Happy Saint Nicholas Day!

And I realize I am late in posting this, St. Nicholas Day is December 6th and it's now after midnight and officially December 7th. We celebrate St. Nicholas Day in a widely adapted manner handed down from my dad's German side of the family. As a kid, we hung socks--not stockings, just a clean sock--on December 5th. St. Nicholas would leave a small gift and some candy. We celebrated Christmas as well, but didn't hang up stockings, there was just gifts under the tree. I've passed the tradition onto my children--although we hang up stockings at Christmas as well. My husband was horrified at the idea of no stocking stuffers (a concept which rather baffled me for a while, the concept of special things specifically for putting in the stocking. Our St. Nick gifts as a kid were simply presents small enough to fit in a stocking, not stocking stuffers.

The girls were quite happy with their gifts. Ivy got the apron, mitt and towel I posted in the last entry, along with some cookware from this wonderful website. Miranda got a Buildabear kit to make her own monkey. Both girls got Christmas ornaments--Miranda's is a wooden wolf and Ivy's a sequinned gecko. And of course chocolates and a candy cane, which are all already gone. Everyone was happy and Ivy was quite impressed that St. Nicholas knew she liked fossas.