A Season of Calm Waters

Spring has given way to early summer, and there have been many changes in my little world. Soon we will be spending more time at our lake cottage, and for the first time in several years, our schedule will not revolve around my work commitments.

A few months ago, I made the difficult decision to leave my part-time position as a Recreation Facilitator at the personal care home and move into a casual role where I can pick up the occasional shift without being tied to a strict weekly schedule. The job has become more challenging as my arthritis progresses and as the workplace continues to evolve. I still love my coworkers and enjoy working with the residents, but both the activities and the needs of the residents are changing.

Right now, there is a talented and energetic recreation team in place, and I feel comfortable knowing that I am leaving the department in good hands. It feels like the right time for this transition.

This is a job that I have truly loved, and nothing about this decision was easy. But sometimes we simply know when the time is right.

I re-entered the workforce in 2014 after a devastating illness and health crisis. Recovering required years of hard work, determination, and patience. I then retrained in an entirely new field and slowly rebuilt a life that at one point I never thought I would have again.

There was a time when I believed I would never be able to work. Instead, I found myself in a role that I genuinely enjoyed and that gave me a sense of purpose. I am proud of what I accomplished. Even on the most difficult days, I went home knowing that I had made a difference in someone’s life.

Now I find myself searching for a new normal once again. Over the past few years, I set aside many of my own interests and activities in order to conserve my physical and mental energy for work. I was content with that choice, but now I find myself asking a familiar question: What comes next?

At the moment, I am tackling a major cleanout of old work and volunteer resources and supplies collected over many years. It is surprisingly emotional. Every box seems to hold memories, reminders of projects, people, and chapters of life that have now come to an end. It is difficult to accept that many of these materials will never be useful to me again.

There is a genuine sense of loss in that realization.

At the same time, I feel hopeful. I look forward to regaining strength, exploring new interests, and discovering opportunities that fit this next stage of life.

This summer feels like a different kind of season. Not a time for striving or proving myself, but one for restoring my energy, reconnecting with the things I love, and making room for whatever comes next. Every season has its purpose, and perhaps this one is simply asking me to slow down, pay attention, and rediscover joy.

Looking for joy has long been one of my personal compass points. Not the big, life-changing kind of joy, but the quiet kind found in sunsets, time with loved ones, a dog at your feet, meaningful work, and peaceful moments by the lake. As I begin this new season, I hope to follow that compass once again.

  Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Thoughts Journal

Have you ever kept a diary?

I kept one when I was young, like so many other kids. It was filled with notes about where I was going and an inordinate number of entries that included excuses about why I failed to practice piano that day.😊   I have also kept a lot of scrapbooks and photo albums and art journals. I love photography, and I try to put labels by my images to explain what the pictures are about.  

Loving my journals

At one point, I discovered something called Smash Book journals. The idea behind those was to gather up bits of memorabilia, glue them down on the decorative pages of the book, make notations, and add the odd accessory. It was great for me because I had all sorts of things, like cards that I saved because I feel good about them and they did not need to be in any kind of chronological order. Most of the items didn't have to have an explanation unless I felt like adding a special note. When I pick up one of my journals, it is just so much fun to look at. Occasionally the memories contained are bittersweet, but they are also empowering, joyful and full of happy thoughts. You don't need to have a specific journal brand, but you should find some kind of book that is sturdy, and easy to carry and use. It can even be a binder with cardstock pages in it. It should also make you happy just to look at it.  I picked up my current notebook at Dollarama. It is very pink. I find the cover words to be rather encouraging, and I find it handy to clip a pen inside the spiral binding.

I like to add quotes, pictures and cut-outs on bulletin boards and into binders and to the covers of my notebooks. Usually, they are meaningful, and they can be very grounding to me, but sometimes they are just for being cute. I tend to change some things around with the seasons. Right now, I have a lot of pics that include flowers and lakes and not too many snowmen!  I thought my inside cover choice of the sweet picture of the birds' nest and quote to be very appropriate and encouraging during our "Sheltering in Place." He will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will find refuge. Psalm 91:4

Create Your Own Ideas notebook

... and in His wings, you will find refuge.

