Blue skies have blessed us with their presence in the last few days, as the sun races across the sky, gaining 2 minutes of daylight daily. How wonderful it is to have daylight now until 5 p.m. !  When winter solstice arrives, our sun doesn't rise until 7:30 a.m., and it sets around 3:30 p.m.  Those are some very short days! But... once we cross that line, the sun really does seem to gather speed as daylight increases each day. 

This is my view whenever I need to run a quick errand into our little town... pure delight always, but especially with those blue skies!

As the days of January's winter drag on, the landscape remains encapsulated in a fog that grasps the world in its wispy embrace. Our area has a weather system that has been with us since January 10th, when the fog arrived.  This is not uncommon for our area, as we live between mountain ranges, and oftentimes weather systems get "trapped" between the ranges, and stay for days.  Soon, they tell us another weather system will move in, but for now, the clouds are low-hanging, and fog dominates the landscape. 

Hello friends! 

I hope you are all enjoying cozy days at home as Winter settles in for the long haul.  It seems Winter has paid a visit to most everyone across the country, and certainly, is it is here to stay for a while too! We have gotten a lot of snow over the past month, which is moisture that we did need. 

Watching the snowfall is such a captivating thing, as it falls so gently and softly here - no wind!  Then after the storm passes on and the sun comes out, all the world becomes a glittering jewel! Oh, when that happens, I just can't stay inside, I must get outside and walk! 

Come along with me, and we will go on some winter walks together :) 

Glorious skies!

Good morning! As promised in my last post, I want to announce the winner of the Family Cookbook Project giveaway.  

My completed Moseley Family Cookbook

Through the span of approximately the last five years, our children have moved away from home and then back again. You may remember our daughter lived in Spain for five months as an overseas student.  Our son had taken a job that required him to commute quite far from home so he moved into an apartment an hour away from us.  Soon things changed, and he came back home to work with us in our family business, but he has his own separate living quarters on our property now.  Our daughter married a year ago, and has her own home now, something we are all very excited about.  Our son became engaged over the New Year, and there will be wedding bells ringing in 2022. Exciting times for our family :) 

So, through the years, as our children were on their own for periods of time, I would often get requests on how to make special family treats and meals.  The recipe would be jotted down and sent off. Sometimes, however, the recipe asked for was one in my head! There was NO recipe for it! The struggle was real :) 

Have you ever experienced that? You've made a favorite family meal for years, but have never taken the time to put it together in a written format? 

That became my dilemma. I really needed to put some of these recipes into a format that my children could continue to enjoy for years to come. 

I began a search for an online cookbook that would allow me to enter my recipes, and print them off for my children. I did a lot of research and settled on this amazing company, the Family Cookbook Project. I can only speak with the highest regard for this company.  From beginning to end of this project, I was encouraged along the way with incredibly helpful videos, how-tos, and newsletters.  I found their website very easy to navigate in order to complete our family cookbook. 

Here are some pictures of the cookbook I created. The front cover was a designer paper created by the amazing KerryAnne at Shabby Art Boutique from her Handmade Club designs. 

I gave the cookbooks to the children at Christmas... but look who was also excited to check it out :) Our sweet curious kitty, Miss Ash.

A closer look at the cookbook. I loved the layout options available.

The spiral binding is wonderful, the book lays completely flat and is easy to use. You can add pictures wherever you desire.

The website is so easy to navigate. You can easily put your recipes into categories where they are easily found with a Table of Contents provided.

The options are really endless as to how you would like your cookbook to look.

I went with a very simple and clean design for my cookbook. You can make the book as customized as you like, adding stories, pictures, tips, and more. I loved all the options, and the website design page was very easy to navigate. 

After receiving my cookbooks and seeing the excitement my children and I felt as we looked through the cookbook and talked about the special recipes included, I knew I needed to pass on this joy. 

So just a few days ago, I called the Family Cookbook Project, and spoke to Chip, the creator of this website, and asked him if he had a promotion or giveaway that I would be able to offer my blogging friends. He was so agreeable and helpful and came up with a very generous giveaway for you, my readers! 

Chip has graciously offered a giveaway for one of my blog readers! The Family Cookbook Maker's regular price for a lifetime subscription is $99.95.  Chip has generously offered to give away ONE LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION to the Family Cookbook Project! Isn't that awesome! I was not expecting such a generous offer, but how appreciative and thankful I am for their generosity! 

