It's Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas...

Eeeeeverywhere I go!!!!

Oh! I love the jolly holly-days!

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. We had a good day, but the weekend was even better! The day after we went to our local Christmas tree farm and rode the wagon out into the fields where there were trees as far as the eye could see and cut down our Christmas tree. The girls dragged it back to the path for the wagon to pick up and we teased them about child labor laws and how they must have been donkeys in a former life. Hee-Haw! Then we slapped it on the roof of the minivanminivanminivan-van-van and took it home where we spent the next three hours slurping homemade hot chocolate (none of that hideous package stuff for me) and singing along to Christmas carols and slinging decorations as far as the eye can see. We even did the dollhouses (or is it doll homes?)! Here's Jacy's. Molly wouldn't let me take a picture of hers because she doesn't have the garland on her picket fence yet or something or another. Can you tell that the little bushes are lit?


Secret! I have heard, directly from an elf, that Santa is bringing Jacy the BIG dollhouse like Molly's for Christmas and soon this little pink house will be a pink grocery store. Shhh...don't tell. There are even little brown paper grocery sacks for the grocery store and a gumball machine. Or so Santa says.

My house smells so wonderful right now. I have done a lot of natural decorating this year with real garland and real wreaths and a big beautiful swag on the kitchen table. It will probably all be dead and brown by Christmas morning and I'll have to rush out to the garage and pull out all my fake garland and slap it up, but I don't care. I want to enjoy the holiday while I can. My mother thinks we're crazy to put our decorations up anytime before the second week of December. But I CAN'T wait that long.

Oh, I'm so festive, I can't stand me.

Do you know what I hate? Putting my mouth on coke cans. I have to have a glass. Or use a straw. And then I feel like a sissy with my coke can with the little straw sticking out. Like those people who drink coffee with a straw so it doesn't stain their teeth. It's a germ issue for me. Not a white teeth issue.

So, here's my Christmas card designed by MOI, The Shabbee Chick and Moi's lily white hands. What doest thou thinkest?


Isn't it Shabbee-licious? I don't do the whole red and green and Happy Holidays thing. Not nearly Shabbee enough. Look at my precious kidlets and their bare piggies swinging on this porch swing. Too bad they're not that adorable in real life. That picture was taken at Ellie's wedding shower I gave her at a bed and breakfast and by the time it was over Jacy had spilled pink lemonade all down the front of her pristine white with roses dress and Molly's hair had fallen down and she had fallen and skinned her knee and I had yelled at them in front of my cousin and oldest friend's new in-laws. Sugar plums my ass.

Oops! That wasn't Shabbee and pretty at all.

So!

Look at these Luscious Links I have for you. Knock yourselves out!

Peddler's Design

Oilcloth.com

Victorian Christmas

An Old Fashioned Christmas

Track Down Santa's Whereabouts Here! We did this last year on Christmas Eve and it was totally fun!

Download Free Susan Branch Christmas Wallpaper here!

Annoy everyone and download Free Christmas Music!

That Man of Mine

Hooray! Hooray!

An excuse to make pies.

Sigh. Is there anything better???? My larder is all stocked. Tomorrow is going to be cold and shivery. The kids are out of school. My house is shiny and I'm in anticipation of spending all day tomorrow cooking in a cozy house while the wind whips outside.

I love holidays.

I feel sorry for our European friends who don't get to do Thanksgiving. But they have all kinds of holidays that we Americans overlook.

Like Guy Fawkes Day in the UK. Which, historically, is rather macabre, but I get the point. Bonfires. Fall. Fun stuff.

So I was all organized and prepared and determined to beat the Thanksgiving rush and did most of my shopping last week for my frenzied holiday cooking. I had a few fresh ingredients that I had to get today, but that was it. So here I come, baggage laden with all this food on top of my normal grocery shopping that I did for the week and my husband says "Uh-uh. No way. That's not going to fit." And I'm looking at him like he's lost it and I proceed to shove it all in my cabinets because that's what I do. I shove. Works for me. Remember this list? What was on top of the list? Kitchen cabinets? In hindsight, I think that list was a little daunting for me. Because the cabinets did not get touched. Some of the other things got done. But, let's face it, digital scrapping is just way more appealing than the kitchen cabinets. So I shove things in. Still.

After about a week of watching things fall on me as I open the cabinets I guess Jason got fed up. Sunday morning he was reading the paper at the kitchen table with his coffee while I made pancakes and shook his head as I reached in the cabinet for the syrup and twelve things fell out along with the syrup. So after breakfast, he puts his hands on his hips and says "This has to stop." and spent the next three hours with me, organizing our kitchen cabinets. Isn't he amazing? Wasn't happenstance and fate and luck or karma or whatever you want to call it with me when I found him? Or he found me? Can you imagine a man who cleans out cabinets with his lazy wife instead of doing whatever it is men do on Sundays? Sigh. I'm so in love. Nothing sexier than a man who cleans.

