Merry Christmas Eve

'Two new-old Christmas pillowcases added to our bedding here tonight.  Chinese food takeout, homemade sugar cookies, and dear Emmet Otter are up next in this little apartment.  I wish you all a sweet and cozy holiday season.  ♥

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day - unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour. ~ Sukhraj S. Dhillon

Well, today has been a relaxing day off.  Really relaxing.  Really off.  I slept in.  The first two Christmas cards came in today's mail, Mom's and Aunt Heidi's.  Mike had the day off too but went out to breakfast alone and then ran a few errands downtown, so I had most of six hours to myself.  I added the miniature pink gingham wreath to my little cottage planter, per somewhat new tradition.  I thought of one last little gift for my older brother and his family and ordered it with just enough time left for it to arrive by next weekend's early Christmas.  While watching The Shawshank Redemption, I touched up a few Christmas tree ornaments with some fresh paint, glue, and faux snow before rehanging them.  I made this year's batch of salt-dough ornaments while watching About a Boy, another of my favorite movies (and books).  (And let us pause here to admire the colorful holiday table-scene here:

Ah!  Love!  Every time I watch this--and it's become another Christmastime tradition for me--I remember that I want to look for a simple candelabra like that one, and then forget until the following Christmas.  Maybe 2018 will be Candelabra Year.)  I had made my last big bunch of salt-dough ornaments in 2011--

--but decorated the tree this year in just pink and white so wanted some pink candy canes and hearts instead of all these rainbow-hued ones.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand just now taken out of the oven and cooling a bit before I add them to the tree, then, is this afternoon's batch, along with a couple hearts formed from the last little scraps of dough.  (Salt-dough:  1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup flour-plus-more-mixed-in-as-needed. . .baked at 250°-ish for about four hours.  Katy Elliot's recipe--and are the snowflake ornaments in her post not the loveliest!--is the one I started with in 2011.  I usually need more flour than her recipe calls for, and I bake mine at a higher temp, but my recipe is otherwise her recipe--and a good one it is.)  Quite soon, then, the new candy canes and hearts will get hooked onto tree boughs and I'll loop some green thread or fishing line through the hearts to hang them and will declare the tree done. 

I'm off tomorrow too and am trying to talk Mike into a game of Trivial Pursuit.  No takers yet, but I got a "We'll see" upon last mention, at least.  'Am at some point re-hanging the gingham apron "curtain" that has a home over the air conditioner now that winter's here. 

I still have my cards to get ready to mail, despite Wednesday night's best intentions, but returning to my book sounds better than cards and envelopes.  Sometime this weekend, I'll take some Christmas tree pictures.  Ahhh, well, one picture for now, because I just added the salt-dough pieces and this is all making me very happy.

Sweet little tree.  ♥  After all the stress and chaos this week, this Christmas tree is actually my favorite one ever.  Go figure.  Thank you all for your kind words on the ol' balancing act.  Maybe everything just had to get worse here before I could figure out how to make it better. 

Yellow Squash Roses & Ice Cube Misadventures: Easter 2017

It stormed here both while I was cooking and while we were eating dinner, so all the more reason to enjoy a colorful and sunny Easter table today.  I forgot to make the mashed cauliflower, my Daffodils from the grocery store barely opened before dying, the Dandelions wilted, the edible-flower-filled ice cubes melted almost instantly and became a loose-flower mess inside our water glasses, and in the last-minute rush to finish, I forgot both to season the quinoa and to add the leftover edible flowers to the salads, but--!--the meal came together, everything tasted good--even the quinoa once I'd seasoned it after our first couple bites--and the table was pretty enough to make me happy even if not quite as flower-filled as I'd intended. 

I was originally going to make tomato roses as garnish but then saw online on various sites that stripes of squash work too, and since the yellow of squash seemed more springy than the red of tomatoes, I went with the squash.  One yellow squash made four of these roses.  I just sliced the squash into thin strips of various lengths, microwaved the strips for about a minute to soften them enough to make them pliable, then patted them dry and rolled them up into the wells of a muffin pan, the shortest strip in the center of each soon-to-be-rose, and the other strips around it until the well was filled with the rolled-up strips.  I wanted to be sure to keep a nice golden color on each squash-rose so mixed some turmeric into a beaten egg and drizzled that mixture over each one too.  For the last few minutes of maybe a thirty-minute-total bake-time, I sprinkled some cheddar shreds between the squash strip-petals.  They kept their shape even after being transferred to the plates, which delighted me.  (It's the little things.  :)   )  I shaped spinach patties into leaves, although I see now that raw spinach leaves likely would have given me more of the look I was envisioning for these.  I have to think this would work with carrot-strips and any other vegetable or fruit that would soften enough to be rolled.  For a first attempt, I'm quite pleased.  ♥

