We celebrated Thanksgiving a day early this year because my oldest decided at the last minute to spend the actual holiday out of town with his girlfriend and her family. That left Wednesday as the only night we'd be all together. It was so nice having our big meal on Wednesday evening that we're thinking about making it our new holiday tradition; we've spent today relaxing and playing games. It feels to me much more like an extra long weekend, since we don't lose Thursday to all-day food prep, eating too much, and cleaning up. I simplified the menu a bit because Wednesday's busier and I hadn't even baked pies or anything. But I also benefitted from having two of the kids already home from college and work to help out yesterday, so it wasn't too bad getting everything together.  My daughter decorated the table, using Japanese maple leaves she'd pressed and an odd assortment of ornaments and candles from family childhoods, like the Thanksgiving candles my husband has used as long as he can remember and the funny little clay pots all three kids made for their kindergarten Thanksgiving feasts. We had a turkey breast rather than a whole turkey again this year; I finally realized that since no one in our family especially likes dark meat, it was silly to wrestle with gizzards and trying to get the dark meat cooked adequately without drying out the white meat when we could just buy and cook (much more quickly) the part we all like best. Doh! For a couple of years, I bought breasts from Costco that came packaged with a really delicious glaze. Costco stopped carrying that brand and I was feeling sad about the glaze again last night when it suddenly occurred to me to just look up a recipe for a similar one. Doh! again. I found a recipe that seemed promising here, but I was missing some of the ingredients. The recipe that follows is my improvised version. I also added extra liquid to the leftovers to make a sauce that could substitute for gravy (I have one kid who eats gluten-free, which makes things like gravy challenging.) Anyway, it was so good, I actually wrote it down at the urging of the whole family so I'll be able to recreate it again.
  I'm not sure why, but I always have urges to do cut paper crafts at Christmas (which is why the floors are always covered in tiny scraps at the holidays).
The two paper cuts above were leftovers from a flurry I cut one year to decorate packages. They're basically just the snowflake idea. I precut thin paper (these were origami paper) into a circle, folded it in half (right sides together), in half again, and then into thirds and then cut patterns out freehand. There are a few simple tips that may help you make especially intricate ones: first, do the folding carefully and press the creases well (you can even iron them). Second, have a mixture of large cut away areas and others that are narrow and repeating. Be sure to use very sharp scissors; I use embroidery scissors. (Though check out these amazing Polish paper cuts that were traditionally made with sheep shears!) Finally, take care not to tear delicate areas when you unfold them. (Small tears can be repaired by gluing narrow support pieces to the back of the paper cut.) I always iron my finished piece flat.
 The paper cut above was done by my oldest son when he was almost 10, and the similar one below was cut when he was not quite 5. You can see he gained a lot of skill in the years between. In both cases, I folded a piece of paper for him (right sides together) and drew one image onto the wrong side, making sure I had an area of join along the fold. By 10 he was able to cut the design out pretty accurately by himself. I showed him how to trim the excess paper close to the drawn lines and then to cut into tight areas, removing sections at a time, rather than trying to cut along the whole perimeter. When he was younger, I held
 Happy Hanukkah! Nearly belatedly! In honor of the Jewish Festival of Lights, I have another Mimi paper doll available to print and color; you can get it here. There's a brief story-ette about Mimi going to a Hanukkah feast, and it includes a menorah that can stand up when assembled, as shown above. The top part of the menorah is a "pocket" in which you can insert the correct number of candles for the current night of Hanukkah (today is the 6th day of Hanukkah for 2009, so you'd insert six candles, plus the center one or shammes candle, which is used to light the others). I was too lazy/rushed to color Mimi and her menorah, but she looks great "colorized" with colored pencils or crayons.  Not sure why this image came out vertically; thought I'd saved it rotated...
Quick question: I've been posting various paper dolls as sort of doodly coloring pages - just pencil sketches, and no color. What do you think - should I keep doing them that way, or would you greatly prefer something more final-artish that you'd have to print in color? (Keep in mind that would likely mean I'd make even fewer of them...)