So. Not only will I be spending a day baking in a clean house, but an organized and hazard-free kitchen as well. All you normal people, who don't shove are reading this thinking, okaaaaaay. Whatever. Organization is important to me.

OH! You know what? I've added another movie to the list of those I watch because of the beautiful houses! It's "The Holiday" and it's fab-oo! I totally recommend it and it'll put you in the Christmas spirit! Love Kate Winslet's Cottage! Oh, her stove and her fireplace with the garland and the dishes displayed on them. And the curtains on the window over her sink. Sigh. Go rent it. Or buy it. Or Ti-Vo it and burn it to disk like I did to rewind and pause and play in slow motion over and over.


Please may it snow on Christmas this year. Please may it snow on Christmas this year.

So here's our latest addition to the family as well.


Her name is LullaBelle and she is another rescue pup. Isn't she pwecious? Jason takes her to work every day and she rides around in his truck feeling important. She, clearly, thinks that he is her Daddy and follows him around worshipping him and whines when he walks away from her.


She sleeps on a ca-yute doggie bed in our heated garage. I just can't have another inside dog. I just can't. My obsessive-compulsive-ness can't handle it. (Sound of me breathing into a paper bag.) Plus, I don't want to upset this pwecious doggie and her princess-ways by another houseguest.
Lou (which is what I call her) is so wee that sometimes her back-end tries to get ahead of her front end, like the slinky dog on "Toy Story". And she falls down a lot, she's only about six weeks old. Yesterday she pulled Jacy's sock off her foot and ran away with it only to get tripped up because my six-year old's sock was longer than her entire body and it defeated her and she went rolling. She's so floppy and fuzzy and ca-yute! Love puppies.

And we're knitting away here. Molly learned to knit last year and I hesitated to teach Jacy because it can be very frustrating if little fingers don't do as they're told and cooperate. But she picked it up in ten minutes and is currently knitting a long pink scarf. Knitters! Love them!



Christmas lights going on the house tonight! Yippee. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready.

We are all headed to my sister-in-law's house for feast tomorrow. She is making the turkey, potatoes and rolls, and I am basically making everything else. Which is just how my husband likes it because he gets to add his opinion on what he wants to eat!

On a serious note, Molly has a friend who has Cystic Fibrosis. She is an amazing little girl and her mother, who is my good friend, is also an amazingly positive person. This little friend has taken a terrible turn for the worse and has been hospitalized for the past 28 days. They are talking about lung transplants and miracles and trying hard hard hard to get a day pass from the hospital to take Haley home to her house for Thanksgiving. I tell you all this in the hopes that you will take this holiday and not get caught up in burning the gravy or that fight you had with your sister's husband last year but that you will look around you at all the people in your life that can draw a full, deep breath that smile and run around and can eat without a feeding tube. I hope that you will all turn off the t.v.'s and sit and talk with your families and that when someone asks you what you are thankful for this year, it won't be a traditional, pat answer, but one from the heart.

Have a wonderful day. And remember the title of this Norman Rockwell painting above, "Free From Want" and remember that want isn't always about food and shelter. But health, happiness and harmony.

May I?

May I just offer up my most sincere apologies to all you gift baggers out there that I have offended with my last post. Dearie me, how sensitive we all are these days! Girls, you just go right ahead and keep on gift baggin'! Don't mind me! We know someone out there needs to keep all those gift bag factories in bidness! But seriously, I didn't mean to ruffle any busy mommies fur out there. (Aside: not that I'm not a busy mommy. Godinheaven knows that if anyone is busy out there its me!) Just remember that what you are reading here is my mindless rantings. A type of online journal or diary. You wouldn't come over to my house, wander into my bedroom and leaf through my diary only to find out that I don't like green beans and read a passage where I blather incessantly about how all people who do like green beans are mad and should be ashamed of liking green beans and then get offended because you yourself like green beans, now would you? Come on girls. This is only a blog.

The author will, at this time, note that she is quite fond of green beans and was only using that as an analogy.

So forgive my condemnation of gift bags. They're not that bad. I guess.

So, we had a fun weekend at home. My chief aim during this time was to leave the house as little as possible and, with the exception of a birthday party at which I did not send said birthday girl's present in a gift bag, we didn't leave. It was great.

We made our little Pilgrim Hat cookies that we make each year. Jacy seemed to actually dive into the chocolate this year and it will be noted that this morning I still found chocolate on her earlobe. If that's at all possible because she did, surprisingly, bathe last night.

