Christmas Superlatives - 2013

Aaaah, another Christmas has come and gone.  Christmas always leaves in its wake some good memories, new experiences, failed experiments, and special joys.

Here are my Christmas awards.

Best Christmas Creativity:

Love this last-minute brainstorm.  I punched stars out of reversible paper (iridescent/gold) and then stitched them together into a fun and sparkly "bunting."  They got wound around the small tree by the front door.  Yeah, the one usually thickly covered with Hallmark children's ornaments.  This year it was my tree, and I wanted it simple.  Star bunting, lights, done.


Most Shocking Christmas Visitor:

Yes, indeed, one of Santa's elves, straight from the North Pole.  Who knew they grew them so big?  Cousin Aaron delighted all the kids . . . ages 2 to 62!!


Best New Addition to the Family:

Oh my word . . . what can I say about these two precious kids??!!  New cousins, grafted by God from their family of origin into our family.  Welcome, boys!


Favorite Incorporation of Vintage:

I love these tiny, old bottles, that in their past life held everything from rat poison to hair tonic.  I love them even more with tiny white lights, evergreen branches, pine cones, and tiny, glittery glass ornaments sitting atop them.


Biggest Christmas Fail:

If you're going to make monkey bread, stick with the canned rolls, close your eyes to the ingredients on the label, ignore the stomach aches that your gluten-free family members will complain of.  Whatever you do, don't even bother trying to make a gluten-free alternative.  Monkey bread?  Gluten-full or not at all!


Best Christmas Game:

Oh my goodness, we had fun with Scattergories, all of us playing together, Oldest Son's friend included as a part of our dysfunctional, game-playing family.  Too many arguments, too much debate and defense, too much posturing and placating, too much fun!!


Favorite new ornaments:

Mmmm, love these.  I've figured out that when it comes to Christmas decorations, I love a blend of natural and glittery.  What could be better than these shimmering pine cones?


Cutest New Christmas Decor:

Love this precious new Mary, Joseph, and baby that Youngest Daughter made in Kidstuff.  Sweet, simple, natural, homemade.  Definite Christmas keeper.


Best Christmas Gift:

Hands down, having all family members together, opening their stockings in their jammies, laughing over the traditional Christmas red boxers and I-tunes gift cards, hearing the Christmas story, choking down a few bites of gluten-free monkey bread, enjoying the family God has blessed us to be, flaws and all.  Best gift ever.

Sugar Cookies . . . Finally

I love butter.  I love sugar.  I love flour.  I love vanilla.

Mix it all together, and the next logical deduction equals = I love sugar cookies!!

Simple to mix up, fulfilling to roll out, fun to cut, easy to bake, creative to decorate.  And that's before you even get to the eating!!  Sweet, tender, soft, chewy, and (with sprinkles or colored sugar) a little crunchy.  A world of delightful texture and taste.  Uncomplicated, unassuming, comforting.  Sugar cookies.

When this household suddenly went gluten-free, years ago, I thought sugar cookies were now extinct under this roof.

Trial runs with rice flours, and mixes incorporating bean flours of different types left us with unappetizing, thick, grainy, or heavy cookies.  You can only hide so much under a substantial layer of powdered sugar icing and sprinkles.  The experimental cookies usually sat neglected on the counter until they were so hard that I was doing us all a service by dumping them.  And yet again dumping the hope of a gluten-free sugar cookie that could be enjoyed.

 Enter the dear Silvana and her marvelous gluten-free flour mix that can be made right in your own kitchen (here).  Take a deep breath and exhale slowly.  It is more time-consuming to combine these flours; it is more costly to purchase these flours than the 5-pound bag of Gold Medal sitting on the market shelf.  However, this mix is gluten-free, and in cookie baking, the flour is a highly billed player!!  No compromises with the flour.

And so, this year we ended up with a chewy and delicious sugar cookie for the first time in years.  And if I ended up making 6 batches of these delights, I can hardly be blamed.

Gluten-Free Sugar Cookies

1/4 pound butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. cream or milk
1 1/4 cups Silvana's gluten-free flour mix (recipe here) - I leave the salt out of the flour mix!!
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder

Cream the butter.  Gradually add the sugar, beating until light.  Add the egg, vanilla, cream/milk and beat thoroughly.

Mix the flour mix, salt and baking powder together.  Add to the first mixture and blend well.  Add more flour mixture if the dough is too soft.  Sprinkle flour mix on the rolling surface, roll cookies to 1/4 inch thickness.  Cut out shapes and back for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Frosting:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp. milk
2 tsp. light corn syrup
1/4 tsp. vanilla 
food coloring

Stir powdered sugar and milk until smooth.  Beat in the corn syrup and vanilla until icing is smooth and glossy. If the frosting is too thick, add more corn syrup.  Divide icing into separate bowls and stir in food coloring as desired.

Christmas Hope

And in despair I bowed my head.

There is no peace on earth, I said.

For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,

God is not dead, nor doth He sleep,

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men!

Merry Christmas to all and God's comfort to those who hurt at this Christmas season.

all pictures via a beautiful world

Things Accomplished, Things Relinquished

At Christmastime, you can't do it all.  You just can't.  Well . . . at least I can't.  I try not to think evil thoughts about those that seem to.

This year, something I really wanted to do was to put a little time into wrapping presents.  Our tree was vintage papers and gold and lime green, and I really wanted a natural look with the lime green touch for the presents too.

Usually, I get around to wrapping all my gifts at about 11:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve and am doing well to throw some Target paper around the present and locate the Scotch tape.  That would be a good Christmas Eve.

