Read Hettie’s Christmas Gift (doesn’t seem to be available through Amazon—I guess, because it’s Australian.)
We did this. This is another book to which I really enjoy returning. I love the fact that it provides a link between the northern hemisphere traditions that we read about, and our southern hemisphere reality.
Read Is That You, Father Christmas?
Decorate the Christmas tree.
Have a picnic underneath.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas:-)
Make presents.
The day ended up being far busier than I had anticipated, so although the activity was ready to begin, Puggle and Bilby only really started on it today. Puggle is being highly industrious and productive though:-) He seems really quite excited by them (can’t give you too much detail though, I’m pretty sure some of the recipients are reading:-) )
Read Is It Christmas?
This is a book we got from the library last year, and it was so sweet that it was a family Christmas present on Christmas Day:-)
This year Puggle is still enjoying it, and Bilby is starting to point out features of it… she’s especially keen on the baby bear hanging from the Christmas tree:-)
Making Christmas cards.
I hadn’t anticipated the busy day we had (although, given how busy it was, I doubt we’d have completed any of the possible activities). Still, now we’re ready to do them tomorrow.
The basket has some card blanks, as well as textas for drawing with. There are also some plain rectangles and decorative scissors (for card inserts). I’ll add glitter pens to this (I forgot to put them on the shopping list:-( )
The small tray has some Christmas-themed paper stamps, and some paper. You can see it, but there’s some glue on the shelf as well.
The activity in today’s pocket was to “Help Make the Christmas Cake”. So a baking we did go:-) I’ve altered the recipe a little in more recent times, I only have plain flour now, so I add 2 dessertspoons of baking powder. And I now use wholemeal flour for this—so it’s good for us:-) The cake has now been doused with sherry, and I’ll wrap it up and put it away until Christmas Day (or, more likely, Boxing Day:-) ).
Last Christmas, Erin from Seven Little Australians plus One has tagged me for this Christmas Meme. I failed to get to it in a timely fashion (story of my life:-( ), so here it is this year:-)
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Wrapping paper.
2. Real tree or artificial?
Artificial. I like the idea of a real tree… I even got one in a pot one year, but it had died before the summer was over:-(
3. When do you put up the tree?
Growing up, we always put it up when the last person finished for the year (usually when my dad finished work, about a week before Christmas). I’ve decided that Gaudete Sunday (two Sunday’s before Christmas) is a good choice… sufficiently in advance that there’s somewhere to put presents as they’re wrapped, but not so far in advance that the children vs tree field is in action:-)
4. When do you take the tree down?
I aim for Epiphany (the twelfth day of Christmas), but was most relieved to discover a couple of years ago that Candlemas (2nd February) was also traditional… it gives me a back up:-) Pulling the tree down isn’t anywhere near as much fun as putting it up:-)
5. Do you like eggnog?
I haven’t ever had it. I did come across a recipe for a chilled version in this last week, so I’m feeling tempted to try it:-)
6. Favorite gift received as a child?
I can’t remember any in particular… a lot in general… I know I recieved a lot of books at Christmas time:-) I guess my favourite thing was probably the Darryl Lea’s chocolates we would get every second Christmas in our stockings (before they had a Perth shop). We would usually reach Port Augusta (the western most shop:-) ) the day before Christmas Eve, and we’d stop for lunch. Mum would always disappear:-) Then Christmas morning at my Uncle’s house in Melbourne (having usually arrived late Christmas Eve), we’d find Really Cool Christmas Chocolates in our stockings:-)
7. Do you have a Nativity scene?
Kind of. We have a small one, which needs to be painted (and then put out), and I have the makings of one (which so far exists of a solitary angel:-( )
8. Hardest person to buy for?
My brother’s partner… she’s into very differenth things to me—and does a much better job of getting rid of clutter:-)
9. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Can’t think of anything… I know there have been a couple of things that were a bit… unexpected?… but I can’t think what they were:-)
10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Mail, and I’m gradually becoming more organised about sending them:-)
11. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Don’t have one.
12. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
I always have good intentions to have it all done by Advent but it never happens. (I am just going to leave Erin’s answer:-) )
13. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Quite possibly… but only because I thought the new recipient would really like the item:-)
14. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Oohh! That’s like asking me to choose a favourite child! My mum’s tomato and onion pie is pretty high up, and definitely Christmas Cake (mum’s Boiled Fruitcake), Christmas Pudding, and Ice-cream Plum Pudding:-) Oh, and Turkey… and my mother-in-law’s Ham:-) Oh, and Mince tarts… and Peppermint Creams… Oh, it all:-)
15. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
Both.
16. Favorite Christmas song?
Once in Royal David City
17. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Growing up, we travelled alternate years. Now though, we just travel around the city… usually only one trip in the day thankfully:-)
18. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?
Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donder and Blitzen. And Rudolph.
19. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star.
20. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Christmas morning. Although we do let the kids open one on Christmas Eve, before they get ready for bed. There are some childhood photos of my sister and I opening presents on Christmas morning in the most saggy baggy pyjamas around… so when I came across the idea of pyjamas for Christmas, I adopted it:-)
21. Most annoying thing about this time of year?
Juggling families (hasn’t been an issue before, but is beginning this year) and the overwhelmingness of being social (I know, awful problem to have!)
22. Best thing about this time of year?
Spending time with family and friends:-) (I know, you can’t have one without the other:-) )
I tag Alice at A Number of Things and Lizzy_bbb (because she doesn’t post nearly often enough:-) )
‘Tis _nearly_ the season to be jolly!
I’ll be hosting my Boxing Day Morning Tea as usual—with one important change… Instead of an open house all day, we will only be around between 10 and 12.
As always, I’d love to see people, even if only briefly. Our address is unchanged… email me if you need it:-)
Our first Christmas card arrived in the mail today. Most pleasant:-) Of course, it’s also a bit depressing because I haven’t even begun to think about our cards yet:-(
(Actually, that’s not entirely true… I know I kept the list of recipients from last year, and all the addresses we had. I’m even fairly certain I know where they are:-) So although I haven’t done anything about it, I have thought a little:-) )
The Christmas stockings!
The Christmas stickers (for in the Advent calendars)!
Some kitchen bench!
A white stovetop!
Room for Bilby’s bed!
It’s been a somewhat productive day:-) (My connection to the outside world was down for most of it… so I achieved more than I expected to…)
Once again, for Second Christmas dinner, we took a drink.
This time it was a punch.
Merry Berry Punch (from Super Food Ideas 12/07–1/08)
125 grams blueberries
125 grams raspberries
250 grams strawberries
1.5 litres raspberry and cranberry juice, chilled
1 cup vodka
1 lime
1.25 litres lemonade, chilled
ice cubes to serve
Place blueberries, raspberries and strawberries in a large bowl. Add juice and vodka. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour to allow flavours to devolop.
Thinly slice lime. Cut slices into small wedges. Stir through punch. Add lemonade and ice. Serve.
We skipped the vodka due to pregnancies and tee-totallers, but we liked it so much we made it again for New Year’s Eve (that time we had the vodka bottle beside it, so people could add their own—nearly ended in disaster as Puggle decided to pour himself a drink! He was seen, and couldn’t work out why he wasn’t allowed to pour a drink of water!) Having had both versions, I would be equally happy with either… I didn’t mind the touch of vodka, but I was certainly happy to be able to guzzle it with abandon when it wasn’t included:-)
This is definitely a keeper! Something bright, festive and cold:-)
Today we had an extended family afternoon tea. Seeing as it’s Epiphany, I thought I would try making a King’s cake or bread or something. I did look at a few recipes, but nothing leapt out at me. I decided that the Spanish breads were similar enough to the Cinnamon Pinwheels I had been meaning to make all week that I would basically do that. I put them in a larger tin than specified, and arranged them in a circle (to be crown-like), then decorated them with glacé cherries as jewels:-) I only used a half quantity of the dough, so I can do another batch in the next couple of days:-) (This is really part of a bid to re-create the Cinnamon Buns of my childhood summer holidays:-) )
Rich Sweet Dough (from Margaret Fulton’s Cookbook)
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
125 grams butter
1/2 cup warm water
1 egg
1 sachet (7 grams) dry yeast
4 cups plain flour
Scald the milk and stir in the sugar, salt and butter. Cool to lukewarm. Pour the warm water into a large, warm bowl. Stir in lukewarm milk mixture, beaten egg, yeast and half the sifted flour. Beat vigorously until smooth. Stir in remaining flour to make a stiff batter. Cover tightly with cling wrap or foil. Chill dough at least 2 hours, or up to 3 days.
