Tag Archives: traditions

Christmas Nativity Play

We had our Christmas Party on Sunday night and let the kids do the Nativity Story.  I found a cute children’s version with the pictures.  My husband was the narrator and then 5 of the older grandchildren read different parts and the two little girls put the pictures up on the magnet board.  My DIL played the keyboard, so that we could have help singing the songs.  (We are not a very musical bunch!)  And all in all I think that it turned out great.  Everyone helped and it was not a ton of preparation.

Here is a sample of the pictures, you cut out the individual characters and animals and place them in the different scenes.  This also has the script, if you just want to let the children act out the parts!

 

 

You can find the link here, if you want to print your own copy.  This site has some cute games and ideas for kids.

Now, with all that said, I am now on a hunt to make costumes for next year!  If anyone out there has seen any cute costumes, please let me know.  I could make them, or I am willing to buy some of them.  It is something that we would use for years to come, so I want to make some that will grow a little with the kids.

Anise Candy

Today’s candy is a very old recipe that I remember my mom making for Christmas.  I have not made it for years, but ran across the recipe the other day and decided in honor of my mother that I would make this!  It is a hard tack candy that you could actually use to make suckers with, but I just made it the way my mom used to.  For those of you who do not know what Anise is, it is a black licorice type flavor.

So let’s make some Anise Candy!  First you are going to put 3 cups sugar, 1 cup corn syrup and 1/2 cup water in a large kettle.  Bring to a boil.

You will let it boil to the hard crack stage.  To test if it is at the hard crack stage, drizzle a small amount of the candy into a bowl of cold water, like this.

When the candy come out hard and brittle, it is at the crack stage,  if it is soft and pliable you need to keep boiling it until you reach the crack stage.  I tested my about 3 times, until I got it to where I wanted it.  If you have a candy thermometer, you could also use that, you need to reach 300-310 degrees F, but I am showing you the good old fashioned way to test it! :)

When it gets to crack stage, add 1/2 tsp red food coloring and 1/2 tsp anise oil.

Pour out onto a buttered cookie sheet  and let cool just a bit. (sorry about the flash spots in this picture, but the candy is so shiny that it just kept reflecting)

When slightly set, mark off in squares.  (I actually do not remember my mother doing this, I remember her just using the handle of a butter knife and breaking it into pieces, but I have this step written in my recipe, so I tried it!)

After it has cooled off, break into pieces.  Maybe this is why my mom just broke it with the handle of the knife, because it just kind of breaks into pieces!  But it looks so pretty!

Put all those pieces into a bowl and look at how festive they are.  They are also fun to add to plates of cookies or fudge etc to just add some bright color!

Here is the recipe:

Anise Candy

3 cups sugar

1 cup white syrup

1/2 cup water

Put in kettle and bring to a boil.  Cook to crack stage.

add: 1/2 tsp red food coloring

1/2 tsp anise oil

Mix and pour into buttered cookie sheet.  When slightly set, mark off in squares.  Cool and then break into pieces.

The White Envelope

We have a tradition in our home that we started three years ago..My friend Leslie shared this idea with me and I immediately fell in love with it.  My children are all grown and married, and every year we would go through this little ritual– They would say, “Mom, what do you and dad want for Christmas?”  and I would reply “that we really did not need anything,” and I could never come up with any ideas for them.

We usually all get together for Sunday dinner, and three years ago at one of these family nights, I read the following story to my family.  It reminds me so much of my own husband and the kids had to agree, and thus was born the tradition of the White Envelope.  It is truly the highlight of Christmas for my husband and I.  We wake up on Christmas morning and we read the letters from each of our children and their family and I must admit, that it usually brings tears to our eyes!  What a beautiful way to start out Christmas Day!

This is our “White Envelope”, I made it out of fabric and it goes on the Christmas tree.  You could use any white envelope, but I decorated it up and we use it year after year.  All of the grand kids know exactly what it is and they get caught up in the spirit also!

Here is the story that I read to my family:

“For the Man Who Hated Christmas”

by Nancy W. Gavin

 It’s just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree.  No name, no identification, no inscription.  It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past ten years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas–oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it—overspending…the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma—the gifts given in desperation because you couldn’t think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth.  I reached for something special just for Mike.  The inspiration came in an unusual way.

Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended; and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church.  These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes.  As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler’s ears.

It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford.  Well, we ended up walloping them.  We took every weight class.  And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn’t acknowledge defeat.

Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, “I wish just one of them could have won,” he said.  “They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them.”  Mike loved kids- all kids – and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse.  That’s when the idea for his present came.  That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church.  On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me.  His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in the succeeding years.  For each Christmas, I followed the tradition—one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on.

The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas.  It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.

As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents but the envelope never lost its allure.  The story doesn’t end there.

You see we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer.  When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up.  But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.

Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad.  The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing to take down the envelope.

 Mike’s spirit, like the Christmas spirit will always be with us.

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I decided to make a binder to put all the letters in.  It is so fun to re-read the letters every year and remember all of the kind acts of service performed by those we love!

Sometimes the letters include pictures of what the family did.  This particular page looks like a Halloween post, but it is the kids dressing up in disguises so they will not get caught in delivering some gifts. How fun is that and I love that the kids are learning to serve others!

Do any of you have fun traditions that you do at Christmas time?  It is such a wonderful time of the year and I love the Spirit of Christmas and wish that I could just “can” it and keep it with me all year long!

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Every year we have a little tradition that my boys hate, but that I love!  It is the hauling of all the Christmas decorations from the basement to the main floor! I have so many totes of decorations that it is crazy, but I love to decorate and at Christmas time, I do several rooms in my house!

All of these boxes go in my kitchen!  Plus I have two little trees that are already decorated, that I put in the adjacent dining room.

Just keeping it real here folks!

This is my main entry, where I have a Santa Claus collection and my Nativity collections.This is the living room.  My youngest son put up the tree for me, since I cannot even lift it!  His cute little new wife said to me “How does all of this even fit into your house, and how long does it take to put it all up?”  I just smiled.  My son replied that I would have it all done by Thanksgiving when they are all coming for dinner, and he is right it takes me 3-4 days to get it all put out.  I also have a tree in my bedroom and decorations out on the front porch.  So yes, I am a little bit obsessed!  OK, maybe I am a lot obsessed!(The kids wanted to put some ornaments on the tree, but we just put the one big Santa ornament on, because I have to straighten all the branches out and get all the lights plugged in right first!)

It was kind of fun this year because most of the grandkids wanted to help haul the boxes up and it made it a lot faster.  Even my boys were excited, because they know that it is not too many more years and their children can just take over with this fun little tradition!  And I would absolutely love it.

These pictures are the before and I will do a little house tour after Thanksgiving with the after.  How’s that?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from our family to yours!

Aren’t these just the cutest little spooks!

We had our Halloween party this weekend and this is what the goodies looked like!  I made this popcorn crunch and it was so good.  I used the popcorn puffs instead of popcorn, because I cannot eat popcorn with my braces. (What grandma has braces at this age?  I know of one crazy one!)   Anyway the popcorn was great and I added an orange flavoring to the orange chocolate and cut up orange slices !Here are the candy corn cupcakes and the mini donuts.  By the time I got around to frosting the cupcakes I was so tired that I just did them very quickly and you can tell, but oh well, they tasted great. I had a treat bag for all the kids to take home, complete with a mummy juice box, popcorn, candy and glo sticks for them to use tonight when they go trick or treating.We played a couple of games and had a fish pond which is a tradition that the kids ask about every year!

What are some of your Halloween traditions?  I hope that you all have a great day and a Happy Halloween!