It's the week before Advent!

It's Coming! It's coming!
No not Christmas, although our Geese are getting fat :)

It is the final week before the start of Advent and it is indeed a preparation week for us. Which really is  quite a statement as Advent is all about preparing our Hearts and Minds for the coming of our Lord, both in the Celebration of Christmas and for His coming again.

So this week we have been preparing by making our Puddings last Sunday - Stir Up Sunday.
We also mixed up our cake recipe and I have been baking them at 2 per day, that's all this little oven will do at a time, how I miss my wood stove at Christmas especially!

I have been making last minute lists of food, cooking ingredients and craft materials to purchase and to have on hand ready for said crafts.
Thankfully when Vellvin and I had made our giant countdown calendar we had already printed out our colouring activities and put them in a folder all ready to use.

We also have Saxon's birthday on Friday to plan and of course he needs gifts and a cake too. This day will also entail us driving to Sydney to pick up both our Uni girls to come home for the year and the return trip home.

Naturally we have everyday activities and extra things thrown into the mix as life could not be plan sailing if we tried these days.

I wanted to have all our St Nicholas gifts organised so I also went shopping on Monday to organise that.
In my plans I also had hopes of getting all our Christmas gift shopping completed before the start of Advent so we could focus on the beauty and traditions of this season......I'm not completely sure this is going to happen yet.

Anyway our week is busy, the sick people are getting better and we are very, very excited as we move forward to the last days of pre-Advent.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Christmas Mulled Cider!

The power of traditions and the memories they invoke is truly a wonder to behold.

One of the first traditions I tried to implement in our Christmas feasts was Mulled Cider on Christmas Eve for our Midnight feast.
Now while I quite liked it the children and our guests really really loved my Egg Nogg, which was the other beverage I made for the Feast.
In fact you could say they loved the Egg Nogg, especially as there was none left over but still lots of the Mulled Cider left.
I persisted with this for a couple more years until I realised our children, who were clearly much younger definitely preferred the milky Egg Nogg to the Mulled Cider.

So as the point of the Feast was to enjoy this tradition I eliminated it from our festivities.
However I have always loved the idea and recently I have reintroduced it into our Advent Season again.

On the first Sunday in Advent we now have this drink along with some special bought (shock horror) Christmas Cookies after we finish putting up the Christmas Tree and at least some of our home decorating.

So here is the recipe we use for Mulled Cider that we enjoy.

Mulled Cider Recipe-

In a saucepan place:

*1 liter of Orange juice (for a more expensive version, or for those who don’t like the more intense orange flavour use another 1 liter of Apple Cider and add an extra optional peel of an orange)

*2 1/2 liters of Apple Cider

*Next add spices. These can be added to a muslin bag or place directly in the liquid.

However if you place directly in you will need to strain the cider before serving J

*The spices we use are

4 sticks of cinnamon broken up

3 nutmegs crushed coarsely

1 tsp allspice crushed

1 tsp of cloves crushed

You could add 1 tsp of cardamom pods too

*In the pan bring to almost a boil. Reduce the heat to its lowest setting and simmer for 30 minutes

*Then serve into tea cups for a festive and elegant setting. For extra pizzazz add a cinnamon stick to the cup as you serve.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

First Sunday in Advent 2014

Well it is that time of year again!!
That wonderful time of Advent.
It has always been a delightful time in our family with lots of preparing and  learning as we meander along our way to the blessed event of Christmas and the birth of our Saviour.

As usual I am up late trying to get all my plans together for our Unit Study for this time.
Of course all the plans I had for today were not accomplished due to outside influences.
However I would like to share a few scenes from today as we started our decorating and putting up the tree, and of course starting our St Andrew novena too.

 'Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment

At which the Son of God was born

Of a most pure Virgin

At a stable at midnight in Bethlehem

In the piercing cold

At that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee,

To hear my prayers and grant my desires

(mention request here).

 Through Jesus Christ and His most Blessed Mother.'

Said 15 times a day from Feast of St Andrew till Christmas Eve

I pray you all enjoy this blessed preparation season of Advent with your families as we journey together towards Christmas.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Ginger Bread House Decorating

 I know that we are past Christmas and starting to move forward into the New Year  but I just need to (for my own sake ) to share these moments that we have each Christmas season.

I know even just looking back to last year and seeing how much our little ones have grown up that it is important to record these times, just for my own joy.

Each Christmas Eve we decorate our Gingerbread House.

This year we had quite a bit of illness prior to Christmas and luckily we had the dough all ready to go for this event.

Due to the fact I was sick myself and I usually am the one to do the dimensions for the Gingerbread House, this left Autumn as the only older person left able to start the house.

