Annual Skate

No Christmas Season is complete without our annual Church Christmas skate!  Isaac, in particular, had anticipated this event for months already.  He was determined that HE was going to skate this year.  I, on the other hand, had decided I might take a 'year off' from skating.  You know, sit on the sidelines, drink Starbucks, visit with my fellow ladies in waiting....So, off we went with our plate of goodies and our winter wear.  We got there, fought the crowds for skate rentals.   Side rant -->  No, we don't have our own skates.  Yes, we live in Canada.  Truth is, it hardly ever gets cold enough in our parts for our pond to freeze over long enough for skating so skates would be a wasted investment...especially for the kiddos who's feet grow every time I'm not looking! <--end of rant.  Ok, where were we?  Oh yes, in line to get our skate rentals and Isaac is adamant that he will NOT be skating.  This was, of course, after we'd already paid.  Sheesh, 3 year olds.  Anyway, long story longer, I got skates simply based on my frugal nature.  If they're paid for then SOMEBODY'S gonna wear them!  What do you think happened?  I was out there, doing my jumps and twirls best to stay upright and Rob skates up to me and says, 'Isaac wants to skate'.  Of course he does.  So....back for another skate rental purchase and alas the Hildebrandts were all skating.  Fun night with peeps.  I am thoroughly enjoying our church community.  Seeing the kids grow up together, seeing the new generation of 'young marrieds' make connections as they start their little families, and feeling at peace with the gift of friendship of so many.  We ended the evening with caroling and goodies, then off to home to put some very tired kiddos to bed.  Ahhh...another memory made!

It Was a Memorable Tree!

Well, our 2011 live Christmas tree will sure go down in history as one of our more memorable trees! 

I'll sum it up in point form:

- It was a beautiful, full tree with a wonderful aroma

- We purchased it from our friends Mark & Sarah, in honour of their brand new baby daughter, Megan.

- The funds for the tree went straight to Mark & Sarah's work at the Music for Life    School in Ughanda. 

   (Where the African Children's Choir children are educated)

- It was a huge tree!  So huge we had to cut the trunk way down to fit in the iron tree stand!

- It fell over.  A lot.  I finally got mad enough that I tied it to the wall in 2 places.

- It was infested with spiders.  A lot.  I find about 6 each day crawling on the ceilings all over the house.  And, I walk through cobwebs all over my house. blech.

- It was a beautiful, full tree with a wonderful aroma.  (I had to end on a good note, didn't I?)

A parting shot of our kids with the beautiful William's kids!
(I think they were wondering why Daddy was letting us cut a tree down in their yard!)

Sarah was the ever-gracious hostess who made us hot chocolate.
We all had a nice little snuggle with one week old Megan!

Um, Hon?  Do you need a hand?  HON?

Like I said, memorable.  We had a lovely, quiet evening here where Uncle Ken untangled lights and the kids and Rob decorated.  The carols were on and I was snapping pictures.  I love Christmas, and the tree is a part of that!

The Family that 'tubes' together...

Ah, I'm back!  Did you miss me?  It's been ages since I've blogged but it's been for a few reasons.  Reason number one:  I love blogging but family and friends come first and they've been all consuming (in a great way) through this past month.  Reasons two:  I really, really wanted to update the look of my blog and start the new year off right.

Oh, speaking of which, Happy New Year!  I had to write '2012' on a form for the first time today and it felt weird.  Even though my brain knew it was 2012, my hand hesitated!

We had a busy and fun Christmas Season.  There's lots I'm going to have to catch you up on but I'll start with our most recent adventure.  Monday was the last day of break before the kids headed back to school so we decided to head on up to Hemlock Mountain for a fun day of tubing in the snow.  The Tam family joined us and we had the most excellent day!  We packed up the snow gear, lunches, and the camera and headed on up the mountain.  We are so fortunate to live in a place where we can drive one way to the ocean and the other way to the mountains!   The kids enjoyed the trip up, but didn't believe us that there would, indeed, be enough snow to tube on once we got there.  The last 15 km of the drive were steep switchbacks on a gravel/mud road.  Great fun!

We made some awesome memories and enjoyed watching the kids have so much fun.  We ended the day with hot chocolate at the Tam house followed by a take out dinner with our wonderful bro Ken.  Fabulous, fabulous day!  We'll definitely do it again!

Just my Style...

Wanted to show ya'll a giftie I got over Christmas.  My friend, Kim, made this beautiful wreath for me!  It fits in with my house just fine!  Thanks Kim...I loves it.

Ta-Da....

