Happy Chinese New Year

Yesterday, February 3rd we celebrated Chinese New Year! The day before we celebrated Ground Hogs Day. I wrote directions about it here.and also here.

Rabbit

Yin, wood, kind, gracious, sensitive, soft, cautious, artistic, musical, tender, compassionate, flexible, moody, detached, self indulgent, self involved, lazy.

These are some of the suggested things to prepare for the Chinese New Year.

• Clean House - Before the New Year arrives, the Chinese consider it very important to give the house a thorough cleaning, sweeping away any bad luck that may have accumulated over the past year.
• Decorate! - Doors and window panes are also often painted red, considered to be a lucky color. In addition, people like to hang papercuts on doors and windows. (Paper cutting is an ancient Chinese art form dating back to the Han dynasty).
• This is my favorite
• Don't clean for the first few days of the New Year - if you do any sweeping during this time, you risk sweeping away your good luck. NO cleaning for me!!
• Offer a Sacrifice to the Kitchen God - Many families have a poster of the Kitchen God in their kitchen. The custom is to offer a ceremonial sacrifice to the Kitchen God, to make sure that he gives a good report on the family's behavior when he returns to heaven. Sticky Cake (Nian Gao) is popular, or children may rub honey on him. I believe the sacrifice to the Kitchen god shall be a new toaster or rice cooker! Yep, I have decided. It may be both!
• An important tradition on New Year's Eve is for families to gather together and spend the evening preparing Chinese dumplings (Jiaozi). According to Chinese Culture Guide Jun Shan, it is common to hide a coin in one of the dumplings. Whoever gets the dumpling with the coin will supposedly have good luck in the coming year. DARN, I didn't read the coin, until it was too late and ours were store bought! They were made by real authentic Chinese people, does that count??
• Give out money packets - On New Years day, children receive leisee - red packets decorated with gold symbols and filled with "lucky money". Nope, no money given but I did make chinese fire crackers!
• Serve festive foods - Throughout the New Years season, certain foods are served because they symbolize abundance and good fortune. Besides preparing special dishes, tangerines and oranges are often passed out to children and guests, as they symbolize wealth and good luck. YEAH, we did this

• Prepare a Tray of Togetherness - This is a circular or octagon-shaped tray with eight compartments, each containing symbolic foods such as lotus seeds and lychee nuts, that provides a sweet beginning to the New Year. (maybe next year)

It was so fun to do this for my family! I am quite impressed with my dining room table and how it all came together! The table cloth is still up from Christmas. But, Chinese New Year colors are red and gold! We had delish food, which I will put the recipes on my recipe blog!
I wish you all a very prosperous and good New Year!
Some of our decorations! Save yourself money and get them from Oriental Trading
This was at our opening

 A large fan which I put over the mirror

 And paper lanterns which were hung from the chandelier! I wish this holiday hadn't sneaked up on me
I would have made my own paper lanterns or had the kids make them during our 4 snow days! WE could
have made really cute dragon faces from paper plates!!

I love how my table came out! Darn that flash!!

 Any way, I had Gold and red candles and the same gold and red colored jewels that I used for Thanksgiving our plates that looked like they could have an Asian flare. There are my Chinese Crackers that I made from toilet paper rolls and wrapped them in red wrapping paper and put little treats inside!
I also decided to purchase REAL GENUINE chopsticks! Our family loves to eat Chinese food but we also love to use Chopsticks! That is everyone EXCEPT for Sweetheart!

 Awe, Here is a much better looksy at my tablescape!

Now for a bit of our food! I made ramen noodle soup and served them in our tea cups

These are those sugar donuts! Guess what these are just made from pillsbury biscuits and

you just deep fry them! and sprinkle sugar over them! Easy and good.

 Chinese Dumplings: I can't say I made these! Just consider buying them at Sam's. They are called Pot Stickers but my family calls them Pot Stinkers and it is the sauce that we crave! MMmmm good.

 Squeshwan Beef

 Chicken Lo Mein

Happy Faces waiting to dig in!

 Dash opening his Chinese Cracker that had poppers in it and a punching balloon.

We had a fun fun night and I hope that everyone would add this holiday to their family celebrations!