Christmas in Belgium

This is our sixth Christmas since moving to Belgium.  So far we've spent two at home in the States, one in Paris, one in London, and two at home in Belgium.  This year is one of "two at home in Belgium".

However, we contemplated taking a little "road trip" the day after Christmas and had decided to go south into France.  The weather was a bit rainy so we just decided to stay at home  . . . and boy, am I glad we did.

This could have been us:

Freak snowfalls and ice stranded more than 15,000 vehicles on Sunday in the French Alps.  Some families spent the night in their cars, blocked in huge traffic jams on the main routes to and from the Alpine ski resorts. One couple said it took them 12 hours to drive 20 miles.  Authorities seem to have been unprepared for the heavy snowfall – resorts had closed many slopes last week due to a lack of snow.

Of course this really came as no surprise to us since last October we spent five hours at a standstill (at least it wasn't overnight) due to a "freak snowfall", "huge traffic jams", and "unprepared authorities".  We were not too far from the French Alps in Switzerland.  It does snow there every year, right?  It IS the Alps.

So we spent this Christmas, and the days after, all cozy at home in Hasselt.

Our Christmas tree with stockings from Randi :)

A little last minute gift wrapping.

Christmas morning . . . Winslow enjoyed this as much as we did!

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We were invited to Ross's friend, Valentine's home for lunch on the day after Christmas.  They live in a small town near the city of Ghent in a very old house which they have renovated into a lovely, beautiful home.

We decided to take family photographs in front of their pretty tree.

Four girls!  Abalone, Aurelie, Valentine, Eugenie, Katrin and Andre' 

We enjoyed an enjoyable, delicious lunch with typical Belgian foods - rucola soup, turkey breasts stuffed with raisins or clementine, witloof, appelmoes, and . . .

kerststronk - a traditional cake served at Christmastime.

We hope you had a joyous and memorable holiday and we wish you a happy, healthy and successful new year!

Scottish Bagpipe

We recently took a trip to Scotland and although our final destination was Edinburgh, we decided to fly into Glasgow, Scotland and then take the train to Edinburgh.  

We had one mission in Glasgow . . . to purchase a bagpipe chanter for Josh.

What's a bagpipe chanter?  

If you want to learn to play the bagpipes one day, it's recommended to first learn on a chanter.

When we heard (thanks, Randi :) that Josh was interested in this, Jim set about learning about chanters, how they're made and which ones are considered the best.

With this information, we decided on the R. G. Hardie and Co. Ltd. in Glasgow.  

Here we are outside the shop where they make each chanter and set of bagpipes by hand.

This is Robert Hardie showing Jim the chanter we chose for Josh.  

The R. G. Hardie Company has been making bagpipes for over 100 years.

He was also nice enough to take us on a tour of their shop.

This is the office!

Turning the bagpipe parts on a lathe.  The older man has been working for this company since 1962!

Mr. Hardie said the shop can make one Great Highland bagpipe per day.

These are the parts that have been hollowed out to eventually become parts of a bagpipe or bagpipe chanter.

It's called African Blackwood and it looks like this before it goes to the lathe.

Before and after.

Everything is handmade, including the silver engraving on each piece. 

This is the chanter we chose for Josh.

It's engraved with a thistle design, which is the official emblem of Scotland.  

The legend of the thistle is that a sleeping party of Scots warriors were saved from an invading Norse army when the Norsemen trod on a thistle with bare feet. Their cries roused the Scots and they defeated the invaders.  True or not, t's a good story.

Soooo . . . despite this being a Christmas present, and despite our best efforts to have it arrive before Christmas, the chanter is still en route.  It's only coming from Scotland, but I think it's made a couple of trips there and back!

Assuming it actually makes it to its final destination . . . Merry Christmas, Josh!  We're expecting great things and perhaps this calls for another trip to Scotland in the summer.

Decorations and Dinner

The weather is getting colder, but we've enjoyed working on a few projects, decorating for the holidays, and having turkey and dressing!

I've been wanting to replicate a wreath I saw online a few years ago. I bought this plastic ornament wreath last year in the States as a starting point, so this was the year to make my wreath.

There were more than a few of these, but, in the end, I decided to go with all glass ornaments anyway.

I got it all put together with hot melt glue over the plastic ornaments and the original wreath form, but something just wasn't right.

I collected most of these ornaments at the local thrift store (kringwinkel) when they had their Christmas sale. Ross and I got there when the doors opened and couldn't believe we were 40th in line to go in!  It's a Goodwill equivalent!  

Anyway, I decided to take the whole thing apart (using alcohol to loosen the glue) and decided to wire each one on separately!

Done!  

I'm so proud of how it turned out.  It may not make it through a year or two of storage, but I'm enjoying it this year for sure.

Next, we planned a little cozy Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings!  That's a pork roast, turkey breast, Jim's delicious gravy, Mae Mae's recipe for cornbread dressing, sweet potato casserole, and Ross's favorite - green bean casserole.

We even had pumpkin and pecan pies.  Okay, it wasn't quite like being at Mae Mae and Pop's, but it was pretty darn good!

Ross invited a few of his friends to join us and it was nice to share our tradition with some of the locals :)  

We always find it interesting that when we invite people to share traditional Southern foods with us, they nearly always go back for seconds.  It seems so different from Belgian food, but I guess it's just as delicious to them as it is to us.

That's me, Valentine (val-un-teen), Ross, Danielle (dan-yella), Laurel and Jim (thanks for taking the photo!).

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving too!