Journal entry about Charity event hosted by my college TR Class

Journal entry about my first and last month of college.

I have recently had a few people tell me how hard it is to stay positive through the stresses of the past few months.  They see so much negativity. The isolation and restrictions have been going on for so long that I see people giving in to a sense of hopelessness and feelings of depressions. At first, people believed, "I can do this for a month- it will be like a vacation!". Time is going by, and now our communities are pushing hard to reopen and people want to get their jobs back and their income secure, and even get haircuts and all the other signs that life is normal. We need our friends and family, and it is so difficult to always be at arm's length from the people you care about. It is hard to keep distracted.

One of my friends said she feels like she is just going through the motions. She is just barely getting through the day. Another friend was just about in tears telling me that something good happened to her that day and said she was going to hold onto the memory. We need to make a point of being aware of those good things. We need to try and find some balance.  One popular approach is gratitude journals, where each day you write down something you are grateful for. The internet is full of lists with prompt questions to help you come up with ideas. The idea is that as you make an effort to identify those positive aspects and events in your life, you will start to notice them more frequently and perhaps find a sense of optimism and enthusiasm.

If you like the idea of a gratitude journal, memory keeping, photo-albums, scrapbooking, dream boards/vision boards, diary or my version of happy thought journals, you should just go with it. Online options, such as creating blog posts or Pinterest boards, count too! 

Maybe you want to just focus on a particular topic that brings you joy. How about a gardening journal., a birdwatching notebook, places you want to travel to, favourite books notebook. You could create your own cookbook with pictures of your yummy creations!

When we become overwhelmed, it can be hard to focus on the details of our lives, or perhaps we concentrate predominantly on certain aspects of our life, and those might be the sad and negative things that are happening around us. When we constantly watch sad news and are surrounded by so many other people who are also struggling, this sense of despair is reinforced. If we only look at the negative, we start to have trouble problem solving and moving forward in a healthy way. So my question is, how do we each manage to find optimism in a time such as this?  How do we find a realistic balance between the sad and happy things we experience in life?

I suggested to the friend who shared her good experience that she take the time to write it down and then see how many more good memories she could add to it. I sure hope that she will experience lots of positive experiences to remember and add to her list.  I hope you do too. 

I sure would love to hear how you like to collect and/or share your memories.

Why Do We Celebrate?

I want to wish everyone in Canada and the USA

 a very happy and safe holiday celebration this week! 

I am going to the lake for two days of relaxing and then for Canada Day, this Wednesday, I will be at work from noon to 8 pm. We are having a little Canada Day party in the afternoon. Providing programs and celebrations at a personal care home is extremely challenging right now during this time of quarantine, social distancing, and so many other changes and worries. We are trying to gather people in very small groups, and then we try and position people with some distance between them.

Previously our Canada Day Parties at the personal care home have been huge outdoor events for residents and families complete with a hired musician, food, and decorations and lots of FUN. We always had a huge turnout. This year - What to do? We are setting up the patio and decorating in Red and White, but we are handling it like a mini “come and go” open house style event for the residents so that we only have a few people gathered at a time. It is a significant change and challenges our creativity.

This year our usual ways of celebrating have been so overwhelmingly disrupted.  We all want our social contacts to return to what it was before the pandemic, but in the meantime, we still want to share our lives with each other in some way. 

What I am impressed with is how resilient people have been. We are, indeed, finding new ways to celebrate and mark special events. My niece’s husband secretly contacted her Facebook friends and arranged for everyone to drive past and honk. He even surprised her by decorated their front yard.  She was thrilled with this new version of a birthday celebration.  I was pleased to discover that I could attend live-streamed service from my local church this past Easter from my own home.

We are communicating with others and having events on Skype, Zoom or Facetime. People from all over the world are participating in activities in new ways. Some times these changes have been very positive.

I love celebrations!

 I even love those days when unusual celebrations occur and sometimes I try and incorporate them into my home life and into my work life at the personal care home. Just to give one random example- Did you know that today, June 29th, is the International Day of the Tropics, which is sponsored by the United Nations? It is kind of the perfect day to buy a tropical plant, have a sweet beachy drink. Click to learn a bit about the fascinating biodiversity of the tropics. Why do we set up these differnt kinds of events and what is the point of it?

