Mannheim Steamroller brings Joy to the World

To keep up the something-holidayish-every-day-this-month...

I grew up with this Christmas music, and it has always been some of my favorite.
Hubby and I went to the live concert for our first anniversary date (thus sharing it today!)...yeah, it's a bunch of old hippies acting half their age, but you know, it was really a lot of fun. And the music is awesome.

Five Years

Five years ago today Hubby and I were sealed for time and all eternity in the Portland Oregon temple. I've been thinking about this for a few months, and how five years seems like a looong time...and on the other hand it's gone by so fast. I can hardly remember what it was like to not be married, and yet it's been less than a 5th of my life. It will be 17 more years before my time as a married woman equals my time as an unmarried one. ☺ So, I thought today I'd share the story of my rings, since it's somewhat unique...

Hubby proposed with a simple solitaire. Classic, elegant, etc etc. He had picked the stone and the band and all that. A couple of days later he explained to me that he had bought a wedding band also, because he had thought it was pretty, but that he did not want me to feel obligated to have it if I would prefer something else. Well, I had been mentally designing my ring since my early teens, and the band he'd picked wasn't a match to my mental images. Pretty--yes, what I wanted--no. More than anything, the sentimental side of me really wanted for us to have matching rings, so since the band had a row of stones, I asked him how he would feel about having a ring with stones...he didn't want stones. So we concluded that we'd do something else, and I figured he'd exchange this ring for whatever we got instead.
Skip forward to actually choosing rings. This was not an easy proposition! I really liked little side stones that wrapped around the diamond, but the setting on my ring was too tall for them. The jeweler offered to set the diamond in a new band, but I am sentimental and wanted the band that Hubby had picked. Finally we found a ring for him that had a three-band look, and we got me two small bands (one to go either side of the solitaire).(This photo shows the height of my setting, and why a wrapped band was not an option. And yes, I know, his ring is WAY too big for my finger, but it was easier to get a clear picture if they were both on one hand)

Several months later I learned that there is an old Swedish tradition of having a three-banded wedding ring--an engagement band, a wedding band, and a band (also given at the wedding) representing motherhood and the children that were to come. I get a kick out of the fact that my ring follows a tradition I had not even known about when I chose it. ☺

But that is not the end of the story! Unknown to me, Hubby did not return that other band. Instead, he turned it into a mother's ring by having one of the diamonds removed, and having Wolf's birthstone put in. He gave it to me on our first Mother's Day (which was particularly moving since I had miscarried less than a month before). After Bear was born we added his birthstone too, and the middle stones are sitting there waiting for the next few siblings. ☺

(I wear it on the other hand, but again, for the sake of the photo...
and yes, I realize that it only has 5 stones, and no, we are not basing our family planning on this ring. If I need to get a new ring at some point I will! ☺)

Frugal Friday: Under the Tree

I hate wrapping paper: it's expensive, it gets torn and wrinkled, and it makes a mess on Christmas morning. If you only use it once, it's wasteful; if you save it and re-use it, it often looks tacky.
I hate those paper gift bags with tissue paper sticking out the top: I think they're ugly, and a lot of times the presents peek out (since they're just dropped in rather than really wrapped).

So today I'm sharing a list of ideas of wrapping alternatives (one of the things I love is that the frugal options are also green!):

• Make your own gift tags out of construction paper and/or last years Christmas cards [link]
• Use fabric gift bags (this is what we do) [link to my crafty shop blog where I talked about them] They are super easy, even little kids can wrap/unwrap with ease, and in the off-season we use them for storing breakable ornaments and twinkle lights!
  
• Cut up paper shopping bags to be your paper (some are colorful already, others can be decorated with stamping or stickers) [link]
• Get a roll of plain craft paper (so it's nice and wide), and decorate it--or leave the paper plain and just use pretty ribbons to brighten the package [link]
• Use old vinyl record covers (very cheap at thrift stores) to make cards or stiff mailing/packing envelopes [link]
• Use old maps--they are visually interesting, and most of us have some outdated ones (or ones from areas where we no longer live) [link]
• Reuse those metal cookie/popcorn tins--just wash them out and fill them back up!
• Save, trim, and re-use regular wrapping paper (though like I said, I think that reusing more than once or twice gets looking tacky pretty fast...)
• Try newspaper
• Do you have any other suggestions?! Leave them in the comments!
  