I also made the balsamic carrots that I first posted here last year, ultimately-seasoned quinoa, a mushroom stuffing dish that seems to grace all our holiday tables and deserves its own post one of these days, although it's not remotely photogenic, green beans sauteed in garlic and olive oil, side salads, and our usual Easter dessert of robin's-egg-blue-colored peanut M&M candy "eggs" inside peanut butter/marshmallow/pretzel "nests." I dye my hard-boiled eggs inside too but left one uncolored to slice for our salads and added the blue and pink ones to our plates.  After years of eating my deviled eggs at Easter, Mike finally told me he prefers hard-boiled ones, and I don't have a preference, so I skipped the filling this time around and just left them plain.  Since I color the egg-white part regardless, they add a pop of color either way. 

I found the two red potatoes closest to being egg-shaped and fried slices of them to add to our salads, along with yellow, orange, and red grape tomatoes.  

The edible flowers that were supposed to dot the tops of the salads were forgotten and remain in the fridge to be used elsewhere this week.  Alas.  The last few minutes of holiday meal-preparations are always so chaotic, even with all the planning and list-making. 

The edible-flower-filled ice cubes looked gorgeous in the trays but melted almost as soon as water hit them.  'Not impressive.  Maybe if the water had been ice water kept in the fridge, the cubes would have lasted a bit longer, but I doubt they'd have lasted long enough even then to make me want to try this again.  With mint leaves or lemon bits frozen into the cubes intended for iced tea, sure.  With flowers specifically chosen to complement the flavor of the drink they'll be going into, yes.  Flower-filled ice cubes for bowls just to chill bottled drinks, of course.  But not like this again.  

I added oats to the recipe--such as it is--to the nests this year to make them more like healthy no-bakes than candy.  Two microwaved marshmallows, a few broken pretzels sticks, about two tablespoons of peanut butter, and maybe a fourth-cup of rolled oats were enough to make these three nests come together.  The bags of pastel-colored/Easter peanut-filled M&Ms always include a few gorgeous aqua ones that already look like little  eggs, so they're my go-to for this dessert. 

'A sweet end to a sweet weekend, and a colorful Easter after a rather dreary and depression-filled start to this year.  Here's to flowers and faith and life's many other lovely blessings.  

♥

My Favorite Night of the Year

The pastel heart, star, and tree cookies are now tradition, but the green gingham towel from Aunt Laurie and the pink gingham pot holder Mom made for me are new this year and at least as sweet.  Happy holidays and love to you all tonight.  ♥

A Lavender Christmas Breakfast Table

I woke up with a sore throat Christmas morning--The Christmas Cold revisited for the second time this month, a new record for me!--and am still battling it, the stuffed-up head, the runny nose, and the complete fatigue a few days later, but this Christmas was lovely.  As has been tradition each year we've been married, I made our Christmas breakfast cinnamon rolls late Christmas Eve (or in the wee hours of Christmas morning, since I went to bed at 2 am this time), but instead of setting the table in this year's color--last year the table was orange, 2013's was a buttery yellow and cream, 2012's was pink, and 2011's was aqua--I just frosted and covered the rolls and went to bed. 

I woke up at 7 am with the sore throat that didn't let me sleep any longer, so I got up, set the table in lavender, and made all the casseroles and side dishes that were to go with our supper.  'A good thing, as I would fall asleep almost seconds after eating that night. 

These two purple-winged cherub bookends are always on my shelves, but they struck me a few weeks ago as perfect for our Christmas table, so a lavender Christmas, it became.  The tiny cupcake and ball ornaments beside them were from my aunt Heidi years ago.  

Mom gave me the lavender napkins, candle, purple tinsel-garland, and the gorgeous Chickadee card this year with my Christmas gifts, since I'd mentioned the lavender table idea to her while home last month.  

The snowflake-shaped candle holder below was a gift from Aunt Laurie this year. 

The snowflake spreader was only twenty-five cents on clearance at Walgreens years ago, and I've used it every Christmas morning.  Mom found me the beautiful lavender snowflake ornament and hobnail ramekin-that-served-as-a-butter-dish below.

