Christmas

Wonderful December Meals

December 31, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

It’s the close of a year! Oh, the meals we’ve made over this past year. As I sit here pondering our wonderful December meals I am also watching the Xmen movies with my family. Every year we watch some series together and this is what my guys chose. In the past we’ve done Lord of the Rings, and Marvel movies. It’s a good family time!

Anyways, on with some deliciousness eh! 🙂

Meals the Lad Made

So I’ve been wanting my lad to cook at least one meal a week and it’s just been a battle to get him to follow through. I finally said “You know what, your friends cook meals at home for their families, so you can cook meals for us too.” He wanted to choose a mid-day to do it but I said “NOPE! You can cook Sundays. It’s a day I don’t want to have to fuss in the kitchen so it’s your day.”. It’s working out really well. A consistent day, no school to interfere, and I or hubby am around to help should he need it.

He’s made this month

Manwich
Chicken wings with sides
Turkey Croquettes. We used this recipe that hubby found.

The croquette recipe caused the lad to ask a ton of questions and have to do some problem-solving. He was quite pleased with himself at the end of it and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Baking

It’s Christmas… baking happened. One needs treats for eating over the holidays even if you don’t have friends and family coming over.

Most of the cookies we made I’ve already chatted with you all about.

But we also did homemade turtles, dipped pretzels, and …. oh shoot.. I know I made something else but I can’t recall right now.

Homemade Turtles, we made some with pecans and others with pretzels as the base.

Christmas Dinner

Well.. I made the BEST STUFFING EVER! See I don’t much like stuffing, but this stuffing was good… in the turkey and done on the stove top. BEST EVER!

So what did I put in it? Stuffing from a box, half pack hash browns (those diced potatoes), apple, pepper, onion, celery, carrot and various seasonings. I made have used bouillon/chicken stock instead of water. REALLY GOOD. I hope I can replicate it next year!

Other than stuffing we also had Turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, cauliflower with cheese sauce, beans, plain potatoes, gravy, and cheese buns. Very tasty indeed!

More Wonderful December Meals

Parmesan Herb-baked Salmon Fillet. First time ever really cooking with a salmon fillet. Oh my.. YUMMY!!!!! Changes I made… I used more salmon so I needed to adapt the recipe and used dry basil instead of fresh. It disappeared too fast to get a picture.

I got inspired after visiting my mom and she had made an apple pudding. I thought the lad’s would enjoy this meal and I was right! Taste of home’s recipe was the one I chose to use.

We’ve made a number of hot sandwiches using bagettes. Manwich, tuna salad, turkey fry with cheese, egg/potato hash, etc.

Jerky! We made both rabbit and beef jerky. The rabbit made using a teriyaki recipe, the beef with basic jerky recipe. It was funny, the lad was threatened by his father…. for going a bit overboard on the jerky eating. Next time we have jerky apparently the lad will be helping to make it so he knows how much work goes into it! Tons of apologies. I think next time sharing will happen a bit more readily eh? 🙂

In between Christmas and New Years I have to admit we did a lot of leftovers and junk food. We did cheese and crackers, and chicken wings, and cookies, lots of cookies. 🙂

How about you? Does your meal planning go a bit wonky over the holiday season? Did you make any wonderful December meals? Do share them if you’ve a mind to. I love discovering new recipes to make.

Favourite Christmas Cookies

December 21, 2020 By Annette1 10 Comments

The crew challenge for this week is Peppermint. I don’t do peppermint well so this was a difficult one for me. I finally decided to simply talk about my favourite Christmas cookies. (and how I avoid too much mint!) Who doesn’t like a good Christmas cookie? I think almost every household has them. I for instance LOVE a good lemon cinnamon cookie, but this time of year I tend to make Hershey cookies, sugar cookies, and papernauten.

Oh… why do I tend to avoid peppermint? Well, combine it with chocolate and you’ll find me very energetic and talking a mile a minute and then having a bad crash. It’s fun, but yet very NOT fun.

So just why do I like baking for Christmas? Like seriously.. with all the chocolate, candy canes, and goodies offered up… do we REALLY need all those extra calories? We don’t!

But you know … I grew up with making cookies with my mom. Now I get to make cookies with my lad. In many ways, it’s a family tradition, and it’s GOOD to have those. They bring normalcy to a season, and frankly this year, with all the precautions being taken, I feel really MEH about Christmas. But these Christmas traditions.. baking cookies, spending time with my lad, talking together, figuring out who will do what, it makes it better. Much less MEH! Good tasting cookies help too!

Favourite Christmas Cookies

Over the years we’ve had students from other lands come live with us. One year we had a very sweet Brazillian lad living with us. He made us Brigadeiros. These are Brazilian chocolate fudge balls. They are extremely easy to make and VERY tasty. They bring us such happy memories.

You can roll them in whatever topping you like. We tend to do chocolate and candy sprinkles, but I’ve seen them with icing sugar, cane sugar and just plain. Apparently others do them with cut up fruit or crushed nuts, candy cane etc. It’s up to you and your taste buds!

