Advent Books

Over the next week I want to post some of my favorite Advent ideas, and thought I would start with the tradition we started four or five years ago in our house, and has become a favorite. Over the years, I have collected various Christmas books. One year I decided that instead of simply reading them throughout the Advent season, I needed to make them a little more special. First, all of our Advent books and St. Nicholas books are packed up with the Christmas decorations. They are only taken out for Advent. This makes it a real treat for the kids when I pull them out. Now, instead of simply bringing them all out on November the 15th for the kids to read, I spend the days leading up to the 15th wrapping all of the books. I usually look for very inexpensive wrapping paper after Christmas (my current favorite is a red and white stripe candy cane looking paper), pack it up with my decorations along with a roll or two of tape, and then it is ready and waiting the following November. I don't do anything fancy, just wrap them up (no bows or tags or anything). We put our tree up on the 15th, and all the wrapped books go under the tree. Then, each day during Advent, the kids take turns choosing a book to open and I read it aloud that evening. Now, we do not have enough books for all 40 days of Advent, but since things come up and there are nights we don't get a chance to read, it all works out pretty well. Each year, I buy one or two new books and add them to the pile. The result is, the kids can't wait to open a book each night and find an old favorite, or maybe a new story. We have about 20 books now, so I know that we can roughly read one every other day, so we will alternate opening a new book with rereading one of the previously opened books. All the books stay under the tree, and the kids are free to come and read them during the day, but they are not to take them from the room. Then, when Theophany arrives, all the books are packed up for the next year. It is fun to see them develop favorites, and try to guess which package holds their favorite book, and the excitement when they open a book they may have forgotten about. If you are starting with only a few books, you could wait to start opening them until closer to the Nativity, or you could adjust it to just one per week until your collection grows.
Here is a list of some of our favorites. Most of them are Nativity stories or about St. Nicholas, but I do include a few traditional favorites I loved as a child.

Who is Coming to Our House - Joseph Slate - this is a great repetitive rhyme book, excellent for younger ones (though my 9 year old still loves to hear it too!). It tells the story of the animals in the stable preparing for Mary and Joseph to arrive. It is also available as a board book.

Long Was the Winter Road They Traveled - J. Patrick Lewis - this book is beautifully illustrated, and is also told in rhyme

The Very First Christmas - Paul L Maier - this is a great detailed explanation of the Nativity story, told by a mom answering questions from her 8yo son. It was a gift from my son's godmother, and is one of our favorites. It is very accurate and in line with the teachings of the Orthodox Church.

The Little Boy's Christmas Gift - John Spiers - illustrations inspired by the art of the Brueghels, the story of a poor boys offering to the Christ child (thanks to Erin for suggesting this one!)

What Can I Give Him? - Debi Gliori - sweet and simple, based on a poem by Rosseti, this is a great one to read to little ones (a gift from the little princess' godfather - Erin's hubby :)

Silent Night - Margaret Hodges - moving story of how this hymn came to be

The Miraculous Child - Alvin Alexsi Currier - Orthodox tale of a Russian Christmas miracle

The Saint Who Became Santa Claus - Evelyn Bence - great explanation of how Santa Claus came to be

The Legend of St. Nicholas - Demi - love this artist, beautiful illuminated illustrations and lots of stories of the life of St. Nicholas

The Miracle of St. Nicholas - Gloria Whelan - very moving tale of a Russian village that has not celebrated liturgy in 60 years, and how a little boy's questions lead to a miracle celebration

The Baker's Dozen - Aaron Shepard - a legend of a St. Nicholas miracle, the story of how 13 came to mean a baker's dozen

Saint Nicholas - Julie Stiegmeyer - again, great stories of the real St. Nicholas

The Nutcracker Ballet - any well illustrated version

The Night Before Christmas - Clement Clarke Moore

thank you

"The only authentic response to life - the good bits and the not-so-good - is gratitude."

Bread & Water, Wine & Oil - Archimandrite Meletios Weber

So thank you, thank you, thank you - to all of you who helped me this past week. Sunday was definitely one of "the good bits" - and I cannot express to all of you how much it meant to have so many do so much to create the perfect evening. I am always so humbled when I see so many willing to give their time and talents for someone else, and I know very well that I could never have done it on my own. And for those of you who don't know what I am talking about, I will post pictures as soon as I get them and fill you in!

Quit reading blogs and go vote! Unless you are one of those people who still does not know who you are going to vote for, or why you are voting for your candidate. In that case, STAY HOME and let the rest of us preserve freedom for our country.

First Deer!

Spoiled for life. Here is the crocodile hunter (deer hunter this week :) after his first deer hunt. It reminds me of the first time his Grandpa took him fishing - he was about 4 years old and cast his rod, and caught a fish on his first cast. From then on, the expectations were a bit high~he assumed that you were supposed to get a fish with every cast. Well, here he is, his first afternoon out with Dad deer hunting, and he came home with this! Guess I will be cooking venison in the weeks to come :)

The Queen's Birthday Party

Right now, the queen is completely obsessed with the Beatrix Potter stories, so of course the birthday theme was Peter Rabbit. Above is a photo of the guest's goody bags - this year around Easter T*rget had Peter Rabbit books, candies and fun treats in the $1 section, so I stocked up.

Here is the table set up - I went a little crazy with the rabbit food theme - we had salad, berries and cream (just like Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail!), blanched asparagus, tea sandwiches, scones and devonshire cream, and those cute little champagne grapes. We served lemonade in pretty tea cups. For flowers I used some potted plants and herbs I already had, a few bunches of inexpensive glads, and best of all, several bunches of Swiss Chard in vases.

And here is the cake - complete with sugar pansies and garden fence, sugar vegetables and butterflies, and a sugar Peter peeking out of the watering can. I don't have a good picture of the girls in their dresses, but I made them all three little dresses out of the Beatrix Potter fabric. The queen loved it, and thought it was the best birthday EVER! (of course, she only has last year to compare to, since I am pretty sure she doesn't remember the first two!)

A peek at what I have been up to!

The past few weeks I have been busy preparing for the marriage of my brother-in-law to my god-daughter. It was a small wedding with only family in attendance. It was a lovely wedding, and I was honored to spend many hours in the past few weeks helping with the plans. Standing up beside them, looking over at my husband through the service, it brought tears to my eyes as I remembered the day nearly 15 years ago that he and I were married.

Here is the wedding cake I made for them. In my previous life (ie "BC"-before children) I was a cake decorator :)

And here is "the queen" who served as a flower girl. She is modeling the bride's veil! Now that the wedding is past, I should be posting more - I have had a bit of a computer vacation over the past few weeks. But school is back in full swing Monday and I look forward to sharing our latest plans!

Booklist - How many have YOU read?

A Booklist from Angelina's blog

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.

**1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
**2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
**3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
*4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling (read the first 3 - decided that was enough)
*5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
**6 The Bible
#7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
**8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
#13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
*14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most, not all)
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
#18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
**21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (one of my favorites)
*22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
**25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
**27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
**30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
%31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
#32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
**34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (read this at least 6 times :)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
**40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
**41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
*46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
*47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
**49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (this one always fascinated me!)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
**54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
**57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
**58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
**61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
**65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
###67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (this was torture in college lit class)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
**73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (parts)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78Germinal - Émile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
*81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
**87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
**89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
*91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
#92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
**97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
**98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
**99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
**100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I was surprised by how many I had not heard of on this list. I can say I definitely beat the average of 6 though!