My secret project, well, 1 of a few, can now be revealed!  I started this quilt over a year ago for my mom.  It truly was a labour of love.  This was a crazy/rag quilt.  Most of the fabrics in it are flannel, and there is a subtle Christmas theme to the fabrics.  This was a challenging project for me.  It starts out with creating 5 stacks of fabric, with 10 squares in each pile for a total of 50 squares.  Once you have the 5 piles, you randomly cut one vertical and one horizontal cut through each pile.  Once the stacks are cut, you 'shuffle' the stacks according to the pattern directions.  Then, the crazy part...sewing them all back together.  Anyway, here's a few shots of the process and the outcome.  My mom loved it and that's all that matters to me!  Love you Mom!

The Prep Work:

The placing of blocks (harder than you'd think):

Putting the binding on (one of my favourite parts):

And, Ta-Da, the finished project:

The Kids & Christmas...

I hand-made a lot of my Christmas gifts this year.  I managed to get everything done ahead of schedule, no all nighters were involved.  I'll post a little more on those projects soon, but my point is, I didn't have a whole lot of time before Christmas to post about all the going ons that we attended. Here's a quick catch up of things the kids were involved in over Christmas.  I already posted about the school Christmas sing a long, but here's a few more.

The children's Christmas program at church was as cute as ever. The uncles came out to see the event. (Rob had to haul Isaac off the stage part way through...for obvious 'parent of a 2 year old' reasons):

Olivia had her Piano Christmas Concert. She played jingle bells and it sounded great!

And the kids helped us out with a few songs on Christmas Eve.  They rang the bells for us while we sang 'Come on Ring those Bells' and they helped us out on kazoos  for the

oh so memorable rendition of 'Mary's Boy Child'. 

All in all a wonderful Christmas Season with a some wonderful memories made!

Christmas Morning...

One of our favourite traditions is staying overnight at my parents' house on Christmas eve and then spending Christmas day together. (We spend Boxing Day with Rob's family)  The sleeping over part started years ago when Rob and I were first married and he had to go out on Christmas Eve to plow snow for half the night.  I didn't want to be alone, so my parents invited me to their place to stay the night.  It was one of those traditions that started in the most unintentional way and has become very fun and special.  We went to our church Christmas Eve program first, then over to Rob's aunts for a lovely meal, then off to my parents place.  Once the kids were in bed we loaded up the tree with gifts, stuffed the stockings and settled in for the the night.  My brother joined us in the morning and away we went.  My brother has been handed the Santa wand the past few years and he's the designated present hander over.  I was so excited to see my family open my gifts this year.  I felt like I put a lot of time and effort into the bought and made gifts and I was excited to see their reactions.  Here's a few pics from the day.  

Stockings first!
My brother had me in the draw and he did a great job!

This was the year that Isaac seemed to figure out how it all works!

It was so nice to have my Grandma Harding spend the day with us.  We missed having Nana Smith with us this year, it was our first Christmas without her.

Out with the Old, In with the New...

Ok, so I wasn't exactly referring to the New Year specifically, but while we're on the topic, Happy New Year!!!  2010 was a year full of changes, some good, some not so good, but what year isn't like that?  I am looking forward to a fresh new year.  I'm not a big goal setter for the New Year.  I love goal setting, just not the whole hoopla of goal setting on a particular date.  Anyway, a few of my (ongoing) goals:  continuing to become more secure in who I am and who I want to be.  Focusing time and energy on friendships that are worthwhile, friendships that give and take, not just take.  Letting the 'little stuff' roll off my back.  Becoming more accepting of others, less judgemental.  Walking closer to my Heavenly Father who will make all these goals worthwhile and fruitful if I seek Him first in all of them.

So, what WAS I referring to in terms of out with the old, in with the new?  Are you ready?  Drumroll please...POTS & PANS!!!  Yes, I know, it's so exciting!!!  For me. 

