december 09 festivities

I have a folder on my computer that has been collecting the pictures of all of the fun & festive things we have done this month to celebrate Christmas. I figured it would be easier to post them all at once rather than a separate post for each, so here I give you a month's worth of holiday fun :).

We have so enjoyed the holiday feeling this year. I feel so grateful for the cozy, easy way this month has seemed to pass. We have soaked a lot of Christmas spirit in, watching plenty of Christmas movies, baking almost constantly, and crafting and creating festive projects. 

Most of our Christmas fun has happened within the walls of our home, but we did venture out to The Festival of Trees at the beginning of the month to kick off the holidays. 

Little G was not so sure about being engulfed by a giant bubble, but after it popped on him he was all smiles.

We brought my little sisters along (and brothers and grandma, too, actually), and they had fun helping G do some of the little Christmas projects in the kids' area.

The next thing to check off our list was getting our tree picked out and brought home. G was pretty excited about having a big tree tied to the top of our car, and of course, thought he was an indispensable help to his daddy in getting the tree all situated in the stand. Notice his little step-stool in the picture-- he totes that around with him all over the house to "help" with whatever project is going on.

Here is the tree all lit up and decorated. G has not let me forget that our tree does not have "colors" on it this year, only "whites," and that next year he would like a tree with colors please.

I have seen a bunch of ornament wreath tutorials floating around on the internet. I went with the one that used a hanger, not a straw wreath, and I LOVED making it and I LOVED the final product. In fact, I loved it all so much that I made two of them. This was one of those projects that is so fun and satisfying to make. (Quite unlike the gumdrop wreath that I also started to make this year, but is not pictured here because I tediously made it about half way around the wreath with the gumdrops and got so sick of doing it that I haven't gone back to finish it since. I have half of a gumdrop wreath and about 3 pounds of gumdrops sitting in my room staring at me, but every time I have a free moment to sit down and get working on it, I think of something else I'd much rather be doing.)

I had never made a real gingerbread house before. I have decorated one using the kits you can buy, and have made a few out of graham crackers, but had never actually made and baked the gingerbread and then assembled and decorated the house. So this year G and I set out to learn how. First we made the gingerbread dough.

Then we rolled the dough out and used cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. (After this picture I realized that it would be a much better idea to roll out the dough onto parchment paper so I didn't have to lift it up and transfer it to a cookie sheet to bake. This made a huge difference in having smooth, even edges of the house to fit together.)

After a horrible realization that I had used the roof pieces for the sides of the house, and a construction intervention that salvaged the project thanks to my husband, I had so much fun decorating the house. My favorite part is the mini Charleston Chews I used to create the bricks on the front of the house.

G loved helping with the house. By helping I mean eating the candy as we went. One afternoon I found him in the kitchen on the table breaking the bottom halves of the roof cookies off and eating them. It was too classic to be mad at him (in fact, I had to leave the room to giggle about it), but he immediately felt bad (he definitely knew better) and started crying and apologizing over and over. The broken cookies give the house character, right?

I am not a fabulous chef by any means, but I do know how to follow recipes and cook, and usually stuff turns out okay. I got all excited to make caramel & chocolate dipped pretzels to give away, but holy cow, making the caramel for dipping almost made me crazy. I made three different batches, thinking it was turning out, but as it dried, the texture went all grainy and yucky-- not at all the soft, chewy caramel I was going for. It was so frustrating and I wanted to just throw them all away, but I couldn't quite stand the thought of just wasting it all. I did throw away a bunch of them, but the ones that weren't quite as bad I dipped in chocolate and decorated anyway. They taste just fine (my mom and J both loved them), but I don't want to give them away. So I shoved them all into a giant Ziploc bag on my counter and that is where they still sit. I don't know what to do with them.

My handy little helper and I have also made dozens of cookies, brownies, and other baked goods for various parties and activities. My favorite ones were the caramel filled chocolate nut cookies. I made this recipe last year for the first time, and it is so perfect for the holidays because you can make up a few batches of dough, shape them into balls, freeze them, and then when you are short on time but need a yummy homemade treat to take to a party or give away, you just pull some out and bake them. If anyone wants the recipe let me know and I can post it. It is too far away for me to get right now :).

G licking the beaters-- the baking skill he does best.

I took a picture of the process so you could get an idea of what you do. The most time consuming part is unwrapping all the Rolos. Then you just shape the dough around them, dip in a nut/sugar mixture, and

put in a Ziploc and freeze. Once they bake you drizzle them with melted white chocolate and they really do make such a yummy, pretty holiday treat.

After the baking, this is where G inevitably ends up. I am loving the modesty cup in this picture, and not loving how incredibly TALL this little boy of mine looks.

For the last three Christmases this has been our little family. I can't believe we've had that many Christmases with our little boy of joy, and oh how excited I am to celebrate Christmas with him this year-- I get butterflies thinking of Christmas morning and running out to the tree with him. I'm sure I'll take plenty of pictures and give you all a play by play at some point next week :).

signs of the times

I'm pretty sure that autumn gets me in the baking/creating mood more than any other season. Christmastime may be a close second. The freshness in the air and cool temperatures fill me into a homemaking frenzy every year. Here are a few of the things we've done this season that just ooze fall/Halloween.

