Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

 

 

 

 

25 Ways to Enjoy the Holidays

 

 

1. Spread the cheer! Do one act of kindness for someone each day of the holiday season.

 

2. Go ice skating!

 

3. Have a holiday movie night and watch all of your favorites. What is your favorite?

 

4. Grab some warm cider and drive around one night looking at the beautiful Christmas lights.

 

5. Buy a CD of holiday tunes and sing along to it in the car as you travel this season.

 

6. Build something creative and fun out of gingerbread.

  

                             7. See a local holiday play, show, or Christmas pageant.

 

8. Choose charities for holiday donations. You could sponsor a child for Christmas, donate food to an animal shelter, or give coats and blankets to the homeless.

 

9. Go sledding on a favorite mountain.

 

10. Give a waiter or waitress an extra large tip.

 

11. Wear at least one festive outfit.

 

12. Take blankets and a thermos of cocoa and go see a Christmas parade.

 

13. Make a gift for someone special.

 

14. Attend a holiday party and learn a new recipe to bring along.

 

15. Make a DYI Christmas photo booth with props and have a silly photo shoot with loved ones.

 

16. Read Christmas stories.                                                

 

17. Make winter treats for your backyard wildlife.

 

18. Make treats for your neighbors.

 

19. Shop at  a Christmas market.

 

20. Try a creative hot chocolate recipe with flavors like orange cayenne pepper, or peanut butter.

 

21. Create a one-of-a-kind wreath for your front door.

 

22. Bundle up and enjoy the beauty of winter by taking a nature walk.

 

23. Bake Christmas cookies. Try something new like rum balls or lemon crinkles.

 

24. Get a new pair of pajamas for everyone in the family to open and wear to bed on Christmas Eve.

 

25. Remember what the reason for the season is and be grateful, humble, kind, compassionate, and generous each day.

 

 

 

 

Deborah Malone's first novel, Death in Dahlonega, finaled  in the American Christian Fiction Writer's Category Five writing contest! Deborah was nominated for 2012 and 2013 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Novel category. She has worked as a freelance writer and photographer, for the historic magazine, "Georgia Backroads." She has had many articles and photographs published, and her writing is featured in "Tales of the Rails," edited by Olin Jackson. She is a member of the Georgia Writer's Association and Advanced Writers and Speaker's Association. As a current member of the American Christian Fiction Writers she has established a blog where she reviews Christian Fiction. 

Traditional Swedish Christmas Cookie Recipe: Pepparkakor

Do you love Ikea as much as I do?

For me, the cheap, cute, easy to put together furniture and "stuff" is just part of the fun. Every time I go to Ikea, I feel in a small way, like I am back home at Fackelbararnas Bibelskola (Torchbearers Bible School) in Holsby Brunn, Smaland, Sweden.

Christmas at Ikea is especially wonderful.

I'm from Portland, Oregon where snow is rare, even at Christmas. But the one winter I spent in Sweden was like a picture postcard for Christmas. Clear, bright blue skies, hills covered in snowy evergreen trees, and stores filled with gnomes, dala horses, straw stars for your Christmas tree, and of course, pepparkakor.

Right now, my Ikea is filled with the same things!

Not that the store-bought cookies are even remotely as good as Aina's homemade pepparkakar--thin, crisp, sweet and spicy, melt in your mouth ginger cookies that inspired more than one midnight raid on the kitchen. (But I'm not naming names!)

This winter I've been re-living Christmastime in Sweden as I work on Dark and Stormy: A Tillgiven Romantic Mystery. And I bet you can guess what that makes me want...

Aina's Pepperkakor!

Since I can't share a plate of cookies with you over a cup of tea (a delightful tradition called Fika in Sweden) I will share her recipe--straight from my Bible school scrap book! (But with American measurement conversions in parenthesis.)

Pepparkakor

300g Margarine (1 1/3 C)
300g Corn Syrup (scant 1 C)
300g Sugar (1 1/2 C)
1 T Cinnamon
1 T Cloves
1/2 T Ginger
1 1/2 T Baking Soda
3dl Water (1 1/4 C)
900g  Flour (9 C)

(It's a big batch, since this is the recipe she used to feed the whole school!)

Heat Sugar, margarine and Syrup carefully and stir until smooth.
Add spices and stir it cold.
Stir the soda in water and add it to mixture.
Work in the flour. (Save some for the dough rolling.)
Let the dough sit overnight in the fridge.
Roll out very thin and cut with shaped cookie cutters.

Serve with hot coffee and enjoy a little taste of Christmas in Sweden!

For a first serving of life at the (fictional) Tillgiven Bibelskola, check out Hard to Find: A Tillgiven Romantic Mystery!

How Much Fun Can One Person Stand?

by Nancy Jill Thames

Wouldn't it be lovely to have one more day in the week? What would you do with an extra day? I think I would do absolutely nothing but kick back and rest. Alas, this wish probably won't happen in my lifetime. Sigh. In the meantime discipline and organization will carry me through the out-of-town-company, the apartment warming for our youngest daughter, the rehearsal dinner barbeque, the mini-family reunion luncheon the following day, and our son's wedding the same evening. 

The thing about it is that it's all fun stuff. Really. Sure there's planning and chaos but hey, no pain - no gain. In my upcoming book "Waiting for Santa," Jillian is expecting a houseful of out-of-town company for Christmas, including a pug puppy. She's also thrust into a murder investigation while juggling romance between two suitors. And I thought I had challenges! The book is all in good fun and captures fond memories of my own family's holiday traditions. Now all I have to figure out is how to juggle between my own busy life and launching this book by November! Hmm. With discipline and organization...and remembering how fun it is to write cozy mysteries for readers like you, I should make that deadline. 

See you next Friday here on Cozy Mystery Magazine. Have a great weekend, my friends.

~Nancy Jill 

Visit the Cozy Book Store for a free offer this weekend!

Nancy Jill Thames is the author of the Jillian Bradley Mysteries - stories often set in exclusive hotels and resorts, based on real life travel adventures with her husband of 44 years. Her mysteries incorporate her love of afternoon tea, which has earned her the title of “Queen of Afternoon Tea.” She holds a music degree from UT Austin and lives in Leander, Texas where she is a member of the Leander Writers Guild. She has won awards for her blogs,  a pie contest for her Chocolate Chip Cream Pie, and has been on the Author Watch Bestseller List numerous times. Nancy Jill is busy working on book 6 Waiting for Santa, a murder mystery taking place on Christmas Eve near Jillian Bradley’s home in Clover Hills.

To check out her books, Murder in Half Moon Bay, The Ghost Orchid Murder, From the Clutches of Evil, The Mark of Eden, and Pacific Beach, please visit the Cozy Book Store and her blogs: 
Cozy Mystery Author, Nancy Jill Thames
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