The truth is that it was time.  My faithful pots and pans that we used wedding money to buy, over 15 years ago, needed to be laid to rest.  It's been bugging me in the back of my mind for a couple of years now.  I took an informal cooking seminar thingy a few years back and our lovely instructor, Mrs. Marilyn, taught me a few things about my kitchen.  I'm such a keener when it comes to domestic stuff..I LOVE it!  Anyway, one of the first things she said in her class was this:  "please tell me none of you are using T-Fal, or nonstick, cookware!  Right???  NONE of you...because if you are you're slowly poisoning your family!"  My keener, nerdy smile quickly disappeared and I was thinking everyone must be cringing inside because we ALL use it right?  RIGHT?  crap, nope, we don't all use it, just me.  In my defense, I follow the instructions (as any good keener shoud) and only ever turned my pots up to medium heat, never max, and I always hand wash them.  But the reality is, my finishes were starting to come off, and I couldn't fool myself into thinking that the finish was only coming off when I was washing them.  Anyway, long story longer, I took Marilyn's advice and decided to slowly start replacing my cookware with something good quality and safe.  Marilyn recommended Paderno cookware.  It's a high end cookware, but it goes on sale every now and then.  I watched for the sales and over the past 2 years had slowly started buying one piece at a time.  Ouch, hate spending that kind of money on pots and pans.  I had 3 pieces of this beautiful cookware, and I was too scared to use it.  I only pulled it out when I ran out of pots while I was cooking a large meal.   Pathetic, I know.  But, BUT, I'm happy to announce that thanks to my parents' generosity this Christmas I am the new owner of a beautiful set of Paderno cookware!  (Applause here, ok, nevermind, I'll do it for both of us)  My parents are incredibly generous people, and I was totally fooled when I opened this heavy wrapped box.  Even after I tore the paper off I still thought it was something else in the box because I was thinking my mom had taken my advice and bought herself a great set of pots and pans earlier this year.  Sneaky woman, she is.  Anyway, when the lightbulb finally came on, I realized that I was the lucky owner of this stellar cookware.  I took it home, put it on the floor and just stared at it for the first few days.  What would the implications be of opening these up and putting them in my drawer?  Well, caution to the wind, I did it.  I DID IT!  I carefully took my old faithful, pathetic, poisoning pots and pans out of the drawer, cleaned the drawer (new pots and pans deserve a clean drawer) and replaced with my new ones.  I had a moment with the old ones, thanked them for our years together.  Kidding, I didn't, that would be lame.  The only thought I gave the to the old ones was, 'what do I do with these, can they be recylced?...ah, I'll let hubby decide'.  So yes, my friends, not only are those pots and pans sitting pretty in my drawer, but I've used them.  Multiple times.  And, I LOVE them. 
Ok, insanely long post for a new set of pots and pans, but I pride myself in the fact that the little things in life still excite me.  Thanks Dad and Mom, for the pots and pans, and for my love of exciting 'little' things.
So, goodbye to these guys:

And Hello to these babies...

 
Editor's Note:  I thought it would humorous to add that I met Mrs.Marilyn for lunch yesterday, after I'd already pre-scheduled this blog post, and she handed me a Christmas  present.  It was heavy, and shiny.  Guess what it was?  A kick butt frying pan.  Marilyn says she can still recall the look on my face when she gave her talk about using non stick cookware.  And as fate would have it, she gave me the one size pan that I didn't have.  Yeah...my life is complete.  That is, the pots and pans portion of my life.  Thanks Mrs. Marilyn.  You rock.

Baking with Grandma...

My mom did some baking with the girls just before Christmas.  The girls were so excited to do this with Grandma, and I appreciate that my Mom took time to do this with the girls!

So Purdy...

Not much snow, just a whisper, but oh so pretty...

A Favourite Tradition...

Our Annual Church Skate is one of our favourite family traditions.  This year was no exception!  My brother, Dave, came along and we gave it our all.  My only regret is somehow not getting any pictures of Olivia!  She's already forgiven me.  Here's a few shots of the event...

The Ladies Who Brunched...

Formally known as the Ladies who Lunch.  Our group of gals got together for our annual Christmas Brunch.  It was a lovely day.  This year the brunch was at my place.  There was so much laughter and fun and the time flew by faster than any of us thought!
The food was so delicious and plentiful, the cards were special, and the gifts were beautiful! Here's a taste of our time together:

Prezzie Time:  Rhonda recieved some beautiful hand knit gloves from Cindy as well as a few other goodies.  Jill recieved some lovely place mats hand-sewn by Sarah, and Sarah recieved a gorgeous quilt that Rhonda made her!  I had Cindy in the draw this year and I made her a table topper specifically for her bright and cheery kitchen.  I'm so glad she liked it!

And now for my present...this deserves a post all on it's own, but I won't hold you in suspense!  Jill had me in the draw this year and I am still overwhelmed by the beauty of the gift she made me.  This is an advent/family tradition calendar of sorts.  It is a flip style book that has a page for every day of December.  Jill decorated each page individually and it's all ready for me to add pictures of our family traditions.  I have never seen this before and I instantly fell in love with it!  I love anything paper crafted and this gift is so special to me!  I think I will have to make a few of these for future gifts.  Jill put so much love and effort into this gift, and that in itself is such a special part of the gift.  So, thank you Jill.  This is one of the most beautiful, and meaningful, gifts I have ever recieved.

Thanks Ladies...for one of our best memories yet made!

Christmas at King...

