holidays – Page 3 – Peaceful Reader

Beautiful Holidays

(Nephew with Groovy Girl)

I’ve recently been holiday bashing because I had to go buy new lights. Our old wonderful blue lights that have circled our house for a mere four years started to fade to a pale yellow and then blah to nothing. Went to Target to replace those lights and brought a name brand kinda light. Name brand is the key word and I was disgusted as I was only buying one set of lights to cover a large-ish bush in our front yard. (we made a new plan to cover some of the greenery out front instead of the house…it’s cold here now, you know.) Truthfully I didn’t expect to cover the whole ding dang bush but I did think I would cover more than one fourth of it. Seriously. You buy a box of lights that shows an entire big bush covered and you expect certain things. Don’t.

(Teenage Boy, College friend, Handsome Husband

walking over T.giving break)

Wow. The light buying business totally sucked the Christmas spirit right out of me for a couple of days. That was it though. I’m done with the rant. This is just my public service announcement, for you. Don’t go buy Christmas lights and expect them to cover what you want. I do remember my parents with this huge long rope of multicolored lights for our large tree. It does not exist anymore. They now measure what would be half or a fourth of a tree or a bush and give you that amount in the box so you are forced to buy two to four more boxes of lights to decorate said tree or bush. Ugh. I’m done.

(My sweet brother)

To remind me of happier holiday moments I went back to my Thanksgiving photos. Viola. I feel better.
p.s. I had to wait a week to write this post so it would not be full of true holiday anger. This is my tamed down version of today’s greed and commercialism. The photos = true bliss.

Dear Janice….Thank you!

I am blesssed in many ways but one thing that sets me apart is my friend, Janice, who comes almost every day to my school library and helps me in the library. She volunteers at our school because her granddaughter is a student. Long ago all school libraries had an aide, someone who came in to check-out, reshelve, and do extra things around the library. We live in an age where school districts don’t have the money to have library aides anymore. I’m so glad to have Janice working with me almost everyday. So many of the massive creative projects I take on wouldn’t be completed without her help. She cut out all the snowmen shapes so first grade students could make larger-than-life snowpeople.

She makes my library dreams a reality!

Last week I mentioned I it would be cool to change our holiday evergreen tree, decorated with snowflakes, into a Valentine tree. Within a few short hours, after reshelving all the books, she transformed that mini-tree into a treat that looks sweet. She will never let me take her photo so instead I share her creation. She made all the decorations using a book…of course! The Valentine Express by the amazing Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. Check it out!

Thank You Janice for all you do!

What a holly, jolly Christmas so far

The holidays started officially for us yesterday (thursday) as we hosted 6 young girls, ready to do some holiday baking. Groovy Girl had her first cookie bake-off. They poured, measured, cracked the eggs, learned the “scoop and sweep” flour method as she took them through her mini-baking lesson. This is the same girl who two years ago “hosted” her own cooking show, which I taped but never got uploaded to a computer because the dog ate the Flip camera.Yes, that was not a very merry moment. Her friends had a wonderful time as they made cookies and watched The Polar Express while they cut out, baked and decorated the cookies. Decorating and eating ranked the highest in fun factor. I think gumdrops were being eaten as fast as I could cut them up. I love to listen to children talk; they are generally so uninhibitated and yesterday was no exception as they shared their own baking experiences and knowledge with each other! Hopefully, we’ve begun a new tradition with this holiday party.

Four days ago I needed to make a treat for my daughter’s school party; luckily we still live in a school district that allows homemade snacks and that no one in her class is allergic to peanuts because we whipped up these delicious Double Peanut Butter Cups thanks to Kathy at Bermudaonion. I didn’t take a photo of mine (there is one with the recipe at Bermudaonion) but the Christmas platter came home empty and she told me several students had seconds.

In my family it is tradition to have oyster stew on Christmas Eve but my husband is allergic to certain types of shellfish so when I got married I had to throw the tradition out. We’ve done clam chowder for the last few years but I’m never quite satisfied with what my clam chowder tastes like compared to what I’ve eaten on my travels to the East Coast. This year I tried a brand new recipe from Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook, which I also discovered thanks to a Weekend Cooking post at Bermudaonion. As soon as I read her post about this cookbook I knew it was the perfect Christmas gift for my mother-a cookbook collector and brunch lover. I found one last copy sitting on the shelf at my local Barnes and Noble, which, sadly, is our own local bookstore. Local trumps indie when your making that last dash for gifts. My family is totally okay with receiving books for gifts that have been “test” read by the giver so I spent hours perusing the contents of this fabulous book. I still plan to give it to my mom with the straight up knowledge that I may have to borrow it from time to time. I’ve already tried two recipes from it-both were delicious and I just ooooh’d and aaahhhh’d as I looked through it. This will be on my list of must-eat eateries when I visit NYC. Thank you Kathy for brightening my holiday cooking TWICE!

