Holiday Challenge: Day Seven

Today with Amber and Neely, the challenge topic is How Do You Celebrate the Holidays (Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa...)

My family celebrates Christmas. We celebrate the birth of Jesus and think that Christmas cannot exist without the Christ child.

We don't do Santa, and I've never believed in him, but I have told my son about him. Not the whole "He'll give you everything you ask for" Santa, but the story of St. Nicholas about giving gifts to the poor.

One story about Santa in my house growing up was that he always forgot our house so he had to come while we were in church. Of course we all knew that the person sneaking those presents under the tree was my mom, but I still joke that Santa came to our house after everyone else.

We always put up the tree, and put up the stockings (which were the only things in the house we could open on Christmas morning).

The past few years my siblings and husband and I have been drawing names to decide who buys gifts for who. The names start out as secrets, but they can never stay that way.

Hubby's family has three different parts:

1. Hubby's Mom celebrates Christmas with the great big French Catholic family, and since we live far away, we do that Christmas every other year. Lots of food, lots of drinking, lots of french.... it's loud and happy.

2. Hubby's dad and his wife live close to my parents (45 minutes away) so we visit them in their apartment and open gifts. It's a quiet get together with just Hubby, myself, and the kids.

3. Hubby's Aunt and Uncle live in the same town as Mother-in-Law, and we have gone over there for an afternoon (because their house is more geared for adults). They have taken us out for dinner before as well.

We have the tendency to stay the longest with my parents because their house is the most child-proof, and they have enough room for all of us to sleep.

I love the holidays, and I love my family. I can't wait to celebrate with them this year!

-A

Holiday Challenge: Favourite Recipe

My first married year (or 8 months) was spent in Sweden, and since returning to Canada, I've wanted to go back. I especially want to go back around the Christmas holidays.

When I was thinking of my favourite recipe for today's challenge with Amber and Neely, I immediately thought of any of the Swedish traditions that I miss.

There are the delicious Pepparkakor (or Ginger snaps) in their traditional shapes of pigs, stars, men and ladies. Eating lots of ginger cookies is said to give you a kind demeanor... plus they taste amazing.

And THEN there is Glogg. The name doesn't give any hint to the deliciousness of this mulled wine. This would easily be my favourite holiday recipe, and it is simple to prepare. I have a few recipes for either an alcoholic or non-alcoholic version. Hubby and I came home for the holidays, and we brought 3 bottles of the stuff home with us.

I've used an alcoholic version and a non-alcoholic version in the past. The portion sizes when you drink it are small, so it's not something you're meant to get drunk from.

Glogg was originally made by adding all kinds of spices to cover up the bad taste of the alcohol, but now there are many different variations of non-alcoholic and alcoholic glogg.

Non-alcoholic Glogg:

10 whole cloves

7 cardamom pods, crushed

2 cinnamon sticks

1/2 inch piece of ginger root

2 gallons apple juice or cider

1/3 cup sugar

sliced almonds

Put cloves, cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks and ginger into a piece of cheesecloth and tie it together.

Pour the juice or cider into a slow cooker, then add spices.

Cook on low for 4 hours, or high for 2 hours and serve with the sliced almonds.

I can't wait to make this again!

-A

Christmas DIY Overload

I'm not on Pinterest.

I waste too much time with facebook to find another website to get lost in.

However, I have managed to come accross enough ideas on my own to get overwhelmed with inspiration. So far, my list includes:

-Make your own Advent calendar (I'm a little behind, but I think I can make up lost time)

-Make Christmas ornaments

-Put together photo album/calendar for the grandparents

-Make Christmas cards (well on my way to completing this one)

-Make and send Birth announcements (EXTREMELY behind on this one)

-Make Christmas presents:

-scarf for mom is 90% done

-knight outfit for Monkey is 5% done
-scarf and hat for sister is completely done, but it turns out she doesn't like the colours...

Here are even more holiday ideas that I don't NEED, but my obsessive personality clung to when I saw the pictures.

-The Peaceful Mom. She has links for Candy Cane bath salt, Peppermint Cocoa, and other DIY gifts and links for a stress-free Christmas

-La Casa de Sweets amazing gingerbread cupcakes that I'm DROOLING to make...

-Confessions of a Homeschooler has a 12 Days of Christmas post, and these Monogram ornaments look simple and fun. I've got a jar of Mod Podge just waiting to get used up...

So even without Pinterest to fill my time, I've already overloaded my plate...

