Somewhere in the Middle

Christmas Joy

Merry Christmas. Wishing everyone a fun & festive day!

As the Days Fly By

The past week in a half have been non-stop. It's mainly my doing. There are so many things I want to do over the holidays. And it's so important for me to create memories for Lil' C... like making gingerbread houses, bake home-made cookies, decorate the house, etc. I don't know why but I always feel like I have to do Christmas related activity in December. But next year I'm turning a new leaf. I'm going to be like the people who create the special December issue of Martha Stewart and start making crafts in the summer. 

So what have I been up to exactly?

• Finished decorating the gingerbread houses. Lil' C worked on his for a good 3 hours and I played with mine for about 4 hours. They came out amazing if I don't say so myself. Will post photos soon.

• Attended a "Santa's Breakfast" play 

• Went shopping for Belgian goodies to mail in the Christmas care packages.

• Bought our Christmas tree last Saturday

• Decorated the tree on Sunday

• A Sunday cookie exchange party

• Attended International luncheon

• Lil' C's holiday program

• Baked 3 Pumpkin breads and tons of little petite flower muffins. I also made sugar mixed nuts and over 8 dozen butter cookies.

• Decorating the house some more

• Visiting the Post Office almost everyday except today so I can mail Belgian goodies to all my friends & family

• Attended a Christmas party at the 4 star Generals chateau. AMAZING!

• Hosted English conversation group

• Wrapping, wrapping, and more wrapping

• And if that wasn't enough we also received a contract on our home in the United States. Talk about stressful. I pray that all goes well.

Gingerbread Construction

The past three days I've been slowly working on my Gingerbread houses. I don't think I completely realized what a big project it is.

I started on Wednesday the day after I got back from my day trip to Cologne's Christmas Market. On Wednesday I had just enough time to make the dough. I used a recipe from Epicurious which looked good and the reviews were very postive. The recipe calls for almost seven cups of flour. It was definitely a job for my Kitchen Aid mixer but since it's in storage I whipped out my handy little mixer. It's a great little appliance but with so much flour I wasn't sure it could handle the dough. I thought at any minute the little mixer was going to start smoking and burn out on me. But the mixer pulled through and the dough looked great. Ironically, I ran out of ground ginger. So I used nutmeg instead. Once the dough was throughly mixed I divided it into six equal pieces.

On Thursday, I started cutting & baking the individual pieces.

And only when I had finished all the sides of the house as well as the triangles did I realize the roof was going to be a problem. But I improvised and came up with an alternative solution... Bake more side panels and hope they somehow can fit onto the roof.

And tonight I put the houses together. It took me about 2.5 hours to make the frosting and put the houses together.

I definitely would not recommend a template where you have to piece together the triangle with the front & back sections of the house. Next time I'll chose a template that is one big piece which will make constructing the house much easier and it will also create additional space for some windows.

I learned a lot from my 1st gingerbread house project. For instance....

• NEVER eat the gingerbread. It's rock hard and may cause some serious damage to your teeth. Lil' C took a bite of a triangle I didn't need and instantly one of his bottom teeth came loose. So loose he lost it the next morning although I definitely think he was playing with it throughout the evening.

• Overnight you'll become a structural engineer & you'll find yourself coming up with creative solutions so your gingerbread house doesn't collapse and look like a gingerbread house that was damaged in a hurricane. lol!! On each corner I have two internal cardboard supports. I also baked some gingerbread reinforcements for the front & back so the top portion of the roof doesn't cave in. It's not pretty but I think it'll work plus I forgot to cut windows so you really can't see the reinforcers. I also found it useful to cut the cooked gingerbread sections so they fit a bit better.

• Do not I repeat do not clean your floors before you begin this project. In the end you will have icing everywhere especially when it starts to harden and get flaky.

•  Make lots & lots of frosting. It works great when filling in those areas where there are huge gaps between the gingerbread pieces. It's like caulk.

I'm excited to start decorating these cute little cottages with all the different candy I bought. It will be interesting to see how Lil' C decides to decorate his house. I just pray that the frosting is as hard as the dough and the house doesn't collapse while we decorate it. Well I'm off to get all the frosting off my counters and floor.

Celebrating December

This Christmas I'm really motivated to make some handcraft goodies. I've been wanting to make a gingerbread house with Lil' C for a while now. They look so pretty. Last year I came really close to making one too. I bought all the candy but in the end I just never found the time to bake the house panels.

