It'sthe firstday of Advent!Time to trim the tree! First, we'll have to choose one!This afternoon, we'll trek over tothe local Scouts lot for a tall, slim fir. Then, we'll turn on some music, make someof my Santa Baby Cookies, and choose picturesfor the 2019 version of our Favourite Photo Ornaments. Sometimes, we throw on a...

Design your own Bookplate! Today's Advent TBD is a MAJOR THROWBACK to our very first online Advent Calendar in 2011 ! The kids were too young to get involved, and we wanted the bookplates to be surprises. So, Blaise sketched bookplates. I scanned them, added text with photo-editing software, and printed them on sticky-backed paper...

Provide Baby Blankets via Plan Canada Gifts of Hope Today, we're providing three baby blankets to children in need via Plan International Canada's Gifts of Hope. How will you be volunteering your time or supporting your community this year?

Make Clementine's Famous Crullers Today, we're going to be conquering our "fear of frying" by making Clementine Paddleford's famous crullers. Clementine is the lady with the pencil, above! Her Cruller Recipe comes from Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris’ fantastic book about the American tastemaker: Hometown Appetites.    And Write a Holiday Haiku! As we prepare...

Family Book Exchange 2019 This year's Advent Family Book Exchange shall henceforth be known as "The Hardcover Edition." Go big or go home. Everyone's going to pick a name from a hat and buy that person a real "traysure" in the form of a hardcover book, new or used. We'll also grab a book for...

Festive Streaming-Service Binge It's Friday. We're going to chill on the couch with some Fish and Chips from our local and have a proper binge of a new-to-us series of shows or films. A few years ago, we watched The Crown. Will we go for Season 3? Should we revisit Derry Girls Seasons 1&2 back...

Carols, Cocktails, and Cookies a.k.a. Winterize the Song of the Summer Last year, our carol-off consisted of a day of writing punk-rock Christmas songs. This year, we're back on a family classic: winterize the Song of the Summer. And by "Winterize," I mean, "Chrismassify." This year's Song of the Summer is insanely easy to identify:...

Concert & Pinochle Today's the Saint Michael's Choir School Christmas Concert at Roy Thomson Hall. It's going to be an afternoon of rehearsals, dress up, performances, and dress-down. After the concert is over, we'll set up by the fire for a 4-person Pinochle tournament.

Make Block-Printed Tea Towels Anyone who knows me knows my obsession with tea-towels, especially calendar tea towels. If we’re going to have a good time this afternoon, DIY calendars may be beyond us. However, we can easily get in on the magic by creating a few simple block-printed tea towels. How are we going to...

Donate to Forests Ontario Let's flight climate change, dozens of trees at at time!Today, we're making a contribution to Forests Ontario. How will you make a difference today?

Make Fried Chicken Last year's Advent Calendar started us off on a Fried Chicken tour of the city. This week in conquering our "Fear of Frying," we'll be frying chicken at home. We'll do this by following Bon Appetit's Skillet-Fried Chicken Recipe. I've provided a reprint below.

Mail Christmas Cards Gone are the family photo cards. We'll be handwriting a select few Christmas cards this year and sending them out as we go. Formerly broken hands need rest. So, yes, this does take time.... But, good news! The first batch sails today! I can't wait to hear the slam of our local...

Spooky Santa Lucia Hold onto your stockings and ignite your candle crowns! It's the Feast of Santa Lucia AND Friday the 13th! Jinx! You can darn well bet we're going to have a scary movie situation tonight. I freaked myself out just looking for movie recommendations! Should we try Krampus? Revisit Gremlins? Black Christmas? The...

It's Christmas Canning Day And, last minute UPDATE, we've got a friend coming over who's never made jam before! So, grab your cross-back aprons, folks. It's going to be a banner day! Rather than run a marathon, however, we’ll keep it simple by making one or both of these recipes: Date Chestnut Spread with Orange Flower...

Perform and Record a Classic Radio Play We did it in 2017, and we'll do it again....Tonight, we're going to perform and record a classic radio play. We'll choose a script, take a few minutes to divvy up the parts and rehearse our characters' voices, and then we'll hit record on all of our devices....

Glam Cans 2019 Back when the kids were young, we took part in Well Preserved's Pimp Your Preserves Holiday Contests! We designed our own canning labels and really dolled up our jars with ribbons, bells, and even colourful rulers for the kids' teachers. Well, Glam Cans are back, baby. Today, we're going to do some...

Food is a human right, yet 1 in 7 people struggle to find adequate sustenance in our own city. Today, the family will be putting food in the Daily Bread Food Bank box at our local grocery. And we'll be donating funds directly at https://www.dailybread.ca/.

Toronto Christmas Market Today, the ladies are heading out to Toronto's Distillery District for our annual luncheon and a loop around the Ferris Wheel. We'll also tour the booths and shops and pick up last minute Christmas Gifts and Stocking Stuffers. Check out the Toronto Christmas Market for hours and prime-time-only admission rates.

Dinner and Star Wars I can't believe they're still making these films.....And, since there's always a new hope, we're still grabbing tickets months in advance. Tonight's the final installment, or so we think, the 9th film in the 3rd of 3 Star Wars trilogies! Between the last piano lessons of 2019 and the movie, we'll...

Sketch a Winter Window Scene Last winter, Bea sketched the snowy view from her bedroom window. Today, we'll all sit down to sketch a winter window scene, whether that's a view from one of our own windows or some other building in the city (the museum, perhaps?)....or a view into another window, a toy store,...

The United Bakers on Spadina in Toronto. Great Canadian Holiday Cookie Bake Off Last year we had a few rounds of Holiday Cookie Wars, wherein we tested our favourite recipes up against other recipes we wanted to try. Today, we're going to do a Holiday Cookie Bake Off in three rounds, similar to the Great...

Reinvent the Bûche de Noël Oh, look at sweet sweet Julia throwing icing sugar on her classic yule log cake, which has already been covered in meringue-mushrooms and lain in a manger of festive laurels. Over the past 7 years, I've made all sorts of Bûches de Noēl: Chocolate Mint, Chocolate Malt, Chocolate Hazelnut, Cannoli,...

Christmas Eve Checklist 2019 □ START THE BRISKET: For a change, this year, we're skipping the Feast of the Seven Fishes and Making Bon Appetit's Red-Wine Braised Brisket   □ SUPPORT CYSTIC FIBROSIS CANADA □ BRISK MORNING WALK WITH THE DOG! □ HOT CHOCOLATE & MORNING HOT TODDIES □ COOL AND REFRIGERATE THE BRISKET □...

WISHING YOU A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! STAY TUNED FOR OUR NEW YEAR'S EVE MOVIE MARATHON POST! IN THE MEANTIME, HAVE A BROWSE OF ADVENT 2019! Advent Calendar 2019 Advent Love-To-Do List 2019 50 Holiday Gift Ideas for 2019 The Posts of Christmas Past: The Lunchbox Season’s 2011-2016 Advent Calendars The Posts of Christmas Past: Smelling...

After last year’s exceeds-even-our-wildest-expectations Train Movie Marathon, it took a long time to come up with a theme for this year’s New Year’s Eve Film Fest. Since we’re looking towards 2020, we thought about roaring-twenties films. But, Gatsby? Sorry, no. Then, we considered movies in which hindsight was less than 20/20, i.e. films about memory loss or...