Thanks to the very unwelcome guest influenza, plus work schedules, we stretched out our New Year’s celebration over three days instead of the usual two!
On New Year’s Eve, I made black bean soup and cornbread:
And we had our customary hot chocolate bar, with a twist…Turkey made the hot chocolate from scratch for us! Chickadee helped me bake two kinds of hot chocolate themed cookies to go with it, too:
And somehow I managed to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year on Gloriana:
New Year’s Day was a pretty quiet day, lacking our usual trip to the mall and the Lego store, and we had our celebratory meal today instead. We spent most of the day watching the last few Christmas movies in our annual rotation, and I made some peppermint frappes from a kit I got at Aldi:
I went with a German theme again this year for dinner, featuring Schweinelendchen mit Pilzrahmsoße (pork medallions with a mushroom cream sauce) and spaetzle, plus roasted carrots and green beans with bacon.
For dessert, Bunny and I made a Glühwein-Kuchen (mulled wine cake).
I wasn’t intending to begin 2026 with illness, but at least we still had a few nice meals to end one year and begin another!
It doesn’t seem possible, but Christmas Eve and Day have come and gone already!
Our celebration started on Christmas Eve morning, with Christmas Crunch:
I made time early in the day to deliver gifts to all of my neighbors on Gloriana, and also chased Roald around my island for a bit, trying to get the perfect picture (which I did).
Bunny had to work in the morning, but when she got home, she put the finishing touches on this year’s Advent Lego project, Rivendell:
And then we went to my second-favorite service of the entire church year, Christmas Eve candlelight:
Candlelight being a relative term, as it was still fairly light out when the service was over. We didn’t stop by the city of St. Louis Christmas tree downtown this year, so it was pretty bright for our drive through the Way of Lights!
When we got home, I made wassail, which was a bit of a change for us…I think it may become a new tradition!
And we enjoyed a gingerbread layer cake with gingerbread mousse filling and molasses cream cheese frosting, and topped with sugared cranberries for dessert.
We also played our new Christmas Eve board game, Ticket to Ride Northern Lights. I lost spectacularly, but not as spectacularly as Ladybug won!
We watched the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker and Rick Steves’ European Christmas, and then I filled the stockings and escorted Mary and Joseph to the stable. I hope there’s never a day when we don’t want to put up the Little People nativity, even though we no longer have any little people living in our home1
On Christmas Day morning, we enjoyed our favorite coffee cake:
And then we went back to church, nice and early so I could get some pictures in front of the beautiful church Christmas tree:
Our church is always beautiful, but there’s something extra special about it at Christmastime!
The family picture we took after the service is probably one of the nicest ones we’ve ever taken!
We opened presents when we got home, and then I got started on dinner, the best dinner of the year, the famed “Pick Out Dinner!”
Setting the table is pretty low-key compared to Thanksgiving, but I still like to make it look nice, including napkins folded like Christmas trees. I added a few small Christmas trees to our traditional centerpiece of the Advent wreath…they balanced out the additional candles I often add quite nicely!
We had quite the spread this year!
We spent the afternoon and evening watching Christmas movies, playing games, and building Lego sets. The weather was far too warm for Christmas (it felt, smelled, and sounded like Easter!), but thankfully the weather isn’t what makes for a good Christmas, and we had a lovely day. And luckily for us, Christmas lasts for 12 days, so we still have our “fancy” (although dialed back a bit this year thanks to rising grocery costs) dinner and more cookie baking to look forward to…and maybe even some colder weather! Merry Christmas!!!
This year’s Christmas School is a lead-in to the 2026 Winter Olympics…we learned all about Christmas in Italy!
We started on Saturday, with a trip to The Hill, St. Louis’ Italian neighborhood. We used to attend Christmas on the Hill fairly regularly, but this is the first time we’ve been in several years (at least!).
We enjoyed the Nativity Walk, where we saw the various nativity scenes, or “presepi,” set up in shop windows, and listened to La Befana tell her tale:
And we got to do the activity Chickadee was most looking forward to…we toured the Herbaria, where we learned a little bit about the history of soap, and how they make their soaps right there in store, visited with the store dog, Bubbles, and made a cut-out soap to take home:
Of course we did a few crafts. This year we made cross-stitch ornaments, which was something very new for us. Chickadee also made an Italian flag ornament as a reminder of this year’s theme. We made a string art in the colors of the Italian flag (this was a true group project, as we had to call Bunny in for help!), and, in keeping with the presepi theme (nativity scenes appear to be the most common Christmas decoration in Italy), we made a lantern version to decorate our home.