The girls' school has a traditional sing-a-long every year at Christmas.  The sing along was on the last day of school for the year and I was working so this year Rob took the afternoon off so he could go with the kids.  Abby's Kindergarten class was being featured so out came the camera!  The pictures turned out a little blurry, but I appreciate Rob taking a few while he juggled Isaac!  Abby's class performed a few numbers and Abby had no trouble belting it out and grooving through it all!  Shane & Angela Wiebe were kind enough to lead the sing-a-long portion.  We will miss them so much when they move out East!  There's nothing like a kids Christmas presentation to get you in the Christmas spirit!

A Christmas Project...TBC

TBC = To be completed.  A friend of mine recently asked me to teach her a quilting/sewing project.  We had fun browsing at the local quilt shop and choosing one of my favorite lines of fabric by Moda called 'Fruitcake'.  We've spent a few evenings over the past months getting together and assembling this cute table topper.  I've done this particular one many times, but usually with the fall theme.  In all the hustle and bustle of the season, we've had to put this project on hold for now.  It's so close to completion, but there are other projects that HAVE to be finished by Christmas for gifts, and these ones will have to wait!  Speaking of gifts, I did, indeed, complete this exact topper as a Christmas gift for a friend recently.  You'll see the finished product in an upcoming post. 

Cranberry Bliss...

Baking is one of my favourite hobbies, period.  But, Christmas baking is even MORE fun!  I already posted about our big bake-fest, but I decided to do a few other recipes just for fun.  This one was a first for me.  I googled 'Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bars' and came up with a whole realm of suggestions, but this is the one I singled out.  I have to give bragger rights to top secret chef Todd Wilbur for his version of this creation. 

Cake:
1 cup butter at room temp.
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cups diced, dried cranberries ( I chopped mine up fine in my mini food processor)
6 ounces (squares) of while chocolate, cut up


Frosting:
4 ounces (1/2 block) cream cheese softened
3 cups icing sugar
4 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup diced, dried cranberries


Drizzled Icing:
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
2 tsp vegetable shortening


Preheat oven to 350*F
To make cake:  Beat butter and sugar together until smooth. 
Add eggs, vanilla, ginger and salt, beat well.
Gradually mix in flour until smooth.
Mix 3/4 cup cranberries and chopped chocolate into batter by hand
Pour batter into greased 9x13" pan.  Spread evenly across pan
Bake 35-40 minutes or until cake is light brown on edges
Let cool


Frosting: combine cream cheese, 3 cups powdered sugar, lemon juice and vanilla with electric mixer until smooth.  Once cake is cooled, spread over top of cake.
Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup cranberries over the frosting.


Drizzle:  whisk together 1/2 cup icing sugar, milk and shortening.  Drizzle over the cranberries in sweeping motion.  ( I used piping bag with small round tip)


Once the cake has set/cooled for several hours, slice once, lengthwise down the centre, then 3 more times width-wise.  This makes 8 large squares.  Then, I cut each of these squares into 3 finger length slices.  You could also slice them the 'starbucks' way and cut each square diagonally creating 16 triangular slices.

A Spot of Cider...

So I'll admit it.  I actually don't really care for apple cider.  I don't detest it, I just don't love it.  Same with apple juice...hmmm, I see a pattern here.  But, this time of year it is so nice to have a pot of cider on to welcome guests in from the cold.  It seems kind of ironic that I buy supplies regularly this time of year to make it, but maybe partake in only 1 or 2 cups during the whole season.  I've had a few requests lately for my 'recipe' for cider, so here's my 'secret'.  For the past 5 years or so I've use the Epicure Cider Mulling Spices, but I didn't have any at the start of this season so I went hunting.  I discovered a local tea shop in our mall.  The store sells loose leaf teas in hundreds of blends.  When I asked about a mulling spice they showed me their 'Yoga' Blend.  Hmmm...not sure where the yoga inspiration came from, but it was just what I was looking for.
It's a blend of: cinnamon, cardanon, ginger, cloves and black pepper. 
In your crockpot:  I do 2 parts apple juice to 1 part cranberry/cranberry blend juice
Add approx 1 tsp of mulling spices for every litre of liquid.  If you like, you can float a few orange slices and cinnamon sticks on top.  I set my crockpot on low and let it simmer for 4-6 hours before I need it.  The house smells wonderful!  Don't forget to have a strainer handy for when it's time to serve!

Sold out....

Sold the last of my advent calendars!  I love these advent calendars, and I trust the families they've gone to will too!  I sold one last year, gifted one last year, and have sold 3 more this past month.  That's it, I'm out!  The good news:  I've found all the supplies on sale in the past couple of weeks and have stocked up to make more for next year.
(Go here and click on the calendar link if you're looking for the original post with the directions I used to make these)