We started to make Peanut butter blossom cookies… I think two years ago? HUGE hit. OH MY WORD… I was so surprised at how well they went over. They are fun to make so it’s a great cookie to make with children and teens. We have played around with different types of hershey kisses on top, and mostly prefer the plain chocolate. This year we got gifted white chocolate spiral cookies… so we used those instead. The pepperminty tasting ones my son stole quietly to his room. 🙂 YEAH!! I don’t have to be tempted by something NOT good for me. 🙂

We’ve made gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. It’s fun don’t you think to make fun shapes with cookies, to surprise a boy with a cat, or to indulge your fancy with bunnies, reindeer or snowmen.

Haystacks and chocolate chip cookies just for fun. You know what I love about haystacks? They are SO versatile. We made our using coconut and rice krispies. My boarder makes hers using chinese noodles, My mom using large flake oatmeal and a friend does her using oatmeal crisp cereal. So very versatile and no need to bake them. Just melted chocolate goodness mixed with toppings of choice. 🙂

Yet to come

Yet to be made yet are my papernauten, homemade turtles, mini rolo cookies and dipped pretzels. You’ll find recipes for most of these in the collection of posts below. You won’t find much in the way of peppermint in them though! 🙂

So what are you baking this year? Do you have favourite Christmas cookies that are part of your family traditions? Share the recipe in the comments if you’d like, perhaps they will become favourites in our household too!

Songs that Help us Remember Christmas

December 14, 2020 By Annette1 14 Comments

Here we come a-caroling
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a wand’ring,
So fair to be seen.

Yes, it is the season to be caroling, to find songs to help us celebrate. To make a joyful noise with each other. The fun, the jolly-ness. It’s good, isn’t it? I just love singing good songs (and silly ones too) with loved ones.

You know what else it is though? It’s also the season to take time. To find songs to help us really remember Christmas, you know… the spiritual significance to the season. These songs help us remember that God made a promise, then kept it! God made a sacrifice so that we could be brought back to him.

Songs that help us remember

Every year on my blog I blog about these songs. Sharing the lyrics, the author, and this year adding thoughts about the songs themselves. I find this draws me more into considering the gift given.

A child born, a promise kept. One of my favourite songs. I don’t know WHY I like this song so much, but I do. 🙂

The news spread. Angels, shepherds,

The future promise

What Songs help you remember Christmas? Do you have favourites? If so, what are they?

Free Advent Devotionals

November 30, 2020 By Annette1 3 Comments

The crew challenge this month is preparing our hearts for December. I was giving some thought to that and isn’t that what advent is all about? Preparing our hearts for the coming of the Lord. Now, our Lord has come. This sent me on the search for free advent devotionals.

I got to thinking, so if we believe in him, do we need to prepare our hearts for his coming? After all, it’s like we’re preparing our hearts for something we already possess. Imagine though for a moment: little ones needing to see the wonder of Christmas, the need for a Son of God to be born, for the hope we hold and why we hold it. Can you see the importance to introduce our littles who don’t know? Sometimes though, we as adults need to remember it as well, don’t you find?

Affiliate links will be used in this post.

Family Devotionals

Sharing devotions as a family gives food for children, youth, and parents. Some devotionals give questions to ask, or points to ponder, prayers to read together. They are a great way to introduce children to doing their own devotions. Some you might want to consider this year that are free:

I shared last week that we’ll be doing the Joy to the World Advent Devotional from DesiringGod.org.

Children’s Devotionals

For years I bought the advent calendars from Lego. They gave my lad something to make/do as I read from a devotional. I was looking on Amazon this year and I was SO tempted by some of the new calendars they have. They have a Harry Potter one (which honestly I had a mixed opinion of as I loved most of the Harry Potter novels, but mixing them with an advent devotions doesn’t read right to me). The Thomas and Friends one brought back happy memories of playing trains with my lad. This Hot Wheels one my lad would have adored as a 5-6 year old!

And what sort of devotionals worked?

When he was younger we did a lot of reading bible verses and just talking about them. One of my joys was introducing him to an advent wreath and talking through the candles each week. My mom did this when I was a child. Nothing as fancy as an advent ring, we had candle holders made from potatoes wrapped in foil.

As he grew older he participated in church with the advent readings we did in there, and we followed that up by talking at home.

Occasionally we’d use free devotionals such as these

Adult Advent Devotionals

Perhaps you don’t have children, or you have teenage or adult children living in your house. You might find thesefree devotions suit your household better.

Do you know of any other free advent devotionals for family, children or adults? Let’s share the resources that are out there.

How Great Our Joy

December 22, 2019 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

A happy, quick moving song, How Great our Joy is only sorta familiar to me. I’ve had the pleasure of singing it often enough to recognize it but not enough to have it memorized. It’s a lovely hymn that walks you through the angels’ conversation with the shepherds.

Lyrics

While by the sheep we watched at night,
Glad tidings brought an angel bright.

Refrain

How great our joy! Great our joy!
Joy, joy, joy! Joy, joy, joy!
Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!
Praise we the Lord in heaven on high!

There shall be born, so He did say,
In Bethlehem a Child today.

