Carols

Well, I enjoyed a lovely Christmas here in the UK visiting friends and skyping with family. One of the questions I've been asked was about carols sung at my church here. Most Sundays I don't know any of the songs that we sing at church but I recognized most of the carols they sang. We sang Angels We Have Heard on High, O Come All Ye Faithful, Good King Wenceslas, as well as songs like Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the carol sessions, though not in church services ;)

Some of them I wasn't familiar with so I thought I would share these with you. I've looked these up on YouTube and will link them so you can hear them.

This one sounds familiar but I don't remember ever singing it before. It's a nice song. When I heard it, it reminded me of the movie The Small One. I may have to add this to my Christmas song list.

~> Little Donkey <~

In The Bleak Midwinter was sung at ever carol singing and maybe on every Sunday in December. It is very popular here but I had never heard it before.

~> In The Bleak Midwinter <~

This last one we sang in church on Sunday and I thought it was a fun little carol. In church we only sang 6 verses but when I was looking for a recording to share with you I found that there are actually quite a few versions of it. I've decided to share two videos of it I liked.

The Cherry Tree Carol, this one is similar in style and wording to what we sang in church.

Judy Collins version, while looking there were a lot of folk song renditions of this but I really liked this version. It has quite a few more verses than what we sang and changes up the wording a bit and if you look it up yourself I'm sure you will find even more variations in tune and words.

Happy Holidays!

Advent

I'm sure there are a lot of advent traditions that I don't know about. There is of course the little kits you can buy that have a piece of chocolate you open each day. I had one of those last year. In years past my mother has done cookie countdowns from allrecipes.com. Those were some delicious countdowns :D While I'm watching the cookie countdown this year, I cannot eat 25 batches of cookies on my own so I'll only be doing a sample from that advent. Instead I'm doing a drawing a day to decorate my walls and make my place a bit more Christmas-y.

So here is my normal wall of drawings. It slowly evolves whenever I draw something I can stand to look at more than five minutes :P

 

And here is the start of the Christmas wall. Already falling behind, but it's not too late! I'm just drawing whatever comes to mind that I associate with Christmas in some way. Ice skating for example is not specifically a Christmas thing, but I associate it with the time of year and Christmas season :)

We had a few hours of nice sunshine this week so my roommate and I went for a walk in Platt Fields. I took a picture of the birds that are sticking around for the UK winter. I don't know birds so I don't know what they are called...

This one walks like a chicken but when I got too close with my camera it hopped into the water like it was a duck...I wouldn't think swimming would be its forte with those feet but what do I know?

Oh! Duck and a Canadian Goose. I do know a few birds :P They were focused on eating the grass, or the moss in the grass. I know when we had ducks they ate all the mosquitos, but the sign in the park says not to feed the geese because they should be eating the moss. More nutritional for them apparently. It looked to me like they were chewing the grass...but again, I don't know much at all about birds. I'll have to re-read their sign again. It is full of rules about what you can and cannot feed the wild birds.

Christmas Season Begins

It's DECEMBER! I did it. Yesterday, November 30th I sat down and wrote the last 8,000 words I needed and I completed NaNoWriMo this year!!!! I'm so excited. Now I can sleep again.

Although I have titled this post as the beginning of the Christmas season, I've got to backtrack a bit first...to Thanksgiving!

I got to celebrate an amazing Thanksgiving with my friends from church and I made two traditional things, green bean casserole and "pink stuff". My sister insists that "pink stuff" is the proper name for the cherry pie salad you see above. Now, normally when my grandmother makes it, it at least is pink. I could only find dark cherries however so mine is Purple Stuff. It does not look nearly as appetizing as my grandmothers, but it tastes good and really, that's what matters :P

 

I also took a picture of the green bean casserole...but it was just the top layer of crispy onions. An incredibly boring picture, but rest assured. I can cook a yummy batch of green bean casserole now.

 

 

I went to the Christmas market this week. Albert Square is all decorated for Christmas and there is a bunch of booths out that sell Christmas paraphernalia, crafts, and food :D My roommate was disappointed that the food wasn't all traditional British stuff and was actually all themed from other countries...but it made sense to me. They don't do this entire event for us international visitors and British people wouldn't fight the city center traffic to eat food that they are going to make at home, or get at the local pub ;)

The building is Manchester Town Hall. The clock tower light changes color which is very cool. I tried to get a video of it but the moment I got my camera switched to video it wouldn't change. You will just have to imagine it :P

The big light up guy under the tower is santa! My pictures didn't turn out very clear of the lights, but it's very cute and reminds me of the Santa on Invader Zim :D

 

And now the season of Christmas baking begins :D I've started off with a delicious crustless cranberry pie, suggested by my mother. My roommate is a fan of this one and I will have to bake something new soon...probably tomorrow!

 

I want to do the cookies with a mini-reeses melted in the middle, but Sainsburys doesn't sell mini-reeses. I have found them at a few stores but they are a bit expensive because they are sold as a specialty American item rather than finding them in the baking section...It's a hard life.