We baked some Italian Christmas cookies…the classic Italian ricotta cookies, topped with sprinkles in Christmas colors (which conveniently also happen to be the color of the Italian flag), and Italian Rainbow cookies, which are gorgeous and delicious and a true labor of love!
I decided we should do some cooking beyond baking, so I taught Chickadee how to make risotto…pasta making will have to wait until the Olympics (but we are having an Italian-themed Christmas dinner this year, too)!
We met La Befana again at Christmas Tradition in St. Charles, MO:
While we were at Christmas on the Hill, we also got a small chocolate chip Panettone to share…it was delicious!
We also read lots of Italian Christmas stories, including several versions of the La Befana tale, each of which portrays her in a slightly different light. And to end what is essentially the first semester of the 2025-26 school year, we stopped at our new Dutch Bros. Coffee for a little treat!
This was a fun way to end school before Christmas break…Merry Christmas!
We sadly didn’t have any company this year, so it really felt like a very laid-back holiday. We watched the Macy’s Parade and played parade bingo and then took in the dog show while I puttered about, getting things ready…I set the table extra early this year, so that was a task done long before dinner:
I found some time for Animal Crossing…I always like to hang out with Roald on a holiday!
And then time for dinner! I think this was one of the better turkeys I’ve ever made, and all of our regular side dishes were delicious, too:
We watched Holiday Inn while we cleaned up and I boiled the turkey carcass for turkey soup. And then we had pie! My choice of cranberry-rhubarb was just as tart and delicious as I hoped it would be!
Today began just as yesterday ended…with more pie for breakfast!
Chickadee and I went to the town Santa Parade, which is always a fun time:
When we got home, we had our traditional turkey sandwiches for lunch:
And I had lunch dessert, which I think should be a regular thing!
For dinner I made our day-after-Thanksgiving turkey soup:
And then Moose, Chickadee, and I went to the town tree lighting:
We also visited the Christkindlmarkt:
And checked out the gingerbread displays:
The storefronts were looking good, too!
Back home we had one more round of pie:
And now I’m exhausted, but the fun is just beginning, because Advent starts on Sunday!
This year I made seven (well, technically eight, because the cookie butter pie recipe makes two pies by default) pies, which somehow seems like much less work than the nine (or ten) I made last year!
The one new pie for this year is the one I chose…cranberry-rhubarb. I also tried a new style of lattice crust, alternating thin and thick strips, which I think looks really cool. I hope it tastes as good as it smells!
The rest of our lineup was pretty standard…pecan, pumpkin, caramel apple (although I did tweak that recipe pretty significantly), cookie butter, butterscotch, and s’mores:
Each of the girls now has a pie that they make with very little help from me (mostly I’m just in charge of crusts), which makes Pie Day a breeze…I hardly feel like I did any work at all!
Time to look back at all of the Oktoberfests we attended this year! I had a great time wearing my favorite Rare Dirndls various places and celebrating my heritage!
First Chickadee and I went to Grant’s Farm in mid-September. This was a first (or at least the first time in a long time) for us. We were there pretty early, so we didn’t get to see the entertainment, but we did share a pretzel and it was top-tier…super buttery and one of the best we had!
Next was Belleville Oktoberfest, which is always something of a disappointment to me…the pretzels weren’t even very good! But it was an excuse to wear a dirndl and walk down Main Street.
Third was my favorite local Oktoberfest in St. Charles, MO. The music and dancing were amazing and the pretzels were delicious! Plus, it seems like the most authentic one in our area (says the woman who has never been to Munich…).
We always celebrate Oktoberfest at home. I made our standard German feast of schnitzel and spaetzle and red cabbage, with Black Forest cherry torte for dessert (not to mention fondue with pretzels, pickles, and brats for lunch), and not to brag, but the pretzels at our establishment are pretty good, too!
For the second year, we went to Soulard’s Oktoberfest, and I have to say, I really love this (relatively) small event! The pretzels were only so-so, but the cheese sauce was excellent, and the brass band was one of our favorites!
