Ribbon Jell-O

This Christmas we got together with some of our foreign friends in town for a yummy pot-luck. We'd just received a ton of Jell-O packets in a recent care package from our wonderful Aunt Teri, so Laura decided to make Ribbon Jell-O for a dessert. Now, Ribbon Jell-O has been a long-time Thanksgiving tradition in the Chapman household and is excellent for testing how level the refrigerator is. Ours, apparently, sits pretty straight because it turned out awesome! It was a complete hit. Thanks Chapmans!


So yummy.


So striped.


Notice that James coordinated his outfit to match. And little Nate coordinated with James. Haha, so festive.

X-Mas in China

cock-a-doodle-doo

Our downstairs neighbors were recently given a live rooster by their grandparents. It's a traditional gift for Chinese New Year. Unfortunately, the bird is going to live in a coop right outside our bedroom window until January 23. It's screeching in the morning isn't the most pleasant thing to wake up to--especially at 4 AM! Good grief. It's so loud it's hard to believe it's not actually in bed with us! James keeps mentioning to our friendly neighbors that their rooster is very fierce and crows very early in the morning. They always laugh heartily at this very good joke!

It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!

At least, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas inside our apartment. Outside it still looks like China. No snow, no yard ornaments, no light displays, no town square nativity scenes or Santa huts. But James and I have enjoyed making our living room look as Christmas-y as possible! And I've loved the excuse to spend some time crafting! Here are some pictures of our handiwork.

These pretty 3D stars look so beautiful hanging over our dining table.


To make this sign I cut out squares of cardboard, covered them with white paper, painted each piece red or green, and then stenciled on block letters. It turned out cute, I think.

We cut out a flurry of paper snowflakes to tape up in our front window. It's almost as cheery as the real thing!

Here is our scraggly little Christmas tree! We found it in a local market and looks so much cuter than anything we expected we'd be able to put up this year. It's fun to have a real, live Christmas tree, potted and all. As long as we don't kill it, we should be able to use it for a few years! (And aren't our lumberjack stockings cute!? Love 'em.)

These origami ornaments were slightly tedious, but they turned out great.

And these 3D paper ball ornaments really helped fill out the tree.

Our last decoration is this antique nativity scene that we purchased this summer and brought back with us. It reminds me so much of the set my mom always puts out each Christmas! I am really looking forward to using it to tell the story.

And now I just want to sing "Deck the Halls!"

turkey, dog, and pumpkins

Though the title of this post includes all things that you can eat here in China, I assure you no dogs have been eaten by us since we've moved here. Rather, we wanted to update you on a few happenings this Fall/Winter. First off, we had a great thanksgiving with some ex-pats in town. We hosted 16 adults and 10 children. Everybody brought a ton of food and we ate our brains out. I even downloaded last year's macys parade and fooled everybody into thinking it was this year's.















Next we got Laura making some delicious acorn squash cookies. They were sssooo delicious!















Below we have a picture of Maggie. She is some kind of Yorkshire Terrier from Chengdu. The owners of this dog are busy having a baby in Thailand so we volunteered to watch her while they're gone. She a bit of a hassle, but for the most part very mild.



















And last we have a picture of a wedding Laura and I attended two weeks ago. The bride is a member of the Pumi minority group and the groom Mousu. It was our first wedding to attend in China which made it extra special for us.















Other than that we've been enjoying X-mas decorating and receiving fun packages from the States. School is still session. We have another 5-6 weeks left of class (with one day off for the holidays, haha). We are seeing a lot of improvement and continue to enjoy our teachers.

Happy holidays!