Holiday Recipe Bazaar

Have you got some good Christmas recipes? I do!! This week is the recipe bazaar at Internet Cafe Devotions...so buzz on over there for lots more recipes!

I've been posting the actual recipes on my cooking blog, but I'll post the stories here, and link to the individual recipes...

Great Grandma's Sugar Cookies
We had been making this recipe for years. It was extremely rich and we loved eating the cookies, but the dough was soft and could be difficult to work with if not chilled well enough (we had to put it back in the fridge between batches). When I was in my late teens, my mother came across another sugar cookie recipe and said "hey, this is almost the same as great-grandmas, except that instead of 1 cup of butter, it has 1 cube..."
...and then the light came on. Somewhere along the line someone had written "1c" instead of 1 cube, and ever since then we'd been doing a double portion of butter in the cookies. ☺
Since then I have opted to use 3/4 cup of butter--halfway in between the two. It maintains the rich flavor of our old recipe, but is much easier to work with.

Cardamom Bread
A Christmas tradition from Scandinavia, braided cardamom bread is not only sweet, but has a unique taste that only cardamom can give. (I've heard some Americans refer to it as cardamin, but as a good Scandinavian, I call it cardamom, or even "kardemomme" which is what it says on my spice jar!)
I grew up with this from my Danish ancestors...imagine my delight to learn that my husband had grown up with an almost identical recipe--from his Finnish ancestors! While our recipes are the same, our methods of eating are different: the Danes frost it and put on maraschino cherries (as pictured) and then tear off chunks from the braid, while the Finns slice it, toast it, and eat it with butter. We all eat it strictly at Christmas--my family saves it for Christmas morning, but my husband's family enjoys it throughout the holiday season. It's a treat I look forward too all year long.

Meltaways
My mother had been making these for years, and told me that she liked them as a Christmas cookie. With sugar cookie snowmen in competition, I could never understand why she felt this was a holiday treat... After I was married I made them one day and my husband said "this is what they make at Christmas in Norway!" Aha!

Soft Shortbread
A lot of us get those tins of danish butter cookies or scottish shortbread...my husband's family gets both. Well, this recipe tastes better than either one, and is much cheaper (and still pretty darn easy to make!)


We also make 'wreaths' (like rice krispy treats, but made with corn flakes and green food coloring and decorated with little red cinnamon candies), homemade fudge, gingerbread men, and occasionally hand-dipped chocolates... But the above few are my favorite.

Advent Spirals (Solstice Spirals)

Winter Solstice is coming in just a few days (December 21). On the last equinox I wrote about seasons and changes, but today I want to discuss ways to observe those cycles.
I feel like the passing of seasons should be observed with contemplation and meditation (I accidentally just typed 'medication'...the passing of seasons should be observed with medication...yeah...) I think God is pleased when we respect and connect with the natural cycles of the world He created for us. I think it helps us connect with the natural cycles within ourselves. I think it helps us connect to Him.

Spirals represent the forces of nature, eternity and transformation [link]. They are linked to circles, which represent wholeness and unity. It should be no surprise then that spirals should be used to represent and celebrate the changing of seasons.

In the Waldorf tradition the advent spiral is made on the floor with pine branches, and candles are set throughout (often apples are used as the candleholders). Each participant has a candle of their own, and walks around through the spiral to the center, lights their candle from the one in the center, and then walks back out, placing their lit candle somewhere along the way. Each person takes a turn and the whole thing is done in silence (ideally after dark, so that the candles can be fully appreciated). This blog post has beautiful pictures as well as a description of the advent spiral at her son's waldorf school.