One of my favorite things about December is the variety of special days (Christmas, Hanukkah, St. Lucia Day, St. Nicholas Day, the winter solstice, etc.), and the opportunities they provide to learn about different cultures (or even just people who have different traditions). My husband and I both grew up celebrating Christmas, so that's the December holiday we celebrate with our kids, but our extended families include people from diverse backgrounds, including the Jewish faith. We live some distance from them, so our kids have only occasionally celebrated Hanukkah with those relatives. Fortunately, though, we long had a tradition of sharing holidays with neighbors and good friends who are Jewish. Their kids came over each year to help decorate our Christmas tree, sing a few Christmas songs, and have a holiday dinner, and our kids went to their house each year for a Hanukkah feast, complete with dreidel games and songs and decorations. (They always sent extra latkes home for me, the latke-fiend. Yum!)
Here's my favorite low-fat latke recipe. I don't have a photo to show you because I haven't managed to make them yet this year, but I'll try to add a picture later. These are quite tasty, though perhaps not as scrumptious as the crispy fried ones. I cut the recipe out of some newspaper many years ago; more than that I can't tell you about its origin. Sorry.
Low Fat Potato Latkes 3 lbs. potatoes (I've used both Idaho and Yukon gold) 1 onion 1/3 cup matzo meal or flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 3 T chopped parsley 2 eggs plus 4 additional whites salt and freshly ground pepper, to t
 Hot. Not. Loobylu. Need I say more?
This week, I'm starting with the NOTS.
Not. Any Computer in Our House. Or, for that matter, any electrical appliance, like say my car. My refrigerator. Half the lightbulbs. Lordy, it's been a week of technology-related woes, and I still feel a bit shaky. I know I was complaining about this last week, but things just kept getting worse every time I turned around, and of course my husband was out of town for much of the week, leaving me, the person who still struggles even just to turn on the TV (which is really not my fault, since we seem to have like a thousand remotes and way too many buttons and I never have the right ones), to be the family Geek Squad. Mostly that means we were computer-light (hence the week of no posts - but I have lots of stuff half written I'll try to post in catch-up fashion). And the car wouldn't go, so I was stuck at home. And the refrigerator was WAY too cold, freezing all the veggies and making the butter extra-rock hard. Maybe even diamond-hard. And I don't know what the heck was going on with the light bulbs, but they were burning out left and right and I still haven't caught up replacing them.
Making Little Dresses for Little Piggies. This little dress was way too small. This little dress was way too big. And this little dress was really too big too, but I fudged and made it kind of fit because I couldn't bear to try again.
 Not getting the recipe for this St. Nicholas Day treat up until today. Two days after St. Nicholas Day. These are actually buckeyes, which aren't officially a St. Nick treat, but they are very similar to a traditional St. Nick candy I found online. More importantly, they are super easy, no cook, use only ingredients I already have in the house, and contain chocolate.
Here's what you do: Combine 3/4 cup of peanut butter, 2 T honey, 1/4 cup crushed graham crackers O
 The new issue of PaperTigers, focusing on Religious Diversity in relation to End-of-Year Celebrations, is now live.
The end of the year, when so many holy and secular days are observed and celebrated, reminds us of the importance of understanding and being respectful of how others in our communities engage with and
express their beliefs. Books play an essential role in helping children learn about differences (for instance, why some people celebrate different holidays, or the same holidays in different ways, while others don’t celebrate anything): but more than anything, books can help them realize that, while our individualities do matter, our common humanity matters even more.
We hope you will enjoy our new features, which focus on celebrating diversity while striving for a more encompassing and tolerant world for all our children, families and communities.
We will also be talking about religious diversity and end-of-year celebrations here on the blog this month, so we hope you will share your favorite books and experiences with us!
