings used to be a community affair, not a show. Her and her mom voluntered to help and it got me thinking… Then shortly after that Merri and I got together for dinner with mother and daughter friends she had grown up with. Merri is the second of the group to get married (our older daughter being the first.) At dinner we all agreed to help each other with food for the daughters'/friends' weddings. The moms agreed to bring fruit pies and crisps to the wedding. I also have a dear caterer friend with her top secret chocolate cake, and Merri's good friend and mom asked if they could make mini cheese cakes as a gift. Neither bride or groom are crazy about cake, and since their wedding is eclectic it seemed like just the right idea. I jumped in to make a batch of gluten free brownies and two of our favorite cookies: Cranberry Orange Cookies and Spice Cookies. As you can see we cut out the spice cookies into shamrock shapes. The groom's name is Irish. I got the idea when his dad showed me his shamrock collection. I played with a few designs and so far I like the bottom ones with the swirl the best. The recipe is below the photo.

Spice Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cream together:

1 cup butter or margarine

1 ½ cups sugar

Add:

1 tablespoon dark Karo syrup

1 beaten egg

Mix well.

Sift together:

3 ¼ cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon ginger

Add to creamed mixture and mix well. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out until thin. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Dough may be refrigerated for several days prior to baking.

Icing per color:

1 cup powdered sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla

1-2 tablespoons half & half

a few drops food coloring

Mix together. Sometimes the amounts of sugar and half & half need to be adjusted a bit to get the right consistency. I spoon each color into small zip lock bags and cut off a small amount of a corner to squeeze the icing through in order to "draw" with the icing.

Cranberry Orange Cookies 

The cranberry orange cookies shown below are one of our family favorites. I got the recipe online from allrecipes.com and have used it for years. In the recipe it doesn't say if the cranberries are fresh or dried, but probably fresh. I put in dried and cut back on the amount called for by a half a cup, but on the last batch I made I put in half dried cranberries, and half fresh. They have a nice orange glaze too. To me they tasted even better with a bit more tartness. Either way, I haven't met anyone who said they didn't like them. Click here for the link for the cookies:
allrecipes.com/Recipe/cranberry-orange-cookies

Bouquets with Brooches and Peacock Feathers

Last month both sides of the family got together for a wedding work night. It was great fun, and I appreciate the fact that this is sometimes rare that the bride and groom's families meet, enjoy each other's company, and share an appreciation for creativity as well as a work ethic. The work party included the bride and groom, all four parents, the groom's sister, my sister and niece and Merri's (and mine too) dear friend. It was a blast. They brought pizza, and we addressed invitations, made thank you cards, scrubbed more labels off of wine bottles, made boutonnières, and put wire on brooches for Merri's bouquet.

Here are the bridesmaid's bouquets. We had a plan, and then we went to Joann's Fabrics. Sometimes keeping an open mind makes things easier. They had the peacock feather arrangement already made, and we liked them, so we changed our plan. We added pearl beads and a metal disc from the jewelry section. Then I bent the stem wire and wrapped it with floral tape.

The boutonnières included peacock feathers. The one shown below is the groom's made by his mom during our work party. His name is Irish so we thought the shamrock with the wishbone was perfect.

On one of our "Wedding Wednesdays" we went into downtown Hillsboro to visit the antique shops for old brooches and jewelry to make her a brooch bouquet. We hit the jackpot at the Hill Theatre Antique Mall. What fun we had rummaging through the baskets of jewelry. They happened to have a sale that day and we found just what we thought we needed. Actually we had never made a brooch bouquet before. After finding the jewelry we set out to Joann's and bought a styrofoam ball, wire, pearl beads, small satin roses, pins, moss, and ribbon. I used lace from an old veil. It all matches her dress perfectly.The bouquet wasn't completed in one sitting. Over a period of a few weeks we worked on it as we had time.

Reusing for Wedding Centerpieces etc...

There usually comes a point in a project for me where I wonder if it will all come together as a cohesive whole. We're there… but as we stack "wedding" stuff on the six foot folding table, somehow it looks good together. It's also a good time for me to remind myself what is the most important: people and relationships. What I do creatively should foster that and help build an atmosphere of love for the wedding, combining the sacred and celebratory.

Wednesdays, or at least parts of Wednesdays have been dubbed "Wedding Wednesdays" for the past two months. Now that it's getting closer more of my days are focusing on Wedding preparations. Here's some photos. They look better in person, but it gives the idea and I'm planning to take pictures after we get everything set up at the venue.

For some of the bigger food tables we incorporated two birdcages. The one directly below was borrowed from a friend. Branches were cut from our oak tree and the paper hearts made earlier echo the paper chain with music and maps. The lower birdcage I bought a number of years ago and it tends to travel around my house making itself at home. In both cages we put battery operated candles. Suitcases are stacked and open ones used for holding cards, napkins etc. We'll also put groupings of wine bottles with peacock feathers in them and votive candles on the food tables (not shown).

The suitcase was given as the package for a wedding gift from our friends and neighbors.
The cards were cut out of leftover wedding invitations.

Most recently, the centerpieces were a focus. Merri read an idea that she incorporated. Because each centerpiece is a bit different and involves various parts, she set up a sample of how she wanted it to look and took a picture of each centerpiece from different angles. The groom loves photography and the bride old books, so the old cameras and books from our shelf are a relevant and easy choice. We printed the images of the photos of centerpieces in black and white on copy paper and taped them to the appropriate box so the people setting it up will know what's in each one. Then she put them each in a box and labeled it "Table #1" etc. Here are a few examples:

Recycling for an Eclectic Vintage Wedding Look

Yesterday, Wednesday, was the last day before the wedding Merri and I will go to the gym together. There seem to be a number of "last" times these days. Her last day at PSU was Tuesday. My husband, Keith celebrated by taking her and picking her up from school. It reminds me that even good change is a loss of sorts and bittersweet. The good part about these kind of "lasts" is they're followed by "firsts." So in the midst of changes and the upcoming empty nest phase, we are busy getting ready for the big day.

We hadn't actually set out to have a "green" wedding but now that I think of it, we are reusing, repurposing and recycling most of the decorations from what we have or found.

The loose vintage style of the wedding lends itself to eclectic and creative applications of decor.  Although it did take some time and effort to get the projects completed, we had fun doing it together.

We repurposed an old atlas and music book to make paper chains and hanging hearts. The paper chain will swag and be hung from the chairs going down the center isle. The hearts will likely be hung from branches in the reception area. I got the idea of the hanging paper hearts on Pinterest.

Another project we did for the wedding is a bit more of a risk since I haven't seen it before: using a large group of pre-recycled wine bottles as a decoration. It won't look the same at the wedding as it does here, but this photo gets the idea across. At the wedding the background will be a cream color with white cord twinkle lights behind it. The bottles will be lined up, slightly overlapping covering two 10 ½ foot sections on either side of the floor in front of the stage where the ceremony will take place. The peacock feathers will likely be shorter, but we're waiting to cut them until we get to the venue.

I imagine we looked a little ridiculous riffling through a local bistro and bar's recycling bins the night before trash day, collecting wine bottles… but it makes a good memory.   When we took a few to the venue we were pleased at how they looked, which was a relief since we hadn't seen it done before. The one thing that was some work and time consuming was getting the labels off the bottles. It helped to soak them in water and then use Citrasolv and a scrubby sponge.