I Hear Those J-I-N-G-L-E Bells!

This year my side of the family was postponing Christmas until January when my brother returns from his mission. That left Blake and I to our own devices. I'd like to say I was sad about it but truth be told I was kinda excited.

I LOVE traditions. I think they might just be my favorite part of the season.  I grew up with the retelling of the saviors birth. The opening of Christmas eve PJ's and the reading of new Christmas story. I loved these traditions, so it wasn't much of a stretch to add them to our own Eve repertoire when we got married.  This year we also added "Gifts to the Savior" which we tied to sky lanterns and let them off into the night. It was pretty fun and very Tangled-esque. More on this in a later post.

Gaufre Liege
Hello delicious... usually we make crepes for Christmas breakfast but I just wasn't feeling it this year. So after much discussion we decided to change out traditional crepes to something more fitting of a once a year delight. It might have been the best decision we have ever made. 

Liege Waffles are amazing plus when do you get to have ice cream for breakfast? It took us almost all of Christmas eve day to prepare the dough just right. after everything is said and done the waffles require around 15 hours of rise time but it was totally worth it. 
 After a night in the fridge under a heavy dinner plate to keep the dough from continuing to mature you add Belgian Pearl Sugar.


 Separate into waffle portioned balls and let rise for another 96 minutes. 


Since we don't have the correct heavy duty cast iron waffle maker we had to get pretty creative with our run of the mill waffle iron. The temperature has to be just perfect so that the sugar melts and crystallizes on the outside of the waffle but doesn't burn.  We implemented the "put dough in smash and immediately unplug waffle iron method." LOL


 Add some white pear eggnog syrup.

The best vanilla ice cream ever made, strawberries and whipped cream.


Yummy!


The last tradition we added this year was the Peppermint Pig. 
 The Peppermint Pig is an old Victorian tradition.


Then you eat of piece of the delicious peppermint to insure another year of good luck. If you would like to incorporate the tradition of the Peppermint Pig at your next holiday celebration you can purchase them here.



When we first got married I noticed that boys and girls like different things for Christmas. I don't actually mean the stuff, I mean the quantity. Example:When I think about gifts I know the budget and then I think to myself how much stuff can I cram into that amount of money. When Blake thinks about  gifts he thinks about one big thing that takes up the whole shebang. He simply doesn't care that he'll only have ONE present under the tree.

This was a real problem for me. Not only was it ONE thing but it was also usually ONE thing that I thought was silly.  I only got to warp ONE thing in a my pretty wrapping paper and while I was opening my multiple budget friendly selections he was only going to open ONE PRESENT on Christmas morning!!! We actually got in several fights about this... which is pretty hilarious when I think about it.

So about 2 years into wedded bliss I sat down and contemplated this debacle. First I reprimanded my self for thinking that Blake's wish list was dumb. Christmas is about giving to other people, it shouldn't matter if I like it or not.  I just simply couldn't get over the ONE item under the Christmas tree.
So over the years I've become pretty ingenious about getting more than one present out of Blake's ONE BIG GIFT.  This year might have topped the cake because Blake asked for a bike. Not just any old bike but a fixie bike. My knowledge about bikes was small to say the least. When you refer to bike parts as roundy bits and spokey things, true bike people think you are crazy. Despite that, my brush with crazy was well worth the extra big smiles. On Christmas morning I unveiled multiple nicely wrapped gifts that when opened revealed the parts to make the perfect fixie bike.   Did I mention the front rim is plaid ;)

Merry Merry to all
xoxo,