Christmas Eve at Le Musée Trouvé 2019...

Merry Christmas to you, My Dear Friends of The Tearoom,
Greetings to you and welcome to Christmas Eve, here at Le Musée Trouvé.  It makes us all so happy to see you here today!

My inspiration for this exhibit is a much-treasured book from my childhood that my mother bought for me one year called "A Child's Christmas Cookbook", by Betty Chancellor, published in conjunction with a 1964 exhibit at the Denver Art Museum called "Once Upon a Christmas".

(As always, feel free to click on pictures to enlarge them.)

In it, illustrations from the great American cartoonist/illustrator Thomas Nast are used to illustrate some very charming recipes and crafts that children can make.  I have always loved engravings from the Victorian time, but these are some of my very favorites.  These illustrations are now in the public domain and have become iconic Christmas images.  Tonight at Le Musée Trouvé, we celebrate them and make them a part of our own Christmas celebration this year.  Won't you join us?

As usual, there's quite a crowd of visitors already today!

And as usual, Professor Reine-Claude and his class are at the front

of the line, waiting to enter the exhibit!  

Now, if you will follow me, we will begin our tour!

Welcome to the Christmas Festivities, here at the Museum!

Won't you please follow me to the next room?

In these prints, you can see that Santa is very

busy in the days before Christmas.

Santa is on the look out for Good Children!

The young visitors are very interested in knowing

more about Santa's Record of Behavior.

Shall we risk being slightly naughty and listen in on a 

conversation between an excited little girl and Santa?

Little Girl: Dear Santa, Please tell me that you will be visiting 

our house!

Santa:  Yes, yes, I promise I'll be there!

(The children aren't the only ones who are excited

about Santa's visit, you know!)

From bugs to buffalo, everyone is waiting for Santa's arrival!

In the next print, we see some children, plotting Santa's

course on a map.  It's a good way to spend the time waiting.

In this room, we can see in the pictures how excited

everyone is for Santa's arrival!

"Perhaps he is in that big box that arrived this morning!

Hurry and open it, in case he is there!!"

"Maybe he's come down the chimney in the upstairs parlor

when we weren't looking!  Hurry!  Let's go look!"

"I've just been outside and he's not out there!"

Whew!  After that flurry of excitement, we've all decided

to wait a bit more patiently (but only just a bit!)

Finally, some are all snuggled, safe in their beds!

Finally asleep!

In the next room, if you look carefully...

...you'll see we've caught a secret kiss by Christmas tree light!

Oh look!

Santa has arrived!

Can you hear him on the rooftop?

The only ones awake when Santa arrives are the pets!

The museum guests have left for the day and all is peaceful.

Merry Christmas to All

...and to all a Good Night!

But the fun is not over yet!

Now, we finish getting ready for a special Christmas Eve

Teeny Tea here at the Museum!!

It's so nice to share a cup of tea and that's just what Eadwig and Lionie are doing!  We are enjoying our favorite malty Awake blend by Tazo tonight, a mix of Assam and Kenyan black tea, with just a splash of milk.

And to have with our tea, why, of course, it's a Tea Cookie, inspired by a recent Instagram post by my friend Christiane (who has the accounts Aliceinthewoodssomewhere and Dolliesinthewoodssomewhere there and is a faithful follower of my Teeny Teas!)  She was making some cookies with Earl Grey tea recently and I remembered I have a really nice recipe for cookies with tea in them too!  I was just about to add some Earl Grey to mine, and then I had another idea!  My favorite after-dinner treat on cold nights like this is a cup of Bigelow Caramel-Vanilla tea!  It's so fragrant and reminds me of the first time I drank Caramel tea, which was in a very sweet tearoom across from the Luxembourg Garden in Paris!  So, instead of the Earl Grey, I used the Caramel-Vanilla this time!  They not only taste amazing, but baking them made the whole house smell so good!  You can see I didn't scrimp on the tea in that cookie and the tea leaf bits add a bit of extra crunch!  Would anyone be interested in having this recipe?  Just let me know and I'll publish it!

So, thank you, Dear Christiane, for the wonderful inspiration!

And here are Giraffe and Lion enjoying a cookie together!

Miss Bumbles, the giraffe, is ready for her cup of tea!

Leopard doesn't mind getting his whiskers wet when the

tea is this good!

Panther, Buffalo and Leopard are happy to share their cookie

with Nubbins the Tiny Bug!

We've had a fun Christmas Eve,

but now it's time for us to go home, go to bed and

wait for the arrival of Santa!

We look back through the windows of the museum

and wish everyone a lovely Christmas Eve.

We say "Good Night and Merry Christmas" to Mr. Deer.

Should we worry about him, out here in the snow?

Oh no!  He likes it!

Also, he has his own warm cup of tea!

And to all a Good Night!

Thank you, as always, for joining us here.

Wishing everyone a Very Happy Holiday Season!

(As usual, I'll apologize in advance if you are not able to leave me a comment here on the blog.  I always welcome your comments on Instagram or Twitter and if you'd like me to publish them here, just let me know that there and I will be happy to do so!)