I'd forgotten until Christmas morning that I had thrown our usual snowflake-patterned lace tablecloth into the hamper a couple weeks ago when I'd noticed a stain on it, and since I wasn't up to doing last-minute laundry Christmas morning, I used a piece of leftover white kitchen curtain material over one of our lavender-patterned flat sheets.  I've spent most of the weekend sleeping and reading in bed and in my chair, but it's still been a sweet holiday.  As I was getting ready to leave for work last night, my supervisor called to tell me I didn't need to come in--BLESSED surprise!  ♥--so that gave me an extra night off to recover.  'Two more days off, so I'm confident I'll be starting the new year in better health.  And I wrap up this Christmas with a relieved "Whew! I pulled it off!" as I head back to bed.  :)  'Hope you've all had a sweet weekend.

And Now. . .Alice Otter (My Favorite Gift I'm Giving This Year)

Whew!  I finished making Alice Otter earlier this morning.  She is part of my Christmas presents for my parents, just as Emmet Otter was last Christmas.  

 I can't be with my family while they watch Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas on Christmas Eve--enjoying the movie over eggnog and dessert is a family tradition--but now they will have the complete set of "Ma" and her Emmet to hold my place.  :) 

I started creating Alice in November and soon realized that I was mistaken to have thought that Alice Otter would be easier to make than Emmet.  I had expected her to be easier since her body is hidden by her dress, but between the dress-making and simply the ongoing trying-to-making-her-face-look-right, she was quite a challenge.   At least she and Emmet are a two-member family, since I don't think I'd want to construct a third otter next year.  :)  I also didn't realize until right now that I attached her lace-and-red-ribbon trim to the front of her dress upside-down.  BAH!  Maybe I'll attach extra lace under the red ribbon to make up for it.  BAH!  And BAH! again!  Anyway, she is either done or nearly-done, depending on my handling of The Lace Issue now.   :)  Her outfit in the movie is just lovely, so to have gotten it even this close was quite the feat for me, since sewing's not really my thing.  

I began with a stuffed animal I bought to cut up for fur and parts. 

I re-cut it to form the body--

--and re-stuffed it to re-shape it a bit. 

The plan had been to start with her face, of course, but I found myself beginning with her costume instead.  "Measure twice, cut once"-type thinking made me too nervous to add her face, I think, since once it was attached, there would be no going back to correct it.  The collar and bow were made from a piece of leftover lace in my fabric stash. 

I found one button in Grandma's button jar that matched the dress well, and I took the lid off a mustard bottle to make the nose.  :)  

I had bought the fabric back in August after a long search for one that closely resembled Alice's talent show costume in the movie.  (I wanted to make the talent show costume because so many of Mom's other Christmas decorations are blue, and Alice's other dress in the film is a brown-with-gold print.)

I didn't realize until I went to attach the finished arms that I had made them way too big and too long, so I spent at least an hour redoing them. I made a basic wrap dress that I'd later cover with a pleated fabric-piece for a proper dress. 

I remembered from last year to use white paint to add a life-like glint to her eyes.  The eyes and eyebrows were pieces of black fabric cut off a raggedy piece of a bag lining. 

I found a doily in October that I thought would be the right size to use as a cap, and I guessed correctly.  I made blue ribbon/cord from a length of the dress-fabric and threaded it through the doily's holes.  The ball-trim is from a piece I've used for so many other projects.  It all worked. 

And then I stopped taking pictures until I was done with her this morning. 

If I had stopped to refer to the photos of her I'd been using as reference all along, I'd have noticed the upside-down lace-and-red-ribbon-trim, but I'll live. 

Dad will get a kick out of her, as he did with Emmet, but I know Mom will truly love her.  :)

I'm so tickled with this. 

I tried making a mouth a few different ways, but I never came up with one that looked even remotely right, so instead I added extra fur with hot glue and bunched it up until it looked like there was at least an opening there.  The suggestion of a mouth looks better than any of my attempts at a real one did.  I added blush to her cheeks with a little of my lipstick, to make her look different from Emmet, and I used a paintbrush to spread some white eye shadow above her eyes. 

I attached her to a plastic container to make her a bit taller and to give her a way to stand, since it bothered me last year that the boots I'd created for Emmet hadn't worked out and he needed to be leaned against something to stay upright. 

And like last year, I made a gingham label as a finishing touch. 

Oh, I love that cap!  Anything with ball-trim just sends me, I love it so much. 

I go home tomorrow for a way-too-short visit and look forward to seeing not only my family, but also Alice and Emmet together for the first time.  ;) 

And now to figure out The Lace Issue before I pack this into tissue paper and box it up for Mom and Dad.  This is my favorite gift that I'm giving this year, although one for my nephew keeps making me laugh too.  Ah, holiday silliness!  I love it. 

Merry Early Christmas!  ♥

♥