Feast of St. Nicholas

Blessed feast to you. Most people can't help but love St. Nicholas, and he is special to James and me because he was the patron of the church where we began inquiring about the Orthodox faith. We try to go there to celebrate the feast each year. Since James is working 50-60 hours a week right now, rather than going there for liturgy today, we went on Sunday when they had a meal in honor of their Patron. It turned out to be a good thing, because today would not have been a good day for me to be in the car.

I thought it would be fun to share a bit of the tradition of St. Nicholas with my co-workers this year. I made up these little bags of  "gold" to take them. Each one contains chocolate coins, a clementine and some mini candy canes. The bags are actually just squares cut from a T-shirt tied with ribbon. I like to re-purpose things for wrapping, and the simple bags are meant to evoke the bags of gold St. Nicholas is said to have given for dowries. According to tradition, St. Nicholas anonymously tossed a bag of gold into the window of an impoverished family on three different occasions, for each of three daughters. This saved the girls from being sold into slavery or prostitution. The bags of gold are said to have landed in the shoes of the girls set out by the fire to dry, and that's the basis of the tradition of setting out shoes or stockings to be filled with gifts on this feast and at Christmas time.

To personalize them for my co-workers, I made these salt dough gift tags/Christmas tree ornaments. I got the idea for them on Pinterest, where I kept seeing lovely ones like this:

Source: pinterest-project.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

It seemed simple enough, but isn't that always the way with crafts? I made some, and I think they're pretty cute, but they are a lot more rustic and homemade looking than what I was envisioning. It's true that they are simple enough to make. You just mix 2 parts flour to 1 part water and 1 part salt to make the dough. For little tags like these 1/2 tablespoon for each part times however many tags you want should about do it, with a little extra for mistakes. I definitely made mistakes!  Stamping letters backwards, not allowing enough room for the whole name...I started over several times. Once you've mixed as much dough as you need, knead it a little, roll it out about a quarter inch thick, cut your shapes, then stamp away. I stamped them on one side with my co-workers' names and the other side with a decorative stamp. The Christmasy stamps were part of the bounty from my mom's basement when she and my dad downsized their house, and the letter stamps I've had since I was a kid. The ribbon for the hangers is from my wedding. Spur of the moment crafters benefit from a slight tendency to hoard things. :)

So after I stamped them, I poked holes in them with the insert to a ball point pen and then I baked them at 325 for about a half hour. I've now seen other recipes say to bake at 250, and maybe they wouldn't have browned quite so much if I'd gone that route. I also recommend that you line your baking sheet with foil if it is not pristine, as the salt dough can pick up oil baked onto the sheet (Not that I would know, from experience, ahem.) Once they were cool, I gave them a few coats of Modge Podge for preservation, and I threaded some ribbon through them as hangers. I tied them to my little bags, and they're ready to go.

Naturally, I planned to give them to my co-workers today, but I'll keep it real by disclosing that I completely forgot to give them out! I spent the morning in a meeting with librarians from other libraries, and then had to leave work with a migraine. I'll have to pass them out tomorrow. I've only had a few migraines in my life, thankfully. I came home and slept, and I feel fine now.

Icing--Or What to Do When You're Iced In

1. Clean your kitchen:
      a. scrub stovetop,
      b. scrub sink,
      c. clear clutter off your counters and clean them,
      d. clean the backsplash,
      e. wipe down your appliances,
      f. clear clutter off the top of your refrigerator and clean it,
      g. clean out your refrigerator.
      h. Get your husband to do the floor.

  2. Do four loads of laundry: wash, dry, put away.
  3. Count your blessings--in particular, thank God that the power has stayed on.
  4. Change the sheets.
  5. Clean the guest bathroom.
  6. Finish the book you're reading.
  7. Spend plenty of time reading blogs and playing on YouTube.
  8. And writing.
  9. Do a project you've been meaning to do for a long time, like seasoning cast iron.
10. Get a little stir crazy and go out in the back yard to take pictures

 11. Cook
      a. pot pie,
      b. a big pot of soup, and
      c. concoct a way to use up the leftover odds and ends you found when cleaning out the fridge.
12. Bake
      a. rye bread
      b. and cake--so you can do a little icing of your own.

I have had a gift of some extra free time today. This was the view outside the window a little while ago, and the snow continues. The library where I work closed early, so I got to come home at 12:30. I am not a great lover of snow, but I can appreciate its beauty as long as I don't have to go out in it. For one thing, I don't like going out in the cold and wet, but for another, going out in it spoils the illusion of the snow's pristine beauty. When we track through it we drag up the muck and dirt underneath it. Having celebrated Theophany this week, I've been thinking about the snow in an allegorical fashion. The whole world seems to be wrapped in a white baptismal garment, one actually made up of water itself. Although the garment is inevitably sullied, it will be cleansed and renewed with another snowfall or will melt away to bring forth new life in the spring, so it seems to be a beautiful illustration of the sanctification of the waters.

Now that Theophany is past, we will be putting away our Christmas decorations over the next few days, so I thought I'd post pictures of ours so I can enjoy them virtually once they're packed away, and to help me remember next year what I did. Below is our little pencil Christmas tree, that we bought when we were first married and living in a tiny apartment. It was perfect for us then, and is small enough to fit in our entry way now. The tree skirt is tulle leftover from wedding decorations.


Green is my favorite color. I have a green car, a green coat, green purses, plenty of green clothes, and this green wall in our dining area and kitchen. One of the things I love about the green wall is that it looks so cheery with the red Christmas decorations.

It's about 15 degrees outside right now, so I suspect that very soon the wood you see in this picture will be burning away in the fireplace. You can also see our Nativity set which is on top of the TV cabinet reflected in this mirror. My brother gave it to us as a Christmas gift the first year we were married, and the cave belonged to my mother-in-law, and might be older than I am.


And this is the first time in several years that we've had a real Christmas tree. Last year we were traveling for most of Christmas, so we didn't get one, and for the few years before that we were in an apartment. James surprised me by picking it up from a tree farm here in Indiana, and it's been lovely. We're going to be a little sad to take it down.


So one more time, to those of you celebrating Christmas today on the Old Calendar, "Christ is Born! Glorify Him!"

Life Interrupted

A virus is certainly an inconvenient interruption to daily life. Around here we have been fighting both the virtual and real-world variety. I have been bogged down with a bad cold that has left me with no energy and frequent sinus headaches to boot. I thought I had it kicked, but I woke up Friday morning with sore throat and light-headedness. Hopefully, I really am on the mend since I'm approaching the two week mark now. Peppermint tea and clementines are a panacea, right?


February sunshine helps, too. It's a definite bonus to get home in time to enjoy a little bit streaming in from the west-facing windows. Mostly I come home from work and curl up somewhere to read. Not a lot of cooking or homemaking has been going on. Since Lent is rapidly approaching, we've been enjoying plenty of quick and easy, cheesy dinners, and I doubt James has minded when my lack of desire to cook has led to the chance for take-out of the meaty variety for him. Easy comfort food has been the order of the day. Grilled cheese and tomato soup is a perennial favorite. I don't generally buy a lot of prepared foods, but I like to have a few in the the cupboard for dinner "emergencies." We both love the tomato soup from Trader Joe's. I think it's organic creamy tomato. I add a little basil and fresh ground pepper and call it a night.


Aside from the cold I've been fighting, our computer also succumbed to a bug. James bought new anti-virus software and wiped the hard drive. Twice. But all seems to be well now. Plus the computer is a little faster thanks to the clean-up. Now if I could just say the same about myself, we'd be in good shape.