St. Nicholas Day

We had a lot of fun celebrating St. Nicholas Day (for the very first time!) last weekend.  Short Pants had been eagerly counting down the days and wondering what kind of treats St. Nicholas might leave for him and Pita Pocket.  Our new St. Nicholas postcard arrived in time to be put on display; Short Pants thought it was *very* funny that St. Nicholas had his horse on the boat!  I explained to him that some stories say St. Nicholas was able to calm stormy waters:

 
While The Mister was busy with a Christmas project in his workshop and Pita Pocket was napping, Short Pants and I made these yummy St. Nicholas Purse Cookies together.  His main job was unwrapping all of the Hershey Kisses.  I think about half of them made it into his belly rather than the bowl:

 
  
After dinner we read a short St. Nicholas story and then before bed the littles set out their slippers with carrots for St. Nicholas' horse.  (we had explained to Short Pants that it's a fun story to play, like Santa, beforehand)  Pita Pocket thought we were absolutely insane for trying to get him to stuff a carrot into his slipper!  He kept pulling the carrot out and trying to put his slipper on:

Short Pants told me before he fell asleep that I was St. Nicholas and The Mister was the horse (heehee) so The Mister would have to eat both of the carrots. 

I wanted to keep the emphasis on "getting" kind of low-key, so we only put a few treats in their slipper - the standard bag of chocolate gold coins, a new Christmas book, and a golden walnut jingle bell necklace.  I used this tutorial for the necklaces; they came out so cute!  I made one for each of the boys and another for a special little friend who wanted to know what St. Nicholas was leaving for her!

 I also needlefelted a very simple St. Nicholas figure that we can use for decorating every year:

 
The littles were so excited the next morning to wake to their treats.  This is definately a celebration that we'll be doing again next year.  If any of you have special St. Nicholas Day traditions I would love to hear them!

Mari-Ann asked in a comment down in another post about needlefelting a figure.  If there's any interest, I will gladly put up a tutorial next week.  Please keep in mind that my figures are not exactly the work of some mystical needlefelting guru; I tend to keep to the simple.  How about a sweet little tomten?  I've been meaning to make one for our winter nature table since last year.

Comments

[Rebecca]

I would love to see a Tomten tutorial! It's been quite a while since I've gotten out my needlefelting supplies, but I've been wanting to do a Tomten to put in Aurora's Advent Calendar.... a tutorial might be just the inspiration I need.

[Katie]

Yes please - I'm hoping for some needle felting suplies for Christmas, so a tutorial would be great!

[One hook wonder]

Great! It will be a great way to make sure that I actually *make* the tomten instead of just thinking about making it! ;)

[Mari-Ann]

Yay! I'm glad others want a tutorial, too. Can't wait!
Love that St. Nicolas postcard. Where did you find it? (are you sick of me asking where you find things?!) Living on an island, I'm VERY limited on what I can buy, so I like to "shop" via other people's blogs. :)

[One hook wonder]

I'm always eyeballing neat stuff on the blogs I read too. ;) The postcard came in a set of seasonal ones from Mercurius - http://www.mercurius-usa.com/product_info-292_323-3369-assortment_seasons__postcards_by_marjan_van_zeyl.html

They have several sets that are super cute.

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