Event: Ocean Beach Holiday Parade

last weekend (Saturday December 7th, 2013) was the Ocean Beach Holiday Parade. Every year it is so much fun to get together with friends & family and celebrate the holidays within our community. The parade takes place down & around Newport street. This year the holiday parade starts at 5:05 PM. I'm having friends come over around 4 PM for hot spiced wine.

HOT SPICED WINE
Ingredients:
3 bottles of dry red wine
3 cored and sliced apples
2 cinnamon sticks
3 whole cloves
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest

this recipe is made for a crockpot. All you need to do is add all the ingredients to your crockpot and stir. Let cook and marinate for a few hours.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PARADE
* Geriatric Surf Club float
* Savannah being in the parade
* Santa on the fire truck
* seeing the OB tree at the foot of Newport

Until we blog again, Enjoy December, XoXo, Connie & Jenn

Holiday: Our Christmas Traditions

This month our blog will be full of holiday activities and traditions because we LOVE Christmas!!! Over the years our Decker family has many traditions that we look forward to each year. If you are just starting a family it is always nice to have traditions to look forward to. Some of ours are:

• Decorating our Christmas Tree while listening to Christmas music and enjoying hot coco or egg nog from Santa Mugs. When we were younger we usually did this on our Mother Kristy's birthday (December 2nd).

 

 

 

• Tamales - We make and enjoy for dinner on Christmas Eve. This tradition started when Connie married her husband Godwin. His family creates yummy homemade tamales and his mother Maria taught us how to make them as well, but we always make them with her!

• Go to Midnight Mass (if we can stay up).
• Wake up Christmas morning in our PJ's and open stockings and a few presents each then we all get dressed and have Christmas morning brunch.

• A yummy breakfast casserole & champagne on Christmas Day.

• Have Honey Baked Ham for Christmas Dinner.

What are some traditions you & your family celebrate?

Until we blog again, Happy Holidays, XoXo Connie & Jenn

SNOW!!!

Snow!!

 

It has been freezing cold lately up in Nor Cal, near Sacramento and it actually snowed yesterday!

 

It rarely snows here (last time was about 4-5 years ago).

 

Didn't stick and melted pretty quick, but still it was SNOW! So cool :)

 

 

 

A little further North it stayed on the ground.

 

 

 

 

Winter is here!! Enjoy it!

 

XOXO,

Double Decker Sister Cooks

Craft: Advent Calendar

25 Days of Christmas Cheer

Saturday November 30th, 2013 is the perfect day to create a holiday Advent Calendar. You will start the 1st day of December and count down the 25 days until Christmas. There are many ways to celebrate each day of December. You may have an activity to complete for each day of December or a litte gift each day or you can even do a candy advent calendar and have a little candy treat for each day.

Examples of Holiday Activities for December:

1. Start a family Advent Calendar (easy enough right?)
2. Go Christmas tree shopping
3. Decorate your Christmas tree and home while listening to holiday music
4. Enjoy hot coco and a Christmas Movie ("A Christmas Story", "Polar Express", "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"...)
5. Go look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood 
6. Be a secret Santa to someone
7. Take a family trip to the snow
8. Go Christmas shopping
9. Donate old coats or canned food to charity
10. Take a picture with Santa
11. Send out Christmas cards
12. Make paper snowflakes from coffee filters
13. Bake holiday cookies and decorate them
14. Host a Christmas party (gift wrapping party, ornament party, cookie party etc.)
15. Go to a local holiday parade or tree lighting
16. Snuggle up next to a fire
17. Create homemade ornaments
18. Go Ice Skating
19. Make gingerbread houses
20. Go to a holiday play (The Nutcracker, The Grinch...)
21. Make a sand snowman at the beach
22. Go to a holiday gift exchange party
23. Go Christmas Caroling ("Silent Night", "Away in a Manger", "O Come All Ye Faithful", "Jingle Bells")
24. Sleep under the Christmas Tree
25. Kiss under the mistletoe
26. Holiday game night
27. Have a holiday photo shoot
28. Attend midnight mass or holiday church service
29. Leave cookies & milk out for Santa
30. Write a letter to Santa

Craft: Advent Calendar

The Advent Calendar Jenn chose to make is a Christmas Tree of gifts with clothespins and construction paper. You will need:

• 25 Clothespins
• Paint brush
• Red Paint
• Printer and green paper
• Heavy duty construction poster board
• Green poster board paper
• Elmer's glue
• hot glue gun
• foam glitter sheets
• white or gold bow
• 25 gift tags, envelopes and/or pouches

The first thing you should do is paint all of your clothespins red. In a large area (outside on the ground, on a table or the floor inside) lay down newspaper and get all of your painting supplies ready. Paint each top of the clothespins let dry, flip each clothespin as you paint and paint the bottoms and insides.

Next, create a MS Word document of letters 1 - 25. Print out the numbers on green paper and glue to the dry clothespins. Set aside.

Take your large heavy duty poster board paper & lay it down. Decide how large you want your green poster board tree to be and cut a tree out. (see photo below for example). Create your tree and glue to the black or white heavy duty poster board. Let dry for about 30 min.

Next heat up your glue gun and glue each clothespin to your holiday poster board tree. You can add decorations as well. I added little gems and glitter to look like ornaments.

Next get your 25 little gifts/activities or candy to add. I chose to do a mixture. Add to the clothespins, hang up on the wall and you have your own custom Advent Calendar.

Until we blog again, Cheers to December XoXo Connie & Jenn