It’s that time of year, when, if you are a mom/housewife/homeschooling mom, life can seem pretty glum. The excitement, bounty and colors of fall are over. The sparkle and anticipation of Christmas are past. What can we look forward to besides the Resurrection? With the cold of winter likely to force most of us inside, unless you have all-season ski passes, it’s good to be reminded of the following. We can look forward to strengthening old or building new family traditions out of ordinary days, eating yummy food, serving others, and reading new books, even in the seemingly blah month of January. It’s all about hygge, folks! If you don’t know what hygge is, go over here. Here are five books to help you as you settle into a hygge winter!

First is the book above. I listened to this one last year. I saved it for every Saturday to listen to while I did chores. Ooh, it’s just delightful! Written by the mother and daughter team of Sally and Sarah Clarkson, it just oozes family togetherness. You can read a semi-review of it here. As I wrote about it over there, it’s like a mashup of the Food Nanny/Bobbsey Twins/the Duggars and the Little Women March family of Louisa May Alcott fame. It has monthly suggestions of family traditions, all Christian-based. You can listen to this as an audiobook in scribd. Learn about scribd here.

Then this book below takes the monthly idea of family traditions even further for moms like me who practice the faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It also has ideas for daily routines involving family prayer, family scripture study, and mealtime.

The top two books pair well together, and so do these next two. The Life Giving Table is also by Sally Clarkson. Again, like The Life Giving Home, it follows a monthly theme, with lots of recipes. If you feel bored by the simple routines of fixing meals, this book will help you recapture mealtime magic. Watch Babette’s Feast, (learn about that movie here) read the above book, and then get more recipes in the book below.

I read of some blogger somewhere who has a child whose goal is to fix all the recipes in the Pioneer Woman cookbook above. This is not a whole foods book, but you can easily adapt the recipes by using whole foods/real foods ingredients and soaking your grains. It’s just so fun to drool over these full-color photos and read Ree Drummond’s comments about all her recipes. Fun, fun, fun! The step-by-step photos and directions make it easy for beginning/children/teen cooks to follow. My own children, even my teen boy, love to use recipes from this book.

Then if you want food for thought, and motivation to give your children food for thought, read the classic above by Jim Trelease, about the benefits of reading aloud to your children. Here’s a video presentation by Mr. Trelease.

Happy hygge-ing this winter to all of you! Winter is not just for Christmas!