Loving Father,
help us to remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and the worship of the wise men.
Close the door of hate and open
the door of love all over the world.
Let kindness come with every gift
and good desires with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil by the blessing which
Christ brings, and teach us to be merry
with clear hearts.
May the Christmas morning make us happy
to be thy children,
And the Christmas evening bring us to our beds
with grateful thoughts,
forgiving and forgiven,
for Jesus’ sake. Amen !

~Robert Louis Stevenson~

Well, this is my last post in the Holiday Open House series…. but not my last post about Christmas! I’ll be doing lots more posts on what we are doing for the next weeks before Christmas. Most of it will be very similar to what I’ve written about in this series, but with more current photos. I just love this time of year!

We do lots in the kitchen at this time of the year! Most of the gifts we give to other friends and families are made in the kitchen. Each year I do something a little different. Some years it may be a gift basket with baked goodies. One year I sewed up these cute little bags and put a variety of cookies in them:

Something I have done many times as well is make gingerbread houses and sleighs to give away. We also always do one for ourselves, and one year the children each made their own mini house or sleigh. So much work, but such fun!

We have our favorite recipes for Christmas cookies, some of which I will share later. I let the kids help with the cookie cutters and then let them decorate their own. I’m not sure where most of the icing goes - in their tummies or on the cookies! In any case, it makes everything quite colorful! LOL!

A few years ago my best friend from the US, introduced us to the wonderful world on making chocolates! We really got into it. Here are some the kids made:

Another tradition is to make Christmas playdo. Not only do we make a batch each of red and green, but we add glitter to it as well! The kids love playing with it and it is quite special even if the glitter does go everywhere….!

Now for some recipes…..

 

Gingerbread the Easy Way

 

250g unsalted butter, softened

2/3 cup soft brown sugar

½ cup golden syrup

2 eggs, lightly beaten

4 cups plain flour

½ cup self-raising flour

2 tbsps ground ginger

2 tsps bicarbonate of soda

Preheat oven to 180C.

Mix butter, brown sugar and syrup. Beat till light and creamy.

Add eggs gradually; beat very well.

Add dry ingredients and mix until a soft dough is formed. You may need to tip the mixture out of the bowl and finish this step by hand.

Roll out the dough and make shapes.

Place on tray and put in fridge until ready to bake.

Bake until light brown.

Allow it to cool very well before you decorate it.

 

 

Royal Icing

 

For Gingerbread Houses

2 egg whites

2 ½ cups pure icing sugar

squeeze of lemon juice

Beat egg whites until thick and gradually add icing sugar and lemon juice until a thick spreadable consistency.

Keep covered or it will dry.

 

Best Christmas Shortbread

 

2 ½ cups plain flour

2 tbsps rice flour

4 tbsps caster sugar

250g butter at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 160C

Place all ingredients in order in food processor.

Roll out and make shapes.

Mark each shape with a fork.

Bake for approx 20 min until pale fawn color.

 

Decorating our home for Christmas is always so much fun! I love to have the same familiar things to put up again every year. I love to have one new thing that I have bought for not much or received from someone to add to my collection. And I love to get new ideas from other people of simple ways to decorate the house.I’ve already shown you a photo of our little Christmas tree with the soft toys on it… well, here it is with the lights on it as well:

I love Christmas carols! I love them all!!! It is quite normal to find me listening to Christmas music in the middle of the year when it is winter here….. you’ll see me sewing or quilting Christmas stuff and listening to carols! :)It’s hard to pick my favorites, because I really do love them all. I love the old traditional carols which have so much meaning in them. I love the new ones, some of which I will share in a minute. I have this strange liking for “Tennessee Christmas” sung by Amy Grant, even though I’ve never been to Tennessee… but drop in and you can hear me crooning about having another Tennessee Christmas…. hmmmm….!I love the fun ones too, “You’d better watch out..”, “Rudolph”, and all those. I particularly like the Aussie ones. Here’s one of my favorite Aussie songs, sung by Colin Buchanan (Sorry, I couldn’t put the actual clip here because it wouldn’t let me) :

Aussie Jingle Bells

Maybe you have to be an Aussie to fully appreciate this clip. We just love Colin - he is really crazy! Here are the lyrics:

Jingle Bells (Aussie style)

Dashing through the bush,
in a rusty Holden Ute,
Kicking up the dust,
esky in the boot,
Kelpie by my side,
singing Christmas songs,
It’s Summer time and I am in
my singlet, shorts and thongs

Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut !,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.

Engine’s getting hot;
we dodge the kangaroos,
The swaggie climbs aboard,
he is welcome too.
All the family’s there,
sitting by the pool,
Christmas Day the Aussie way,
by the barbecue.

Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut!,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.

Come the afternoon,
Grandpa has a doze,
The kids and Uncle Bruce,
are swimming in their clothes.
The time comes ’round to go,
we take the family snap,
Pack the car and all shoot through,
before the washing up.

Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summers day, Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut!,
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden Ute.

Aussie Jingle Bells -
Traditional/Colin Buchanan © 1992 Rondor Music.

Another “new” favorite of mine “Mary Did You Know”. I first heard it a few years ago, sung by Kenny Rogers and Wynonna Judd. So often we think - oh yeah, Mary was the mother of Jesus…. but it doesn’t sink in that she really had some big issues to face! She became pregnant and had to explain to everyone what had happened when she didn’t really even know herself! She had this baby and didn’t realize the importance of it all until later on when she watched him grow and eventually die…. so, here it is another favorite:

Mary Did You Know?

Finally, another Aussie one that I really enjoy. It is pure fantasy since Jesus was not born in Australia, but I love the way it makes Jesus relevant to us here….