Cinnamon Pinwheels (from Margaret Fulton’s Cookbook)
(makes 20 in two batches)
1 quantity Rich Sweet dough
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup sultanas
70 grams melted butter
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons water
Prepare the dough, and chill. When ready to shape, combine the sugar, cinamon and sultanas. Divide the dough in half and roll each half on a well-floured board to a rectangle 46 cm x 23 cms. Brush with the melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and sultana mixture. Roll up from long sides, like a Swiss roll. Cut in thick slices and place, cut-sides up, in two 20 cm sandwich tins. (I did 1/2 the dough, in one 26 cm tin.)
Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, for about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 190˚C. Bake for about 25 minutes. Remove from the tins and drizzle with icing while warm. Sprinkle with a little extra cinnamon (or cherries, as I did today).
In future, I wouldn’t bother to mix the sultanas with the cinnamon and sugar—it was too hard to spread it all evenly. I’d just do one and then the other.
It was pretty good! I don’t think I’d use so many cherries another time… 50 grams is probably ample. I also forgot that with this only being half the quantity, it would only need half the icing:-) I didn’t put a bean or anything like that in it this time, because I didn’t remember until after they were in the oven, but I’ll try that next year:-)
A half batch made 10 scrolls. I’m going to cut the other piece in two and freeze one of them to try later. If that works it would be good—5 is probably a better number to make for us than 10 one day and 10 three days later! It’s definitely not an everyday recipe… but it’s easy enough to be anytime you want a treat, rather than needing an ‘occasion’ to justify the effort:-)
(I learn so much from blogging! I was checking the wikipedia on Epiphany, to include the link, and came across a reference to the Irish custom of Women’s Christmas—who knew there was such a thing?!)
I didn’t take the handmade pledge this year, but I did seriously consider it. Actually, thanks to books and DVDs I probably wouldn’t manage particularly well:-( But it certainly influenced my thinking (as well as it being something I think is worthwhile for the kids to do). So there were several things that we did make.
Obviously, the kitchen I blogged about earlier today (BG loved it—when she could get to it… my two were also rather taken with it:-) ), and the little apron I made for BG (like the one Puggle got last year).
BG and Bilby also were fortunate enough to recieve beanbags that Puggle made (there’s actually a fifth one, purple, but apparently it’s currently behind the piano—that didn’t take long!) He did quite a lot of it himself, almost all the overlocking, a little bit of the sewing (both of these on my lap), all the pin removal and thread snipping, and the filling of the bags with beans. He was very pleased with them, and I think both the girls will really enjoy them when they get past all their other presents! I had thought of putting rosemary or lavendar in them to make them scented, but just didn’t get to it in the end. They’re a pretty good project for using up appealing scraps—just two twelve centimetre square pieces of fabric.
Puggle made the Rocky Road for family, and he and Bilby also made handprint Christmas decorations for friends and family. In general, I think that decorations are a great Christmas present for the grandparents… there is a specific purpose, they typically ‘have a home’ and they’re often small:-) These were pretty straightforward (although, it was a bit of a challenge to keep Bilby’s fingers spread out sufficiently to be star-like!). They also have a cute litte rhyme on the back, which includes the date—I can post it if it’s helpful to anyone. I did the cutting out, but other than that, Puggle did almost everything on his.
The project that probably occupied most of my time was Bilby’s Advent Calendar. This was rather more complex that Puggle’s, because each pocket is individual, and shaped. I actually haven’t quite finished it… I still need to quilt about half the stocking pockets and some other things near the bottom. I just got it to the point where it should be ok for a while.
