My little family took this week off. I’ll talk more about that later, but the time away made me realize how much we need to focus on grounding ourselves to the present. Being present is work. It’s easy to get lost in planning for the future, and spend too much time reliving the past.
But this week, my little boy slipped his hand into mine as we were walking along and all of a sudden my wandering mind felt jolted back to the here and now. I loved it and felt truly happy. We had just been running around, my brain filled with a list of to-dos, goals, and the vague sense we really ought to stop to eat but when his little hand tucked into mine, none of it mattered! It’s really funny how love can bring you to the present. And it’s hard to feel down when you have roots in the here and now.
Hopefully, during this holiday season, you can find a minute to just look around at the good. Too often horrible stories fill my twitter feed, or the news, and even my beloved instagram. (which is why I’m spending so much time on pinterest!)
Sometimes, I forget there is so much good that gets taken for granted. Instead of letting my thoughts focus on things changing around the world, my family is focusing on our traditional service project this holiday season. We hope to spread happiness as far as we can. And our downtime is spent on gratitude. When we work to be present & grateful, we’ve noticed the mad crush of gimme-gimme-wanty-wanties also seems to vanish.
If you are looking for a place to start, the Mormon church has put together a calendar for their month-long service project #lighttheworld. You can take a peek and see if their daily prompt helps you to focus on the present.
So, here’s my favorite holiday plan for a quick meal party appetizer. (We don’t need to talk about how many times I made this my actual meal, right?) Recently I had the amazing opportunity to get to know Sara over at Our Best Bites. She is such a sweetheart! For our little gathering, she brought some of her olive oils & balsamic vinegars with her to share. They knocked my socks off!
And her cute little heart whisks just make me smile every time I see them! Seriously, who doesn’t want to add a little extra love to their food?
In the interest of sharing both one of my favorite foods and another amazing shop owner, I’d love to give one of my readers a set of my favorite oil & vinegar and the cutest whisk in the entire world.
You can enter my little giveaway below so I can share this amazing set with one of you. And if you entered my last giveaway, I announced the winner in the previous post! Thank you so much for reading! <3 Amanda
I try to provide service by helping some needy fans lies with gifts and food.
My parents taught me to always put a donation in any Salvation Army bucket I passed — even if I only had a few coins in my pocket. I taught my children to do that as well. Now I have been teaching my grandchildren to do that, too.
During seminary, our teacher used to lead us in singing his favorite Christmas hymn, O Holy Night. He did not have a great voice, but he sang with such pure love and devotion, and absolutely no self-consciousness, that it really put every teenager’s focus on the birth of the Christ child and not on ourselves. I think of Brother Johnson every time I hear, or sing, O Holy Night, and, more broadly, have tried to emulate his attitude in many situations in which my attention should be focused on others or on sacred matters rather than on myself.
Our family loves to share and serve during the holiday season. I love performing Random Acts of Kindness, such as leaving a Christmas card with a gift card on a random persons windshield, or paying for the order of the car behind me in the drive thru. We also volunteer every Christmas night at the donation booth at Christmas Tree Lane where we live. But my favorite service is to treat a deserving family to the Twelve Days of Christmas! The Christmas season is so much better when we focus on giving!
Aa good friend lost her husband this year – he was a terrific guy. I’ve made up a package of small gifts – the kind he would have given her if he was here so she will have something to open on Christmas morning!
I like to draw several names from different organizations to gift children at Christmas. I draw at least 3-5 names at the hospital. I try to gift them everything on their list because the little ones want so little that it is well deserved.
Homemade dressings are the only things I dress my salads with! These sound great!
The struggle of staying present is real!! I get so busy with all my to dos this time of year, I sometimes forget why I’m doing them. Thanks for the reminder! I’ve been wanting to try out the OBB oils!
What an incredible gift this would be ☺
A smile , a kind word.
These gifts we could savor all year long. Thanks for the chance to win.
We give a Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas morning breakfast to another family.
With small kids and working…my service is with my family. I try to be more patient and say “yes” more when the kids ask for more game time, lego time, reading etc