fluffy snakes....

I whipped up a pile of fluffy snakes for the kids at the party to go with their North Pole Goodie Bags.  These snakes are such fun to make except the fabric sheds and I ended up with bits everywhere! But as far as snakes go, you can't get any cuter than stripy fluffy snakes....

A Question....

I know this is a Christmas question and that is done and dusted with but I just have to know! When we were talking at one of the parties it came to light that our Canadian friend leaves milk and cookies for Santa and the reindeers get carrots and celery, we leave Santa a glass of sherry a mince pie and a carrot for the reindeer. Then a fellow Brit said that they leave whiskey for Santa and an Aussie friend said they leave beer!

image

So, what I want to know is....

Where are you and what do you leave out for Santa and the Reindeer?

and back to Lego, thank you for all your replies so far. Piling the whole lot in one tub was working when it was bigger Lego but these newer sets have so many small and strange parts that is it is really difficult to find what you want. It is not like the olden day eh? I will let you know what we decide to do...

Lego Crazy...

We are all Lego fans in this house, which is juts as well really! Ebi-kun has worked his way through the Kingdom's (knights) sets and now is hooked on Ninjago, we have a good collection of goodies and baddies so the ninjas have teamed up with the knights and some big battles have been going on. The downside of this is that I have apparently been appointed as Chief Lego Builder so when something is damaged in battle I have to rebuild it, I can see the novelty of this wearing off pretty quickly.

Anyway, a question for fellow Lego fans, how do you store it all? At the moment we have a couple of tackle boxes for all the teeny pieces and a big box for the main pieces and I also made a grab mat but it isn't working well so I am open to suggestions, if you have a Lego storage system that works really well, please share! Do you keep each set in it's own box or just chuck it all in together?

and then it was all over....

I hope you all had a lovely few days whatever it is you celebrate. Our Christmas was much quieter than last year (when we were back in the UK) but it was a lovely anyway. We were awoken by a very excited small boy at the crack of dawn, well I am not sure dawn had actually cracked. We opened the stockings and snuggled under the blankets until the heaters had warmed up downstairs.

Daddy-ebi designs industrial mixing machines, so what? you say, well many of the machines got to cakes shops and so each year on Christmas eve we get a super fancy cake and this year was no exception, we end up having fancy cake for Christmas breakfast with pink champagne.

And then it is time to get on and open the presents, we have a tradition or a game if you like, started by my mom, I think to keep a track of who got what and from whom. The rules...

1. The youngest person picks a gift from under the tree, reads the label and gives it to the intended person.

2. Once the gift has been opened then next youngest takes a gift, etc. etc.

3. If you pick a gift labelled to yourself you must put it back.

4. The game continues until everything is opened.

Ebi-kun was more than chuffed with all the Beast Quest books he got, should keep him going for the holidays at least!

And as time goes by I realised I married a True Yorkshireman rather than a Japanese man - my grandfather would have got on well with him.

Turkey dinner and all the trimmings, lovely! Although I did cook enough to feed a small army, we will be eating leftovers for a week!

Ebi-kun loves to tuck into a bit of leg!

The rest of the was spent building this Lego set, watching Muppets Christmas Carol (and poking daddy to make sure he didn't doze off) and playing games. 

Christmas day ebi-kun started with a runny nose by last night he was coughing like he smokes 60 a day so instead of a playdate with his yochien friends today it is going to be a trip to the doctor, we are supposed to be going skiing in a couple of days so I don't want him to get any worse.

Quick Winter Cake....

For the party I whipped up a quick sponge cake, you could easily use a bought sponge and just decorate it. To make the North Pole sign I used a sweetie tube, the Japanese equivalent to smarties, we had used the sweets on the gingerbread houses. I covered it with white paper then used red tape to make the stripes. The actual sign was just a piece of card then I stuck it to the pole. Then jammed the whole thing into the centre of the cake.

Next, make the royal icing, 2 egg whites (should be at room temp), 1/4tsp cream of tarter and 2 1/2cups of icing sugar, whisk until thick. Pour all over the cake, add a few mini marshmallows for snowballs and I happened to have some snowflake sprinkles so I threw them on too. Finished it off with by dripping icing on the sign and some chocolates that were wrapped as presents.

