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So around here this week...
We involuntarily decided to add a water feature to the kitchen.
We had lots of moisture last week and this was the drippy view we woke up to one morning. Fortunately, things dried up. I will be interested to see what happens with the storms we are supposed to get in the next few days.
I led the youth group girls in the ward singing this song on Sunday. Really a nice partner song that I found in last year's December New Era magazine.
My husband, his dad and Evan out frolicking in the frigid South Dakota air. He says it was -8° when this was taken. Doesn't that sound like fun??? It's possible that this is even too cold for me.
The lights are all aglow.....
Started the baking. Well, technically the fruitcake started the baking, but we're getting serious this week.
And filing under Keeping It Real, this is my wrapping station. Yep, that's my bed. While I covet one of those of those nice walk-in pantries, or a big laundry room with counter space enough for a wrapping place that are prevalent in newer homes these days, there are sacrifices when you buy a late 60's era home that's been added onto multiple times, but has mature trees and pasture for your husband's horses.
Mostly, I'm feeling like this....a lot.
Sent to me from the kids and grands this week, Evan texted me this picture of Quincy during nap time. He's the first of my grandchildren who likes their thumb. My mother says I did as well.
Eric sent this one....he built a fire in their fireplace and the kids were just mesmerized. He says it's better than television.
My DIL, Alison, sent this one of James. He decided he wanted to tip over his train table. Problem was, he got stuck, then was hollering for his mama. I totally love that she took this picture.
The "awwwwww....." moment for the week. David is pinking up quite nicely after his encounter with jaundice.
Collin sent this one, which made me laugh.
And my daughter sent this one, with the caption, "Don't say I never send you any pictures." :)
Not knowing when too much of a good thing is too much, I found a couple new nativities this year.
This one is stone, from Kenya.
And this Amish-style one just caught my eye.
Of course, this one is classified as one of the new guys right now. :)
My nativities have become my favorite Christmas decorations and I have them all over the house.
They've become like old friends. When I pull them out of their boxes it's like, "Oh hello there!"
Some of them have been gifts, some of them my children brought home from far-away places, and they always help me keep my perspective in the craziness that can be Christmas.
Both Eric and his wife sent me several pictures last week, many of them from our time spent in Ohio last month.
Caroline and Grandpa ready for church. Interestingly, the chair they are sitting in belonged to my husband's grandmother. Sat in her living room for years and years and has trailed around with Eric on his educational road. You sink really low when you sit in it.
Caroline helped me make rolls for dinner one night.
Gwen let me play the duet part of "Up on the Housetop" with her. That was really fun!
There were stories for Emmett on the day we left. This was before we went to lunch at a Korean restaurant. You know how I know?
Because this is how his shirt looked after we went to the restaurant. Elisa, did that sauce come out of the shirt??
Both he and Caroline had a dish called Japchae. This version has a mild, slightly sweet dark bean sauce on it.
Caroline also enjoyed hers.
Eric sent picture of leaf raking.
That's a pile o'leaves! Did they all fit in the compost bin, Eric?
In project news,
I've totally finished off baby David's quilt. Don't ask me why I call him Baby David....it just sort of rolls off my tongue. I used this pattern for the quilt top and my quilter did a transportation pattern with cars, trucks and helicopters on it.
I had enough blocks left to make an insert on the back.
And here's a close up of the backing with little airplanes on it, since my son is still in the Air Force.
Last week's Project Life pages. You've seen all these pictures.
At the end of this year I will have a whole year of Project Life done. All the important things that have happened are already documented. I can go back and tell more detailed stories with "real" layouts, but I don't have to.
And some Christmas cards I've made over the last few weeks. This was my take on a card by Lucy Abrams that I pinned.
And pretty much a lift of a card by Yana Smakula.
A tweaked lift of this card.
I took inspiration from this card and this card to make these. The sentiment on the inside is "All is Bright" stamped in either gold or silver ink to match the cards.
I loved this one by Shari Carrol and used older Basic Grey Christmas papers to do my take.
Now, every once in a while my husband comes looking for a card he can send to outdoorsy type people. I saw this one and thought it would work for him. It uses a Hero Arts Ombre ink pad that gives it that gradient look.
And finally, this is my take on this card. It's hard to see, but the bird have some shimmer on them. I think I'm done for the year. I need to move on to mailing. :)
Roger and I made these last week during our Honey Day. As he was dumping the white chocolate chips into the batter he said, "I'm SUCH a big helper!" And he was. :). I saw these on the Jamie Cooks It Up blog earlier in the week and thought they would work well. Of course, mine aren't as pretty as hers, but they taste good.
White Chocolate Peppermint Kisses
Preheat oven to 350°. Cream together the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Crush the candy cans using a food processor or blender until you have tiny pieces and powder. Add them and the white chocolate chips to the batter and you, too, can be a big helper.
Spray your cookie sheet with non-stick spray. DO NOT SKIP THIS. Since the batter has very sugary pieces of candy cane in it, you will not be able to get them off the pan if you don't spray it.
Scoop the dough onto the baking sheets and bake for 7-8 minutes. Don't overbake them. You want them to be soft when you get them out of the oven. While the cookies bake, unwrap the candy cane kisses. When the cookies come out of the oven, immediately press a kiss into the center of each cookie, then remove from pans and cool on wire racks.
