Christmas in review

So it was a White Christmas here, despite my fears to the contrary. The whiteness wasn't award-winning, but at least it was white. Then a day later we got a good, old-fashioned blizzard, but even that wasn't award-winning. I was hoping for maybe 3-4 feet of the stuff, but we got only 12" or so. It was difficult to determine just how much snow we did get because the wind howled and caused a lot of drifting. Ah, well. Winter is still young.

On Christmas Eve we went to our good friends Jim and Lynn's for a delicious seafood chowder dinner. I wish I could upload some photos from that evening, but Blogger is in a snit, it seems, and won't let me. The chowder was generous and thick and full of haddock, lobster, shrimp, and scallops. I'm salivating just thinking about it.

Christmas Day we went to my sister's, where we celebrated the day with her, her husband, their son, their son's wife, their grand daughter (Violet, whom you've met before), and their son's wife's mother. (Pay attention, please, because you'll be taking a quiz when you finish reading this post.)

Violet comes in handy as the Christmas gift hander-outer, and we've put her to work in this capacity since she was big enough to hold a gift without dropping it.

She received a hot pink froo-froo skirt from her grandparents, and she immediately stripped down in the living room, put on the skirt with matching tights, and wore the new duds the rest of the day. (I'm told she also wore them the next day, and the next, and even wanted to wear them to school, but her mom finally convinced her they weren't the most sensible clothes to wear while playing in the snow.)

After the so-called blizzard, Mr. Cardinal paid a lengthy visit in the bridal wreath bush outside the kitchen window. I love to see the male cardinal year-round, but I especially enjoy him once there's snow on the ground and his deep red color contrasts nicely with the whiteness of his surroundings.

I'd like to ask him where Mrs. Cardinal is, since I haven't seen her in about a year, but he ain't talkin', it seems. Could be a sensitive subject, I suppose.

I've been on a focaccia bread-making kick the past few days. It could have something to do with Santa's bringing me a panini press. I've made paninis once this week and plan to try them again in a few days. Of course, the press is now on sale at Macy's, I couldn't help but notice in the newspaper today, for $40 less than Santa paid for it. That's always the way, and it reinforces the old "Ignorance is bliss" axiom.

I'm reading Bill Bryson's At Home. I love Bryson's writing. This particular book, which details the evolution of the "home" as we know it today, contains a lot of surprising tidbits that only Bryson could dig up. In the section I read last night, Bryson mentioned a fellow who spent three months trying to teach his dog to read. Needless to say, the endeavor was fruitless.

We can't even teach our Molly the difference between the "beep-beep-beep" of a truck backing up on T.V. and the beep-beep-beep of one backing up in our driveway. She goes into a frenzied barking at either. I can't imagine trying to get her focused long enough to decipher letters on a page!

Maybe, just maybe...

...it'll be a White Christmas after all.

Thumbprint cookies

Ok, ok, so these cookies won't win a prize for beauty, but they sure do taste delicious, and they didn't go flat in the oven.

I've never before been able to bake a batch of thumbprint cookies that didn't turn into pancakes in the oven. Today I tried a new recipe, and I like it. Granted, I have a thing or two to learn about the cookies' final appearance, but overall, the recipe is a success.

It's from Parade.com, and here it is.

The mega snowstorm that was supposed to arrive tomorrow, last into Tuesday, and guarantee us a White Christmas has decided to take a route too far south of us. Shoot. There's a chance of some "residual snow" backing into Maine from this system on Tuesday, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm adjusting to the idea of a brown Christmas and moving on.

Last evening I took a few photos in the house, trying to capture the atmosphere. Our tree looks pretty short when photographed from the balcony. We have a much taller tree, about 12' tall I'd guess, but the thing got to be such a dreaded chore to put up each year that we decided to save ourselves some stress and get a shorter tree. I think we made a good decision.

Have a wonderful week-before-Christmas!

Progress

A week ago I intended to finish decorating the house for Christmas. Then I kept putting it off. And putting it off.

Yesterday Ken put up the tree, however, so I no longer had an excuse for procrastinating.

This morning I've been making major progress.

The tree is decorated, and Molly's been enjoying its magic.

The bannister is as decorated as it's going to be. Usually I do more than this, but I kind of like the simplicity of it this year. Or that's how I'm justifying it, anyway.

My carolers are a-caroling.

And Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli, and Susan Boyle have been serenading me as well.

Now if only we could get some snow. SNOW, I said. Come on, Mother Nature. This isn't funny.

A little Christmas cheer...and raisins

We have no snow here in Southern Maine, except for the odd snowflake here and there. The northern half of the state, though, is getting hammered with a nice snowstorm today. I'm envious. I like snow for Christmas, then after Christmas I like it for cross-country skiing. A friend told me this morning that the Farmers' Almanac predicts little snow for us this winter. I hope it's wrong. It's been known to be wrong.

I won't fully get into the holiday spirit until that first significant snowfall, but in the meantime I've begun digging out the Christmas decorations.

The bubble light mantel box is in place, along with the nutcrackers beside it.

Yesterday Ken and I dragged the giant nutcracker out onto our front porch. He's a big fella, weighing well over 100 pounds, so it's a two-person job to take him outside and bring him back inside after the holidays.

In the past we've stored him upstairs, in one of the closets, but this past year we decided to make our job easier and just store him in Ken's walk-in closet. It took me awhile to adjust to his being there: I'd jump every time I walked past Ken's open closet door, thinking a stranger was standing inside.

I'd intended to get a lot of Christmas decorating done yesterday, but once Mr. Nutcracker had vacated his space, I decided to give Ken's closet a good cleaning.

That's a problem I seem to run into a lot since retiring: I used to stay focused on one task until completion, probably because I was always pressed for time and didn't have the luxury of wandering off course.

Now I constantly wander off course and find myself doing something totally unrelated to the original task. I've been known to find myself using Q-tips and rubbing alcohol to clean the vents in my oven door when I thought I was going to do a load of laundry, for instance.

Anyway, I did manage to set up our four little trees in the kitchen, dining room, front hallway, and bedroom. The big tree isn't up in the living room yet, but we'll get to that later this week, probably.

A couple of you have asked for an update on the gin-soaked raisin treatment for arthritis.

Ken is quite sure it's working. He says he's either not feeling the pain or not thinking about the pain, which to me is a good sign the pain isn't there. Once in awhile he feels a sharp jab, but for the most part the constant pain is gone.

I need to mix up a new batch of raisins and gin soon, so it will be ready when Ken needs it. He's being good about eating precisely nine raisins per day. Why that's the magic number, we don't know, but nine seem to work.