 

What do we celebrate?

We celebrate or commemorate the important markers of our lives. We celebrate our birthdays and commemorate the passing of loved ones. We remember anniversaries. There are special feelings of pride and acknowledgment of your capibilites on the day you get your driver’s licence on the day you graduate from school or when you get that longed-for job or be a winner in that major sports competition.

We celebrate the community acknowledgment of Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Mother’s Day, Fathers Day and many other days with big events or family gatherings.  We sometimes do a lot of consumer purchasing to get the right décor, clothing and treats and even cards to share. 

Each culture has its unique occasions and ways that they celebrate these days.  It might be hoisting a beer stein for Oktoberfest, or it might be watching a dragon dance for Chinese New Year.  These celebrations reflect the history, culture and beliefs and geography of a place and a people. It is a way that a group defines itself and binds itself together as a group. It is a way to remember the past traditions of their people and to teach its youth to be proud of their heritage and to continue it into the future.

These special days and moments are centred around universal human experiences. We all experience loss, sadness, fear, accomplishment, and we all look for love, peace, joy, and success. When we act to notice and mark these events and moments, we find meaning in what is happening to us. The sorrowful and the joyful can be shared and let us gain validation for what has happened and our feelings about it. As a group, we can offer each other solace in difficult times, and we can provide practical support too. We can even create a force for change by acknowledging the importance of what has happened.

Back to why do we celebrate?

We have fun and excitement, and we make special memories

What is life without a little joy and laughter? Human being’s health and well being are dependent on having a bit of fun and expressing ourselves.

We bond with others and become part of a broader community.

People need a community and a sense of culture and identity. We need to have the physical support of others, but we also need to have people to share in who we are and have things in common with us. 

We discover more about our own identity and learn what is important to us.

When you celebrate a rite of passage, it can change who you are and in a very real way how you see yourself.   My granddaughter just graduated from grade 6 this past week. She was a little kid and a member of her old school. When she returns to school next term, it will be a new school. It will no longer be the elementary school where she played during recess. It will be a junior high with new expectations, and there will be new social and extracurricular groups for her. Retirement is a big change too. We often describe ourselves by our jobs and our workplace. After you celebrate your retirement, you will redefine who you are and look at new possibilities.

It reflects our growth as people and our changing lives.

Our personal journey is marked by baby showers, births, baptisms, weddings, educational completion and all those other life events. Eventually, there will come the time of our death and commemoration of who we were and of our beliefs.  

Through our lives, we define what kind of person we are, we look at our roles in our communities and families, and where we belong and where we can make a difference. Our special days and events let us mark and confirm what these events mean to us as individuals and as a society.

Lets make this Summer's celebrations fun, thoughtful and meaningful despite the challenges we are facing in our world today.

Have a wonderful Canada Day and a fantastic Fourth of July.

Make some great memories!

Mental Health Week

Ok...  right now I am asking you. 

Answer out loud.   

... How are you?

Think. What is your normal response?   Did you just say, "Fine thanks and how are you"?  I bet you expect me to say, "That's great .. I'm fine too".

The real answer might be, "I feel great because I had a wonderful day working in my garden, and I am happy to be home with my family".

The real answer might be, "I had a stressful day at work. It was exhausting, and I am afraid I might catch the virus from someone".

The real answer might be, "I am very lonesome, stuck at home with no one to talk to, and I am worried that I am not going to have a job to go back to".

Canadian Mental Health Week was from March 4 to 10. I think this year's Mental Health Week theme is incredibly relevant and valuable.  Don't just get loud, Get Honest and   #GET  REAL  

I looked at their website last week and it really hit me that I am giving exactly that kind of automated answer. I have had friends messaging me and contacting me on Facetime. They care; that's why they are calling, so why don't I tell them more about how I am doing. I am resolving to be more mindful of my answers to friends and family.

What we are doing there is giving up is a chance to really connect with someone, and share our real feelings at that moment. It is so easy to just walk past or just perhaps just be polite but listening to someone and sharing a little bit about yourself can change you and the other person's days or possibly your lives.

