Christmas Traditions

Last Christmas we tried out a few new delicious seasonal treats.
Here's a bit of a rundown on them:

Bethany's first Christmas Cake

With an egg allergy in the house, we've put off making our own Christmas cake until last year, when Beth tried out Annabel Langbein's 3 Ingredient Christmas Cake.  The recipe looked incredibly easy, so she gave it a go.
It turned out beautifully, although it didn't lend itself to being iced, because of all the moisture from the milk.  It's not a cake to be kept for too long either.

Gingerbread House

We were also inspired by friends to try making a gingerbread house.  We have a delicious gingerbread recipe, so we used that for the house itself.  The icing however, was a mission.  Again, because of the egg allergy we couldn't use the traditional icing with egg whites, so we made a lemon and icing sugar mix instead.  The house was tricky to hold together, but once the icing dried it stuck well.  It was delicious to eat too!  

We even had enough gingerbread left over for Lucas' first "birthday cake".

Yule Log

And for our Christmas dessert, we made a delicious Yule Log.  Check out Jessica Fisher's version at Life as Mom.  The process is a little bit tricky.  We baked the chocolate sponge in baking paper and wrapped it in a tea towel while still hot, then filled it once it had cooled. We iced it with chocolate cream cheese icing - mmmm!

Did you try any new delicious treats for Christmas last year?

Morning Time Schedule

It has been a looooong time between posts for me!  But here's to a new year and a new plan to start each day.
I've been reading Cindy's blog Ordo Amoris for a couple of years now and always wanted to begin our own Morning Time.  With my older children getting older and having a new baby in the house last year, our days were getting pretty fractured.  So this year we're making a fresh start with Morning Time each day.

Here's what we've been doing:

1. Prayer - we are working through a list of family members, our church member list, and other prayer needs for those outside of church and family life.  I am trying to remind the children to include thanks and praise in their prayers, along with the many petitions.
2. Bible - we decided to read through Acts as our pastor will be preaching through Acts this year.
3. Bible memory - The Books of the Old Testament, to get the younger ones up to speed.
4. Sing - we are singing our way through our church's Psalm book, and will add in the new Psalter Hymnal when it arrives.
5. Read-aloud - we are alternating between Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit and King Alfred's English: A history of the language we speak and why we should be glad we do by Laurie J. White.

6. Poem memorisation - currently The Whole Duty of Children by Robert Louis Stevenson
7. Other memory work - currently the grammar memory work in First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise- definitions of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc

All the children, aged 5 to 15 are enjoying morning time so far, long may it continue.
To read more about how Cindy has structured Morning Time over the years read her series: 31 Days to Morning Time.  It was a great help to me!