Here are some pictures from our spiral last year:Wolf lighting his candle (Hubby on the left, on his way out of the spiral...the bald guy on the right is my dad)
Me (with Bear in the sling). It was a windy night and the candles kept going out...it took me about 15 tries to get my candle to light. ☺
My mom and I had read about the waldorf advent spirals, and were excited to do this one last year. The rest of the family obligingly participated, but mom says that none of them want to do it again this year.
I have mixed feelings...like I said, I want to take the time for meditation and contemplation, but I don't know how best to do it. I like the idea of the spiral, but I am interested to hear other ideas too.
Have you ever done an advent/solstice spiral? Tell me about it please! What do you do to celebrate (or at least take note of) the solstice?

Six (Holiday) Things...

I was tagged by Inspired Mama to do this six things meme.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

I've actually done almost the same thing (here) just a couple of months ago, and if you've been reading long at all you'll also know that I'm not shy about talking about myself. ☺ SO, I thought I'd take the angle of talking about specifically holidayish stuff...

1--I hate gingerbread men. Really, they are so gross. They smell awful too.

2--Chasing lights give me a headache if they are the the really fast blinky ones (they're ok outside, but I can't have them in the house, say, on the tree!) Out lights are here now and they are the kind where you push a button to change from solid to slow chasing to fast chasing to about 6 other things, and Bear discovered the button, so every time I walk through the room the lights are doing something new on half the tree (there are two strings with separate buttons). It's making me crazy!

3--I resented eggnog for years, because my dad would always make it (from scratch) on Christmas morning, and we all had to wait for him to finish it before we could go out and open presents. (We got our stockings before breakfast, but then had to eat before presents.) The wait might not have mattered if I was one of the ones drinking the eggnog...but dad's eggnog was thin and gross. I had no idea that eggnog could be good until I had some out of a carton when I was in college!

4--I prefer my eggnog (from a carton) with root beer in it. This is what my parents did, and I've tried it with sprite or other less flavorful sodas, and I don't care for it. Give me root beer or I'll pass on the eggnog! (Hubby thinks I'm very very strange.)

5--I adore Jack in the Box's eggnog milkshake that they have at Christmastime. It's the only time they have it, and I have lived outside JitB territory for the last 6 years, and I sure miss those milkshakes. (And yes, I still love their food even though I worked there for a summer in college and ate their food all the time!)

6--One of my family's (as in, my parents and siblings) traditions was that on Christmas afternoon we would watch all the movies we got as gifts. That worked ok the year we got the (original) Star Wars trilogy, but not so well the year we got the 5-pack of The Pink Panther movies...those are just a little too asinine to watch back to back to back!! To this day I can't remember which of the movies is which.

I tag some people I'd like to know a little more about:
Top Hat
Becky at "On Top of the World (or at least really far north)"
Becky N. at TNN
ThrowsLikeAGirl (I'm not sure if I've ever learned her real name!)
Carrie
Mae of "WordDork" (we were roommates, but honestly I'm just really curious what she'll put!)



By the way, on an entirely unrelated note, I made a very cool Northern Lights treasury over on my crafty blog...if you've got a minute, check it out!

Season of Light

You probably noticed my new banner there at the top...Winter 2008, the season of light...
Since posting about Santa Lucia's day this weekend I've been thinking about how so many celebrations at this time of year focus on light. (You haven't even seen the posts I've written for hanukkah and solstice!) I've been thinking about how illogical it is to celebrate Christ's birth at a time of year when we know it could not have really happened (the facts about shepherding teach us that shepherds would have only been in the fields at night in spring or fall, and my own religion teaches that Jesus was born in April). Why then should we celebrate birth and life in winter rather than in spring? Because this is the season of light! All faiths (and non-faiths) seem to recognize that. When the sunlight wanes, we realize its strength, and rejoice in the knowledge of its return. We light candles and fires, and cling to one another in fellowship and love as we walk forward toward the increasing light.
In the dark winter of eternity--the time when we live apart from the One Light--we can cling to one another in fellowship and love, creating our own little lights to share, and walking foward toward the time when His Light will be seen by everyone, and when Lightness and Goodness will rule the universe.

Why Christmas is Nice

This is one of my favorite Christmas stories, and the one we are performing for tonight's school play (which I am in charge of)...