You must try these-they are so easy and fun. The kids can do them all by themselves. Molly melted the chocolate this year. You take a fudge striped cookie for the brim and coat a jumbo marshmallow in chocolate and let it harden. Then you pipe a square of yellow icing on for the buckle. That's it. They're totally disgusting to eat, but adorable to look at. We send tons of them to teachers and the office staff at school. I'm sure they're taking a bite and throwing the rest in the garbage, but the kids love these little festive projects.

We also made these turkey pins. We make these every year too. I inflict them on all the women in our family and insist they wear them all day on Thanksgiving. They're a pain so if you don't have a couple of hours to sit at the kitchen table and supervise I would pass on these. What? I'm just being honest here! Don't you appreciate honesty?
We also made three more pumpkin rolls if you can believe it. Hello? Less than two weeks until Thanksgiving, people!

Molly had a solo in her Veteran's Day program last Friday. We had a minor crisis that morning because I had packed away most of our red,white and blue clothing since most of it is for the Fourth of July and everything else that I selected for her that had red, white or blue in it was, apparently, unacceptable to a nine year old. So yes, she is wearing a Valentine's Day shirt, which clearly is much better than the outfit that I picked out for her. Here is her solo for your viewing pleasure. Please note that I am not responsible for her musical prowess and yes, I recognize that she cannot carry a tune in a toesack, but she's damn cute and the music teacher must appreciate cuteness. Look at that face.


On another note, you will remember our little clutch of hens that we are raising since the mass exodus of all but one of our remaining flock. You may read about the massacre here. I say hens because that is what we thought we were getting. The key word here is thought. Those of you unfamiliar with purchasing chicken apart from those that you get packaged up at the meat counter, it is not advisable to purchase baby chicks out of the bin labeled "Straight Run". That basically means "Free For All" or "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.". They can throw pretty much anything in there and that's that. We always buy pullets which, by definition, is a female chicken less than a year old. Note the term FE-male. Somebody was either stupid, or thought they were funny and threw a rooster in the Pullet bin. Isn't that clever? Let's put this baby rooster in here because when they're this size nobody can tell and when the customer gets it home and it grows up it will be a rooster and heeheehee won't that be funny. I'm going to go ahead and hope these people were stupid and couldn't tell a male chicken from a female. It just makes me feel better about the world.

Houston, we have a rooster.

Here he is. Molly has named him Seamus. Seamus the rooster.


Jason, godblesshim, has built them this fancy new henhouse because he loves me and I hate the one we have now because it's too hard to get to the eggs and I've whined about it for three years and so he spent all weekend making them a fancy new crib. Now they can get in and out into their little chicken yard on their little ramp and I can hear Seamus all the livelong day.

Oh, Lordy, what am I going to do with this rooster???? He's actually quite funny and it's true what they say about the old "cock of the walk" if you know what I mean. I think I've dated men like him before. Long, long ago. I'm not one of those let's-get-rid-of-this-animal-for-the-good-of-the-rest (or the sanity thereof) kind of people. I can't just off this rooster because he crows all the time. Can I? No. No, certainly not.

Anyone have any mob connections? That was a joke, people. Please don't email me.

Gift Bags

This is ridiculous, but you know what? I cannot stand gift bags. You know, those lazy excuses for wrapping gifts with tissue paper sticking out every which way looking like a decorative second thought? Oh, here. Here ya go. I got you this gift. Didn't put much thought into it and even less into it's packaging. Here ya go. It's for you.

Aren't I completely manic and isn't it clear that my life must have little to no real issues in it if I have the time and energy to complain about gift bags. But honestly, how much effort does it really take to find a box, some cute paper, tie a bow on and write a hand printed card. All you gals out there who wax eloquently about your creative juices and all your little treasures that you post on your blogs to make me green, simply green, with envy at your imaginations-tell me, oh please, that you do not gift bag. Tell me that you're not in Target over in the cute-sy aisle picking out matching tissue paper to hide a gift that you have lovingly selected for a dear one.

Say it ain't so!

Jacy's little best friend is having a birthday party this weekend. And, of course we had to pick out the perfect pink princess paper for the perfect pink princess friend. (This child is as prissy as my own, if there is such a thing.) And we had to embellish it and make it fun. It took ten minutes. And my six year old wrapped it. Ten minutes, people.

And look. Look at the ca-yute vintage wrapping paper you can buy now!!!

Stay away from the gift bags.

Reminder

Don't forget! It's time to get your FLU SHOT! The girls and I went yesterday morning before school. They were brave and didn't even flinch. Don't be big babies, ladies. If you skip this year, you know this'll be the season you're down for two weeks sniffling and groaning because you didn't listen to The Shabbee Chick! Just do it!