As she wasn't sure how I decide on dimensions she found an online pattern for a small Gingerbread house and decided to make a little  village instead.
She made the houses and they were ready for Christmas Eve even though we were not all as enthusiastic as usual the little ones still wanted to decorate them.

So as usual we divided up the lollies and gave some to each child or team to decorate as they wanted.
It is so sweet to see how each child will use their stash of decorating items to decorate.

Consequently we had  a mini village ready for the Midnight Feast just like usual.
I love that the traditions we have made over the years are so important to the children.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Lead up to Christmas Eve (and the Midnight Feast)

Finally getting back to this post. Sigh......

My laptop computer has been broken since the start of Advent and thus I have had to fight the children for the use of one of our only 2 computers in the house, so my ability to post, even when I am keen has been severely hampered, sigh again........ hint, hint......

And so on with the original post-

The last few days, well the last week of Advent leading up to Christmas eve were in fact a source of ongoing hardship for us as a family, a series of unfortunate events as much of the last year has been really.

We loaned our second car to our son as he had someone run into him and damage his car enough that he had to have it in the repair shop until just before Christmas. Then our own big van broke down again, seriously this is just such a financial drainer of a thing now, and we needed to get our small car back from Braedon and Anna-Lisa and share this car among all of us

Then to top it all off we had a really big hit of a gastro that went through the family and we were recovering on Christmas Eve, in fact we were not sure we could even get to Mass for a while but managed when we had no recurring instances for some hours.

So in fact we kind of lost the plot on the last things we had been planning to do in our Advent Study as well as other last minute things.

Our children were most upset as they really wanted and had planned to be part of the Bethlehem that is put on one of the local parishes every year. We loved it last year and all year they had been planning on being involved with this. 

Of course we did not want to infect others and really how much fun is it to be dressing up and  then throwing up over the people coming to be part of this reenactment.

Again all is in motion for next year on this. 

Thankfully we were able to call on Braedon and Anna again to pick up the last minute groceries and the presents we had on lay by for a long time and deliver them to us later in the day. It was a awful day in town and we were so thankful they could do this for us.

This was the sunset on Christmas Eve from our back yard................

So very very beautiful and not to hot at all!

While the little ones slept prior to being woken up for Mass we (the older kids and I) prepared the feast for when we came home.

Our cookie baking schedule was quite reduced due to the illness but we had some of each type of cookie for the feast but sadly no one was that interested in eating too much, although the eggnog was still consumed at a good rate.

Fruit cake, chocolate chip shortbread, yo yo's, stone fruit and Corinthians sticks

Fudge and Coffee Balls

More fresh fruit which is highly popular

Lebkuchen cookies, Speculaa cookies and sugar cookies

Home made Eggnog

After the family photo some of the children get into their pj's as we start the feast

The Christmas bags are then placed out ready to be filled and the children go to bed while Stephen, well me mostly every year put the presents in the bags before heading off to bed around 6 am on Christmas morning.

The presents under the tree are actually family gifts. Gifts the children have either bought or made (mostly made especially for the younger children) for each other and for us.

So after filling the bags, checking all is good for the night, you know -last minute things like changing the altar cloth to white, putting baby Jesus into his manger bed and the small but significant things that say CHRISTMAS MORNING in our home, it was off to bed to be roused by excited children at around 9am.
I know!! They are so good but remember they did not get to bed till about 3:30am themselves.

So a Merry Christmas Eve was had by us and celebrated in a subdued fashion but still with all the joy and faith we have for the Birth of our Lord!!

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Advent Week One ~Roundup

Even though I haven't posted our plans for Advent this year I do want to share what we have achieved each week during this preparation time.

I really have been happy with what we have achieved with this learning so far this year.

Although it seems we are missing so many people and only really have from Vellvin down most of the time.

We are doing a daily theme and we have worked out simple activities and using picture books as well as the talk I give about the theme for the day around each theme.

We are making good progress through the Jesse Tree this year as well. (oops forgot to add pictures)

DAY 1- Bells
We read only the one book specifically for this day (which I cried through, and the kids asking whats wrong)  but we coloured in our picture and made a bell ribbon to hang up as well

We also finished our Advent decorating after the  formal work of the day

 

DAY 2- Angels
Well we could do so much with this one but I kept it manageable with
Reading the books we own the children's favourite being Alabaster's Song, colouring pictures and making tissue paper angels to hang across a window

DAY 3- Candles
Again we read our books made edible candles and rolled bees wax candles.
We were planning a cake candle too but we ran out of time wit this one.
 
