reindeer headbands and candy cane cookies

Last week was T's preschool concert. The kids wore reindeer antler headbands, made from brown paper

each child had traced their hands and those were the antlers. They were decorated by the children, T's antlers were covered in glued on eyes. They sang Rudolph and Jingle Bells, followed by "This Little Light of Mine" which the kids love. Some of them love it so much they continued to sing - "don't let anyone fffffff (blowing sound) it out" long after the song ended! Then came "Slippery Fish", one of T's favorites. In the middle of the song, T turned around and said to the little boy sitting behind him "that's not the way it goes!". I looked over at D and he was burying his head in his hands. Then the children sang "I'm a pizza" which T doesn't like singing so he got up and wandered around! But he was corralled back into his seat for the finale - "we wish you a merry Christmas". Very fun! The singing was followed by a slide show of the children at preschool. Each child yelled "that's me!" whenever their picture came up on the screen! Then came the party. I had made candy cane cookies

and they were quite popular but never as popular as the perenial favorite - mini cupcakes! T had 2 cupcakes and 1 candy cane cookie.

(The candy cane cookies were baked from a recipe for sugar cookies from Martha Stewart Living, sprinkled with white and red sanding sugar).

new (old) additions to my kitchen

I recently acquired a couple of my mum's cookbooks and her recipe box

- on the promise that I will put all mum's recipes into a family recipe book and make copies for my siblings. Added to my shelves are mum's copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking

and Joy of Cooking.

My copy of Joy has now been consigned to the recycling bin as it was in several pieces and held together with elastic bands curtesy of a soaking it received at some point in its storied history.

Mum's recipe box has typewritten and handwritten recipes,

mostly my mum's but also some of my grandmother's (Dad's mum) - a family kitchen history in a box. What a treasure! One of the funniest things about the recipes pictured above is that on the back of the Easy Cheesecake recipe is written R E L A X.

And delving into my own history, I unearthed two egg cups and an egg hat for T to use. As children hard-boiled eggs were a breakfast staple. We would "race" my grandfather, Da and always "won" to which he would say "bother". The poor man always had cold egg and toast for breakfast whenever his grandchildren were visiting.

almost winter garden

Thoughts of my summertime garden swirl in my head. My christmas list is topped with things like gift certificates for seed purchases and cedar planters. This past weekend, the rain stopped and the skies cleared and I peered into my garden. This is what I found:

One rose hanging on. And in the vegetable garden

some tiny cauliflower.

And when I came back inside, there was T's combine harvester ready and waiting for harvest!

visit with Santa

Today was the big day - T's visit with Santa. I was a bit worried about the weather as throughout the night the wind was howling, sending various items skidding around the backyard. And it was cold enough to snow, if there had been any precipitation. But it didn't. Snow that is. It was a lovely, clear, sunny day once we woke up. "Mummy, it's morning. We have to get up and go visit Santa", was how it was worded today.

It was a smaller party this year, less children as there are fewer employees this year. T had a wonderful time decorating and then eating two gingerbread cookies. He's an equal opportunity boy - he ate one gingerbread boy and then one gingerbread girl.

And in between he had a Christmas truck painted on his face (with sparkles). He played in the wind tunnel and had a few bounces in the bouncy pirate ship but he was waiting for the main event. He sang with the other children to welcome Santa. And when it was his turn to go up and see Santa he rushed up on the stage and then got a bit shy. He sat down on Santa's knee and when Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas he was silent. I whispered "a bulldozer" - T repeated "a bulldozer" in a whisper, I whispered " a track backhoe", he repeated in a slightly louder whisper " track backhoe" and then he almost yelled " a rogater"..."please". He jumped off Santa's knee when the elf came to lead him away and gave Santa and the elf a high five and a wave. He then trotted off and collected his present. The paper and the box were ripped open to reveal a lego car racing kit.