Delicious Autumn

Delicious Autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird
I would fly about the earth
seeking
the successive autumns.
-George Eliot

Oh my goodness! We've been so busy worshiping the autumn season and running around in a flurry of autumnal frenzy, that I haven't had a single solitary moment to blog. I have made mental notes throughout the week, making lists in my head of things to blog, but every time I sit down to write something, life tears me away.

So let's play catch up!

The Halloweenie Roast was fab-oo! We had about 40 people and perfect weather. We even had a black cat slip into the yard for a visit. He lives around here somewhere and makes an appearance from time to time, but I thought it was especially fitting for him to visit that night. He strode in like the spooky-ooky kitty he is underneath a cloud covered moon and set the atmosphere for a purrrrr-fect Halloween party.

We had a great few follow up days, as well, carving pumpkins, trick or treating, making caramel apples and popcorn and watching creepy movies!




I always enjoy the autumn season and love the weather and the leaves falling and the feeling of change in the air. I went to get my haircut last Thursday, the day after Halloween and they had their Christmas tree up already. I was so pissed off. How dare they interfere with my delicious repartee with fall? I was thoroughly engrossed in my love affair with this delicious season and they muddy it up with a CHRISTMAS TREE? I sat and stared at it while she trimmed away and thought un-Christmasy thoughts in my head. So in order to enact revenge on these Fall-Scrooges I immediately went home and did some Christmas shopping online.

So there.

Okay, so I promised Kellie that I would write a post about my daughters' mailboxes. She mentioned one day that she was having a hard time corralling all the extra papers that needed keeping that came home in her daughter's backpack every day from school. I hate paper. I hate those fundraiser packets and permission slips and notes that need returning. I hate them laying around disrupting the beauty of my clear surfaces and making it look like an in/out box in my mud room. So when Molly was in Kindergarten, five years ago (gosh, that seems weird to say) I copied an idea that I had seen in a magazine somewhere. I went to our local hardware store and bought two of those wall-mount mailboxes, painted them a beautiful soft lavender color and hung them on our mudroom wall right next to the back door and opposite where the girls hang their back packs and piano bags and etc. I stuck some alphabet magnets on them to spell out their names and Ta-Da! In these mailboxes go school calendars, fundraiser packets, homework assignments that need finishing over the week, etc. And if a note needs to be returned to school or lunch money in an envelope goes with them the next day, it gets clothespinned to the front. The girls know that it needs to go with them that morning and when they put on their jackets and backpacks, they just pull it off their clip and run! No more paper clutter.

Here is our mudroom.

Here's where I'm sitting right now typing away and looking out the window at my darlings jumping on the trampoline in the backyard. Incidentally, this is also the counter where I scrapbook, fold laundry, do all and sundry of projects and wrap presents! I love my mudroom. Do you see why stray paper was not welcome?


This is the little shelf where all our keys, sunglasses and all the contents from Jason's wallet ends up! The girls hang their backpacks here also their jackets, and Molly's piano bag. They have hooks on the opposite wall that hold their cheerleading bags full of pom poms, etc.

Here are the famous Mailboxes! Aren't they cute? I have more people comment on them when they come over. They really are a lifesaver for people with OCD, like myself.

So, Kellie, go to Lowe's and buy some cheap $15 mailboxes and a cute paint color and stuff your mailboxes full.

We have a blissfully quiet day today. I am making a huge pot of chili and my hubby and I have a date on the couch under the afghan this afternoon to watch football. But first we are all four having our big bake day where we make and freeze tons of pumpkin rolls for the holiday. They are so fun and kid-friendly and SO delicious! We make about ten or eleven pumpkin rolls, freeze them and pull them out for Thanksgiving get-togethers and fun fall treats. I cut off several slices and send them to the office staff at the girls' school, give them to the bus driver, the mailman and last year I even ran out and gave some to the trash guys and they took away all our ha-yuge boxes at Christmas that year in one trip. Go make some with your kids-they are so easy.

Here's the recipe:

Beat together:
3eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup pumpkin

Grease jellyroll pan and cover with wax paper. Pour mixture over wax paper lined pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts over top. Bake 13-15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Moisten towel (not terry cloth) sprinkle with powdered sugar. When cake is done, immediately turn onto moistened towel. Leaving the wax paper on, roll up jellyroll style (with towel). Allow to cool well. (Can put in fridge). Unroll, peel off wax paper. Spread filling evenly. Roll up and refrigerate until ready to serve. Or freeze!

Filling:
2 teaspoons butter
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 t vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar

Cream together and spread evenly on jellyroll. Roll back up and wrap in aluminum foil. Slice desired thickness.

She has got on to the right side of the baking powder, and her cakes and things are so light they fly down your throat of themselves.
-Susan Hale