How Do Holidays Change With LPLD: Advent

Aw, snap!  I bet you were expecting Christmas next!  But no, we are Catholic, and we save our Christmas celebrating for after December 25th and spend the 4ish weeks prior preparing for it.  We space out our decorating (this year the first weekend we set out advent calendars and outdoor lights, next weekend we get other indoor decorations and nativity sets, the next weekend is a tree with lights, and the final weekend we'll put ornaments on it), we light up our Advent wreath every night with dinner, we sing songs about the coming of Christ (but not His birth yet!), and we do readings every night from the Bible showing how Christ's birth was foretold throughout the ENTIRETY of that holy book.  None of which is impacted by LPLD!  Hurray!

But we also start making cookies for gorging ourselves on after Christmas.  And we have Advent calendars for each of the kids, which are usually chocolate.  How do we manage that?

Luckily I found this neat Advent calendar house at a German Christmas market:

It's gorgeous and a little flimsy (we glue on a few doorknobs every year), and a little crunched for space with two LPLD girls, but we've made it work so far.  This one seems pretty similar.  I can fit a small toy (either a finger puppet or a tiny ornament for Monica's own little Christmas tree in the playroom) and two small pieces of candy into each drawer and voila!  They have a special thing to do every night through Advent, just like my other daughter who doesn't have LPLD and gets a store bought Advent calendar with a chocolate for every day.  Everyone ends up pretty happy!  I've also seen neat toy-based Advent calendars which also seem like a good LPLD option.  For us, though, we like being able to just use the same toys every year, and not add to the toys which are already taking over the house!  And, honestly, I think the candy is important when compared with my other daughter's chocolate.

The back bell-shaped plate is all LPLD safe goodies!

And then cookies!  I love to have a huge variety for me and my husband, and so I like to make quite a few kinds for my LPLD girls, too!  Here are links to what I'm making this year:

meringues (with a few mini chocolate chips or one chocolate chip per cookie)
gingerbread folks (sprinkles are fat free!)
self frosting (vanilla) drops (from St Nicholas day)
peanut butter cookies (new!  I'm trying these for the first time this year!)
maybe pumpkin cookies, too!

LPLD gingerbread houses are pretty easy, too! Graham crackers with fat free candy held in place with fat free frosting

What LPLD ideas to you use for this time of year?