Once upon a time, in the days before anything much was organized, and when people were all pretty much alike and had not yet learned to be doctors or politicians or secretaries or movie stars or optometrists, there were never any holidays, because everyone was too busy.

What they were busy doing was taking STUFF! They spent all of their time either taking stuff, or trying to take stuff, or planning to take stuff from each other, or fixing the walls and fences and barbed-wire in their section of the jungle so no one could take stuff from them.

In those days, it was considered absolutely necessary to have a LOT of stuff, and taking it gave people a stimulating feeling. When they took something especially good (something BIG) the feeling started in the back of their neck and spread down across their back and made a tingle in their left foot. This feeling was pleasant mostly because it was the only feeling anyone ever had, except maybe being scared or hungry.

Several techniques had been developed for taking stuff. These techniques were, first: SWIPING! This was the most difficult because, naturally, few people were foolish enough to leave any of their stuff lying around unguarded.

The second and most popular method was to find someone smaller than you, give them a BASH and take whatever stuff they had at the time.

The third was to find someone your own size, sneak up behind them, and give them an unexpected BASH. Then you could grab their stuff and run like crazy. This method, although dangerous, had the advantage of being healthful as the bashing and running prompted deep breathing and increased heart rate as well as keeping the waistline down.

Now in time the smaller people learned to be very clever at hiding and swiping. And the larger people developed a protective layer of bone across the back of the skulls. And some of the medium-sized discovered they could tell BIG LIES about the amount of stuff they had hidden, and that this was about the same as actually having stuff! And so a status quo came to exist and it balanced out pretty well for everyone... for everyone, that is, except Marvin Ouk.

Marvin Ouk lived in a rather provincial area of the jungle, and his only neighbors were named Gloog, Howk, Murdleigh, and Lester. Now Gloog, Howk, Murdleigh, and Lester had each accumulated about the same amount of stuff. They were all about the same size, and they had equally excellent walls and so it became difficult for them to increase their stuff.

One day, Murdleigh would bash Gloog and take his shirt and an egg beater, but the next day Howk would bash Murdleigh and get his shirt and a fountain pen. And so on ...

They were all getting bashed a great deal, and in the long run there was no percentage in it. So, after a while, they all concentrated mostly on taking stuff from Marvin. This was not an easy thing to do. Marvin was the smallest and the most simple and the least devious of all the people. He didn't even have a proper wall or fence and as a result . . . he had no stuff. In fact, Marvin never had anything! He lived on toadstools, since no one would take them. The only feeling he ever experienced was when no one hit him on the head. He really enjoyed being not hit!

So it wasn't long before Gloog and Howk and Murdleigh and Lester gave up even trying to take stuff from Marvin. It wasn't worth the trouble it took to bash him, because although he bashed easily, Marvin was concussion-prone, and merely fell quietly, face forward, and didn't yell or holler or do anything that was fun.

And so in this part of the village the status became more quo than was suitable. Actually, the status became over-quo’d, and everyone sat behind their walls and got restless.

Murdleigh became particularly uptight about the situation. He was afraid he would lose his skill at taking stuff. So he rushed out and found Marvin Ouk and in his mind he pretended that Marvin was carrying a whole bunch of stuff. He gave Marvin an excellent bash and pretended to take all the imaginary stuff away from him, but it didn't work! He didn't get any feeling or tingle at all!

He went back home and fretted some more. "It didn't work to pretend," he said to himself. And he began to think. Suddenly a big idea came to him. A really big idea. "If I'm going to practice on Marvin, I must have it as close to the 'real thing' as possible. Marvin has got to have some stuff that I can take away from him!" He paused, because he had to make up a word to express the odd idea he had in his head. "Give," he said. "I will give Marvin something first. Then I can take it!"

So Murdleigh searched through all his stuff, and he picked out a spoon with a broken handle, and he went out to find Marvin. When Marvin saw him, he sighed and looked around for a soft spot to fall on. He was, of course, very surprised, even shocked, when Murdleigh stopped in front of him and made no bashing gestures!