 I'm joining in again with what's hot and what ain't at Loobylu (and you should definitely head over there to wish her a happy 10th blogging birthday at a minimum), but I'm starting to squeak in just under the deadline every week - but it's one of the "nots" fault. At least it's not yet midnight on Wednesday (here in Pittsburgh anyway), so here's my list:
HOT
A Template for the Scandinavian Heart Tutorial Which I posted, um, last December here. Well, now that I've remembered again how to turn jpegs into pdf files and post them so you can actually get them (I think Blogger still doesn't allow them - somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), I decided to make a new printable (can't find the old one anymore) and quick get it up. You can get it here. It's not exactly pro-quality or anything, but it does get the job done - as shown in the examples above.  This (above, not the chili below) is what the finished templates should look like when you make them out of your cereal box.  Turkey Chili - and Using Up the Last of the Thanksgiving TurkeyThis is such an easy meal and satisfying on a cold night (and again for lunch the next day) and it makes a nice change from yet another turkey sandwich. I make my chili dinners a little differently each time (my usu
 How goofy are paper shoes? But when I checked the stat thing for my blog the other day, I noticed that lots of people have been coming here looking for directions and a template for making them for St. Nicholas Day, which is coming up fast on December 6th. I felt kind of bad because I don't have anything like that on here. And then, probably because I've been busy making little bunny slippers for my Mimi doll, I realized I could figure out how to make some, so I did. These ones are just the right size to hold the bag of chocolate coins St. Nick is likely bringing my kids in a few days. (You can buy the same ones at Aldi's. Yum.) These paper shoes turn out to be very easy to make, and practically free (except for a small quantity of glue) because I used all materials from the recycling bin.
My husband says blogging is making me completely lose my marbles. He may be right. Only now am I wondering why people would want to make paper shoes for St. Nick Day - for party favors? For a class project? Because they're not sufficiently addicted to chocolate to overlook the fact that their bag of chocolate coins smells a bit like old sneaker if they put out their regular shoes to receive treats, like we do?
Whyever. Here's the tutorial:  STEP ONE: Gather your materials You'll need: - a printed copy of the template, which is available as a pdf here,
- some lightweight cardboard (I used some from an empty cereal box),
- some scrap paper (I used the insides of security envelopes, which I am absolutely addicted to these days - I have fits if anyone rips the envelopes when opening bills),
- some kind of a quick grabbing glue, like Alene's Fast Grab Tacky Glue, pictured above (and no, Aleene's does not give me any kind of a kickback for how frequently I mention their glues, but I wouldn't say no if they offered one...),
- a pair of scissors, and
- a pencil for tracing the patterns
 Happy Advent, which I guess technically started yesterday, but in my household it begins officially on December 1st (making me early! At least in the U.S.!) Last year, I wrote about my family's advent traditions which are focused around a little Elf dropping by to leave the kids little gifts and chocolates in a pocket calendar to minimize the "I can't wait for Christmas" whining. I also linked to a zillion ways to make your own creative calendar. (You can see my 2008 post here - I checked and all the links still work. Amazing.)
Anyhow, over the last year while working on my Preschooler Problem Solver book, I talked to a lot of parents about their families' holiday traditions and ended up feeling regretful that I'd failed to take our calendar tradition to the next level and use it to help instill some better character traits in my kids. Some families, for example, instead of doling out more goodies every day to their already privileged kiddos, set up a little empty creche with a container of straw next to it. The idea is that the kids (and I guess the adults too) add a straw to the creche each time they do a good deed. The family tries to amass enough kind works to create a nice cozy soft bed for the baby Jesus by December 24th. They didn't mention anything about having to remove straws for evil deeds done to your little brother, but that corollary might be useful in certain unnamed households.
Other families have traditions like decorating a tree via good deeds (you add an ornament each time you do something kind), having secret Santas within the family, secretly delivering goodies or thank you notes to deserving people around the community, or putting notes with compliments or promises of a family activity in their calendars instead of sugary things or cute erasers shaped like animals.