So around here this week...
The temperatures headed for the basement early in the week. Yeah, that's officially cold...and still I prefer it over summer.
We got our first snowfall this week as well.
This is the type of snow we usually get....grainy and powdery. We rarely get the big, wet, blobby flakes. Another day this week we managed to accumulate about 3", so that was fun. I love snow in the winter when it first falls and is all white and clean and quiet. Not so much when it's slushy and dirty.
We drove to Utah last weekend for the BYU Music Department's Christmas concert to watch Bryce sing. It was a quick trip, but we managed to meet him and my daughter and son-in-law for dinner and some post-vittles ping-pong.
My daughter and son-in-law at the concert. Not a great picture, but I'll take what I can get.
We love to sit up in the balcony for these concerts. It's easier to see Bryce that way.
This is only about 2/3 of the singers that ended up on stage for the final number, along with the symphony. Bryce is in there somewhere. Actually, I know right where he is (2nd row right..), but unless you know where, it's nigh unto impossible to find anyone up there.
Slowly, slowly Christmas is coming out. It's taking a while for whatever reason.
I spent a little time at the care center this week delivering these. I got the idea here. I'm always a little leery of taking food things to the care center because I'm never sure about what dietary restrictions they might have.
Filing under "keeping it real," this is what my Christmas looks like right now.
Sent to me from the kids and grands this week, I got a bunch of pictures from Eric's family which will get it's own post next week since some of them are from our trip out there last month. I will include this one, though. Looks like they were raking up some of those leaves from that pretty red tree in their backyard.
From Collin's family, here's the day baby David came home from the hospital...the first time.
Pretty sweet seeing them all together.
Marc sent me this one of Isaac on a trip to Costco this week. He's asleep in the cart. :)
And then this one. This is Isaac and his "map."
And after asking very nicely, my daughter sent this one of the two of them.
Baby David is almost a week old. I very fortunately have a son and daughter-in-law who understand my need to see my people's faces and I have gotten several pictures over the past few days.
He went home on Monday, where his other Grammy and James were waiting.
My DIL had made him this adorable little hat that looked like a Christmas ornament.
I'm not sure he appreciates the effort right now.
Collin sent me this one that said, "Peek-a-boo!" Apparently this is how he looked on any ultrasound that was taken.
Unfortunately, after they took him home, his bilirubin level kept going up, to they had to re-admit him and bake him a little bit under those UV lights.
My DIL says he's tanning. His levels today (Thursday) are lower and if they continue to drop today, they will be able to take him home again tonight.
For a a long time now, I have wanted to try making my own vanilla. In fact, I've wanted to make it for neighbor gift giving at Christmas time. I finally settled on this recipe from the Our Best Bites blog. The thing about making homemade vanilla? It only requires 2 things, whole vanilla beans...and alcohol, usually cheap vodka. Oh, and time to sit a cogitate. This is how your store-bought vanilla is made as well. It's just that you never think about how that happens when you're buying it off the store shelf. It just is. It just exists there for your buying pleasure, and you don't think about how somebody poured some kind of booze over vanilla beans to make your store-bought vanilla. It's kind of like the whole hunting vs. buying your meat at the grocery store. The meat sitting in the store just is. You don't think about how it came to be all nicely cut up and packaged for your consumption. I can tell you in vivid detail how that happens, because I have a butcher shop just off my garage every fall. So on the advice given by the ladies on OBB, I elected to use white rum to make some vanilla. Now, with apologies and a little bit embarrassment to my LDS friends, I'll tell you the story about how this all came together.
I'll begin by telling a family history story. If you've followed my blog for any length of time at all, you know that I make my husband's grandmother's fruitcake recipe every year. The things we do for love. It's just not Christmas for him without it. When she was younger, she and a group of her friends decided to stick to the original recipe, which calls for the the loaves to be wrapped in cheesecloth that has been soaked in brandy. None of them wanted to go to the liquor store to get the brandy so they drew straws. Grandma Gwen was not the short straw, so she dodged that bullet, so to speak. The same cannot be said of my vanilla-making adventure.
So I had to somehow get my hands on some white rum and that required me to go to the liquor store. You have to picture this, now. I'm a very devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), and I'm standing in the liquor store for the very first time in my life. The walls are lined with every kind of alcohol imaginable and I have absolutely no idea where I'm going to find what I need for this project. Then I had to tell the whole story to the very nice clerk, who had to show me every bottle of rum in the place and explain the advantages and disadvantages of each. And you know what's running through my head? The Johnny Depp remix that repeats, "Why is the rum gone??" about 28, 000 times. I know why the rum's gone. The Mormon lady bought it all!
Then I cut the ends off a lot of vanilla beans that I bought off Amazon. (Can you get liquor off Amazon?)
And put the beans and the rum into Mason jars which are now sitting on a shelf in my storage room, cogitating.
This is how they looked a couple of weeks ago. The OBB ladies say that it never gets as dark as what you get in the store, but I was thinking it should be at least somewhat darker than this by now. We'll see. The weirdest part of this whole thing? Having my husband find the empty bottles in the trash, and the very puzzled expression on his face....and then the questions that ensued.
