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Polar Express 2025

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog1 Comment

We hope and pray you are all having a blessed holiday season. This post is a little later than I had wanted due to some computer glitches. Thankfully, the problem has been remedied, and I can share some of our Polar Express updates with you.

Once we got to St. Nicholas Day, we got the tree up… it is a little smaller and simpler than usual, but it works perfectly for us right now. Then it was time for us to focus on the upcoming Polar Express Party, our Bethlehem dinner, Christmas Eve dinner with our traditional eggnog making party, and then Christmas Dinner, and planning for our family that will be visiting.

We had our Polar Express Party on the 2nd Saturday of December, as this seems to work out best for most people. We did not have as many people as we had expected, but it was a lot of fun. This has been an annual tradition that we try to keep for our friends and family, and some were able to experience it for the first time this year.

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St. Nicholas Day 2025

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

Whew! This year is flying by at warp speed! I completely forgot to update you all about our St. Nicholas Day this year, but I did post a video on YouTube that I will post below.

We let the kids make their own Santa Pancakes with fresh fruit and whipped cream… yummy! We also had a few things in their stockings, as well as a few little candies. We read the book, ‘Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend.’ I will link it below.

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Christmas Breads with Baking Timeline

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

This has been one of our favorite Holiday Recipes for the past couple of years, and everyone looks forward to getting these as gifts. The cover photo is from last year, when we used Rosella Jam for the filling!

The recipe and instructions are very long and a little time-consuming, but you could also buy the premade crescent dough and use that in place of the sourdough. You would just use the filling of your choice, a glaze or icing, and then bake about 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

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Easy Rosella Sauce

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

We love Rosella here… it is known as the Florida Cranberry, and I love Cranberries, so this was a must for our garden. Rosella is a very pretty plant, and we use the leaves in some recipes, like Butternut Squash Medley, as well. We have been trying to use as many plants as we can from the garden, and this one gets used in so many ways. Mr. Awesome also wants to try some in our favorite cream cheese cookie recipe. I’m also going to try this in our Christmas Bread this year!

Last year, we made a bunch of Rosella Jam, and we still have plenty left, so this year we did something a little different. We have frozen several gallon bags of Rosella, dehydrated some of it for teas, and made some Rosella Sauce… it is so good! We served this at Thanksgiving, in place of the traditional cranberry sauce. I do want to try boiling some of our lemon grass to make a tea to try in place of the plain water for this recipe, but I keep forgetting.

This would probably also freeze really well and make a great gift! It can be used as a jelly or jam as well as an alternative to cranberry sauce.

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Shyanne’s ‘Two Kind’ Cheesecake

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

This recipe was chosen last year for one of the birthdays, but we never actually made it. This year, we tried it out and changed things a bit to work better for us. Everyone loved it, but the original recipe was a little dry. After the changes, it was amazing!

Shyanne really loves this and would ask for the ‘two kind’ cake when she wanted more…lol. This works with any boxed cake mix and would also work with a packaged brownie mix. You could make the brownies as directed on the package and bake them in the springform pan so they could be your ‘crust layer’.

**Special thanks to my son-in-law @moments2lifephotography for the amazing cover photo!

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