Epiphany 2012

On Epiphany (celebrating the three wise men visiting Jesus) in our home, the children wake up to find three small gifts on the breakfast table: a gold gift (something homemade), a frankincense gift (something religious), and a myrrh gift (something for the body).  Well, seeing as this mama has at least one hand full of baby nearly 24 hours a day, making something homemade with just one hand was not quite do-able for me.  So... for their gold gift, the girls got some saint bracelets (similar to these) that a sweet lady at our parish got for them at a cathedral she had visited!  Their frankincense gift was a new DVD - a movie about St. Bernadette, who saw a vision of Mary in Lourdes, France.  We just celebrated the feasts of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette this past week (since it's February already!).  The myrrh gift was really cool, I thought... a bar of soap I got from Etsy called "Three Kings Soap."  It is made and sold by Swan Mountain Soaps (so I did work in a bit of "homemade," even though it wasn't by me!), who I found by chance when perusing a list of pro-life Etsy shops!  I also got my brother some shaving soap from them.  I would link to it, but the site is down right now.  But the soap has swirls of gold in it and is scented with either frankincense or myrrh (or both; I can't remember)... so neat! 

If you click on the photo, you can see the gold swirls better!

We do this Epiphany celebration on the morning of January 6, although the Church in the United States has moved the feast to the following Sunday.  We have been having "Gifts of the Magi Bread" (I make ours with whole wheat flour and omit the cherries) for breakfast for the past few years - yum!  Like the gifts brought by he magi, this bread is full of sweet treasures: chocolate chips, banana, mandarin oranges, coconut, almonds... yum!!  And especially delicious with my Irish breakfast tea!

In some countries, children receive their gifts on Epiphany.  Some areas have legends that the gifts are brought by Old Befana or Babushka, who was looking for the Christ Child to bring him gifts along with the wise men and never found him, so she still roams the world every Epiphany eve, leaving gifts for all children just in case one of them is Jesus.  So my kids seem to think she's come to our house since we've read the stories, although  I think they are just pretending (particularly the almost seven year old).  But it's fun!

This year on the Sunday after the 6th, we had an Epiphany party with some friends!  We did this a couple years ago as well.  I made a "king cake," which was a walnut butter rum cake shaped like a "crown" by being baked in a bundt pan.  I'd also picked up this box of dark chocolate star cookies from Trader Joe's right after Thanksgiving, thinking the stars were perfect for Epiphany!  And oh, those were some yummy cookies... I love dark chocolate and probably ate most of them myself!

The kids decorated crowns and colored pictures of the three kings offering gifts to baby Jesus.  My friend Beth and I read them some books: The Last Straw and The Legend of Old Befana.  We might have read The Story of Three Wise Kings too; I can' remember.  Caroline, Cecilia, and their friend Brianna are reading Strega Nona's Gift, a new story that covers St. Nicholas Day (December 6) through Epiphany.  We got most of these from the library.  The kids also went from room to room and searched for the Baby Jesus (played by Lucy), returning home another way so they could avoid King Herod (Chris)!

After dinner - we had ham, potato salad, fruit, and some really yummy crock pot baked beans that Beth made - it was time for dessert.  In years past, I have put a little plastic baby inside the cake for somebody to find in their slice.  I bought a package of six of them a few years ago in the cake decorating section of a craft store, but I haven't seen them since.  So this year, I cut a few slits in the cake and inserted three chocolate coins.  Brianna and Leah found the first two, making them "kings" of the party.  The third king ended up being Alex, who was eating his cake very slowly, as all the kids crowded around, waiting for him to find the coin.  Turns out he'd apparently eaten it on the first bite because we never saw it, but we knew he took a slice that had a coin in it.  It was so funny because his dad kept asking if he had the coin, and he said no, and ten if his dad said "Oh, you don't have the coin," he'd say, "Yes I do!"  

We had a fun Epiphany this year!!

Epiphany 2010

We celebrated Epiphany on the traditional day, January 6. Here's how we began our day with three little gifts, waiting on the table:

~The Gifts~

The Gold Gift (something handmade): I Spy pouches

The Frankincense Gift (something religious): a new Glory Stories CD

The Myrrh Gift (something for the body) : a bottle of body wash

Caroline's I Spy pouch was filled with little plastic clear jewel-looking things that I found at the craft store (over two years ago, when I first planned to make one of these, ha ha!). Cecilia's was filled with dry rice. In each one, there are several trinkets to find: beads, pennies, shells, small animal-shaped buttons, paper clips, and various other small items found around the house and in the craft closet. I plan to make a checklist for each pouch so the girls can check off each item as they find it. Each pouch also has some tiny letter beads inside - letters to spell each girl's name. I plan to make sure we take these on long car trips!