Tonight I was browsing Martha Stewart's website and I found all kinds of good stuff. Lots of delicious yet different Christmas cookie recipes along with some pretty yet easy handmade ornaments. I just love the garland with baby socks. What a great way to recycle baby socks. And those button trees look pretty simple to make. And this year I'm hoping to decorate some of my gifts by incorporating nature, wooden clothespins and recyclable paper.  Martha's Christmas workshop also had some funny video clips with celebs making some of her craft projects. I also found a recipe for a graham cracker house just in case my home-made gingerbread house turns out to be a disaster. Sounds like fun! I'm not sure I'll have time to make everything but if not there's always down time in January.

Who Knew Santa Blogs?

Last Friday the class I volunteer for had some extra time so the teacher allowed a few students to do a little "show & tell". One of the little girls wanted to share her letter from Santa. Well... it wasn't a real letter but an e-mail! lol! Santa e-mails now! I found this so amusing. The teacher told everyone that Lil' S had received an e-mail from Santa and she began to read it to the class. It was a really cute letter and Santa even mentioned how if she wanted she could check on his progress by visiting his blog! A blog? Santa now has a blog! Wow! I didn't realize how progressive Santa is; despite his age he's quite comfortable with the latest technology. When the teacher asked the students if they knew what a blog was they all shook their heads and said "Yes". I wanted to laugh. Just three years ago I discovered blogs. lol! It didn't seem that long ago that Santa wrote actual letters not e-mails. But I suppose his communication with the children is much better now. There's no chance of the US Postal Service losing his letters anymore. And now with web cams there's no getting around to tricking Santa about whether you were naughty this year. Technology is a great thing.

Over the weekend I got curious and found many Santa blogs. But this one was my favorite. Santa is quite modern. He tries his best to be health conscious, enjoys listening to his iPod, loves drinking Starbucks coffee and has a great sense of humor. And this year Santa took delivery of a new sleigh. His newest sleigh is quite different from those he used in the late 1960's without seat belts and air bags.  Who knew? With all the children in the world now Santa has become an efficient businessman too. Take a look at his team:

"Friday morning we officially kicked off this year's Christmas Eve preparations with my staff meeting. Everyone was at the 5am staff meeting... Jingle (Chief of Staff), Melody (Internal Communications, Public Relations, Legal and Community Affairs), Jangle (Chief Financial Officer), Snowflake (Chief Information Officer), Jolly (Chief Marketing Officer), and Candy (Chief Operations Officer). Candy's team is a part of the senior staff meetings. Her team includes Bo (Production), Sprite (Procurement), Star (Advanced RD&D), Ollie (Logistics), North (HR plus Elf & Reindeer Affairs) and Bob (Flight Operations)."

One of the things I was most excited to discover about Santa is his love for coffee. This year Lil' C has decided he doesn't want Santa to bring him any gifts but instead he wants to give Santa a present. Here is how our conversation went...

I told Lil' C, "You need to write your letter to Santa this year telling him what you'd like this Christmas."

Lil' C told me, "Mommy, I'm not going to write a letter. I don't want Santa to bring me anything. I want to give him a present. He never gets any presents."

Shocked I said, "You don't want Santa to bring you anything? If you don't tell Santa what you want he may not know what to give you."

Lil' C said, "That's ok. I don't want anything."

So I asked, "What do you want to give Santa?"

Apparently, Lil' C and S were discussing the issue earlier. So Lil' C said, "A coffee maker".

At this moment I'm thinking... "Is this child really mine? I always knew what I wanted Santa to bring me for Christmas. lol! If Lil' C hadn't been the only baby in the maternity ward I would have sworn he was switched at birth! lol! But really... I do think it's so sweet how he just wants to give this year rather than receive. He has such a good loving soul.

I told Lil' C , "Ok. Maybe we should also give Santa something from Belgium. Can you think of anything special from Belgium?

Lil' C said, "How about flowers? We can give them to Mrs. Claus."

I said, "Ok. Can you think of anything else? How about some Belgian chocolate? Belgium makes the best chocolate in the world."

"Ok." Lil' C said.

So there you have it... Coffee maker, chocolate, and flowers. Maybe we'll even throw in a bag of Santa's favorite Starbucks Christmas blend coffee beans. ;) Last Thursday, I picked up a container of Pierre Marcolini's (only the best for Santa) shaved hot chocolate for Santa. This week Lil' C & I are going shopping so he can pick out a coffee maker and wrap it up & put it under the tree for Santa.

Update: Here is a photo of Lil' C carrying the coffee maker he plans to give Santa on Christmas Eve.