Baking Day - through the years. A Holiday tradition!

It's no secret that Christmas is my absolute favourite time of year. Ever since I was little - everything about Christmas made my heart flutter, and... well, I'm still little....... just older. Whenever I see trees for sale outside the grocery store, the first shipments of clementines and egg nog, and kids visiting Santa Claus - I turn five again. Of course, everyone has the generic holiday traditions, and everyone has more specific, varied traditions within their family or amongst groups of friends. My favourite of all has to be Baking Day. This event over the years has created quite a following with my friends, and I love how it brings people together.

How'd it all begin? It was during the time I was home schooled, so maybe when I was thirteen or fourteen-years-old. I went with my Mom to her friends' Christmas cookie exchange. It was a weekday morning, with a couple of her close ladies. I loved how happy everyone was, not to mention the abundance of wonderful Christmas sweets. I wanted to have an event like this too! But obviously like, fun, and like, hip, and like, for adolescents, and we'd play like, Simple Plan's 'My Christmas List'.

My first year back in school, I was fifteen-years-old, when the first Baking Day came to be. Over the years, more people started attending, we threw in adding old school Christmas specials on VHS, complete with early 90s commercials (since not everyone could fit in the kitchen!), and the recipe for 'Esther's Special Hot Chocolate' was created. This has become a Baking Day favourite, and the recipe to this day still remains super top secret!

.....And now here we are - eleven years later?!? Which boggles my mind - how crazy to think that a tradition has carried on this long! Old high school friends still attend the event too!

Along with watching 'Muppet Christmas Carol' on Christmas Eve, and decorating the tree, this is my favourite holiday tradition. As Baking Day is tomorrow, I'd post some photos of Baking Days through the years. Take a look, maybe you'll see your very own wonderful self!

 Baking Day 2005, Jenni, Heather, and Katherine

 circa 2005, Miriam, Jenni, Steph, Candance, Meaghan, and Allie

 Famous chocolate chip cherry cookies... that still get made every year!

Cassie and Kristen... these lovely girls still come every year! And holy crap, this is actually from seven years ago.

 Baking Day 2009 with Steph Seaton!

 circa 2009 - Kristen and Steph at Baking Day four years later

Sssshhhh... we're hiding from the gingerbread house monster? I don't know.

Baking Day 2010... the first one living downtown! With Amanda.

 Baking Day 2011 - Cassie smashing some candy canes!

 Baking Day 2011 and Kristen is still here! Along with the awesome Simon.

 Baking Day 2011 post chocolate attack.

 Baking Day 2011 - Phil, post icing attack

Baking Day 2011 - watching Muppet Family Christmas while the rest of us are in the kitchen

.....excited to see what photos shall surface this year! Baking Day tomorrow!

Get Interested

One of my goals this month was to write/blog more often. Nov. 24th.... better late than never!

Another goal this month was to finish reading a book I started a few months ago, but put away for awhile. It's called 'The Happiness Project', written by Gretchen Rubin. I've never been one for self-help books, but what I've liked about this one so far, is that the author gives you insight to her 'happiness project', while remaining adamant that this is what worked for her - and the reader is welcome to try it themselves; however, they should tinker with the 'formula' and find their own happiness project. What works for one person, may not be the perfect solution for another.

That being said - I've found many things that have provided excellent insight and advice to finding more joy in my life, though not everything in the book has been a 'eureka' moment, or something I would agree with.

This morning, I came up with my own rule that will help keep my house cleaner! I love deadlines. I love the feeling of getting things done on a deadline, and also the adrenaline of doing things by a certain time. So, my plan is, once a day, to set my alarm for exactly 15 minutes. In those 15 minutes, I will get as much cleaning done as possible... But when the alarm goes off, I have to stop everything I'm doing. I hate cleaning with a fiery passion. But when I do get to it, I get obsessive about it and then do it for hours, which makes me resent it even more. This way, I'll get a little bit done each day, and won't immediately feel like I'm losing hours of time once I begin cleaning. Hopefully this works!

Today however, I decided I want to focus a bit on something in the book that really stood out to me. Finding time for fun. As a certified musical theatre dork, I think, 'Well, what I do is already fun, and in my spare time, I have even more fun going to shows, listening to old and new cast recordings, and watching 'Submissions Only'!' ...However, this is a different kind of fun. It's a kind of fun that is completely separate from things that pertain to my everyday life. Really, I suppose it's the things we do as hobbies. But do I honestly take the time for that? Do a lot of us? Probably not. We all have things that we do for pleasure; reading, watching TV, spending time with our friends, and the like - but how often do we read something in a magazine more than once that we find interesting, yet still ignore it? Or find ourselves saying "I've always wanted to learn a certain skill", or "start an art collection", or whatever it may be?

These things that we connect to and would like to do end up being put on the back burner because they are less necessary than our "official projects" that pertain to our day to day lives. In Rubin's book, she suggests forming your own 'INTEREST LOG', a place where one can write down things that naturally catch one's attention, instead of forgetting it and moving on to the next order of business in the day. I love this idea. There are multiple things I'm fascinated by, that I want to learn more about, and that I'd love to do..... and never honestly take the time to give them a second thought. So, here is the beginning of my own Interest Log. I'm excited to see where it takes me, both for remembering things I am interested in - and also for making the time to delve further into these subjects. I'm sure there'll be lots added to this list in the next few days. And if you feel like it - start your own! See where it takes you.

ESTHER'S INTEREST LOG
- Sign language
- Learning French, Italian, and Romanian
- Learning properly about wine and cheese
- Both the history and the current affairs of Israel
- My ancestry on both sides of my family
- Table etiquette
- Collecting 'Beauty and the Beast' mugs and Christmas ornaments
- Learning how to drive (yes, I'm 26 and still only have my learner's permit)
- ...more to come!