Christmas crib and cooking

This year I spent 'Stir Up Sunday' weekend in bed, sick. I've had another bout of sickness since then and so all the usual Christmas cooking was pushed back, till now.

I've made my usual Christmas cake - Port and Dark Chocolate cake, two 28cm sized cakes and a smaller one.

Then onto the puddings as you can see above hanging from my kitchen utensil hanger. This year I decided to start a new tradition....the adding of a sterling silver medal (rather than the tradition use of a coin)

I searched through my medal stock and found these four that would be suitable and then finally decided upon the top two - the cross was placed in one pudding, the scapular medal into the other. Next year I will give more thought and planning to this endevour and order the medal below - "Gloria Deo"

Gloria Deo Medal

I was chatting to my aunty last night and said to her that the medal can be looked after for the year by the person who received it in their slice of pudding, when the following Christmas comes around the medal can be handed back to be put in again, most likely going onto another family member....

I have vivid memories of visiting relatives and been given a slice of pudding, to which a silver sixpence and had placed into - as a child I was SO excited!

It is a tradition that has faded since modern coins are unsuitable for this, the old sixpence had been perfect in it's day but replacing coins with religious sterling silver pieces I think will work really well and give it a more religious dimension to an old tradition.

For anyone looking for a religious medal, there is this website, open to the public - Rosary Workshop.

The Dark Chocolate and Port Christmas Cake is all done, wrapped and placed in it's tin.

This has been the first year that we have been blessed with this beautiful statue of the baby Jesus and so we were looking to start a new Advent tradition.

I have been slow off the mark, but I liked the idea of adding straw to the crib to prepare the bed for the Christ Child on Christmas Eve, each child's good deeds allow them to add another bundle of straw..

I had been greatly inspired by Erin's posting at Seven Little Australian's plus One last year. Erin's Carpenter Boy had made a lovely crib and so my ds 14, decided to do the same.

Someone gave us a lovely basket of chocolates and it had been packed in this straw you can see above. The trouble is there is so much straw to be put in the crib I decided it would be better to make the straw into little bundles. Each time a child performed a good deed, they could put one of these bundles into the crib.

I tied the bundles together by using very thin, straw coloured thread, that can't be seen but holds the bundle together firmly.

This particular Advent tradition is one that is often started at the beginning of Advent, but due to sickness in the house it was one activity that has taken a while to get going. So we are a week out, finally starting, but better late than never.