NOVEMBER LEFT WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE

That awesome month we call November seems to have blown away with the last of the autumn rain storms.

Did you notice how the wind was  already chilly and bustling during even the early parts of Fall?

I think those winds just took November away without us even noticing.

Is it possible that time is speeding up?

Things have felt that way here during the fall season. There simply has not been enough time to squeeze in so much life and so many blessings!

What we did get to enjoy of the flash of time called November was amazing though!

Let’s look back at the month and review what we discovered from The IN SEASON Lifestyle during this busy but very thankful month.

As we go through and review the articles from November, we will also give you a glimpse into what is to come with The IN SEASON Lifestyle Community for December.

SEASONS

A BLESSED TIME OF THANKSGIVING

Of course, November was all about giving thanks.

Is there any other holiday which is proclaimed by mankind that is as wonderful as Thanksgiving?

I don’t think so.

I love that time of the year.

This past Thanksgiving was no exception.

We decided to be different and pretend we were visiting Italy for Thanksgiving.  Tuscany to be exact.  The whole group of us just pretended we hopped a plane and were having our Thanksgiving dinner right in the midst of a Tuscan Vineyard.

It turned out lovely; and none of the grand-kids got confused with their history lessons!  Of course we recited the American stories to them at our Italian table and THEY GOT IT.  I pulled out the little Thanksgiving treasure chest and the books and stories that we always use every year and scattered them around just to keep the educational aspect of our gratitude in check as we had fun with the pretend trip to Tuscany.

The kids also learned a few facts about another country; but mostly that only America celebrates Thanksgiving, but Italians grow grapes and vineyards and make wine and enjoy fine foods too.  They remembered that you need to watch out for those little foxes that will sneak up and steal your joy and spoil your vineyards.

Most importantly; they learned you can offer thanks to God for your blessings in any time and place; and they did just that; along with all of the adults in our little family that are daily learning how to live simply by watching them learn how to live.

Several articles in the SEASONS topics as well as THE HOUSE DOCTOR and the MONDAY MENU sections of the blog explained our Thanksgiving celebration in bits and pieces.

First we worked on getting the house ready for the celebration.  That article showed up in THE HOUSE DOCTOR section of the blog and you can review it here:  https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/thanksgiving-in-a-vineyard/.

Next we worked on the food and that part of our celebration showed up in the MONDAY MENUS section of the blog.  You are welcomed to review it again here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/recipes-and-ideas-for-thanksgiving-in-a-tuscan-vineyard/

We wanted to give you lots of different options that might spark your imagination with ideas for your own Thanksgiving feasts though; so we also offered glimpses into another Thanksgiving theme called THANKSGIVING BY THE SEA. You can see how we decorated that year here:  https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/thanksgiving-by-the-sea/; and how we prepared the appropriate foods for that theme can be found in this article: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/thanksgiving-by-the-sea-recipes/.

Don’t think we would leave you with only two options for Thanksgiving though; we also included our ideas for A CLASSIC THANKSGIVING in these two articles: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/classic-fall-thanksgiving-decor/ and https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/thanksgiving-recipes/.

It is our desire to help you to make your holidays as festive as possible.  We want to bring a new theme to our readers every year.  Of course; if you prefer staying traditional; that is also a very good option.  We hope these seasonal articles were fun to read  and that perhaps they sparked just a few new ideas for your home and your own celebrations.

We would love to see what you did for Thanksgiving this year.

This is a season for sharing! We want to share in your holiday times too!

If you have Thanksgiving photos that you would like to share with The IN SEASON Lifestyle Community please send those to wordcastlepublications@gmail.com.  Let us know who you are and why you sent them.  Tell us what Thanksgiving means to you.  Sharing is a way of life here in this 2 Timothy 4:2 lifestyle.  Your stories and photos are important to us.  Keep in mind that any of them could be published at any random moment, or in our next year’s Thanksgiving suggestions.

Just to show you how much we love sharing too; here are a few of my favorite pics from our family Thanksgiving celebration this year:

 

We ended the day feeling very blessed and knowing that our greatest gift from God is our family and friends.

Of course; the food was good too!

Why is it that no matter how formal you set the dining room; they always wind up in the kitchen huddled together sharing desserts in the end?  I think hearing the laughter in the other room is one of my favorite parts of our celebrations.  It just lets me know what I have suspected all along; that our kitchen is a place of love.  People just gravitate toward that room of the house.

