Happy Saint Lucia Day!

 Happy Saint Lucia Day! Today we are joining the Saint Lucia Day blog procession over at Audrey Eclectic! We hope you'll head over and see all the other wonderful posts about this lovely day! Many thanks to Kim at Mothering with Mindfulness for our beautiful Lucia and Star Boy peg people! 

 We spent this past week reading about Saint Lucia and talking about how we can help and serve others. Yesterday, the girls spent the afternoon creating their Saint Lucia crowns. Once again we used the patterns found in the Little Acorn Learning December eBook that I purchased a few years ago. Perhaps next year we'll get creative and make crowns out of felt! 

Emma decided during this project that she would like to go as Saint Lucia next Halloween. 

I think we can make that happen! 

 We also baked a test batch of cinnamon rolls to serve as our Saint Lucia buns (we had a second batch in the fridge waiting to be baked this morning). It was the first time we made cinnamon rolls from scratch, and it came in the wake of making dinner rolls from scratch and having too much dough left over. I can safely say that we will no longer be purchasing refrigerated cinnamon roll dough as this recipe is that easy and that good! The deliciousness of these rolls became truly evident when Grace said to Emma: "Em, if you're not going to eat the rest of yours I'll gladly take it off your hands." The look on Emma's face in the picture above says it all: She'll  be finishing that roll, thank you very much!

 This morning the girls donned their red dala horse skirts and white shirts, tied red ribbons around their waists and completed the look with their beautiful crowns while today's rolls were baking.  

Our celebration continued in the kitchen where we took turns serving each other breakfast. Traditionally, the oldest daughter rises before everyone and prepares breakfast and serves the rest of the family. As Dave was leaving so early for work this morning, and Grace is not known to be an early riser (and since I knew Emma would want to be a part of it too) we decided that we'd take turns serving each other. It was while we were serving each other that Grace shared what we all were feeling: "I really love this, mama! Let's always do this!" I couldn't agree more!  xo 

Saint Lucia Crowns

On Friday we made Saint Lucia crowns in honor of Saint Lucia Day. 

 It was the first time we had made them and we had so much fun!

Emma's looking very Swedish here!

She looks like Christmas royalty here!

Our sweet Saint Lucias. Their smiles say it all!

The girls had such a great time making their crowns! While they were creating them they each asked if we could make them again next year! We had read a couple of stories during the week about Saint Lucia (which they loved) and chatted a bit about life in Sweden. Perhaps next year we'll try our hand at making Lucy buns (the traditional Saint Lucia Day treat) in addition to making these sweet crowns. And so begins another winter holiday tradition!