Making the Gifts Last

When our temperatures threatened to drop significantly below freezing a few weeks ago, we stripped our pepper and fall tomato plants and brought the harvest inside to add some flavor to our winter soups and omelets.  The tomatoes obliged by ripening a few at a time.  Habanero, Jalapeno, and Gypsy peppers were beautiful in bowl or basket, and have been welcome heat!  Only a few remain, and I find myself counting them and thinking they are almost all gone.  I am keeping a gratitude journal this year.  So I will write that I am thankful for the gifts my garden has given me.  Long past the time the plants have withered and faded, the fruit they produced nourishes and delights us.  Our lives can be like that too.

Packing the Christmas Dress

When my mother was growing up, they never put up the Christmas tree until Christmas eve.  All the festivities and celebrating came after Christmas.  They  celebrated the 12 days of Christmas beginning with Christmas day.  Now that we decorate our and trees much earlier (ours is usually done on Thanksgiving weekend) we have longer to enjoy our house with its Christmas dress on, but I still don’t like to take anything down until Epiphany.  As I pack away ornaments and manger scenes, I remember that I am not putting away the Christ-light.  Nearly 30 years ago I wrote about “undecorating”. 

The mantle seems lonely without the little manger scene.

The house looks plain, bereft of red and green.

The tree is down, the front door bare.

No wreath or garland festooned there.

Our mailbox no longer yields its daily harvest of cards.

The lights and Santas are gone from all the yards.

We packed away the manger scene,

But not the shine of the star!

For His new birth within us, no time or season can mar.

Because He was born, we have Christmas.

Because He died we have life.

Because He lives we have new years

No matter what serves us with strife.

We thank Him for peace and for promise.

We thank Him for love and for sight.

We thank Him for meaning and purpose.

We live to show darkness the Light.

Definitely older, hopefully wiser...I sing along to Andrea Bocelli's Christmas album, allow a few tears to fill my eyes, and am aware that the gifts of Christmas continue.

A Fresh Pot of Tea

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I believe in enjoying Christmas gifts right away!  This amazing tea flower opens as a fresh pot of tea is brewed: fragrant, lovely, delicious!  I would never have known how beautiful this could be if I had not opened the present, looked inside the box,  removed the strange little ball of leaves, placed it in the tea pot, and added the boiling water.  Without taking the illustration too far, allow me to say this may be a lesson for our new year.  Let's open our gift, learn all we can, believe beyond first sight,  use what we have received,   and be astonished at unexpected beauty.  Here's to tasting  2011~

Vintage Postcard Cookies

Most of my Christmas baking is chosen from long time family favorites: German Butterballs, Candy Cane Cookies, Pumpkin Bread, Thumbprint Cookies - although I bake  less each year.  Last week, with the help of my daughter in law, I tried something I never even heard of, much less had done before.  I made large, card sized molasses cookies, frosted and decorated with wonderful vintage images that might have graced postcards in my grandmother's time.  These are printed on wafer paper and applied in a very simple way, completely edible, and a beautiful addition to our Christmas dinner.  The photo gleams back at you due to a pearlized finish applied as the last step.  If you are a baker, try www.fancyflours.com for these and other ways to add fun and fanciful finishes.  OK, I confess, I already ordered some for Valentine cookies.

Joy to the World!

"Come on, ring those bells, light the Christmas tree!  Jesus is the King, born for you and me...come on,ring those bells, everybody say:  Jesus, we remember this your birthday!"

Remembering a Gift

I don't remember most of the gifts I was given at Christmas when I was growing up.  I recall sweater sets, a doll, books, and I still have a stuffed Rudolph that may be one of the first sold when the song came out. But one present I could count on to be the same every year was a box of chocolate covered cherries from Daddy. For many years after his death, I would buy a box for myself and remember.  This year, chocolate covered cherries have returned!  Skye came over last night to help make Christmas mice, my old favorite in new form.  Don't tell the cats.

Making Bread, Making Memories

Maddie baked Cranberry Bread with me on Thanksgiving morning.  This is the way we do this:
1.  Read the book.  When her Daddy was just her age, he and his brothers loved a book called Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin, the story of a little girl and her grandmother and a famous cranberry bread recipe. We still have the book!  It has the recipe on the back cover. 2.  Assemble the ingredients (more fun than an Easter Egg hunt!)  3.  Find our bowl and measuring "things".  4.  Let the mixer do most of the work except the important things like cracking the eggs, adding everything, and licking the spoon...all Maddie's jobs.