Some days are just amazing!

Some meals turn out just right.

Don’t think there weren’t a few snags and catastrophes along the way; I simply choose not to remember them.  It is a time for giving thanks to God and not a time for acknowledging how the enemy can rob us of our joy.   I’ll know I’ve matured a lot as a child of God when I can always remember what I teach to my grand-kids!   I keep watching for those little foxes in the vineyard; and I simply chase them away.  If you tell them to leave; they will!

We are forever grateful to God for so many wonderful blessings and nothing has to be perfect for us to enjoy the abundance of life and the people we love.

During this Thanksgiving Season one of our greatest prayers of thanks was to acknowledge and ask blessings on our loyal and dedicated community of readers. We are so thankful that you allow us to share our home and our hearts with you each season of the year. We are always interested in your comments and your feedback and would very much enjoy seeing any of your photos and ideas. Again; send them in an e-mail to wordcastlepublications@gmail.com.

We LOVE hearing from our readers; and hope that you become very active in making more comments on the blog pages we offer and share with the whole IN SEASON community.

REMEMBERING OUR VETERANS

November was also a month for remembering and honoring our Veterans of war.

The IN SEASON Lifestyle celebrated the day with this article: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/veterans-day/.  Veterans of war are very much appreciated here.

Thank you for your service!

If you are a veteran with a story to tell; please send it to us at wordcastlepublications@gmail.com.  The true stories of our Veterans need to be shared in the community; don’t let them slip away from history.  It is our desire to be a part of passing them on to the next generation.  We are excited to be able to publish them here in the blog for you.

Please take the time to tell us your stories because someone out there needs to hear your story.

AN APPLE A DAY

MINDFULNESS, MEDITATION AND YOGA

This November the AN APPLE A DAY section of the blog was very busy with giving you all of the facts we could find about the subjects of mindfulness, meditation and yoga from a Christian perspective.

These subjects have turned out to be so big that we have turned them into a rather lengthy series. In November we published these articles on the subjects:https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/mindfulness-meditation-yoga-thoughts/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/mindfulness-and-absolutes-article-two-about-mindfulness-meditation-and-yoga/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/mindfulness-meditation-yoga-series/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/mindfulness-yoga-meditation-and-they-make-you-feel/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/mindfulness-meditation-yoga-part-five-is-it-christian/.  Now that is a lot of articles for us to publish on one subject; but we will have more.  We we will continue to publish more articles on these subjects through the month of December.

Our next discussion will be about neuroplasticity and how we feel it should and should not be incorporated into our daily lives from a Christian point of view. Some pretty interesting facts are still out there; so keep praying for God to lead us as we discuss and continue to provide reading in this series.

365 DAYS TO A BETTER LIFESTYLE

Our loyal readers all seem to love this series, and it will continue to be ongoing within the pages of The IN SEASON Lifestyle’s AN APPLE A DAY Section.  We are slowly working up to that place of reviewing 365 great habits for maintaining good health.  That is a whole year’s worth of health tips!

This year we got to Day 19 before we were sidetracked with the other series of health-related articles on mindfulness, meditation and yoga. Some side articles will be interjected into the 365 Days articles from time-to-time; but we will keep returning to the original focus until we have a year’s worth (365 days) of good health habits in this blog section.  Maybe we can compile them when we are done and provide them all together in one place for you.

These side-articles on mindfulness, meditation and yoga will be completed sometime in December.  Those article will count as Day 20.  Then we will return to our normal patterns of publishing one article at a time and continue on starting with Day 21 of 365 DAYS TO A BETTER LIFESTYLE.

I think we all can use a few tips on habits that keep us healthy during the feasting and festivities that seem to take over our lives in the month of December.

Temptations to ignore our health will be out there everywhere.  We must continue to overcome in this area of our lives.  It is a lot about balance and good common sense though.  Hopefully; we will have some new helpful and not-too-hard tips for you to implement into your healthy habits and routines in the days that are coming up soon.

OH THE PLACES WE SHOULD GO

COLUMBIANA, ALABAMA

Our intentions to write several “travel” related articles in November in the OH THE PLACES WE SHOULD GO column of the blog got a little pushed into the future.