Any other exhausted crafters in the house?

-A

Holiday Challenge: Favourite Holiday Tradition

Today in the Holiday Challenge with Amber and Neely, the topic is my favourite holiday tradition new or old.
This year is the first time we're not going to be making a crazy sport of travelling all over the province to see every family member at Christmas, and I'm really looking forward to having a quiet(er) holiday season.

That being said, since I've got a large extended family, I've got a lot of traditions.

My immediate family (siblings and parents) has a tradition of going to church Christmas day, and opening presents after we got back and ate lunch. As a child, I hated the waiting, but now I really like that we were forced to remember the real point of the day, and I think I'm going to continue this tradition, but with a slight change. Since hubby and I go to a church that doesn't do Christmas Day services, we're hoping to read the Christmas story from Luke to the kids in the morning, and then open presents after having a really great meal.

My extended family always gets together the day after Christmas (boxing day here in Canada) and since we're so large, we've had to rent a school for the past few years to host the event. This is the one time of the year that we ALL get together. There is a camping trip in the summer, but lately more and more people have had to miss it for many different reasons. At this Christmas get-together, we have a giant meal, we play games and sports (since there is a gym) and we watch the little ones open presents. It's an awesome day of family, fun and food, and I don't think it would feel like Christmas without it.

There are other traditions I've missed, especially the ones from hubby's family, but I'll save those for next week when I get to talk about how we celebrate the holiday season.

~A

Holiday Challenge: Favourite Gift Received

This is the first year I've been out of school in 2 decades, and since I've been home with my two kids, I've got all kinds of time to think about getting ready for Christmas.

I'm participating in the Holiday Challenge hosted by A Complete Waste of Makeup and Brunch with Amber. Each day I'm going to be posting about the topic they have chosen. Today is about my favourite gift I've ever received.

In thinking about this, I remember many gifts over the years that my parents have spoiled me with. The best Christmas present I've ever received has to be from last year.

I was in my last year of Culinary school, and I have always done a lot of baking, so I would always drool over the KitchenAid equipment my school had. I knew that even the most basic KitchenAid mixer was normally over $200, so I thought it was a crazy item to put on my list, however, come Christmas day there was a heavy box with my name on it, and before I even opened the wrapping paper, I knew that my mom had spoiled me more than ever before.

Now I may be a bit obsessed about baking (I've already admitted that cookbooks are my bedtime reading material), but this present tops anything I could ever ask for. I would be Popeye because of all the buttercream icing I make if I didn't have this machine.

Basically, after my kids, this would be the one thing I'd grab if my house was on fire...

And I think the only gift that could ever top that machine is the gift that Christmas is all about, the little baby boy born 2000 years ago in a stable.

~A

It's not December, but it's Christmas Season already!

I can post about Christmas now, right? I mean once American Thanksgiving is over the Christmas season is in full swing...

We put up our tree on Thursday. My husband works for an American company that's here in Ontario, so they were closed. Bummer for the paycheck, but Yay!! for the help cleaning the house.

My little monkey was so thrilled with the tree that he hugged (and kissed) it goodnight. He keeps grabbing the ornaments and moving them around to different branches (we have all child-friendly ornaments on the tree so no worries about break-age.) His favourite is a snowman made from bells that he takes and shakes and sings "Jingle Bells, all the way. Jingle Bells, all the way..." until we tell him to stop.

We started watching Christmas movies and reading Christmas books this week as well.
I've got about 25 books that are winter or Christmas themed, and the PLAN was to wrap them each up, and then unwrap one a day to read, but when we took the tree out of our storage closet, the bag of (unwrapped) books came too, and Monkey immediately pulled them out and started looking at them. I gave up trying to take them away, so now they're sitting in a basket under the tree.

We've also started Christmas crafts.
So far we have finished some cards (that I'll post about when we've mailed them) and we've made a garland for the tree from construction paper. I've done a few other things on my own, but I'll post those pictures later.

The one thing that made it really seem like the Christmas season is started is the snow we got on Wednesday morning. Monkey woke up with a bad dream at about 4am, but when I saw the snow on the ground, I held him up to the window to look before I put him back to bed.
The first snow is always magical.

I'm excited for all the rest of the Christmas activities we are hoping to do this year! I'm still working on an advent calendar (hoping to finish before Thursday!), and hopefully we'll be able to do lots of fun things as a family in December!

happy crafting!
~A