Lack of personal connection has long been recognized as a problem in our world, long even before we were faced with  COVID 19.  Now we are even more focused on the impact of Social Distancing and the impact it is having on our mental health and social interactions. Almost half of all Canadians are currently claiming to feel isolated and about 47 percent are feeling anxious.  Even more disturbing to me is the fact that only 9 percent are feeling happy.  

Social isolation can cause a whole raft of other physical and mental health problems. Depression, anxiety and cognitive decline (in older people) are all associated with social isolation and having fewer social ties. These mental health concerns can make us withdraw from our communities even more, reinforcing our feelings of social isolation. It has also been found that the absence of strong relationships can cause early death. One study found that being socially isolated reduces our lifespan in a way that compares to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

                  https://mentalhealthweek.ca/social-connection-is-the-cure/

I really suggest that everyone check out the "Your Mental Health Section", found along the top bar of the above webpage, for several really good and timely short articles that will be applicable to people everywhere.

https://mbwpg.cmha.ca   is the local branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association and the hosts of Mental Health week.

https://www.mherc.mb.ca/ is the Mental Health Resource Centre and has TONS of information and places you can find help.

https://mentalhealthweek.ca/yourmentalhealth/  is the web page for Mental Health Week.

The Shoppers Drug Mart Run for Women, is a huge fundraiser supporting initiatives for women's mental health that my family supports, has been at the least postponed for this year. They are still supporting their current mental health initiatives.

 #GetReal

 #MentalHealthWeek.

Making Sourdougn Bread is Easy?

My daughter Emily and I began a couple of sourdough starters yesterday. I have used sourdough in the past, and Elizabeth, our eldest daughter, has kept her own starter alive for almost two years now. I'm already dreaming about all the wonderful things we can try baking in the next tew weeks.

I looked up Sourdough on Wikipedia, just in case you are not sure what makes it special.

Sourdough bread is made by the fermentation of dough using naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeasts. Sourdough Bread has a more sour taste and better inherent keeping qualities than bread made with baker's yeast, due to the lactic acid produced by lactobacilli.

Sourdough seems like the COVID 19 project of the month according to social media, so we decided to join in too. Emily wanted to try the "Wild Method" to make a starter. That means you use flour of some sort and add water and wait to see if wild yeast that is naturally occurring on the flour or maybe even in the air can start to grow. That is how you develop a local sourdough kind of like San Francisco sourdough because of the specific wild yeasts and lactobacilli in that environment. I wanted to go with the lazy method of adding a package of yeast, so I knew how much was in there and can expect faster results.  We are trying both ways.

My first sourdough ever began with a starter gifted to me around 1981 when I was a new mommy and all into healthy foods for baby and family. My starter came with the name Herman. There have been a few more Hermans since then who met unfortunate ends, but I am more than ready to try again with "Herman the 5th". I asked my daughters what they wanted to name their starters, but they seem to think that naming them is unnecessary and perhaps a touch odd.  Oh well.

There are tons of different Pinterest links on how to do sourdough starters, so you can easily find directions that will work for you, but the following is what we did for Day 1.

We carefully cleaned our glass containers.  It needs to be a container that is made of glass, ceramic or plastic. A lid is a good idea, but if not, you will need something like plastic wrap or waxed fabric to cover it over with.

Emily placed about a cup of warm water and a cup of regular flour in her jar and then put it in a warm spot covered loosely.

My jar was bigger than Emily's, so I doubled it up and used 2 cups of lukewarm water and added one packet of quick rise yeast that I had stored in my freezer. I let that sit and soften for about 10 minutes then gradually added ½ cup whole wheat flour and 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour. I stirred this around until it was kind of thick like a pancake batter. Cover the jar tightly and put my "Herman" starter on the counter next to the "Wild One."

Tomorrow, Day 2, calls for us to remove half of our starter mix and dispose of it. We will then add half of the original amount of flour and water. I will then add a cup of flour and a cup of lukewarm water, mix thoroughly and cover and put it back on the counter until Day 3!

I will keep you updated on our progress.


Have you ever had a sourdough starter?

How about Bread Baking? Is baking bread a skill you have mastered or maybe you have fond memories of your grandma baking a loaf for dinner?

