Twelve Days of Christmas :: Instagram Recap

Jessica is doing an Instagram recap link-up and I thought it would be fun to play along. Here is my caveat though… my IG is a private account where only a small number of people follow me. If you find me on IG and I don't approve your request to follow me, please don't take offense. I am purposefully keeping my IG account very small. Even though I use my blog name, it really is more of a private account. All three of my older children are now on IG and while we navigate learning to use this social media responsibly, we are all keeping our accounts very small and private. Thanks for understanding!

Twelve Days of Christmas: (there isn't a picture for every day but that's ok)

For the first time in years Sean and I have our own tree to decorate! This little tree was too small for the family anymore so we bought a bigger one for the kids to put their ornaments on and we moved this one to the front room. Some of the kids have never even seen our ornaments before.

✨Merry Christmas! ✨

"Mama, take my picture taking your picture." Biggest hit of Christmas with this three year old. It has a real button to push! (I found it on Etsy. It came with a cord to hang around their neck but my husband has a serious thing about choking toddlers to we cut the cord off. She still loves it.)

"Daddy, will you be my Frog Prince?"

Puppy Chow :: Our favorite New Year's Eve treat has been well guarded all day.

My little helper.

Epiphany Tart cooling. I wasn't going to make one this year but after the Twelfth Night cake disaster yesterday my kids were super excited to see this pretty treat go in the oven.

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night Rum Cake

Gluten Free Twelfth Night Rum Cake

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

 Recipe over at Catholic Cuisine!

 

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas...

     Tomorrow is Twelfth Night! Are you making any plans? We've decided on a few fun things... first of all will be a GF version of Jessica's delicious Twelfth Night Rum Cake! Mmmmmmmm! Followed by a reading of this Shakespearean picture book, Twelfth Night, of course. Our copy is from the library. Maybe yours has one too! We will also be reading the corresponding chapter in our read-aloud book, The Thirteen Days of Christmas. We've had a debate this morning as I set out our 12 Days of Christmas pillar. The pillars say it's 11 pipers piping (doesn't the angel make such a sweet little piper) and then tomorrow, 12 drummers drumming but in the book we are reading and the song we are so familiar with it says 11 drummers drumming and 12 pipers piping.

One more to go!

     My children also inform me that in this pop-up book which they received as a gift from a sweet aunt, uncle and lots of boy cousins, the order offers a third variation. Which leads me to wonder... who wrote this thing and where can I find the original? I guess it doesn't really matter. I like my pillars so I'm gonna stick with that order. (Oh, and I bought them a few years ago, after Christmas, when they were 70% off at the local Hallmark store. Nowhere near the original price or even the price listed on Amazon!)

     We also look forward to a little merrymaking in the form of some corny jokes and games and getting ready to celebrate the Epiphany on Sunday! So, again, what are your plans?

Update! While at the library, we snagged a copy of Twelfth Night: The 30-Minute Shakespeare to read aloud and act out. The kids are really kind of giddy about it. Or maybe that's just me.

 

Patrons for the New Year

My family really likes using Jenn's Saint's Name Generator to assist us in choosing new patrons for the new year. I usually print everyone a homemade holy card to use as a bookmark or just a reminder of who they chose, or rather... who chose them. Here are our special friends for this year...

The Professor

Sunshine

Shortcake

BigBoy

Cupcake

Mom

Dad

I hope you all rang in the New Year in health and happiness. We had a very quiet movie night with some fancy popcorn and our traditional Puppy Chow treats. Then headed off to a nice, quiet (read: sparsely attended) 9AM Mass. I am assuming everyone else went the night before. The children have the rest of the week off from school, but we will be working on our schedule for the next half of the year and getting some things better organized. I hope to share it all with you soon!

 

An Epiphany Tart

Thanks to the recommendation of my SIL, we have been enjoying a family read aloud called The Thirteen Days of Christmas.The children have found it entertaining and informative. The antics of the young man pursuing his true love are entertaining, but the insight into English traditions during the 12 days of Christmas have made us more than a little curious on more than one occasion... Churching Day, Adam's Day, Dancing Day and so on.

Allowing ourselves to indulge in a little Anglophilia, we were curious what the English traditions for celebrating Epiphany were. We are saving that last chapter for tonight! What we discovered was a spiced cake similar to a fruit cake which nobody was really keen on. Now, Jessica's rum cake looks divine! I could go for that! But not fruit cake. Sorry friends across the pond!

So we were pleasantly surprised when our research turned up this bit of tradition we'd never heard of but seemed simple enough... an Epiphany Tart!

I posted the recipe I used over at Catholic Cuisine, but you could also just use your favorite pie crust or shortbread recipe.

Dorothy Hartley, in her wonderful 'Food in England' describes the various designs of jam tart made (very competitively, especially for Church social events) by English housewives proud of their pastry-making skills. Skill was demonstrated by the number of different coloured jams that could be fitted between the spaces of the lattice top. One star-shaped design was called "Epiphany Tart" if it was made for this day. Done well, it must have looked like a stained-glass window. Use your favourite pastry recipe or brand, and find 13 different coloured jams, and you have it. ~The Old Foodie blog

We did not have 13 different jams, but we managed to get 6. I couldn't convince the kids to go for Tart Cherry or we would have had 7! Amaretto Peach Pecan was as crazy as they would get! It looks so pretty we almost don't want to eat it. If I can't figure out how to slice it, maybe we won't!

 

Quickly before midnight...

This is too sweet not to share!

Feast of the Epiphany

 We all enjoyed this Galette des Rois, a French almond filled pastry, with a feve inside and a traditional gold paper crown. You can read more about it over at Catholic Cuisine. We opted to let the person who found the favor crown the Child King.

 After processing through the house blessing, our three youngest, dressed as the three kings, presented the gifts to the Christ Child.

Blessings to you all at the close of this joyful season!

Merry Christmas, friends!

Psssst... Anyone else delighted that the Christmas season is over? I love this liturgical season, really I do, but I also love it when life (and my house) gets back to normal.

Bûche de Noël

I haven't made one of these in a long time, but I kind of had an itch to. You know that itch just had to be scratched! A Bûche de Noël is a traditional French dessert honoring the Christmas Yule Log. We decided to save ours for celebrating the Solemnity/New Year today.

I read somewhere that servants use to go find the largest log they could for the Christmas hearth because tradition held that they didn't have to go back to work until the log was all burned up. Husband asked if he had to go back to work when our Yule Log was gone and I said, "Yes! That's why I left out all the sugar!" Tee hee!

~Gum Drop Holly Leaves and Berries~

Flatten gum drop on a little bit of sugar to keep it from sticking to the counter.

Start cutting off bits to form a holly leaf. You can squeeze in the sides and shape it with your fingers once you have it cut. Chop off the tips of the red ones for the berries.

~Truffle Mushrooms~

Traditional Bûche de Noël are usually decorated with marzipan mushrooms but we are not very fond of marzipan, so I used white chocolate truffles and Pepperidge Farm Pirouttes.

Dusted with some cocoa powder, they look pretty convincing!

On the fourth day of Christmas...

Jessica has officially spread her candy making addiction across the internet! Candy molds are so easy to use and the treats are adorable!

 

I made little boxes with 12 days worth of homemade candy treats using these two sets of molds for each of the kids. My only insistence is that they must sing the appropriate verse before they eat their treat!