The closest my family came to some advent altruism was leaving an occasional little something for the advent elf and writing him teeny thank you notes at the end of the advent season. I'm reasonably proud I did that (not every night or anything! I was way too tired, plus struggling to remember to, um, remind the elf to visit in a timely fashion). You can read about sending elf thank yous in a post from last year here and find my pdf template for making a cute cardstock elf mailbox and mini card and envelope here. Anyhow, today's craft is making elf-sized food and arranging a welcoming rest stop for the present-deliverer who visits your house. This stuff is actually edible, as both I and the dog can attest.
Naked Mimi, above (I will finish her dress one of these days, very soon), is standing, or more precisely, sitting in for our elf, who just happens to be 9 inches tall like her, in front of a tempting wee feast, featuring a properly crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cut on the diagonal as it should be, potato chips, apple slices, and bits of a blackberry artfully arranged to look like grapes (until they shriveled up while they sat on the counter for a couple hours waiting for me to get around to taking a picture of them).
2 Comments on Advent Traditions: Encouraging Affection, Kindness, and Gratitude with Tiny Food and Little Notes, last added: 12/3/2009
By: Aline Pereira,
on 11/25/2009
Blog: PaperTigers
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Eventful World, Thanksgiving books, Reading the World, Jacqueline Jules, family traditions, Colorin Colorado, inclusiveness, holiday traditions, Duck for Turkey Day, Kathryn Mitter, Multicultural Meals, Add a tag
 As our world gets smaller and people from different cultures find themselves sharing one same country, traditions once thought to belong to a particular group are bound to mix with others and acquire new flavors. Sometimes quite literally, as it happens in Duck for Turkey Day.
Written by Jacqueline Jules and illustrated by Kathryn Mitter, Duck for Turkey Day is about Tuyet, a young girl who wants to celebrate Thanksgiving the “right way.” Her excitement about making turkey crafts and singing turkey songs at school is damped when grandma reminds her that they will be having duck, not turkey, for Thanksgiving because “Our family likes duck better.”
When mealtime comes, the wonderful smells of grandma’s special duck recipe fill the house. At the table they take turns expressing their gratitude: for their home, their food, the country where they live… The main menu? Not duck, but family love.
A good time was had by all, but the idea of “sharing time” at school the following Monday has Tuyet worried. “What will Mrs. Cook say about eating duck on Turkey Day?”. When the day comes and she finally tells her classmates about her Thanksgiving meal, they join in with menus of their own: from enchiladas to lamb to tofu turkey to chicken with noddles. Their non-turkey meals remind Tuyet that, even though Turkey Day revolves around food, it’s having a thankful heart and sharing a meal together with those you love that matter the most.
You can watch the book trailer of Duck for Turkey Day here, and for more books on the various aspects of Thanksgiving, check out Colorin Colorado’s reading list.
PaperTigers wishes a Happy Thanksgiving to all who may be celebrating the day!
|
0 Comments on Get Ready for St. Nicholas Day - by Making Paper Shoes with My Handy-Dandy Tutorial! as of 1/1/1900
I was trying to think of this story the other day, that I, too, loved as a child...I could only recall Mama's Bank Account, Life With Father, Betsy-Tacy, but couldn't remember this one. All childhood favorites! Thanks for nudging my memory! :)
The CPSIA issue is SO CONFUSING and SO FRUSTRATING to me! I finally googled it on SNOPES to try and figure it out. So the vendors/booksellers aren't required by the govt. (yet) to certify that their used books/toys have been tested, BUT they have to ensure that the items they sell meet the new standards...how are they supposed to do that without testing the items??? CPSC spokesman Wolfson says they're supposed to go back to the supplier and ask...is he KIDDING?? Does he know how thrift stores work?? So all Americans that ever donated used items are supposed to do the testing?? The govt. again is talking out of both sides of its mouth.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/pending/cpsia.asp