Cecilia and Caroline hold up their three gifts

~Breakfast~

Gifts of the Magi Bread, which is filled with special treasures, just as the three kings brought treasures to the child Jesus

It has coconut, raisins, dried cranberries (rather than the cherries listed in the recipe), mandarin oranges, bananas...

...and chocolate chips!

This goes fast - and it is great with decaf Oregon Chai, by the way!

~King Cake~

The girls helped me bake a king cake - one we've never made before, which was a recipe for a Louisiana King Cake. It is more like a bread... with seven egg yolks in it, yum!!!

The recipe said to shape it into a 14 inch long piece of dough and then form it into a ring... now, there is no way a 14 inch long rope of dough this thick can become a ring, so I made it longer, and yet it still ended up with no hole in the center. But it cooked through just fine.

Here's the glaze, with my attempt at homemade colored sugar sprinkled on top... of note: natural food dyes don't shake nicely into sugar and require lots of stirring and smashing, ha ha!

And here's a traditional Epiphany drink, a hot apple cider with baked apples in it called Lamb's Wool.

We had our friends over to share our King Cake, and Sam found the baby doll in his slice of cake!

Beth read a couple books about the three kings to some of the kids. Cecilia is wearing her favorite dress-up outfit and holding her favorite Advent/Christmas book, Hanna's Christmas (I think I have read that book 187 times in the past month! ;).

Here's most of the group holding up our "Star of Bethlehem."

Our glitter stars from last year decorated our dining room today.

Our kings also made it to the manger scene today... they had been slowly traveling along the living room furniture toward their destination!

I hope everyone had a great Epiphany!

More Epiphany Fun!

Happy Epiphany, everyone, on the Traditional feast day! Yesterday, we made some Star of Bethlehem cookies! The girls had never helped me do sprinkles on cookies before... I found some all-natural sprinkles on sale at the local health food store. I think Cecilia ate them more than sprinkling them!

We used this set of star-shaped cookie cutters that I found at Wal-Mart on 50% off a few days after Christmas. Only $2.50, and I saw some more still there this past weekend in case anyone is interested... and they have some a set with an angel and a dove, also, which they oh-so-PC'ly label as the "Peace on Earth" cookie cutter set, ha ha!

The girls wanted to put tons of sprinkles on each cookie but soon discovered they would run out if they did that!

About to sample their work...

An up-close view... we tried the recipe in the King Arthur's whole grain cookbook - they actually have oats in them.

Then, last night, I baked a couple loaves of Gifts of the Magi bread for us to have for breakfast. They are filled with "rich treasures," (raisins, coconut, sliced almonds, mandarin oranges, chocolate chips, and blueberries - the recipe calls for marishino (sp?) cherries, but I don't like those) like the three kings presented to Jesus. I also subbed whole wheat flour for all the white flour and used Sucanat, about 3/4 cup instead of a whole cup, and I used a little less than the original amount of chocolate chips, and it turned out very moist, sweet, and yummy! We've eaten a whole loaf already!

What a treat for breakfast - Caroline was almost appalled that we were eating "chocolate for breakfast!!!" I assured her there'd only be a few chips in each slice of bread. ;)

Enjoy the last few days of the Christmas season!

Happy Epiphany!

Yesterday, the Catholic Church in the United States celebrated Epiphany, which is the day that we remember the three wise men following the star from the East to worship the baby Jesus. Traditionally, Epiphany is celebrated on the 6th of January, but the U.S. Bishops have moved it to a Sunday. In some cultures, this is the day on which gifts are given, because it is the day that Jesus received the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We observed Epiphany last year at home, but not in any big way. This year, we celebrated a bit more!

We held an Epiphany party at our house for a couple of families from our church. I have never even attended an Epiphany party, but I thought it sounded fun to have one nonetheless! We made this big star and I attached it to a dowel rod to be the Star of Bethlehem. Caroline wanted to carry it around and have an "Epiphany Parade" - that was all she talked about for a couple days prior to Sunday! She was so excited to have her friends over to have a parade. After Mass on Sunday morning, she even told Father Paul and her favorite non-relative seminarian about her Epiphany Parade and invited them to come. Neither one could, but it was cute that she was so excited and wanted them to be there, too!

Here's Caroline helping to make the glitter stars that you saw in the first photo, hanging from the light in the dining room. I love that light fixture... it is kind of ugly, but it has been great for hanging things!

I bought a 3D cardboard star from the craft store and then traced it onto white cardstock four times. Then the girls helped me paint the stars with a glue and water mixture, and then we sprinkled on the gold and silver glitter. Good thing we just got a new vacuum cleaner last week!