We did, however, finish one article that will be the beginning of an interesting on-going series of articles on unique small towns of the south. Our first pick was the little town of Columbiana, Alabama.  Did you catch it?  If not; you can review it here:https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/columbiana-alabama/.

You will fall in love with this unique little town and it’s interesting community of artists and musicians.

Look forward to more interesting small towns from this series in the future. We have picked up on the fact that certain little towns relate more during certain seasons of the year and we will probably give you a small town to visit with each changing season of the year from now on.

Is your town a “Christmas” town?  Is your small town full of winter fun and activities?  We would love to hear about it.  Send any suggestions to wordcastlepublications@gmail.com.  One day you might just see an article about your own hometown here.

COME AS A CHILD BIBLE STUDY

November wrapped up the book of Leviticus in our COME AS A CHILD, every-Thursday, online bible study.

Eventually we will be offering a compilation of the Leviticus study in our The IN SEASON Lifestyle Community Store. First we will give you the summary of our Genesis studies in one book and our Exodus studies in another book. We have been compiling the Genesis study for a long time now; and it will be available soon. We think it is an amazing summary!  Keep watching for it.

Once that is done we will compile Exodus and then we will compile our Leviticus lessons. We hope to offer these summaries in The IN SEASON Community Store as soon as they are ready and published. Keep watching.

In the meantime; if you missed any of our lessons in the month of November; you may review them here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/last-chapter-leviticus/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/disobedience-and-the-consequences/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/blessings-from-obedience/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/did-god-approve-slavery/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/year-of-jubilee/.

Also keep watching the blog for the beginning of our Numbers study!

The Book of Numbers Study kicked off on December 6th.

You can follow right along with us every week in the blog. The study is always there on Thursdays and it is absolutely free. Your bible is your workbook.  We tend to hit on some unique and timely subjects each week. Please sign up for our Newsletters so that you never miss one study. Thank you so much for joining us.

This bible study is the main hub of our blogging publications and it hits right on the heart of what The IN SEASON Lifestyle is all about.

THE IN SEASON LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY STORE

We have slowed down a lot with advertising products.

That isn’t because there are not a lot of products out there that we want to show to you – it is simply that we have writing as our first priority. Don’t get discouraged though; the advertising of your favorite products will continue more into the future.

We are hoping to advertise some unique gift items for December.

We want to bring our new logo to you in a more personal way too. Be looking for how to order your The IN SEASON Lifestyle coffee cup soon. There will be several different types and styles of cups offered and you can start your collection if you watch every month.

They are beautiful!

We are excited to have and offer them as our very first personalized product.

Also; we are working on some ways to help our readers stay ahead of the game by ordering products that prepare them for the upcoming seasons.

Keep watching for The IN SEASON Lifestyle seasonal packages which we are soon going to bring right to your very doorstep.

You are going to love them; and we are excited about helping you to arrange this part of your life in a easier and simpler way that arrives right on time for your annual seasonal decorating and celebrating.

It is all in the works for our store; and we will keep you posted and tell you more in December.

COMING IN DECEMBER 2018

December brings us to another season of joy.

Isn’t it great that so much joy can be shared if you are an active child of God?

A DIFFERENT VIEW OF CHRISTMAS

Of course the month of will be full of Christmas articles. A few of those articles have already hit the press and you may find them here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/truth-about-christmas-trees/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/pondering-advent/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-first-sabbath-of-advent-a-meditation-on-waiting-seasons/; https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/conception-of-christ/.

We might celebrate Christmas a bit different on this blog because we try to stick to truth in all that we do.

Our concept of Christmas is that it is the time of Christ’s Conception. We think the Christ Child was placed inside Mary’s womb to grow for the nine months that lead us up to the birth of Christ sometime in the Fall of the year. So our Christmas celebration is all about the miracle of the life of the unborn child, and and magic of waiting and anticipating a Savior of the World.  Or perhaps you could say it is a celebration of a Christian’s maturing into wholeness.

Perhaps this is a different kind of history lesson that you might not be too familiar with; but if you open your eyes to it; all kinds of joy will come to you.  I suppose what we celebrate is a very similar to the Catholic concept of The Annunciation; however; we are including thoughts about Emmanuel – Christ with us.  He was dwelling as a person on earth even before he was born; as Mary carried him in her pregnancy.  We think a lot about the time of waiting during those nine months.