Refrain

There shall the Child lie in a stall,
This Child who shall redeem us all.

Refrain

This gift of God we’ll cherish well,
That ever joy our hearts shall fill.

Refrain

Author and History

We actually don’t know who wrote this hymn, it is a traditional German carol. In fact you might know this other German Christmas carol as well. O come Little Children. Theodar Baker translated the first two verses into English. In fact, if you want to know about this Christmas song, Celebrating Holidays did a write up that might intrigue.

Pondering How Great Our Joy

Don’t you just love songs that speak scripture back to you? Sometimes in not exact words, but in the overall telling. It’s lovely to sing God’s word back to him!

In this one we start with the shepherds and quickly move to the angels. The angels tell the glad tidings of a child to be born in Bethlehem. It closely with how this child is a gift of God, and we sing of our great joy.

It’s so true isn’t it? That joy we have in the hope given to us? It’s just marvellous and worth singing about. 🙂

Stille Nacht (Silent Night)

December 23, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Originally I wanted to find a Christmas song from Austria/Hungary. Or Bulgaria… and then I sussed out Great Britain. I had no success in my first two searches, and Great Britain only provided me with more modern songs which I didn’t really want. I got to thinking about other European countries affected by the war and thought… The Netherlands! My mom, being of Dutch origin was a natural for me to call, she suggested I do Stille Nacht.

I’ve already done Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia.

Here it is in Dutch

And now in English.

Lyrics in English

Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright.
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight.
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia,
Christ the Savior is born!
Christ the Savior is born

Silent night, holy night!
Son of God love’s pure light.
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

Lyrics in Dutch.

I’m including these because as I was looking for information I learned there are two versions in Dutch. This one and the Roman Catholic version.

Stille nacht, Heilige nacht,
David’s zoon lang verwacht.
Die miljoenen eens zaligen zal,
Wordt geboren in Bethlehems stal.
Hij, der schepselen heer,
Hij, der schepselen heer.

Hulp’loos kind, Heilig kind,
Dat zo trouw zondaars mint.
Ook voor mij hebt G’U rijkdom ontzegd,
Werd G’in stro en in doeken gelegd.
Leer m’U danken daarvoor,
Leer m’U danken daarvoor.

Stille nacht, Heilige nacht,
Heil en vree wordt gebracht.
Aan een wereld, verloren in schuld,
God’s belofte wordt heerlijk vervuld.
Amen, Gode zij d’eer,
Amen, Gode zij d’eer.

Four Ways to Remember the Reason for the Season

December 10, 2018 By Annette1 6 Comments

Tis the season to be jolly fa la la la la la la la la.

It is the season to be jolly, it’s great time of the year, this time of hope that we are in. There is so much to see, do and be involved in. But think.. What’s the real reason? It’s the hope of the Saviour… not coming as a baby, as important as that is, but as the Saviour of the world. We so need to remember and to contemplate what that really means,. 🙂

It’s hard not to get caught up in the busyness of the seasons. In this post I will talk about some of my joys of the season, as well as some ways to remember the reason for the season.

My Joys:

In the baking of cookies. Papernauten anyone?

In the putting up of a Christmas village.. I do have to admit this year, I’ve reduced my Christmas village. We are trying to light our load abit and I’ve needed to cut my village. A hard decision but it all needs to fit into ONE bin.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember, to focus on the fact that Christ came to earth FOR US. And not just for a generic us but for a specific ME.

Four ways to Remember the Reason For the Season

So the question arises. Just how does one remember what truly is the reason for the season?

These are things that help me
1. Doing a daily advent activity. Often we have used a Lego Advent Calendar. 🙂 What can I say… it’s fun to put together Lego as one thinks about the events of Christmas. But lately we just have those dollar store chocolate Advent Calendars and read scripture daily. Different passages that speak to the true meaning of Christmas, and the story of Jesus’ birth.

2. Spending time alone. YES.. alone… in fact sometimes I will squirrel myself away like a little spider, getting away from the noise and bustle of the world and just stay within my own cozy home. Reading a book, going out for a walk when no one is around, getting lost in the world of colouring and a Christmas movie. Just stuff for me alone. 🙂

3. Christmas music and books! In the past I read lots of books (like Alabaster’s song). Now I play Christmas music as I bake cookies, pumpkin spice muffins, and meals) and even while I’m sweeping the floor or doing laundry. Bring music that I like into the house. 🙂

4. Spend time with the Lord in church services, readings from the bible and Christmas poetry that reminds me of the season. There are some you might want to check out here and here.

We all have ways that help us to remember what is important about the Christmas season.

So tell me then, what’s important to you? How do you focus on that importance? How do you remember the reason for Christmas?

Christmas

Wonderful December Meals

Meals the Lad Made

Baking

Christmas Dinner

More Wonderful December Meals

Favourite Christmas Cookies

Favourite Christmas Cookies

Yet to come

Songs that Help us Remember Christmas

Songs that help us remember

Free Advent Devotionals

Family Devotionals

Children’s Devotionals

Adult Advent Devotionals