Here Comes the Sun

The warmth of the past couple of weeks has caused the snow to melt here in Winnipeg. The grass is getting greener and there are birds returning and bunnies hopping all over the place. Spring has finally reached Manitoba!

The sun is peeking out intermittently today and my daughter decided that she would take a break from her work and take the dog out to play in our backyard. She said getting dressed, putting on her shoes and leaving the house to get some sun made her feel happier and a lot more ready to get to focus on work again. I teased her when she came back in by playing  Here Comes the Sun by The Beetles.

I love that song. To me, it says to hang on, it has been a long difficult period but that this too shall pass.

The first online handle I had was the nickname  Rainy Gal because it seemed like every time I went camping it rained. I first got dial-up internet around 1998. Things were very innocent back then and I became part of an online "web design and shared learning group" where we linked webpages in our private websites to form a "mouse village".  Yes, really a bunch of adults. There were people there with varied knowledge and info and I learned about initial set up of pages, graphic design, animation, and HTML and even learned some javascript skills.

Together we designed graphics and animations and had our mice do little activities like telling stories and creating new digital furniture and clothes for them and had them do magic tricks. They even got to go camping. We had little digital prizes and certificates for our mice and our fellow creators. We really learned a lot from and about each other.

One of the big online things back then was to program webpages to automatically open with little music clips. This was all before YouTube existed. I had about 20 mousey pages all with different rain or cloud themed songs that I coordinated with the graphics and page content.  One of my favourite pages had the song Here Comes the Sun playing and I placed a sun animation and added my little mice family creations, all animated to jump up and down in the sunshine.

 It was a happy time.

Perhaps this fairly recent Abby Road release will get this hopeful song stuck in your head.

Here comes the Sun

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun

And I say it's all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

Comfort Foods and Carrot Cakes

What is your favourite comfort food? 

 "Our Favorite Foods" has been a topic with my family and friends lately.
What foods trigger your happy memories?  Did your grandma make a special treat just for you? What kind of things did you first learn to cook? Have you shared meals that were special dates with your partner? Did you have a favourite restaurant? Our sense of smell and taste connect to our memories in very special and sometimes emotional ways.

My husband and I started dating very young; in fact, I was still in high school. The convenient place to go was a little 10 table restaurant about a 10-minute walk from my house at the end of my street. We almost always got a pepperoni and mushroom pizza. I don't remember how we originally came to make that pizza choice, but it was a decade later before we realized that neither of us really loved that type of pizza and we were just ordering it to make the other happy. That pizza is now a comfort food for both of us because it was part of a happy, loving and secure time with a full future ahead of us.


In difficult times like we are experiencing now, people are looking for comfort and security as they try to deal with the emotional and physical stress around them. Food is one thing we need to deal with each day, so it is natural to try and make choices that give us comfort.

People are currently challenged by problems obtaining food from stores. We are concerned about making our food healthy and nutritious and as the true economic impact is becoming apparent we also want to look at getting the most for our money. More people are finding time to cook while sheltering in place, and we are trying to use what we already have in our homes.  I keep thinking of the families before us that survived the great depression and the shortages and rationing that occurred during the war years.  They found amazing ways to work with what they had and working together rose to the challenge of getting through those difficult times.

A month ago, on a cold Manitoba day, my coworker and I made homemade vegetable soup at work with our seniors. It was an enjoyable experience getting a 10 out of 10 from participants. The warm smell of soup in the hallway was enticing to everyone going past. We had leftover uncooked carrots, and that generated a whole discussion about what we should do with those carrots. Make more soup? Stew? Then someone said Carrot Cake and the rest was history. There was a massive agreement that the best thing to do with carrots was to make a cake! That followed with a discussion about what is the best way to make a carrot cake. Will it be raisins or walnuts, cinnamon or nutmeg, and how about icing?

I have a lot of carrots in my home right now, so I dug out my own favourite simple carrot cake recipe. The house smells Yummy. Give it a try, use what you have and change it up to make it your own. I like to make it as a loaf or as cupcake/muffins for extra easy snacks. This recipe freezes very well too.

