Review:
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Title: 12 Days of Christmas With Six Sisters Stuff: 144 Ideas for Traditions, Homemade Gifts, Recipes, And More
Authors: The Six Sisters
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Genre: Non Fiction/Christmas
Year Published: 2014
Number of Pages: 150
Binding: Paperback
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-1-60907-935-2
Price: $19.99
Review by Trudy Thompson for the Association For Mormon Letters
The Six Sisters of the popular food blog, SixSistersStuff.com, have released a new book just in time for the Christmas holidays. The sisters-Camille, Kristen, Elyse, Stephanie, Lauren, and Kendra started a blog in 2011 as a way to keep in touch when they started families of their own. In just a few years it became one of the top blog sites for women, with more than 11 million monthly page views and nearly 3 million visitors each month. They share not only recipes and crafts, but stories of their families and tips on running a home. This is their third book and they often appear on local and national TV programs.
This particular volume is divided into 12 sections, and include 12 different recipes for Christmas cookies, 12 Family Traditions, 12 Christmas Brunch Recipes, Sanity Saving Tips, Party Ideas, Christmas Treats, Ways to Give Back, Gifts for Neighbors, Quick and Easy Family Dinners, Homemade Christmas Gifts, Christmas Decorations, and 12 Days of Christmas For Your True Love. The latter section tells how to give a series of gifts to a special person in your life, like a spouse, a child, parent, sibling or neighbor, over the course of 12 days. On the first day, you give them something they need, on the second day think of things that come in pairs, like gloves, 2 tickets to the movies, shoes etc. On the 5th and 10th day, give them a $5.00 and $10.00 gift card to a fast food place or store. You finish up on the last day by giving them something that comes in dozens, a magazine subscription for 12 months, a dozen donuts (my favorite), or a 12 pack of soda.
Each unit of the book contains excellent color photos and easy to follow instructions on the various recipes and projects.
As usual, the recipes are the stars of this book. Some that I plan to try are: Baked Apple Pie French Toast (using canned apple pie filling), Ginger Bread Waffles, Gooey Butter Cookies-using cream cheese and a yellow cake mix etc, slow cooker ham and pineapple sandwiches, and Brunch Enchiladas using ham, cheese and other yummy ingredients.
There are some clever ideas in the other sections, like the idea of a “book advent” in the Family Traditions chapter, where you head to a local thrift store and find 23 small children’s books, wrap each one individually and open and read one each night, starting December 1st and ending on the 24th with the Christmas story read from the Bible.
This is the second Six Sisters book I have read. Despite my delight in the new recipe ideas, my feelings about the book are a bit mixed. Having hoped for some fun and unique craft ideas I could do with my young grandchildren, I found that, in my opinion, they were either too complicated, too messy or too over-used before. The 12 Ways to Give Back ( to the community) chapter covers some good ideas about how to serve the community this holiday season, but there wasn’t enough new here to suggest innovative ways of serving. The ideas presented are commonly known to readers.
Overall, this book would be appreciated by women who are Six Sisters Fans, love to cook, entertain, young children, make crafts and holiday decorations, and give of themselves to their neighbors and their communities. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to figure out which recipe I want to try first!