A Cookie Cutter Diva's Life

this was fun to make! A cute twist to the normal cheese ball!



Ingredients
8 ounces of cream cheese (softened)
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
Scallion
Red bell pepper
Instructions
Mix the dried dill, garlic powder, and salt into the softened cream cheese.
Pack the mixture into a rectangular container lined with plastic wrap (you can reuse the cream cheese box).
Refrigerate it for at least 3 hours. Before serving time, set the unwrapped block of cheese on a platter and decorate it with a scallion bow and red pepper polka dots and gift tag.

The Christmas Pickle


The tradition of the Christmas Pickle has got to be one of the strangest modern Christmas customs in that no one is quite sure why it exists at all!

In the 1880s Woolworth stores started selling glass ornaments imported from Germany and some were in the shape of various fruit and vegetables. It seems that pickles must have been among the selection!

Around the same time it was claimed that the Christmas Pickle was a very old German tradition and that the pickle was the last ornament hung on the Christmas tree and then the first child to find the pickle got an extra present. However, this seems to be a total myth! No many people in Germany have even heard of the Christmas Pickle! (Like in Russia virtually knows the story of the supposedly Russian story of Babushka!)

There are two other rather far-fetched stories linking the pickle to Christmas.

One featured a fighter in the American Civil War who was born in Bavaria (an area of what is now Germany). He was a prisoner and starving, he begged a guard for one last pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and gave a pickle for him. The pickle gave him the mental and physical strength to live on!

The other story is linked to St Nicholas. It's a medieval tale of two Spanish boys traveling home from a boarding school for the holidays. When they stopped at an inn for the night, the evil innkeeper, killed the boys and put them in a pickle barrel. That evening, St. Nicholas stopped at the same inn, and found the boys in the barrel and miraculously bought them back to life!

There is an old legend about St Nicholas rescuing boys from a barrel but the barrel was originally holding meat for pies - not pickles!

So it's most likely that an ornament salesmen with a lot of spare pickles to sell invented the legend of the Christmas pickle!

The American city of Berrien Springs, MI (also known as the Christmas Pickle Capital of the World) has an annual pickle festival held during the early part of December.






So this is one of our favorite Christmas traditions we have adopted as a family! Every year when we wake up Christmas morning the kids unwrap their gifts and at the end the kids look for the "Christmas Pickle" which is a pickle that my son Keagan made that was hidden on our tree by Santa! The child who finds it, gets the extra gift! They have a ton of fun with this every year! Our pickle isn't the traditional ornament but rather looks like this

just got done baking a favorite in the family that has been made for years growing up as a family tradition even back when I was little and my siblings were little! They're gingerbread men cookies but we call it alien men because they look like little alien men lol


1 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 egg
2 1/2 cups flour
2tbs molasses
1 tsp cloves
pinch of salt
1 tsp cinnamon

raisins or red hots for decoration.

Cream butter and sugar. Add molasses and unbeaten egg. Beat until smooth. sift all the dry ingredients and add to molasses mixture. Roll 3 pecan size balls for each. Flatten first ball for head. Roll 2nd and 3rd slightly into a rope for arms and legs. Flatten slightly. Decorate adding eyes and buttons and bake at 375 for 8-10min.

Today we made our traditional gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, and lots of goodies from coconut for snow, marshmallows, candy canes, gum drops, chocolate chips and more! The kids had a lot of fun this year since they are getting older and can really get into making them even bigger and better!

We've had a fun last two days getting into the holiday spirit!

Yesterday we took the 3 older kids to see Arthur's Christmas after dropping the youngest at the babysitters. They loved it and it was a pretty cute movie! I even cried at the end! I know, I'm such a sap!


later that night we took off for our yearly tradition to visit the Blora Festival of Lights and stop in between for hot cocoa and a cookie! Their lights here are huge and so much fun! Between driving slowly through the lights and stopping to see santa and get our treat in between looking at lights at Santa's Shop it turned into a 3hr event!


The kids love it every year but I think this year Santa spent a little to much time in the sun because he was really tan this year! haha

Today for the fun part of our day we learned about the chinese moon festival and made Moon Cakes! Mmmm they were ever so yummy!!




On the 8th full moon of the lunar year comes the Moon Festival. On this night, the moon is at its brightest. Friends and family gather together to enjoy the moonlight and of course eat mooncakes!
This Festival is the equivalent of Thanksgiving Day and its origins go back to ancient times, when people would get together on the 15th day of the 8th moon (around September or October in our Calendar) on a day of thanksgiving for a good rice harvest. This is the time when crops and fruits are at their best and the weather is pleasant.

In ancient China, emperors would make offerings and sacrifices to the sun in spring and to the moon in autumn.

An so it is also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Autumn in the Chinese Calendar falls on the seventh, eighth and ninth lunar months.

Nowadays, families get together with friends to celebrate and enjoy the moon and the savory Mooncakes.

In celebrations around the world, there are the usual Dragon Parades, Lion Dances, and festivities of the season. Take a look at this Mid-Autumn Festival celebration in San Francisco,


Here's what real moon cakes look like




Er, yours likely will look more like these as ours did unless you are a better artist lol




Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup salted butter

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup strawberry (or your favorite) jam (traditionally red bean paste is used so if you want a more authentic version, you can use a can of red bean paste instead of the jam).

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the butter, sugar and 1 egg yolk and stir.

Mix in the flour.

Form the dough into one large ball and wrap it in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate dough for half an hour.

Unwrap the chilled dough and form small balls in the palms of your hand.

Make a hole with your thumb in the center of each mooncake and fill with about half a teaspoon of jam.

Brush each cake with the other beaten egg yolk and place on a cookie sheet. (We didn't have a brush to do this, so skipped the brushing step)

Bake for about 20 minutes or just until the outside edges are slightly brown.






We also studied about winter and made some fun winter painting outs of snow!

Foam shaving cream
White glue
Construction paper
Small plastic bowls
Paintbrush or Q-tips
Toothpicks, twigs, or craft sticks, if desired



We also made some paper snow flakes!


Some of our math fun was season today and Christmas themed pictures as well as writing letters to Santa!



Aidan's letter read..

Dear Santa,
I want an ipod touch. I want a iphone more. More cologne and gingle bells. I want a bird. I want a four wheeler. A country guitar or an electric guitar and a picture of rudolph.



Keagan's letter read..

Dear Santa,
I wanta monkey and a foobal and a light saber. I want to be like you and a reely little motor cycle and a i podd touch and a remote controle car. I want a monkey stuffed animal and a picture of rudolph. And a toy elf and toy phone and a hug from santa and to see you. I love santa.


Brooklyn's letter read..

Santa,
I want a ds and a monster high and a repunsel doll and dora kitchen and dora with her dogs and operation game.

Aidan finished up reading about edible flowers and sunflowers today! He was really amused with the different uses for so many flowers.

He made a sunflower out of popcorn today as part of his craft project blended in with his science lesson.


he also finished up on his history lesson reading about Greece and the Spartans! He made his own shield to defend himself in war after he finished his lesson out of card board!


He however is not to pleased with the fact they killed off their weak babies or left them out to die and could be adopted as slaves. In fact I'm pretty sure he's traumatized by it haha jk

Keagan continued on reading about Daniel Boone today and more about the Arctic Ocean, Tundra, Grasslands and more! He had some fun with making his own ocean and watching the different waves! We used a tub of water, food coloring and a blow dryer (supervised lol) to watch the different waves!