A few minutes later, he came to me all upset (I was on elf photo taking duty). I asked him why he was upset and he said "why didn't Santa get me the construction toys I asked for?" Oh dear. So I told him that Santa was going to go back to his workshop as soon as he had visited with all the children at the party and he was going to tell the elves what all the children wanted for Christmas and they were going to start work on making the toys right away so that Santa could deliver the big toys on Christmas Eve. The lego racer was a special early present from Santa to say thanks for coming to see me today. Fortunately that seemed to mollify T and he mulled it over all the way home. Once the racer was put together

and raced a few times, T was ready to tell everyone that Santa had given him a racer as an early present. Phew!

Fruit Dumplings

A while ago I found this recipe What's Cookin' Italian Style Cuisine: Apple Dumpling Shortcake with Caramel Sauce and made it up as written for some yummy apple dumpling goodness! Perfect for a cold, dark, rainy night which would mean pretty much every night in November and January! But the 6-8 apple requirement means it doesn't get made that often - well, only once so far. And yesterday I used up 4 apples making soup so the apple pile wasn't big enough for apple dumplings. Sigh.

But this weekend, I've been doing my version of eating from the freezer in an effort to try and wittle down the pile so I can get some more things in (ice cream?) and while looking a box of stock in the cupboard I found a big can of canned peaches squirreled away in the back (on one of the higher shelves so I can't see it unless I stand on T's stool). So- how about peach dumplings?

So I skipped over the first part of the recipe (apples and syrup) and instead drained about half of the syrup from a big can of sliced peaches and dumped the rest into a greased baking dish. I made up the dumpling mixture:

1 1/2 c. flour

3/4 c. milk

1/2 tsp salt

6 tbsp. soft butter

3 tsp. baking powder

And dropped it in pieces over the peaches. Then I melted together:

3 tbsp. butter

3 tbsp. sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

and dribbled it over the dumplings. Baked at 400 deg F for 30 minutes and yum!

I made it last night and this morning they are almost gone. D blamed the cat!

the window game

This is what T calls opening the advent calendar windows. "Mummy, can we play the window game when we get home?"

We have two advent calendars. A chocolate one with reindeer, elves, polar bear, penquin and Santa on it and each window reveals a small chocolate. T loves this one! But he also loves the quilted "Santa picture" - an advent quilt - a picture of the jolly elf holding a tree with 24 buttons on it. Each day another fabric tag is hung on a button to count down the days until Christmas - there is a wreath, candy cane, goose, lamb, angel, mitten, tree, gift basket, wrapped present, reindeer, snowman, birdhouse, etc. When I put that one up T wanted to know where the Santa picture had come from. I explained that I made it when he was a baby as I wanted to have a non-chocolate, family advent calendar. He was very excited about putting the tags on to count the days until Christmas. He did try to speed things up by putting up 10 tags on the first day but we explained that even if he hangs all the tags up at once, it still is 24 days to Christmas (23 now). So now he's been hanging the tags up one per day.

dear santa

We went on Santa's website today (http://www.northpole.com/) so T could take the naughty or nice quiz and the result is that Santa put T on the nice list (for now). So T dictated a letter to the big man, I transcribed:

Dear Santa,

My name is T.M and I will be 4 in January. I have been a good boy this year. (There was some hemming and hawing about this statement after I wrote it as T was fairly sure he's not always a good boy at daycare - not listening well, etc but in the interest of the letter he left that bit out).
I hope you and the reindeer will come to my house at Christmas and we can look at wheel backhoes (real ones) on the computer. I would like a bulldozer, a track backhoe and a road grader for Christmas, please.
Mummy and I will make cookies for you - chocolate chip ones - so I hope you like chocolate.
Hello to the reindeer.

Your friend,
T

T decorated the letter with some stickers (fire truck, monster truck, train and 18-wheeler). We are going to mail it on the way to preschool tomorrow.

I don't remember writing to Santa as a child. A family tradition was that on Christmas Eve we would write out a list of wishes and each member of the family would throw the paper on the fire. If the paper flew up the chimney that meant our wish would come true. At least, that is how I remember it. I do remember my mum being nervous about us throwing paper on the fire at my grandparent's as my grandfather (my Da) would encourage us really close to the fire to catch a draft so the wish would fly up.