If you missed out on getting yourself something merry this season, buy it here-Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook

Enjoy the ~~video~~ (never did get the video to upload after three days of puttering with it)now, photos of the baking party. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good day, filled with roasting fires, a few perfect presents, time to read and a dinner table filled with good food. Don’t you just love a young girl who bakes in a huge string of pearls.

German Pancakes

My sister-in-law made thee most delicious German pancakes for us while we were visiting over Thanksgiving. My kids loved them and she said they were easy to make so I googled and found a great recipe on a blog called Adventures in the Kitchen by Cheri. I read around a bit on her blog and found other recipes I liked so now you can find her on the right-hand side bar Food and Wine section. Thank you Cheri-I used your recipe tonight and my children ate them all up.

We did have a very relaxing holiday with my mom and two of my brothers (oldest and youngest) and their families. My youngest brother and I love to cook-a skill we attibute to both our mother and grandmother. Throughout my childhood we had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner at my grandmother’s house (over the snow and through the woods to Amity Drive we go) and she cooked up a storm. She used an old gas oven in the basement to keep up with the demandsof cooking a turkey, sweet potatoes, bread and pies for many of us. It has always been tough to get down her timing of getting everything to the table at the same time. We did it this year though between my mother, sister-in-law, brother and myself. Yeahhh, Grandma Bruch-we did it. And then we sat down and ate it (almost) all up.

The holidays of my childhood will live on through this yearly celebration but I still miss her and her cooking terribly. My grandmother was somewhat of a health nut but she was definetely a meat and potatoes women. She balanced it out with oatmeal every morning. My brother and I tend to cook more vegetarian now but we did have a 13 # locally-raised (right here in Iowa) turkey so the little ones, my husband, teenager and my oldest brother’s family would not miss the big bird. It was yummy-all of it. Yes, I tasted a little of everything. Even the dressing was worthy (thanks Mom).

Okay, I digressed from German Pancakes to our holiday time but we did have such a good celebration and it was all food-related. I didn’t blog once while gone as I just enjoyed my extended family. I hope you had a lovely holiday time as well.

Howling for Halloween

Reading Halloween books this week to a few classes makes me want to share some Halloween book love.

Halloween books give me special credence to use all sorts of fun/scary voices for read-alouds! Students are thrilled as I stomp around our reading circle.

1. The Perfect Pumpkin Pie by Denys Cazet: I love pie and this book makes a great read-aloud about a dead man’s love for pie. This book has a marvelously fun refrain about pumpkin pie with delightful illustrations.

2. That Terrible Halloween Night by James Stevenson: Louie and Mary Ann think they have Grandpa tricked when he doesn’t know that October 31st is Halloween but it’s really Grandpa tricking them. Kids love the speech bubbles in the illustrations and the ending had everyone thinking!!

3. The Three Bears’ Halloween by Kathy Duvall: Mama, Papa and Baby Bear dress up for Halloween and trick-or-treat around the forest. When they find a house door open they venture in…A funny take on Goldilocks, kids love it when they figure out the story is the reverse of the original.

4. Where’s My Mummy by Carolyn Crimi: Little Baby Mummy wants to play one more round of Hide and Shriek and runs away from Big Mama Mummy. When she doesn’t come looking for him, he has to search for her in some unusual places. John Manders illustrations show us a perfectly creepy graveyard with a wildly un-frightning but fun cast of characters. This also has some easy repitition for young ones to repeat with you.

5. Boris and Bella also by Carolyn Crimi: A romantic tale of a friendship that forms between Bella Lagrossi and Boris Kleanitoff-one messy and one tidy vampire, both wishing to host a Halloween Bash. Everyone heads to Harry Beastie’s party instead as he’s neither messy nor too clean. Cris Grimly illustrates this one for Crimi and they are perfectly spooky! Crimi is the only author on this list to have their own website…such a shame!! I think it should be a requirement for publishing houses to get a website up and running for an author with a few books under their belt, at least! [soap box moment] I discovered this interesting interview with Crimi at Make It Better, a North Shore publication.

What Halloween books have you spooked?

I’ll be back this weekend with a photo celebration of our own holiday fun including an up-date on all my pumpkin seed roasting trials. My groovy girl is Ladybug Girl and again I shout from the mountain top how hap, hap, happy I am that she chose a book character herself!! Go Young Happy Reader Girl!!!