Boomerang of flowers

1. A child is lying cradled here,
Beneath the slender gum;
The God of might has left his home,
And to Australia come.
The kookaburra laughs with glee,
The shy koala peeps,
The magpie carols blissfully,
As little Jesus sleeps

Chorus

What shall we give our infant king?
A boomerang of flowers?
To say come back and stay with us
And be forever ours.
(repeat)

2. One day a cross will hold him fast,
And lest we should forget,
Above him in the sapphire sky
A cross of stars is set.
But there’ll be no pain for today,
But peace and joy and love.
Beneath the slender gum he sleeps,
And magpies sing above.

Music: Leigh Newton Words: Mary Philip © Leigh Newton 1983

This is my third post for the Holiday Open House. You can see my first here and second here.

The next one is here.

For more Holiday Open House posts, visit Tiany!

Our Christmas traditions start with Advent. We almost always miss the first Sunday of Advent, however! Mostly this is because of Sinterklaas. There are so many preparations for this, that the beginning of Advent gets forgotten. Not good, I know, and I hope that one year I will be organized enough to incorporate both… but till now, we start Advent after Sinterklaas!As a child I had an advent calendar, and it was a tradition I wanted to carry on with my children. I buy them or make them, depending on where we live. In the Middle East there was no Christmas celebration in public, so we made our own. We hung 25 little paper bags on a garland and I put chocolates in each bag. Back home in Australianow the children have chocolate ones from the shop. Daniel has a Spiderman one this year, Elizabeth a Barbie one, and Matthew a Cars one. I know, nothing to do with Jesus… we just use them as a countdown till Christmas.

This year we also have a really special Advent calendar sent to us from friends in the U.S. - a Lego one! The kids are having so much fun having something little to make from Lego every day! They are quite spoiled by our dear friends!

We have Advent candles as well, that we light each Sunday (except for the first one as already confessed!). We do a little Bible reading with each candle that we light, and last year with school we went into the meanings of each candle a bit deeper. We use white, red or gold ones - whichever we happen to have on hand. This year I need to buy new ones since I had to leave the candles I had behind when we moved back to Australia. I think I will go for gold…

Last year we made an advent wreath. The children just had so much fun doing this. As I already mentioned, there was no Christmas to be seen in public in the Middle East. In one way this was good, since we weren’t bombarded with Christmas sales and junk mail. On the other hand, it was easy to forget Christmas was coming up since there was no sign of it anywhere - no Christmas decorations, no music playing in the malls, etc. We had to make do with the decorations we had brought with us, or some we managed to buy off other expats who were leaving. Sometimes we found some Christmas things in the strangest places - little shops where you would least expect them. When we saw these things we would buy as many as we could and share it around with all our friends!

Mostly, though, we made things ourselves. From this:

To this:

And finally this:

The white candles were for each Sunday, and then the red one was the Christ candle.

Celebrating Advent is really a lovely way to prepare our hearts for the birth of Jesus. It gives focus to what can often be a hectic and stressful time of the year. There are lots of links for advent stuff on the internet. Here are just a few that I have found:

http://www.teachingmom.com/features/advent.html

http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/child/adv.html

http://www.crivoice.org/cyadvent.html

http://www.spirithome.com/advent.html

How dark outside!
but see — a star’s in the sky;
Mary and Joseph are passing by.
So let’s light a candle to welcome them
as they go on their way to Bethlehem.

We’ll light a candle in church each day,
We’ll light one candle each week and pray.

We’ll light a candle at home each day,
We’ll light a candle each week and pray.

(from here )

This is my second post for the Holiday Open House. See my first post here.

My next one is here!

For more Holiday Open House posts, visit Tiany!

I am joining in on Tiany’s Holiday Open House, but I’m not going to just do one post. You’re going to have to come back during the week and read some more!After Sinterklaas on the 5th, we start decorating our house on the 6th. I did this because I didn’t want the children to confuse Sinterklaas and Christmas when they were little. Sinterklaas really doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas, ie with the birth of Jesus. Yes, Santa came from St Nicholas, but in Holland there was a clear distinction between the two, and I wanted to keep it that way.So, on the 6th we bring out all our decorations and start putting them up around the house. I love having the house look all Christmassy! Since we were married, every year I would buy a special Christmas decoration in the after Christmas sales. I have quite a nice collection now. Since I learned how to quilt, I’ve been wanting to make a Christmas quilt a year so that I can swap my quilts around too. I always swap all my normal nick-nacks for Christmas decorations, so I want to do that with my quilts too. So far I have started four, and am almost done with one!!! Maybe this year I’ll at least finish that one….!Our Christmas tree is still the same little one that we bought when we were first married for $19.95, which was a lot of money for us then! I don’t have the heart to get rid of it and buy one of those beautiful ones they have out these days…it does the job and I am way too sentimental!

Today we brought the tree out of the shed and set it up, but the other decorations were at the old house still. I told the kids to put the tree together, and then we’d go and get the other decorations. In the meantime I was busy doing some other things around the house. I heard lots of giggles, and then the children called me to the lounge room. They had decorated the tree with their soft toys!

I thought it was quite cute and told them if they wanted to leave it like that for this year, they could! They were pretty excited. We’ll have to take all of them off and put the lights on it, but they would like to have it like this for a change!

This evening was a special night for our local tourist attraction “Sovereign Hill“. It is a replica gold mining town. We go there often as we have a membership, and want to make the most of the local history. Anyway, tonight was a late night Christmas shopping night with free entry for all. Boy was it busy! There were some lovely stalls though, and the children got to do some candle dipping for free because the guy there was a friend of the family! Here are some of the sights in our first of many Christmas activities this year:

It was a bit of fun! More on how we spend Christmas tomorrow….

This is my first post for the Holiday Open House. My next one is here!