Happiness Report No. 21

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Good morning friends, how was your weekend? It was a blissfully quiet weekend here, just what I needed. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends as they say and I wore myself out. Yesterday was the Feast of St. Nicholas, and it was fun to wake up to a stocking filled with treats. Do you celebrate St. Nick?  Thanks to the German influence in my family I  grew up celebrating the Feast of St. Nicholas, we put our stockings out on the 5th and if we are lucky they are filled with fruit, nuts, candy and little gifts. If you are unfamiliar with the tradition, you can read all about it in my Saturday post.. 

I’ve been shopping online, mostly looking because it’s 2020 and I feel like I’ve been living in pajamas this winter. Somedays I come home from yoga, shower and put on a pair of warm, comfy pajamas to work in, other days comfortable lounge pants pants. I sometimes wonder if my Parisian neighbors think I am eccentric because frequently they will see me during the day in my pajamas, wellies and jacket chasing Patches around the backyard. 

I love this time of year, my “love language” is gift giving and although I enjoy finding the perfect gifts for family and friends more often than not I find myself giving care packages instead. In the case of my family, the packages are filled with treats using the same recipes that my grandmother made. My grandmother was a prolific baker, she baked every night for weeks(she had 10 children) and by the time Christmas came an entire closet was filled with tins of cookies. The cookies were made into cookie plates and given to family and friends, and they were eaten on Christmas Even and Christmas Day. There were linzer cookies, pecan snowballs, chocolate crinkle cookies, butter horn, and so many more and that was just the cookies! She also made pans and pans of cinnamon rolls, prune danish, poppyseed rolls and some other rolls that looked like cinnamon rolls but were filled with ground nuts. 

Over the years I have added breads, stollen, nuts, chutney, granola and other sweet treats to my boxes, along with books, my own blends of chocolate chaud and hot cocoa, to those care packages I add homemade marshmallows as well. I want people to open the boxes and feel, a). happy b). a sense of nostalgia c). I want them to stop, slow down, have a cup of cocoa, enjoy some treat and the season. 

My husband and I have been trying to make the holidays a little more special this year as it is just the two so we’ve been doing little things every day; like having dinner in the dining room by the light of christmas trees and candles, we take late night walks to see the neighborhood christmas lights, on Friday night we make a holiday cocktail or mulled wine and we have been watching Christmas movies/shows every day. 

Don’t get me wrong, every day isn’t a holiday, I have my down days just like everyone else. But I believe that Christmas is what you make it, and this year more than ever I want it to be special and “the most wonderful time of the year.” I want to look back on 2020 and smile at all of the new traditions that we have made and added to our family traditions. 

What have you been doing lately to make yourself happy? Have you been making or baking anything? 

Have a great day my friends be safe.