Happy day before Christmas, everyone!!! I can’t believe it’s already here. I don’t know about you, but my day is busy with preparations for tonight and tomorrow. It’s such an exciting and busy time. But I’m never too busy to make a few treats for Santa’s plate. One of my favourite recipes to make this time of year is my gingerbread cookie recipe. I have changed and perfected this recipe over the years. This is a favourite among my friends and family, it’s even requested. Although the cookies turn out really tasty, my favourite part is actually using the cool cookie cutters that I have. I mean common, look at some of the shapes I made above, Star Wars cutters, ninjabread cutters, funny gingerbread cookies etc. It’s a lot of fun. You can even get your kids to help out. I know growing up, I helped out with the Christmas baking, especially the cookies. Rolling out the dough, cutting shapes, decorating them, and then the best part, EATING THEM. So if you are looking for something to bake today with your family, and need some cookies to set out for Santa, this is the recipe for you.
Portuguese Kings Cake (Bolo Rei) – A Christmas Tradition
If you ask a Portuguese person what dessert says Christmas, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t say it’s the Kings Cake or in Portuguese the Bolo Rei. Kings Cake is a traditional Portuguese cake that is only eaten between December 25th and January 6th. In many Portuguese homes, Christmas isn’t over on December 26th, it’s over on January 6th or Epiphany (Three Kings’ Day). For anyone who wasn’t raised in a Christian home, Kings’ Day is the day that the Three Wise Men or Three Kings visited baby Jesus with gifts. The cake itself, which is actually more of a sweet bread, is shaped like a wreath or a crown with a hole in the centre and decorated with candied fruit and nuts. It is absolutely delicious. This cake isn’t difficult to make but it’s so time-consuming but the end result is totally worth it.
10 Christmas Films to Watch this Holiday
It’s a week until Christmas Eve and our family is getting cozy by our faux fire with bowls of popcorn and mugs of Star Wars blue hot chocolate. We love spending time together during these cold winter months and our favourite thing to do is watch movies together. It’s not a difficult thing to find on television, we actually don’t have cable, we prefer watching Netflix and such, but if you turn on the television, most channels are filled with Christmas movies this time of year. But if you’re looking for some movies to cozy up to with your loved one here’s our list.Read More
Quick and Easy Antipasto Wreath
Hello Friends,
It’s the season for holiday parties and today I’m sharing a quick and easy antipasto plate that you can put together. The version you see in the photos was actually small and made for a quiet date night in. So this can easily be made into a huge platter, just buy more antipasto ingredients like deli meats, olives, cheeses, etc. Read More
From the Desk of Santa Claus [Free Printable Letterhead]
Can you believe it’s almost Christmas?! Holy holly this year is zooming by. It’s been an exciting year and even though Wendy is too young to understand who Santa Claus is, or even why we have a tree in our living room….let’s be honest, she is just figuring out that her arms and legs are connected to her, I still wrote her a letter from Santa. Crazy? Possibly. But I enjoy it and it’ll be another thing I give to her when she is older and able to understand the things Chris and I did for her. My hope is that when she’s at that magical age of believing, it’ll make it even more magical for her to think that Santa has been writing and watching from the beginning. Or maybe that’ll creep her out a little…who knows.
Since I believe that a child’s imagination should be encouraged, I’m sharing my letter from Santa template with you. I bet that your little one would LOVE to receive a personalized letter from Santa. Here what you do: Download the template, print it out, type your letter on Word, or any other word processing program, insert your printed template into your printer and print your letter. BOOM! Done! Official letter from Sandy Claus. (FYI, when you type out your letter just make sure to leave enough space around the edges so the letter doesn’t print over the template design).Read More
A Canadian Military Tradition: Moose Milk
For all of the years I’ve been with my husband, he’d talk about a drink, a tradition really, at his Army unit. It’s called Moose Milk. The first question I asked, and I’m sure is the question on your mind right now, was “how do you milk a moose”? But I never tried it until this year (the moose milk not milking a moose….those beasts are dangerous) when he made it at home for the first time, and wow it’s good, but wow it’s strong.Read More