traditions |

Happy New Years everyone!!!! I have not forgotten to post about our final 2 days of advent, I have just been insanely busy (or way too much in relax mode to pull out my laptop). Either way, I’m here now.

I have to admit. Days 24-25 are the hardest for me. We are so busy both days, it’s hard to think of something to do. For day 24 we were supposed to color Christmas cards to give to people at all of our parties. BUT because we were SO BUSY it ended up that just Raegan and I colored one card each-and mostly in the car between parties. Either way, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and we were so busy, the other two didn’t mind at all.

For day 25, we went to Chick-Fil-A for breakfast-like, 2 days later. Haha. Yeah. Christmas day can be so tricky. I was telling Blake that I would love to start a fun new tradition for Christmas evening. I feel like we usually have absolutely nothing to do/look forward to that night, and I tend to get antsy just sitting around all day. It’s really nice for the first half of the day, after opening presents, and then enjoying those presents, but by about 3:00-4:00 I’m ready to get moving and do something. I really want something that is low stress/fun/easy. We tossed around the idea of game night or movie night, but haven’t landed on anything yet. I would LOVE to hear any ideas any of you might have.

Because I got no pictures whatsoever of days 24-25, I thought I would leave you with some of Christmas morning.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Here’s to 2017!

P.S.-don’t forget to share your Christmas Night traditions/ideas for me to steal!

I always feel like the closer we get to Christmas the less hours we have each day. Why is that? Even when it’s a nice, relaxed day, I feel like a have fewer hours. I was telling Blake last night how when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for Christmas morning, but now that I’m an adult, I almost don’t want for it to come. Because then Christmas time-the season-is over. Maybe that’s why it feels like I have less time. Either way, because I “had less time” I’m combining a couple of days for you here.

For Day 22 we made the cinnamon ornaments from the She Reads Truth advent book. They were simple and fun to make! In the advent book they strung theirs to make a garland. For this year we opted to turn them into ornaments to add to some of our gifts. Wanna know how we made them?

Start with 2 cups of cinnamon and 2 cups of applesauce.

Now combine them and mix them all together. It will form a nice, thick paste.

Now sprinkle some cinnamon (not flour) on a sheet of wax paper and place another sheet of wax paper on top. Roll it out to about 1/4″ thickness.

After a while we lost the top piece of wax paper.

Choose your cookies cutters and cut away. If you want to make holes in them for string, now is the time to do so.

Bake at 200* for 2 hours. Let set for 24 hours. Your kitchen will smell like wonderful cinnamon for a couple of days. 🙂

You can make more or less ornaments depending on what your preference is. Just use a 1:1 ratio of applesauce to cinnamon. We got 2 full cookie sheets of them with 2 cups of each.

For Day 23 we made Swedish Tea Rings.

Years ago a family friend had me over so she could teach me how her family makes them. It was such a fun day! Ever since then we’ve made them each year so we could eat them for breakfast on Christmas Eve. Because it is their family recipe, I won’t be sharing it here. But I will show you the pictures!