10 Again

Ten Things I Love About the Holidays

1. Food, of course! Yay food! Christmas cookies, Christmas pudding, and all seasonal things like mince pies, or roast goose, buche de noel and peppermint bark.

2. Maybe peppermint bark deserves a special mention all its own. Yum, yum, yum.



You can buy it from here.

3. Carols and Christmas songs like this one, this one, and this one.

4. Ok, I admit it, I love getting presents. Especially if they are books, video games, or something for the kitchen.

5. I love giving them too.

6. The feeling of camaraderie everybody seems to get around December, as if they've suddenly realized that goodwill towards men includes everyone, and not just the people they like.

7. Christmas specials on tv. My absolute favorite is "The Night Before Christmas" with the mice, but this may be an opinion shared by no one but me.

8. Seeing our stockings hung by the chimney with care, and the house looking all decorated and Christmas-y.

9. Tracking Santa on NORAD's Santa Tracker with my daughter on Christmas eve. We also enjoy hanging out at this website around Christmas-time.

10. Seeing the myriad of fun new ways that others celebrate the holidays, and incorporating their traditions into our own family traditions.

How about you? What are your favorite holiday traditions?

Clearing up the confusion

Nibble, nibble, little mousekin

These gingerbread house sections were made by my ESL childcare kids today - one of our most fun projects ever! Check out the one with the fishpond! I think Erik could grow up to be a chef. He had his mise en place down too, everything very neatly arranged and ready to start. I have such a great group of kids. And that sugar extravaganza didn't make them hyper at all...if you believe that, there's a bridge I'd like to sell you. :)

The Christmas fun continues

Today's cooking endeavour was this plate of cupcakes, rounded out with some gingerbread cookies, for my uncle Leonard's book signing. Today, an important lesson was learned about baking, and that is - if you cannot find your muffin pan, propping all of the cupcake wrappers up in a sheet cake pan and then filling them with batter is not an acceptable substitute. Unless you want your cupcakes to turn into a sheet cake that looks like the surface of the moon. You have been forewarned. Fortunately, cutting the overgrown cupcakes into small squares and putting them back into fresh cupcake papers made decent-ish petit fours, so the day was saved.

Book signing, you ask? Why yes! My uncle, Leonard Urban, just happens to be an author as well, so excuse me while I take the next paragraph or so for some shameless family promotion.

The Millennium Conquest, Leonard's fourth book, is a semi-autobiographical story about a couple who, dealing with a recurring dream peopled by great historical figures, grapple with questions about the inequality and injustice in the world, and their place in it - what they can do, on a personal level, to help alleviate human suffering and make the world a better place.

This book would make an excellent Christmas gift for someone on your list who thinks about these issues. Proceeds from the book will benefit the Sister Mary Alice Murphy Center for Hope, a homeless resource center in Fort Collins, Colorado. Millennium Conquest is available for $14.95 from Ancient Echoes Publishing in Fort Collins. Leonard is also the author of Look What They've Done to My Church, Requiem for a City Church, and Sighs from the Desert.

Lastly, the pipe cleaner candy cane below was made by my daughter - a fun and easy Christmas craft you or your kids may want to try:

An Advent-itious post

It may not be quite time for this picture yet, but it is time to start thinking about Christmas - or at least about Advent - that time of year when we start thinking about thinking about Christmas! So, for today's post, I thought I'd give you a collection of what I consider to be some of the most fun Advent calendars out there this year, to get you in the Christmas spirit in these upcoming weeks!

The first one is an Advent calendar, the kind with fun activities for each day. You can find it online at Smart Martha's blog at http://smartmartha.com/Documents/AdventCalendar.pub.pdf
My daughter and I will be starting the activities tomorrow. A few days late this year, but better late than never, right?

Or, in case you would prefer your Advent calendar online: http://www.smmp.com/Advent/Advent.php
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Advent/Advent-Calendar.aspx
http://www.teachingmom.com/features/advent.html (This one gets my vote, hands down! It is chock-full of book and movie suggestions, information about how Christmas is celebrated in other countries, games, recipes, and all the holiday fun your little heart could desire, all in one convenient spot.)

And here is a neat one from Allrecipes - a cookie calendar. It's actually from 2007, but last time I checked, December has 24 days before Christmas every year, so that shouldn't really be an issue: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Christmas-Cookie-Countdown-2007/Detail.aspx

And you can never, never, go wrong with the kind that is filled with chocolate: http://www.candywarehouse.com/adventcalendar.html

How about you? Do you use an Advent calendar? Do you have any neat holiday website suggestions?