December

December is such a fun - but crazy - month! Some happenings ...

 

Hot cocoa day - Ana tried very hard to drink her cocoa through the candy cane. 

 

Lots, and lots, and LOTS of cookie making! 

 

Making Christmas ornaments with playgroup 

 

It was warm out the entire month of December.  When did we get our tree? Thanksgiving weekend, in November.  Literally the only cold and nasty day the whole holiday season.    My husband looks like a shepherd with my ring sling on his head (it was also raining).

 

Ana loved the Christmas village too much.  She carried around all "the guys" (what she calls any animal figures - stuffed, ceramic, whatever), and inevitably, they almost all broke at some point.  Holden would collect the pieces and make new characters for the village - like this one, a goose head on a man's body.  

 

Our festivals display

 

Santa baby! 

 

Christmas in Collinsville - we took a beautiful (and warm) horse drawn carriage round around downtown.  

 

St Nicholas visited! 

 

Santa Lucia Day - taken just before she dropped the entire plate of saffron buns on the floor!  

 

My star baby 

 

Gluten free saffron buns.  I combined several recipes to make up this one. They were very yummy! 

 

Our sensory bin this month was stones, in honor of the 1st week of advent.  It was a huge hit.  I think the only thing more popular was the corn pit on the deck. 

 

All the kiddos at the holiday lights display

 

"Mama, I've got big sockings on!"

 

Lots of cookies! 

 

And homemade caramel 

 

Gluten free pizzelles 

 

It can't be Christmas without stroopwafels!  

 

Why yes, it was 72 degrees in CT on Christmas Eve.  

 

So the littles decided to play in the water on the deck 

 

And wear just a tee shirt outside to sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn for Rudolph

Thanksgiving

We spread Thanksgiving out the week before, and the 3 days the week of.  We spent a lot of this time cleaning out the house, something I do with a vengeance every year just before I pull out the holiday decorations.

Monday - playgroup.  We had our Thanksgiving pot luck dinner and we decorated cupcakes.  Somebody *really* liked the cranberry sauce!

 

It was fun, and when do kids with food allergies/sensitivities/intolerances ever get to decorate cupcakes?!?

Tuesday - baking day.  The first Tuesday, we made corn muffins and shook up cream FOREVER to make our own butter.  Ana shook the first 15 seconds and the last 15 seconds - she was quite proud of herself when she opened the jar and saw she had shaken the cream up into butter! She promptly drank all the buttermilk.

The second Tuesday, we made carrot soup.  It wasn't what I had planned;this was Ana's idea.  I've been telling the story of Hugin's Carrot, and the last line of the story is "and Hugin made carrot soup".  Ana stood up and said "Ok" and walked into the kitchen.  When I asked where she was going, she said "I making a carrot soup, just like Hugin does!".  So off we went to make carrot soup for lunch.

I think she just wanted to use the peeler.  It is her current favorite kitchen gadget.

And spices - she is obsessed with adding large amounts of spices to everything.  Her favorite food is "'picy salad" - a mix of kale, cabbage, and lettuce into which goes a huge amount of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, cajun spice, pepper, garlic salt, dill, and parsley.  She eats it daily. 

  

Considering we used no recipe and just threw into the pot what we had in the fridge, the soup was surprisingly tasty! It made a nice lunch paired with the leftover bread from our Thanksgiving dinner. 

 

"Recipe" for carrot soup:

Peel and cube several carrots and place in a stockpot.  We had probably a pound and a half, orange, yellow, white, and 1 purple.   Add one diced onion.  Add spices - Ana put them all in so nothing was even remotely measured, but we used freshly ground pepper, salt, garlic salt, parsley, thyme, and dill.  Add water to just cover the carrots and bring to a  boil, them simmer until the carrots are tender.  Add broth; I used chicken bone broth because that's what I had in the freezer.  It was probably a cup and a half.  Puree the carrot and broth mixture; I used our nutribullet for this.  Add cream or milk, rewarm if necessary.  It was the perfect temperature for Ana and Meems with the addition of the cream. 

Wednesday - Painting day.  Autumn colors in liquid watercolor, which I later cut into leaf shapes for our thankful tree.

 

Thursday - Sensory/Tactile.  We made pumpkin pie playdough.  I've recently discovered that you can add cornstarch to relatively anything and end up with playdough.  So we mixed together a can of pumpkin puree with cornstarch and pumpkin pie spice, and broke out the pumpkin cookie cutters.  The whole house smelled delicious!

Friday - Craft day.  We made handprint turkeys.  These are the start of a calendar's worth of handprint art that we are working on for Tata for Christmas.

 

And, of course, we had to set up our Thanksgiving nature tables this week! 

  

 

Martinmas

Martinmas has to be my favorite of the festivals. The cold, crisp night air, the smell of beeswax candles, a bonfire ... and the spirit of helping others. 

Monday - We had our playgroup here in the evening.  We started with a pot luck dinner, which everyone shared, in honor of St Martin.  Once it was dark, we lit our lanterns (with real candles this year!) and took a walk through the driveway.  We ended with a bonfire in the backyard with s'mores and other yummy chocolate desserts.

 

Tuesday - Baking day.  Tuesday was the day before Martinmas, so Ana and I started to get ready.  We made some gluten free horseshoe cookies

Holden and I worked on some beeswax lanterns that night, once the littles went to bed. They came out beautifully.  Our balloons were a little too big so they are more like candle bowls than lanterns, but we really enjoyed making them and the are beautiful all lit up!

Wednesday - Painting day.   We didn't paint this week; instead we added another baking day to get our Martinmas dinner ready for that night.  Ana had a lot of fun making gluten free weckmenn (which was very yummy!!)

  

Our holiday dinner consisted of the traditional "goose" (which for us was roasted chicken - Holden and Kenna would never eat goose if I tried to make it!), winter squash, salad, weckmenn, and horseshoe cookies for dessert.  We ate by candlelight (with the lights on dim after candles started almost getting knocked over - candlelight dinner with 4 kids is not an easy task!)

 

 

Thursday - Sensory/tactile day.  We rolled and decorated beeswax candles today.

 

  Ana is a little young for this for sure, but she enjoyed it.

Friday - craft day.  I had planned on painting some fabric to make a blanket today, but Ana had other plans.  She requested lots of books and snuggle time, so that's what we did ♥