DAY 4 and  DAY 5- St Nicholas
Day 4 is generally planning for St Nicholas and some reading of our ST Nicholas books. It was also our monthly Homeschooling get together day we attend.
Sadly we spent ages on getting our car to go and then not going and we watched a Christmas movie instead The Bells of St Mary
Day 5 we read more books, coloured in pages, played with their gifts and  prepared for the play the children did which include  more speculaa cookie baking

Each evening we have our countdowns that the children take turns in doing the countdowns we have.
This is a very exciting part of the preparation time for the children and we do this before we start reading Jotham's Journey and light the candle countdowns.

We are going well still with week two and I hope to be able to share more here next week.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Saint Nicholas Celebrations 2013

St Nicholas Day is one of the most eagerly awaited feast days in Advent for our family.

We tend to celebrate in many ways.

Of course the stockings have nothing to do with the excitement the younger children especially have for this day. Although I will admit that the hot chocolate comes in a pretty close second.

Our preparations start the night before with the hanging of the stockings I have made for the everyone.
Again this year we had difficulty working out where to hang them as we don't have the huge open fire place with had in our Tasmania house.

We solved our difficulty when one of the children suggested we hang them on a ribbon and secure them with a peg in readiness for the gifts to be placed inside

Poor little Trahaearn was a sleep already when this was happening so Autumn helped him hang his stocking.

Then most of the children went off to bed and the rest of the preparations began.

The first thing to do was to start making the Speculaa Cookies, (our recipe is here) as i needed time for them to cool down after to then be placed in to the stockings.

I decided that even though we made double the recipe that we would only cut out two per person for their stockings.

I really am glad they are such a simple shape to cut out and my trusty assistant Rogan was a fun to work with too.
It really has become part of any type of Feast preparations to have one or more of the children want to be part of helping me set up and it certainly is a lovely way to spend some individual time together.

Once they are on the trays it all starts to happen!!

On to stage two-
Making those chocolate Santa's into stately St Nicholas figures (how we do it here, although with much smaller figures)
Setting up in  a place to do this we started cutting out the paper Mitre for each St Nic

A box full of gold coins and potential ST Nicholas'-I was thrilled last year when I discovered for the first time large size Santas for only $1 at Aldis

As Rogan was finishing up the Mitres I started writing on the back of our traditional St Nicholas card I had printed out for each of us to keep in our special Feast Day boxes.

The empty stockings are about to be filled and this is the part Rogan has been looking forward to especially.

Only one thing remains before filling the stockings and that is setting the table and decorating it.

Doesn't  St Nicholas look fantastic?

Everything ready even though it isn't as decorated as I usually do. I'm pretty sure it was way past midnight by this stage due to a later bed time for little ones.

This year I put the St Nicholas card on the table instead of  in the stocking partly due to the missing laminator :)

Ta Da - the stockings are all stuffed.
Each year I usually end up taking something out of the packaging trying to fit it into the stockings.
We do keep the dollar limit to $10 each so finding things to put in can be a challenge too.

Bright and early, very early considering how late we went to bed , we were up to open the stockings. I am sure I remember in my sleep daze someone or two asking me even earlier if they could go downstairs 'just for a look?'

What was in the bags?
Hopefully something that each individual would love!

Each year not matter what the standard beginnings of a St Nicholas stocking are- speculaas, gold coins, an orange, Candy canes, and a St Nicholas card. This year I added a couple of smaller chocolates too.

Oh and these are my added presents. I just can't resist tea cups and these large ones are just perfect!

The next part of the day is the actual moving on to the Advent Study- Day 6 this year was obviously St Nicholas and these were the books we used this year.

I printed out (just a few as I often do way too may different varieties) of ST Nicholas activities to add to our work

Vellvin and Rogan were the directors of our play this year and they used The Bakers Dozen as the basis for the play, just to do something different.

Nearly all the children working on their activities as I read form the picture books.

Then dressing up for the play is as much fun as the actual play I think for the children- Moran was the old woman in the story.

A few extra parts were added so everyone could be involved - Arwen is a rich customer

When Stephen, Eden and Saxon were all home from work the play was aired.......

Freshly made Speculaas were needed as props, to be eaten at the plays end of course

The Baker and his son

The old woman

Vellvin was the narrator as well as a customer

It was a really good play and I loved that it was a different version than the ones we have had in previous years.
Good work to our children.

The rest of our evening passed fairly quickly and WITHOUT  the Hot Chocolate  to which I was shamefully reminded all weekend.

So on the plans for today will be the Hot Chocolate as part of our Advent Study - Candy Canes, Shepherds Crooks and Peppermint.

I pray you all had a most excellent feast day for ST Nicholas

Blessings to you and your homes,