Country Girl in the City: Thankful Thursday

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Thankful Thursday - Christmas Edition

I'm going to try this again...I'm hoping to put up a Thankful Thursday post each week this month highlighting some Christmasy things I'm thankful for; here are two of them:

1) This Advent Storybook: I found this book several years ago at a used book store. The book has Mama Bear sharing a story each night with Benjamin Bear. They follow Little Bear's journey to Bethlehem. After each story Mama Bear shares a moral reminder or a specific truth about God. The stories are short enough to keep the attention of the youngest and also allow some beginner readers to read the stories.

One thing I was disappointed to find out was that there is no corresponding advent calendar to go with this book (despite the fact that each story begins with Benjamin Bear opening a door each day on his advent calendar). So, my goal this year was to build one myself. There are some odd items listed in the book (a beggar, thief, wolf, etc) so I couldn't use any traditional advent calendars. While poking around online I found a seller on Etsy that sells silver charms. She had every single item I needed in her inventory! Another quick look around online and I found this cute light up advent calendar with drawers. The drawers are large enough to hold the charm and a Lindt truffle candy. So far it's working great and I'm so thankful to finally have an advent calendar to match this book.

2) Today we also made one of my favorite cookie recipes. They are a bit more involved since they require making brown butter, chilling the dough and then rolling them in sugar. My three little helpers had fun with the rolling. The picture below shows off their different personalities. I've also included the link to the recipe for these yummy Brown Butter Chewy Ginger Oatmeal cookies. One note I would make is that the dough needs to be chilled for much longer than the 15 minutes to insure that the cookies don't melt too much.