The fact that Christ was given to be born from Mary meant that the moment He began to grow inside her womb a Savior had come to live on earth among sinful men.  The fact that he was born to a virgin is a miracle; but the greater miracle is that he came to earth to live and die for all of mankind.

The greatest miracle is that He was “God with us!”

His name is Emmanuel – Christ with us; even in this unborn state; He was our greatest hope. This is what we will be celebrating at Christmas at The IN SEASON Lifestyle.  It all ties in with the facts that we celebrate in observing a Christian version of Hannukah (the way a Christian would celebrate the occasion) because Christ came to be the light of the world.  There will be several December articles about Hannukah too.

We celebrate Hanukkah from the perspective of Christianity.  This would be noting the great miracle of the light that happened at the Temple; and at the same time understanding that the great light was a foretelling of Christ coming to be The Light of The World.   The two subjects inter-wind and weave in and out of each other while together they are presenting the whole picture of so many great miracles of God that happened in the winter and brought warmth and light to the cold, dark world.

No group or organization taught us or directed our thinking on these subjects; it was simply a matter of studying the scriptures and prayerfully applying what was truth to our lives. The times of Advent (we light our candles on Saturday) also correspond with the teachings of scripture.  We have incorporated all of these things into our seasonal worship.

 

 

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

If you truly seek the truth of God; life can sometimes be a bit confusing.

That confusion doesn’t come from God; but from the enemy of God and demonic forces that assist him. It also comes from the people of the world because they are Satan’s greatest tool against God’s people receiving the joy of being God’s children.

It is this very fact that originated the need for our column we call PIECES OF THE PUZZLE.

There are so many profound facts that Christians either don’t know or don’t seem to think about, or the churches in general don’t practice which they NEED to know and think about and practice in order to grow closer to The Kingdom of God. This column was designed for the discussion of our view of those things that are often confusing and misleading.

We hope this particular column is helpful to you in your seeking of the truth.

We can guarantee it will be different from any other compilation of facts you have ever encountered before, which is very strange considering the fact that we take our understanding directly from the prayerful reading and study of the scriptures and absolutely no where else. No singular group of men or any particular organization have composed these facts and presented them to us; they are simply our opinion and prayerful interpretations after years and years of prayer and study on each subject.

December is a month that is full of discussion on such amazing topics.

We have a lot of friends who agree with us on most things but disagree with us on the celebration of Christmas. That is between them and God; but we do express our opinions on whether or not we should have a Christmas tree or use an Advent Wreath, or even celebrate the date of Christmas.

You can review these December related subjects in articles published here in the PIECES OF THE PUZZLE section of the blog; and don’t be surprised if new topics pop up as the month goes along.

PEN ART

Our PEN ART column is mostly about promoting the good use of literature; but it is also there to promote the arts in general.  We hold a deep appreciation for the place that art plays in the world and our daily lives.  Of course you might have noticed that literature is a favored art which we love to promote.  We love good authors; and we enjoy reviewing their work.  Our December blog for this section holds a few new book reviews we think you will enjoy.  Look forward to seeing these soon.

You never know what type of book review you will find here.  We love all types of books and movies!

THE HOUSE DOCTOR

The section of the blog called THE HOUSE DOCTOR gets really busy during the months of November and December.

There isn’t a better time for some good home decorating ideas!

Expect a few surprises as to what we are doing at Landgraf Castle this December as well as some reviews from the past that we think you will still enjoy and find interesting.

MONDAY NIGHT MENUS

Who can face Christmas and Hanukkah and New Year’s Day without a few new food ideas?

We will be offering our best efforts and sharing them with you all through December, including some plain old comfort foods for these cold winter days as well a the festive stuff.

Come join in with us in the kitchen.

We will be cooking up a December feast!

Thanks for chatting with us last month and thanks for helping us to be excited about December.

We are looking forward to hearing more from you this December!

God bless you everyone!

 

f you are not already on our mailing list you can sign up here!  About once a month we send out a new Newsletter and information on exciting happenings and events for The IN SEASON Lifestyle Community.  If you are on our list; you won’t ever miss a thing!

Gail Landgraf/Editor – The IN SEASON Lifestyle/Via Wordcastle Publications LLC/3685 Pine Lane, Birmingham, AL  35242/wordcastlepublications@gmail.com/205-532-9893