The Coopers' Carrot Cake

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup canola oil 
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

• 1  1/3 cup  all-purpose flour
• 1  1/2 tsp baking powder 
• 1  1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1  1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

• 2 cups grated carrots

Method
Preheat the oven to 350° F or 180° C

• Beat the sugar and oil in your mixing bowl 
• Continue beating and add the eggs one at a time
• Add vanilla
• Add in the next 6 dry ingredients
• Stir to mix
• Add in the grated carrots
  
• Pour your batter into a greased 9 by 13 cake pan. 
• Cook for about 40 to 45 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean from the center. 
  
• Let cool and then frost if desired.

Basic Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

• 8 oz brick of softened cream cheese  
• 1/4 cup of butter 
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 2 cups icing sugar

Method

• Using an electric mixer, combine the cream cheese, butter and vanilla  in your mixing bowl
• Add icing sugar and beat until it is fluffy 
• Frost your cake. 

Note that you can add other flavourings to your frosting, and you can stir in other items at the end. One of my favorites is to substitute coconut flavouring for the vanilla, and beat in some shredded coconut  to make a cute Easter cupcake treat, especially if you add mini chocolate eggs on top.

Carrot image courtesy of Pixsabay

Gingerbread Houses and Grandkids

My son called me up last week to tell me that the grandkids were complaining about missing out on building Gingerbread Houses at Grandma's house. We have done houses together most if not every year but I somehow missed that it was a tradition for the kids.

We had the kids over this past Sunday and their Mommy and Daddy got a much needed chance to go on a date to a movie. Making gingerbread houses seemed like an appropriate  way so spend Ukrainian Christmas.

We had a nice dinner and then quickly cleared the table so that we had lots of rooms for gingerbread houses, 4 kids and extra candies! Grandpa had gone to the store and purchased a wide assortment of extras but there was one very special bag with assorted jujubes. We had raspberries, coke bottles and most special of all we had Christmas Sharks.

When my kids were little I used to make the dough and chill it, make sticky royal icing and make cardboard trial versions to use as patterns. It was time consuming and took days really but it was worth the effort. I even made gingerbread houses and gingerbread men with children at my kids schools. It was lots of fun but due to time and minimal kitchen resources we did graham cracker houses based on milk cartons. When we did Gingerbread men with older kids I was amazed how a cookie cutter man and lady suddenly could be dogs, aliens with multiple limbs and funny head shapes and some cookies would be holding hands as BBF.

A generation later the supermarkets have a good selection of ready made kids. Premade gingerbread, bags of icing and a nice start to the candy decorations. The grandkids are aged 11 to 2 so it is just easier to set everyone up and go for it. The house above is what the 7 year old boy did. The shark is edging around the corner to surprise the gummy bear. lol

The older kids were much more detail orientated this year for example look at all the icicles. Next year I want to try and get the two older ones over to make cookies from scratch and plan the style of house they want to build. They would love doing that. Then we could add the other two kids the following day and still all decorate the houses together.

The almost 3 year old was so funny. Her shark tried to eat me and swam all over the plate and the table and jumped over the houses. She also had a moment when she started to cry because of her mucky hands but then aunty told her to stop fussing and just lick them. Well my goodness! Icing is edible, the candy was edible but not sure she figured out the gingerbread was yummy but she kept licking it. It is so funny to be almost 3.

We had a special visit from Batman,  to check out the Gingerbread. He approved!

The Nativity Scene

We have a display cabinet in our living room that we like to change seasonally. During December we set up our collection of Nativity sets in it plus some angels, snow men and other wintery items. I do like that the cabinet is lit from the top and it has glass shelves. This gives a nice shade and ambiance, but  perhaps not the sharpest for pictures.

My mother-in-law made beautiful ceramics as a hobby in her later years and produced many lovely, beautifully painted pieces but my favorite by far is this little nativity set that she displayed in the dining area of her kitchen. My kids remember it from grandmas and now my grandchildren get to see it too.

Grandma Cooper's Nativity Set

We Three Kings

Shepard's await in Fields by Night

Oh Come, O Come Emmanuel! 

The top two shelves of the cabinet.

I hope to share pictures of some of the other Nativity sets in the near future.