Monday, September 28, 2009

decorating for the mid-autumn (moon) festival

moon festival decorating

Oh how we love to decorate! Today Lilah and had fun hanging up these little Chinese paper lanterns for the Mid-Autumn Festival (Zhong Qiu Jie), also called the Moon Festival. It's the second most important Chinese festival, after Chinese New Year. The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. This year it falls on October 3rd, that's Saturday coming.

The festival is celebrated by gathering with the whole family to enjoy the full moon, the brightest moon of the year. Moon cakes are served and children run around playing with their lanterns. Lilah and I will try our hand at making moon cakes this week. I bought a wooden mold online and it arrived last week; now I just need to choose a recipe. Fun stuff!

moon festival decorating

moon festival decorating

moon festival decorating

moon festival decorating

moon festival decorating

moon festival decorating

[ more pictures here ]

6 comments:

  1. Oh Jill,

    I adore your decorations! They are so colorful and fun. I've already gotten online to look for some....LOVE LOVE LOVE them. I have decorations that I use for Chinese New Year but I would like to use something different to keep each holiday seperate and special. I may have to make a trip to Dallas this week to the Asian market. I can't believe I let this holiday sneak up on me and have not planned anything to decorate with. Thanks for the reminder....I better get busy :-).

    I love your pictures as always!

    Kim

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  2. Beautiful laterns! Where did you get the book from and mooncake form from? Have a wonderful time celebrating!
    Blessings,
    Kim

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  3. Hi Kim,

    The book is from Chapters/Indigo, I ordered it online and the mooncake form is from adopt shoppe. Here is the link...

    https://www.adoptshoppe.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=361

    I also like to use different lanterns for the different festivals, I bought the ones we use for New Year in China, but these ones I picked up online, from a baking shop called bake it pretty (www.bakeitpretty.com). I love that store! The colours are so much fun!

    I really wish we had a better China town in our city so I could shop locally.

    I am on the look out for a battery operated lantern for Lilah to play with, but it's so hard to find. Wish I'd thought about these things more when we were in China.

    Jill xx

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  4. JILL!!...I LOVE these lanterns! :) You have done such a good job incorporating Lilah's culture into your family. You'll have to let us know how the cakes turn out...be sure to post pics! I was going to ask where you got all of this stuff...but I seen your response to Kim, so I will check it out!

    Happy Chinese Moon Festival!!
    ~Tanya

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  5. Beautiful and very good idea !

    Thank you fro this pictures.

    friendly from France
    Severine happy mother of Victoire
    www.magrosspoule.blogspot.com

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  6. I would be happy to send you a battery-operated lantern from Chinatown. They sell these really cute ones that my girls love that are on a small plastic stick and are the size of pool ball. They have a little button on top to turn them on and off. They're pretty cute!

    E-mail me and I can send you one. :)

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