I was worried we weren’t going to make it to Zootoberfest at the St. Louis Zoo, but we managed to get there on the final day. As always, the pretzels are the best in the region (and the beer cheese they serve with them is outstanding), and I got to hear a polka band, complete with accordion!
This was a really fun season of festing…I’ll leave you with Brasshaufen Brass Band (a group we enjoyed both in St. Charles and Soulard) doing one of my favorite Oktoberfest numbers. Prost!
Last week, I was mentioning how much I was looking forward to Michaelmas, (which was yesterday), one of my favorite principal feasts of Christ on the church calendar. Ladybug immediately responded with “What are you making?”
Nothing?
I hadn’t planned on doing anything special. No angel hair pasta. No angel food cake. No fancy or themed food of any kind. Mondays are kind of a crazy busy day here this semester, and I didn’t figure it was worth it.
But this is what I’ve worked for all these years. My adult children hearing a church festival is coming up, and knowing that it’s a day for special food and feasting, a day to look forward to and celebrate. A day to recognize how God has provided for His people through the years.
This was the goal all along.
I can’t change how busy Mondays are. We didn’t have the time for a fancy dinner. But I did have time on Sunday after to church to bake an angel food cake, and I even found time to stop at Walmart to get some fresh strawberries to go with it.
I am so thankful that the traditions we’ve created over the years mean something. I’m grateful I found ways to make connections between the church year and home life. I’m glad that Ladybug heard a church holiday was coming up and wanted to know how we were going to celebrate it.
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
This summer has been a “Pokémon Summer,” which was Turkey’s idea after we started playing the trading card game. We’ve had a really fun time playing, and once a week, we have a “Pokémon Night” which features something of a tournament. We all have at least one deck to play with, but none of them are adequate to defeat Turkey, the house Pokémon champion!
To go along with our game nights, we also made lots of recipes came from the My Pokémon Cookbook and My Pokémon Baking Book! For our first themed dinner, I made a Flygon Pan Pizza. We also had a Musharna Strawberry Taro Slush, which was light and lovely. For dessert I made Morpeko Double-Dipped Viennese Cookies.
Our second Pokémon dinner was nothing short of amazing! We had Charizard Spicy Arrabbiata with Chikorita Cheesy Pesto Brioche Rolls…they were outstanding! Our drink was the Bruxish Slush, which made use of butterfly pea tea to change the color of the blue ice to purple! Finally, for dessert, I made Sylveon Strawberry Shortcake, which was as delicious as it was pretty.
Our third Pokémon dinner started with a fresh and tropical drink, the Alolan Exeggutor Tall Tropical Slushie featuring pineapple and mango. I made Darumaka Tomato Soup with homemade cheddar croutons for the main course, and Bunny made Floette Focaccia to go with it (I enjoyed using the leftovers to make some amazing sandwiches!). For dessert I made the Sandile Butterscotch & Brownie Parfait, which featured a homemade butterscotch crème pátissière and a crispy brownie topped with strawberry whipped cream.
The theme for our fourth Pokémon Night was “beat the heat” by using the oven as little as possible! We started with a Tsareena Roast Beet Salad…It featured a delicious orange shallot vinaigrette, and the combination of beets and goat cheese was outstanding! The main course was Flygon Avocado Toast. The cream cheese spread had dill and lemon, and I will definitely be using it on other sandwiches! For dessert we had Relicanth Chocolate Malts…they were extra chocolatey!
For our fifth Pokémon dinner I made Dragonite Butternut Squash Gnocchi topped with fried sage.The drink was the Seaking Dragon Fruit Agua Fresca. It had a base of dragon fruit, coconut water, and lime juice, and the ice cubes were made with grapefruit, orange, and lime juices…it was really good, and somehow, it tasted a bit like bananas! For dessert, we made Whismur Lemon-Lavender Bars.
We had breakfast-for-dinner for our sixth Pokémon Night. The main course was Gogoat Breakfast Burritos. They had spinach, mushrooms, avocado, and refried beans in addition to eggs and shredded hash browns. Our drink was Shuckle Berry Juice. It was very similar to the smoothies we usually make, with frozen berries and vanilla yogurt, but it also had pomegranate juice, which was a new and delicious addition for us! For dessert we made Drifloon Blackberry Marshmallows. This was our first experience making homemade marshmallows, and was one of my biggest kitchen disasters to date when marshmallow ended up stuck to EVERYTHING, but they were really delicious!!!