"Ouk," said Murdleigh, making a peculiar twist in his face (which later they called a smile), "Ouk, I have some stuff here. I want to . . ." Murdleigh swallowed and continued with some effort. "I want . . . I want . . . I want to GIVE you this stuff." He pushed the spoon forward. Marvin backed away. "Murdleigh has sprung a gasket," he thought to himself. "I better get out of here quickly as he could be dangerous!" But Murdleigh anticipated Marvin's escape, and he seized him by the arm. "Here!" he said, and placed the spoon in Marvin's hand. "I want you to have this!"

Then he stepped back, and he prepared to give Marvin a bash and take the stuff in the usual, approved manner, but before he could do a single thing, before he could move even one muscle, he felt a strange, new feeling. A feeling ten times more powerful than the feeling he always had when he took stuff. It started in the back of his chest, and it spread not just through his back and his left foot, but all over. He began to tingle in both feet and both hands and on top of his head!

The new feeling was so pleasant and so powerful that Murdleigh caught his breath and sat down on the ground. "Ha!" he said and again made that kind of funny twist on his face in Marvin's direction. Marvin ran away.

"Who would have suspected?" said Murdleigh. "Giving stuff is . . . " He searched for a noise he could use to describe all this that was happening. "Oooser?" he said. Then "Meeper?" "Neeper." "Nipper." "Nisser." "NICER!" "Nicer" sounded exactly right. "GIVING stuff," Murdleigh thought, "is a whole lot nicer than taking stuff."

Murdleigh soon found out that part of the new feeling was a desire to let everyone else know about it. So he did. Another great discovery was made. The secret of the new feeling has been passed down from century to century. But sometimes we don't see too much evidence of it except at Christmas time, when instead of bashing and taking, people are smiling and giving, and it feels very nice!

Simple Christmas: Three Gifts

This isn't something we're doing this year, but I do like the idea. I know families who do it every year, and while I don't think we will ever be that family, I would like to do this with our family ever 5 years or so...

If you're tired of the stress and expense commonly associated with the holidays, consider the idea that less can be more...
So, Jesus got three presents, right? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. So just have three presents for each family member.
Some families even take it an extra step and make the presents fit into categories:

1. Something for self--this is what most people do--something intended for the recipient alone
   
2. Something to share--games or movies for example
3. Something for Jesus (or to remind them of Jesus)--scripture books or movies, uplifting music CD, etc

I think this idea is a great way to simplify Christmas and help our kids (and ourselves) focus on the less-materialistic side of things. ☺

Santa Lucia Day

"During the cold months of winter in the far northern countries of Scandinavia, the light and warmth of the sun are felt and seen only a few hours each day, if at all. Through those cold, dark days candles glow in the village windows, reminding all that the light kindled in homes and hearts cannot be darkened. Over the centuries the source of this light has been commemorated in a beloved Christmas tradition: the procession of Santa Lucia, queen of lights.
"On the 13th of December, a young woman dressed in a white gown and wearing a crown of lingonberry twigs and blazing candles, would carry a torch from farmhouse to farmhouse. To each family she would bring baked goods and warm conversation, before returning home by break of day. Every village had it's own Lucia.
In Norway and Sweden it is still the custom on December 13th for a young girl wearing candles on her head to lead the Santa Lucia procession of lights through the village. The light and hope she brings symbolizes a greater Light: the Light of Life, whose coming we celebrate this Christmas."

~~read by Sissel (famous Norwegian singer) at the 2006 Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert (where she was the guest artist)


While some villages celebrate Santa Lucia day on a grander scale, many scandinavian families celebrate privately. The oldest daughter in the family would dress up early in the morning and bring saffron buns and coffee to the rest of the family as they awoke. I am the oldest daughter in a family of Scandinavian heritage, but I'm sorry to say we never did this tradition...I suspect it has to do with the fact that I was never the early riser of the family. ☺
Incidentally, most celebrators now use electric candles or even paper crowns (with paper candles) rather than actual flames...there were a few too many cases of girls catching their hair on fire!