This year, the presents were wrapped slightly earlier with some stamping, curling of ribbon, stuffing of tissue, punching (of different papers . . . not of family members) and gluing.  And then I arranged the lime and natural brown presents under the lime and natural brown tree and . . . oh, my heart!!  Worth every minute.  ::sigh::  Even worth seeing the presents ripped to shreds by teen-aged males without so much as a cursory glance at the stamping, curling, and artfully arranging.  Still worth it.

On the other hand, I relinquished all Christmas baking.  Yes, all.  I just never got to it.  With 4 now that struggle with wheat, many of the recipes just aren't the same with the GF mix.  And I was just never in the mood.  Not this year.

Well, I take that back.  In a fit of motherly guilt, I did throw together one small recipe of GF sugar cookies on Christmas Eve, let Youngest Daughter press out the bells and trees, and angels and then hurriedly frost.

Hardly to be called Christmas "baking."  More like a quick Christmas craft project.  But it made both of us feel better . . . she more creative, me more of a good Christmas-mom . . . a win/win to be sure.

Before We Leave the Subject of Christmas Decor . . .

Remember the child who was so desperate for Christmas decorations that she taped pieces of green and red thread to her wall?

Yes, this one:

Well, I can't leave the subject of Christmas decor without giving you a little peek in to her room.

Between school crafts and my cast off decorating goodies from year's past, she has managed to "decorate" every square inch of her bedroom . . . bringing herself much Christmas delight and good cheer.

Shiny red Christmas garland, snipped into little bits and taped (and apparently re-taped and re-taped) 

onto pieces of furniture, walls, and windows.

Santa stickers peeled and stuck with abandon onto other un-Christmas-y pieces of decor.

A little Rudolph for the door.

Gold ribbon to accent her wall art . . . 4 glittery ornaments taped on for good measure.

All dresser knobs sporting shiny Christmas balls and someValentine's (!!) ribbon to bring in a little red.

Crowning achievement:  Bookshelf stuffed with Christmas balls, golden crown, Christmas carousel, Rudolph, Christmas stickers, figurines, gingerbread boy, and some out-of-place white poinsettias.

I do fully expect that one day I will drive up to this child's suburban home and find a molded plastic Santa in her front yard, pulled by 6 pink flamingos.  Things just seem to be headed that way in the decor department.

Wreath with (more) Vintage Paper

Since I am soundly in love with my vintage paper strips, and since there were plenty,

I decided to use them as a "ribbon" for the front door wreath.  I just turned the strips in to loops (instead of circles this time!) and then used the long strips as long, flat ribbon.
.

Loving the vintage, woodsy feel, with red berries, pine cones, and a sweet little "bottlebrush" bird.

The best part of my wreath?  At night, with the light of the house shining through the glass door, it fairly glows!

Paper Chain a la Vintage Book

Somewhere out in the vast expanse of Blogland, I got a couple of ideas and put them together and came up with a plan that I had to have for our tree this year.

I decided to make a paper chain for our tree out of a vintage book and then glitter one edge of the paper chain.  Yummy.

First stop was Kinko's, where they cut off the binding of a 1940's book and then sliced the pages into thirds, lengthwise.  Alfredo was my Kinko's assistant, and, my, did the two of us have a time oooh-ing and aaah-ing over the warm, old pages, the bending of the strips into circles, the bliss that was to be my gilded vintage paper chain.  He told me about the garland he had made out of the pages of a vintage book . . . the folding, the wrapping, the draping.  The two of us stood there, enraptured, loving the other's idea, hands over our heart to still the wild, creative beating.  (Even better, he decided not to charge me!)

Once home, I turned half of my strips into circles, with glue and clothespins and left the other half as strips.

After filling a bowl with glue and another with chunky gold glitter, I dipped one edge of all the circles into glue and then glitter.

And then one edge of all the strips was dipped into glue and then glitter.

For several days, there was endless assembling, pinning, drying . . . and then finally the chain garland was lowered over the banister and draped around the tree.

I think Alfredo would be proud.

Going Natural (or How a Cat Got Us Off Track and a Dog Corrected the Matter)

Back in the good old days of the "M" family, it was a real Christmas tree all the way!  Every year. 

Love the smell!  Love the feel!!  Even love the ever-dropping, vacuum clogging needles.

And then into our lives came a cat.  A cat with a Christmas problem.  Vienna loved gnawing on real Christmas tree needles . . . juicy, crunchy, pungent with Christmas smell.  Only problem was, her tummy couldn't take it, and she quickly vomited it up.

And so that was her Christmas . . . irresistible urge to partake . . . undeniable urge to vomit.  On living room carpet, corners or couches, and at the puddling bottom of long draperies.

Since this was clearly not going to work, out went the soul-satisfying ideal of the real Christmas tree and in  came a steady procession of artificial Christmas trees . . . complete with whole sections of pre-lit branches that wouldn't light, a steady shedding of PVC needles, and the annual stuffing of the 9.5' tree into a box clearly made for it's 6.5' foot cousin.

Last year, seeing as the cat was no longer with us, the dogs took things into their own strong paws. 

While we were away at a Christmas party one evening, the dogs apparently had had their fill of Christmas.  It appears that one dog may have gotten his leash wrapped around the base of the tree.  And then in a fit of panicked angst fought the Christmas tree for his freedom.

When we came home, the giant tree was languishing on its side, large chunks of its PVC green-ness crushed and bent, and the newly purchased stand with all four of its tough green legs snapped off cleanly.

What had been started by a cat had now been finished by a dog.

So, this year found the "M" family happily purchasing a one-time-use-only, real Christmas tree . . . complete with smell, feel, and dropping needles.

Mmmmmmm.

The shop trimmed it, bagged it, and stuck in all the trimmed goodness to tuck into corners,

on top of the refrigerator,

and coming down the bannister.

 Sometimes it just takes a dog to put things to rights.