Before the party, we had our family time Epiphany observance... with a few little gifts for the girls! I didn't go crazy, because goodness knows they received plenty of gifts this Christmas... but another Catholic mom shared this idea a few years back, and I had been wanting to implement it. The idea is that the children receive three small gifts on Epiphany - a "gold" gift (something handmade), a "frankincense" gift (something religious), and a "myrrh" gift (something for the body). So, for the handmade gift, I have been working on these wool felt seals:

I was really happy with how they turned out. They were a bit time-consuming, but the second one was so much easier than the first and went much more quickly (I spent two evenings total on the second seal, start to finish). They are about three or four inches long each and are made from wool felt and stuffed with unspun wool. I used the pattern in the book Feltcraft. They were fun to make... I enjoy sewing things by hand; it is a soothing activity.

Here's an overhead shot of what turned out to be Cecilia's seal... Caroline chose the pink-eyed one and hasn't noticed the flaw on one side of the head when I didn't get it lined up right and had to cut it and sew the cut together to make it line up... I did better the second time!

Here are their gifts, waiting on the table before breakfast on Sunday morning. We have been reading The Legend of Old Befana from the library and also read a similar version of the story called Babouska (from this book) in which a woman is cleaning her house and is too busy with her constant cleaning to come along with the three kings to worship the Christ Child... she decided to search for him too late, and to this day, she still wanders the earth on Epiphany Eve, leaving a gift by each child's bed in hopes that one of them will be the Child Jesus. So, I don't know if Caroline thinks Old Befana really came to our house, but the magic of the story sure is fun!

So here is the gold gift, cinched up in a gold drawstring bag that was formerly full of foil-wrapped chocolate coins, found on the hearth where Santa must have accidentally dropped it while filling stockings, oops!

Here is the frankincense gift: Glory Stories CD for Caroline, and a board book about Mary for Cecilia. I love this book - it has darling illustrations!

And the myrrh gift, a new bottle of body wash/shampoo - the expensive kind that I love but hate to buy. But it lasts such a long time, and the girls often get a bottle of it in their stockings, so it's not that bad when you figure we only go through maybe three bottles a year.

Apparently, I took no photos of Caroline and Cecilia discovering the gifts. perhaps it was because Caroline slept in until 8:00 and we had to be at Mass at 9:30...

Here is our table set up for our Epiphany party in the afternoon. You can click on the photo to see it up close. I didn't take a close-up of the king cake, which doesn't really matter since it was nothing special looks-wise (although I did bake it in the cathedral bundt pan, which I have bad luck with... the cakes often get stuck and rip apart when I remove them from that pan, but by some miracle, it didn't this time)... I thought it kind of looked like a crown, though. It was not a traditional king cake other than being ring-shaped and having a little plastic baby Jesus inside. It was a whole wheat spice cake. We also had star-shaped cheese on crackers, and our friends brought a cheese spread that was shaped like a snowman - cute!! And we had various Christmas teas and Coke, too.

The bigger girls did a crown craft. I cut out crowns from construction paper and put our adhesive-backed sequins along with non-adhesive ones and glue. Caroline and her friends decorated their crowns, and then I read The Story of the Three Wise Kings and We Three Kings aloud to them. The other kids (six others ages 3 and under) enjoyed just playing with blocks and the Noah's ark in the den...

... although Cecilia later decided to make one, too. What big sister does, Cecilia wants to do, too!

Here are the three kings (uh, queens?) wearing their masterpieces!

And the lesser-known little fourth king

Caroline is holding up her baby Jesus from the king cake. Chris said, "People will think it was rigged if our own kid got the piece with the baby!" Actually, the piece with the baby was sitting there on the platter and nearly half of the cake had been taken already, so it was almost like that piece was being avoided... maybe because it was a little large (Caroline couldn't eat the whole piece). She was excited to have found the baby Jesus and today, I got to hot glue a teensy little diaper on him. Ah, the varied job experiences of a mother. ;)

Caroline convinced her friends to join in the parade. They marched around, pretending to follow the star.

They each took a turn carrying the star. They also got a baby doll to be Jesus and Caroline was crawling as a camel with Brianna pretending to ride on her back at one point... it was very true to the story, ha ha!

And this photo shows me how cluttered-looking this view of my house is. Wow. Oh well. The top of the refrigerator is a perfect junk-storage place, right?

Caroline's friends were sweet to participate in the parading as long as they did... she was heard to beg them to do it again later, but they had already been parading for quite a while!

And probably to Chris's relief, I didn't make everybody gather 'round and sing We Three Kings, although Caroline did want to sing a couple verses of it with me after reading the book! We had a great time hanging out with good friends and will have to try to celebrate this way more often!

To those who celebrate it on the 6th, have a happy Epiphany in a couple days! We will be having Gifts of the Magi bread for breakfast on Wednesday, just to prolong the celebrating a bit more! ;)