Merry Christmas!

Whether you celebrate or not, I hope you and your family have a wonderful day today.

This is basically how our day will unfold....

all images via Pinterest

A triple celebration....

Yesterday was a national holiday because it is the Emperor of Japan's birthday, so we invited a few friends round for a little Christmas party, it is a while since some of the kids have seen each other so we played a couple of games to break the ice.

Koko and Jack were also celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary, so basically we had three good reasons to party :o)

 Ms. Clause popped in with presents for all the kids...

Ebi-kun was super happy because he got the next Beast Quest book, he had finished the last one of the first set that morning, he is totally addicted to these books and I must admit, they are really exciting.

It was a lovely day, not our usual 23rd trip to Tokyo but it was great to spend it with good friends, there was a great mix of foods, I love pot luck parties! and we have enough left overs so I don't have to do much in the way of cooking today - even better. Daddy-ebi has to work today so Ebi-kun and I are going to have a nice relaxing day, I will cook the turkey this evening, I can't fit the turkey and veg in the oven together, so it is the turkey today and prep the veg and then on the big day I will do the veg. If you are like me and pretty useless at working out roasting times, there is a great Roasting Calculator you can use. Ebi-kun is super excited about Santa coming, I hope those who celebrate Christmas as excited too!

A walk around the old town of Kawagoe...

A few pictures from our day out in Kawagoe....

sweetie street

In Kawagoe there is a whole street dedicated to selling candies and sweeties and other snack type food, this is in Ebi-kun's favourite shop....

chocolate cigarettes

dried squid on a stick

candy heaven!

pretty sweeties

and ebi-kun's favorite bit, the pick and mix

Do you want a copy?

QUICK, pop over here to enter, I think this is a great book so if you can get your hands on a free copy all the better!

A little bit of the North Pole...

We have some friends coming round on Friday so I made up some little sweetie bags ...... 

If you would like a copy of the bag topper, download here

North Pole Bag Topper Jojoebi

and the word of the week is....

GLORIOUS

Ebi-kun loves the word glorious, I'm not sure where he picked it up but he uses it all the time, like when we walked through these ginko leaves at the park when he went for his last football lesson of the year.

Gingerbread Houses....

This is a project that Ebi-kun and I really wanted to try this year but I searched high and low for the ingredients for gingerbread and failed (rumour has it that kaldi coffee farm stocks it, not our local one though)  so then I saw that a lot of people use Graham Crackers which sent me on another hunt, I eventually tracked some down in Iishi Seijo in Kawagoe! This post is as much for me as it is for you because I am sure when it comes round to doing it again next year I will have forgotten everything.

We invited two of ebi-kun's friends who live down the road, they are sisters and had never made gingerbread houses either. After advice from Auntie lolo I decided to pre-build the houses and it was much easier than I thought it was going to be, Auntie lolo (she isn't my auntie, just a general type of auntie) suggested using melted almond bark at glue but I wasn't even going to try looking for that. I used royal icing, one batch to stick the houses together and a double batch for decorating:

1 egg white (at room temperature)

1/4 tsp cream of tarter

1 1/4 US sized cup of icing sugar

whisk on low speed until think and glue like.

Next, to shape the end of the houses you need a serrated knife but not a steak knife, just a regular dinner knife will do.

Keep the knife straight and use it like a saw, once you have scored the cracker you can break it or just keep sawing. If the cut is not clean rub it against one of the scrap pieces which will act like sand paper.

Ebi-kun assisted with the house building, we did it about an hour before the guests arrived and the icing had set pretty well by the time they got here. When they got here I whipped up the second batch of icing and gave each child a bowl of icing, a spoon and a bowl of sweeties then left them to it...

m-chan seemed to eat half of her icing, I hope she wasn't sick when she got home!

M-chan got stuck in, she took a bit more time than the younger two who were basically piling on as many sweeties as possible!

and our finished set, the test one, mine and ebi-kun's, they look really cute and it was super easy to do, this is definitely a tradition we are going to start (taking I can find crackers again next year!)