I've mentioned before that squash is basically my favorite food ever. I could eat it for every meal. I was so excited to try a recipe for squash soup, and let me tell you, this one did not disappoint. Aside from peeling/gutting/dicing the squash, it was simple to make. And the homemade gruyere croutons? To die for. (Though I did use swiss instead of gruyere-- just couldn't bring myself to spend 21.99/lb. for cheese.) Recipe found here. (Don't have a picture of the finished (blended) product, but this is while it was getting all soft and delicious.)

Oh the joy of fresh apples from trees. Almost nothing is more autumn-y, right? This batch came from a neighbor's tree, and I baked up a new (to me) recipe for apple crisp that turned out really, really yummy. Recipe here. (Again, this is not the finished product. Can you imagine an apple crisp without the crisp? No, of course not. This was just when the apples were getting all juicy with the cinnamon, flour, and sugar.)

My mom gifted me a few old Family Fun magazines that had some ideas for Halloween crafts that I loved. I always get ambitious with plans to create up a storm for holidays, but my follow-through sometimes is lacking. This year I was pleased because I have completed each project on my list. Here are two of them:

For family home evening one night we went out and found a bunch of rocks and then painted them orange. The next day I drew on the faces with permanent marker, glued on some sticks for stems, and voila! A happy little pumpkin family for your mantle (or in my case, bookshelf).

This was my favorite idea initially, but I have to say that the finished product doesn't thrill me quite as much as I thought it would. Perhaps because the fruit peels that are the facial features are continuing to curl as they dry out more (even though I dehydrated them in the oven and left them out overnight at the beginning), and they don't stick to the squash/pumpkins as well as I would like. But they are a pretty cute little trio when their parts are all on, and Baby G LOVES them (which perhaps accounts for some of the features falling off), so I am glad I took the time to make them. The green pumpkin that I used for the witch was the single offering from the enormous pumpkin plant that overtook my front flower bed (ironically enough, this was a random plant that sprouted all by itself (perhaps from a stray jack-o-lantern seed from last year?), and the pumpkin plant that we planted on purpose in the backyard failed to produce anything but pokey leaves).

This wasn't something I created, but it is fallish, so it counts. We love going to Oktoberfest every year and eating all the yummy German food. This year Baby G got his face painted like a pirate and he loved it so much. Please take note of his little bent finger acting as his pirate hook.

I first saw this idea months ago here. I filed it away in my brain to make when Halloween was near, and this past Sunday my mom came over and helped me whip up many dozen of these darling little ghosts.

I wrapped them up, added a fun tag (got the idea from the same blog), tied it with pretty ribbon, and then we went and delivered them to neighbors last night. Baby G really wanted to eat one while we were out and about, but I told them those ones were just for our friends and neighbors. "But I'm a friend and neighbor, Mama," he insisted. We played up the idea of how good it makes you feel to give treats to your friends instead of keeping them for yourself, and after the first two houses Baby G enthusiastically asked, "Can I give a cookie to EVERYONE?"

We were at Williams-Sonoma on Monday. Baby G spotted this frankenstein spatula and fell in love. Since we were with a grandma (my mom), of course it was purchased for him, much to his delight. It has quickly become his favorite thing. He sleeps with it and we have cooked pancakes and eggs for the last two nights just so he can help us "flick" them over. I don't think I would've thought we would've gotten our money's worth out of a spatula for him, but we totally already have.

And lastly, two little stories that you could kind of twist to make Halloween related.

Baby G has a Halloween shirt with a big bat on it that he has been wearing. A few weeks ago he asked to sleep in it. After he was in bed for about an hour he started crying. I went in to see what was wrong and he couldn't stop talking about how scary the bats were. I tried to console him, telling him that bats were nice and wouldn't hurt him, but he protested with tears and, "Bats are NOT friendly, Mama!" I tried to get him to take off his bat shirt so he'd forget about it, but he wouldn't. Anyway, he finally fell asleep and that was the end of it. The next day we were at Costco with my mom. Baby G was standing up in the basket part of the cart and was a little wobbly. My mom said to him, "You are scaring me, G," because of his unsteadiness. He gave her a puzzled look and replied, "I'm not a bat, NeNe!" I cracked up because it was so funny to me to see how his brain was working-- clearly if something is scary is must be a bat.

Last night Baby G woke up in the wee hours crying (this doesn't happen that often, I swear). I went in to hear him sobbing about the bugs that were stinging him. It was evident that he was having a scary dream about bugs, and he was insisting a gray and black spider had come in his crib and was in his shirt. I felt all around in his shirt and promised him the spider was gone. "The spider left?" he asked. "Yes, it's all gone." He sweetly and enthusiastically cheered, "Yaaayyyy!" and then immediately plopped back down in bed. Before I left he requested that I sing "I am a Child of God" to him, which I of course did. I had been back in my room for 20 seconds when I hear him calling out something to me. I go back in his room and he is saying what sounds like, "Up here. Up here." I thought maybe he wanted his blankets up higher on him or something, but he said, "No, Up here! Up here." Then it clicked. He was actually saying, "A prayer! A prayer!" I said, "Oh, you want me to say a prayer?" "Uh huh," he replied. I said a prayer and then went back to my bed smiling. I love LOVE that when he was scared and having a hard night the two things he wanted were "I am a Child of God" and a prayer. Oh to have the faith of a child!