Friday, November 28, 2008

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Happy Thanksgiving :) I am a day late with my wishes, and I wish I were only one dollar short! Here is our comically small table decorated for the most festive eating holiday there is.


I love an excuse to break out the crystal fancy stuff. I have yet to acquire a fancy dish for turkey however, so this turkey breast is on a sushi plate :) Faaaaancy stuff people. This year my hubby and I ate as a twosome, which was surprisingly nice. We made french press coffee, listened to Christmas music, stuffed ourselves, watched the Sopranos (we only have two episodes left. mphf), then watched the Visitor - an awesome movie, I highly recommend it.



My shutter-happy hubby took some shots of my dishing out the goods. The meal was a particularly good one, even if I DO say so myself (hubby said so too).


I think he captured the quiet mood of the evening quite well.


And I leave you with some pictures of chocolate chip pumpkin bread and banana bread I made during the week. I definitely plan to make the pumpkin stuff again...I have a serious weakness for pumpkin - is it adictive? Hubby and I are also adicted to peppermint bark - our yearly dose is sitting unopened (amazingly) for us to enjoy around Christmas.

Happy holidays to everyone! I hope you are all surrounded by people you love, and that safety and security find their way to you in spite of all the bad news this year.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Haaaaang on Snoopy, Snoopy Hang On!

Have you ever heard that song by the McCoys? I love that song - and when I was little, I always thought they were saying "Snoopy" instead of "Sloopy" :) I just have to keep singing that to myself so I can make it to Christmas...


Here is the giant Snoopy balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York last year. My eldest sister came to spend the long weekend with us then, and we had so much fun. I have to admit the parade itself was a pain in the patoot, but I really loved the rest of the weekend.

It has been nearly a month since I posted last! Life is stressful beyond my wildest dreams these days, as I tend to keep saying. We're still working on placing my father-in-law in a good assisted living facility, and my mother-in-law is coping with sickness and blood clots. All a barrel of laughs. On the plus side, we're all alive and we love each other, and the holidays are upon us! This year my husband and I are doing Thanksgiving as a twosome since everyone is tired of traveling. I've done more driving this year than I have in my entire life.

I have Christmas on the brain to keep my sane, and I've been working on some basic ornaments and decorations for a while. I recently took apart the wooden bead curtain my older sister gave me when I was in college. Being a wannabe bohemian, I had always wanted one and never got a chance to hang it up. My husband is a definitelynot bohemian, so hanging it in our apartment is not really an option. heh. So I decided to use it for Christmas! I'm taking all the bigger, round beads and spray painting them red. The rest are smaller, and I've leaving them their natural wooden colors of cream and brown and stringing them up alternating each other. Basically I'm trying to achieve my mother's cranberry strands which I associate so closely with Christmas since my childhood.


Aren't they pretty? For kicks and grins, here are some other shots of last year's decorations at my mother's house. You can thank my gifted sister for such cool pictures!


This is my hand and my grandmother's hand - those peach ballet slippers are my special ornament my mother gave me a long time ago. My eldest sister has blue ones, and my other sister has rosy pink ones.


That metal bear ornament is possibly my favorite ornament of all time. The red ribbon is actually metal too, and the green center are tiny jingle bells. So sentimental!