Our seventh Pokémon Night dinner was a little different because I started running out of main courses to try from our cookbooks. I mixed things up with recipes a bit, and we started with an appetizer of Pyroar Bruschetta. It had a bit of spice from the addition of Calabrian chili crisp! I made a side dish of Pansear, Pansage, and Panpour Roasted Cauliflower. It was served with a trio of dipping sauces: buffalo (which I have to confess, I did not make from scratch), green chutney, and blue cheese. They were all good, but I liked the cilantro-based green chutney the best! Our drink, Clobbopus Vanilla Punch, was like a second dessert! It had the flavors of vanilla, orange, and ginger, with a few blueberries thrown in! Our actual dessert was Igglybuff Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes. The chocolate spirals were a lot of fun to make!
In between Pokémon Nights, we made a stand-alone dessert…Kricketot Chocolate Strawberry Sandwich Cookies, only we used raspberry jam for the filling because that’s we had on hand. The recipe suggested using a music note-shaped cookie cutter because crickets sing, and it just so happens that I have one of those!
Our eighth Pokémon Dinner was another breakfast-for-dinner featuring Furret Fluffy Pancakes. They were vanilla-cardamom pancakes alternated with chocolate to mimic his stripes, and they were both delicious! Our drink was Ampharos Lemonade. It was light and refreshing, and I especially enjoyed the addition of lemon ice cubes! I decided to really test my baking skills with dessert, the Koraidon Mixed Berry Soufflé. It was made (and topped!) with two different berry purées, and was lighter than air…I wish I had gotten a picture before they started to fall, because they were extremely puffed when they came out of the oven!
Next we had kind of a mini Pokémon Night with a special side dish and dessert. I made the Magby Spicy Cherry Tomato Galette. I’m not going to lie…this is my least favorite thing we’ve tried from these cookbooks. The recipe called for smoked paprika, and that was all I could taste, which was unfortunate, because there was a really good combination of other ingredients here. The dessert however, a Cufant Thai Iced Tea Float, made up for the disappointment of the side dish. It featured a homemade cardamom-vanilla ice cream with chai tea, coconut milk, and boba pearls.
We kept making dessert once I ran out of dinner ideas, including a pair of desserts from the My Pokémon Baking Book, starting with Buizel Apricot Thumbprint Cookies. We also made a Bidoof Peanut Butter Pretzel Tart.
The most iconic dessert from the My Pokémon Cookbook has to be the Pikachu Lemon Tart…it featured a smooth and delicious lemon curd. Making Pikachu’s face with candy melts also made me realize that his ears look like pencils!
The final Pokémon dessert of the summer was Oshawott Blueberry Meringue Tartlets…the were both delicious and adorable!
This has been a really fun and special thing to do this summer, and I’m really glad we took the time to choose and try some new recipes!
Happy 626 Day!!! Tonight’s recipes come from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook. The main course was one of my favorite recipes in the book…Kiki’s Special Saimin Noodles, which has an amazing broth infused with lots of ginger! Our drink was Hapa Kine Strawberry and Basil Cooler Companions. In addition to the strawberries and basil that give the recipe its name, there was also lemon juice, honey, and lots of ginger syrup…one of the best drinks I’ve ever made! For dessert, I made the Guava Celebration Cake, which is a strawberry cake with a whipped cream cheese frosting, and a guava filling and topping.
The best celebrations include fashion of some sort, and today I wore my Disney Store Lilo and Stich dress with a Hula Lula Tiki Girl brooch from Miss Fluff for Lipstick and Chrome plus a Rocklove Jewelry “Tell Your Tale” Stitch Aloha enhancer and a stack of tropical Splendette Duchess bangles. I’ve also been carrying my sparkly Stitch Loungefly bag all week!
I really love preparing food and drinks with matcha, which is funny, because it was a flavor that I originally wasn’t a huge fan of! But it grew on me, and now I’m always looking for new ways to use it. Drinks are obvious, and sweet treats are a natural pairing for green tea (I’ve used it in everything from waffles to cheesecake and madeleines to crinkle cookies), but I’ve also found that it words well in savory preparations like matcha-garlic knots.
I’m still working on an idea for using it as a rub on a pork tenderloin, and I’m always on the lookout for new dessert recipes, too!