So... here are the details for the giveaway! Starting today until next Sunday, January 16 the giveaway will be open to anyone in the WORLD! If you have access to the internet, this is open for you.  The only rules are to leave a comment below, and if you feel so inclined... share a favorite recipe of yours for all my readers to see... I think that would be fun! We will keep things simple though, your comment gets you entered into the drawing :) Please make sure you are commenting with an email where you can be reached should you be the winner. 😊

Please drop by the Family Cookbook Project website, and poke around. There is a free trial where you can try out the cookbook project to see if it is something that you would like to do.  You can use this link here:  https://www.familycookbookproject.com/mts

I will share the winner in a post next Monday, January 17th... so please share and tell your friends and family about this post, or even just share this link to the Family Cookbook website! 

Blessings to all! 

PS: Wintertime is a perfect opportunity to gather recipes and put them into a cookbook, don't you think? ~smiles~

Happy New Year to all of you, my dear friends  

I hope that the holidays were special in every way for all of you and your families. 

We had a special season celebrating the Lord's birth with our children.

A picture of Dan and I at our Christmas Eve service. I put together the program, "An Old Testament Christmas" for our church. It tells of the beautiful story of the birth of our Lord as seen through the Old Testament and then fulfilled in the New Testament. It really is an amazing thing that so many different prophets foretold exactly of the Lord's birth, and yet, it still came in such an unexpected way.

Our family gathered together for Christmas dinner.

A special gift for my children this year - I made them a Moseley Family Cookbook with all of my favorite recipes, along with others in the family, for them to always have our cherished family recipes.

Little Ash inspecting the cookbook {smiles}

It was fun putting this cookbook together, although a lot of work! I had to go through a lot of cookbooks. I plan to do a separate post sharing a bit more information about this project :)

A Christmas gift for me... oh my! A learning curve here, lots to learn with this machine! Do any of you have a Cameo Silhouette cutting machine? I'm currently watching videos on how to use it.

Sharing some beautiful scenes that we have enjoyed in the month of December here... the skies have been incredible! Often grey is the main color theme of our winters here, but this December, we have had a lot of sunshine mixed in, and it has been wonderful!

A little "pot-o-gold' on the hillsides!

The kitties enjoying the snow from inside looking out.  They are not as thrilled about the snow as the dogs are!

Walking in subzero temperatures... I was bundled up and warm and cozy inside, but the ice had built up on the fur around the hood, and I looked a bit frozen, even though I wasn't!

After Christmas, we had a week of polar arctic air visit us where temperatures hovered close to zero for a week. We had to really bundle up on our daily walks!

New Year's Eve was such a beautiful day here, although cold! We went up to Schweitzer Mountain to cross-country ski. Dan had only skied downhill before this. It was a gorgeous day to ski the mountain!

We had the trails mostly to ourselves, away from the crowds. It was spectacular!

What a gorgeous day it was!

We skied several miles across the ridge of Schweitzer, and the views were glorious!

We skied up to the warming hut and peeked in. Not much to see, but it was nice to know it was there.

Back home... the dogs were enjoying all the snow we have gotten this year.

A neighbor's home in the closing moments of daylight one evening as I walked.

Our home wrapped in its snowy blanket!

Evening skies vibrant with the sun's waning rays.

Night comes softly with great beauty in these December skies.

Rosy sunrise skies welcome the new day.

Rock cuts are covered in ice.

More amazing December skies!

Our community fireworks show was canceled in July due to extreme fire danger. They decided to have the show on New Year's Eve instead.  With the temps hovering around 0, you can see the steam coming out as the fireworks are deployed!

Most everyone stayed in their cars to watch the show!

I did get out to take these pictures but was glad to climb back into the warm car after the show ended!

So that wraps up our Christmas and New Year celebrations... but we also have some exciting news to share that happened right around Christmas, and New Year's. 

Zak and Danielle became first-time homeowners! It was a very long process in this difficult real estate market, but we are thrilled for them! It is a fixer-upper home, but they have great plans for it, and Zak is in the carpentry business. We are so excited that they will be able to have their own place now, and soon, I'm told, we'll have grand-doggies... not to be confused with grandchildren... but we are getting closer {smiles}

And congratulations to our son and his fiancee Alanna... she said yes! He proposed to her over the New Year's holiday and now we are quite excited to be adding a daughter to our family :)

Alanna is such a sweet girl, and we are so happy for them!

Well, I think I've just about written a book, and it's time to close for now! I hope to be back soon, and share some more about the Family Cookbook I created. It is such a special treasure, I think every family needs one :) 

Wishing all of you God's very best for each of you in this coming year!