The final project I was working on was two shirts for Puggle. Once again, this is a great project for using fabulous material (they’re not small enough for scraps, but it takes just over a metre). I found some gorgeous quilting cotton to use. I’ll be doing more of these! (Actually, I guess the final project is actually the one I have yet to make. I’ve promised Paddington a shirt from fabric of his choice… we’ll need to go and choose that soon:-) )
I’d like to try and focus on birthdays being handmade (certainly for the kids)—I think that may also be logistically more achieveable:-) My dad got a copy of the current Australian Toymaker magazine for Christmas, and I’ve put forward some ’suggestions’ for later birthdays:-) I have some ideas for Puggle’s next birthday, and I may (if we can work out where to put it!) attempt to make our kids a kitchen for the next Christmas. I enjoy the making:-)
ETA I can’t believe it! I forgot to include the Christmas cards (photos of the family) and Chrismas Calendars! The calendars have a page of photos per month (just the children… I use photos from that month the previous year… it’s a great way of using some of the many photos we take:-) ). The actual calendar page for each month includes important dates—family birthdays and the like… and Paddington’s one has friend birthdays as well. Last year’s were so popular, I felt a certain amount of pressure to do them again this year:-) Fortunately though, it’s a single document printed multiple times (aside from Paddington’s inserts… but the calendar bits are the easy bit now… just move them on from last year, change the font if needed, check a couple of dates and add in new babies:-) )
(This is a fairly image heavy post!)
One real advantage of having my brother work away is that it means we’re having ‘Second Christmas’ today. That means that I didn’t have to be sorted for their presents to the same deadline as everyone else:-) Which has turned out to be a very good thing for his daughter:-)
She has recently been displaying keen interest in their kitchen, and keeps pulling things out to use. It seemed that it was a good time to give her her own kitchen. And I had time to make it:-)
I decided to go with cardboard because we had plenty of boxes, and her mother is great on de-cluttering… so something that could be used up and then discarded seemed like a good idea (they don’t have a lot of space).
I took 11 nappy boxes (basically cabinetry), and four other large boxes (the ‘wall’ and doors), plus a collection of smaller ones (a couple of ‘tray’ style came in very handy for the freezer drawer and ice-cube tray, and drawer). I also used 4 tins of spray paint (2 of the green, 1 violet and one silver—so that the fridge, stove, dishwasher and microwave would match the real kitchen:-) ), a pie dish and some alfoil (the sink and draining rack), 4 corks (stove/oven knobs), 2 small medicine bottles, a couple of bits of dowel (they made the taps) and a dozen velcro dots. And of course, glue and masking tape.
There’s another post coming to collect all my research images together (not specifically for this, I am intending on building a wooden one for my kids and have been mulling over ideas for a while), but I basically played around with the boxes until I got something that seemed to work (and checked that it would fit in the back of my brother’s car:-) It’s smaller than his swag, so it should be right:-) ) It’s about a metre and a half wide (57 inches), about a metre high (39 inches), and about 35 centimetres deep (14 inches).
All up, I think it took a little more than a dozen hours of hands on construction. There were a few gaps in the middle, so things had time to dry, but it seemed to go together quite quickly.
There are definitely a few things I’d do differently! I’d make a point of looking at the rough cut doors before trimming to size and mounting them—there’s a couple where the better side is on the inside:-( I think I’d also make the pantry not quite as deep (more like the microwave) and continue the bench around in front of it. That would also make the corners a little more robust. I would like to have put a couple of shelves in the oven, cupboard and dishwasher—and maybe a sliding tray in there as well. It would have been better if I’d done a better job of avoiding over spray on parts of it.
All up though, I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m particularly fond of the colours—especially the arrangement of the ’stainless steel’ and purple… I hadn’t planned on including a dishwasher… it just ended up lending itself to its inclusion… and it really ‘finishes’ the cabinetry:-) I’m also really pleased with how the splashback ended up—probably less than a minute to paint (although rather longer to cut the stencil:-) ).
I’m looking forward to seeing her reaction this evening:-) We’re also giving her one of the aprons I make, and my sister has got a collection of small saucepans and cooking utensils… My brother knows this is what’s coming, and is hoping it distracts her from the real thing—he’s a little possessive of his kitchen:-)
by A. A. Milne
by Andrew Lang
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