Happy Holidays!!!

Happiest of Holidays, my farmgirl friends!!!

It’s finally winter!!! Can you even believe that this week is Christmas (and includes many other Hoildays, too!)? Come on in, and see what’s going on around the farm and farmhouse. Oh, I love this season – it makes me think back on days and years past with such love and warmth. Put on the kettle, grab a gingersnap or two (okay, or five), sit down and let’s chat…

The days are short, the nights are cold, and the fire burns bright. Right now, I can see some very wooly sheep grazing across the street, and I’m glad that I’m looking at them through a warm, new storm door (thanks, Mom and Dad!!!). On these gray winter days, I’m glad for whatever light there is outside and am always a culprit of having the front wood door open and the fire buring full force – it’s a bit of luxury I allow myself in winter. Since we heat with wood mostly – we have a gas furnace, but we set it at 59 degrees F and it comes on only in the middle of the night – I figure that it’s affordable this year – my husband was a wood-gatherer-and-stacker extrordinaire this summer. What a pleasure!

Around here, the farmhouse is buzzing with activity…

Trees are being decorated…

Holiday cards are being written…

Santa is watching all of the action from the front door…

Cats are trying to be part of the action…

And…GROWN MEN are being “coerced” into playing with Legos.

You KNOW it’s a good time when the little ones are bored with the Legos, but the uncle and the father? still going strong!

Now, there is plenty of action in the kitchen, too. Breads are being baked, cookies are “happening,” and there will be the requisite holiday lamb dinner sometime soon. Now, we raise lambs, so we don’t have a Christmas goose or the like, it’s lamb, and I love it. More holiday food traditions from around here? Salmon mousse (YUM!), rum cakes (DOUBLE YUM!), gingerbread cookies shaped like gnomes, licorice allsorts, Haribo gummy bears, hot chocolate with little candy canes for “stirrers,” – oh, there are so many! I forgot – the orange rolled cookies that aren’t “cooked” – what are those called? OH, the holiday kitchen is wonderful!

Since we celebrate the holidays between our home, my parents’ home and my in-laws’ home, we draw out the festivities for a few days, and it’s lots of fun. On my side, we have a more traditional Christmas Eve/Day celebration, and we go there after the festivities on my husband’s side. His family has a raucous and fun Christmas Eve party with something like 35 cousins for my little boys to play with in attendance.

AND, for an additional upcoming night of fun, have you considered a “return of the light” Winter Solstice celebration? I think this year, we’ll invite a few friends over, have a big bonfire, fix up some glogg and enjoy the full moon that night. And just think, from then on, until the Summer Solstice, each day will be a little longer than the one before it. It’s in this midst of winter that I can hardly remember what it was like to be warm, outside in the soft evening sunglow at NINE O’CLOCK in the EVENING!!! Ahhhh… the days. Really, however, I DO also love these cold dark-early evenings. They are perfect for reading to little ones, knitting and just chatting by the woodstove.

How I hope your holiday season holds peace, love and much joy.

Farmgirl hugs…

Libbie