Christmas shopping. Yikes. It’s on us, almost past us (!)  and I am barely started. The list is not too long, luckily, but I have been wracking my brain to think of suitable gifts and have only covered my son, who always only wants money, and Dan. My sisters, my brother-in-laws, Dan’s family.

I have loved having someone with me who actually wanted to help decorate the tree this year, and who put up lights outside. It’s fun to Christmas shop with someone who genuinely wants  get people presents they will appreciate. Last night we were looking online for gifts for his grandkids, ages 6 and 8, and came up with a Lionel train set. We also found a good gift for Dan to give my sis and brother-in-law.

As with most things, Christmas shopping changes when you can share it, and not make it a burden.  Usually, I am overwhelmed with shopping, having to do it all myself along with wrapping and mailing. This year it feels different, like almost fun.

Come to think of it, a lot of things are different in a positive way this year.

But I digress.

We were going to go to Kohl’s today, armed with 30% off coupons, a $15 off coupon, and the promise of lots of Kohl’s cash back ($10 for every $50 we spent.) The operative word is “were” because I got an email from Kohl’s today announcing that Santa was going to be at Kohl’s today only.

UH UH.

Instead, we postponed the shopping trip until tomorrow, and we are beginning a closet organizer project which will almost double my hanging clothes space. I’m pretty excited about that. I live in a house almost 100 years old, and closets were not a big thing 100 years ago. I have enough for my stuff, though barely. Not much room for another person’s stuff.

It’s a good project for today for another reason. Although it is brilliantly sunny, it is cold here, literally. 46° F when I got up. And windy. Not exactly a beach day. So it’s a good day to get stuff done inside.

Maybe with any luck I’ll be able to get more shopping done online. I had planned to make Dan’s mom a piece of jewelry, maybe I can get that done today too.

Now that I’ve sorted out my day, I guess I’ll get busy. I have to do Christmas cookies this week too, so I can get them in the mail to my son. Enough procrastinating.

Love and light to all.

My sister has a staghorn fern. It’s huge, kind of like the one in this picture, though hers is not as prolific as this one.

hI have always loved it, and finally was able to find one at our local Tuesday fresh market. It is in a pot. The man who runs that booth explained that it is just a cutting from another larger plant and needs to develop roots, so I should leave it in that pot for awhile. He also told me it didn’t need to be watered, which my sister also told me. I maybe didn’t hear that right though, maybe just during the rainy humid season it doesn’t need it.

I hung it out on my deck from the overhang when I bought it last summer. It did pretty well then, I suppose because it rains every day and is so humid here. Now that the weather has dried up some, it’s not doing so well. I just googled the care of it, and it seems that now I need to attach it to a board, after I wrap the roots ball in burlap and soak it. It also does well in a wire basket if you want to hang it. Mine is in a pot. I’m sure that by now, it’s got roots and needs to be put in a pot or hung on a board (which seems to be the preferred method). So I have some work to do on it.

I am not a gardener. I have a small herb garden, but truth be told, Dan takes care of it much more than me. Last year, I did ok watering the herbs so I could use them for cooking. I manage to water my shrubs in front of the house when necessary, if Dan doesn’t have time (though, you might remember last time I did this I got 6 hornet stings on my butt.) But honestly, watering is about the extent of my gardening.

I really wanted one of these staghorn ferns. This plant, once I get it properly hung with the burlap, in the right place, seems like the care is pretty easy. Water it every so often, and mist it. Legend has it that you can fertilize it with a banana peel. I guess that I need to take the responsibility on to care for it. Seems like it’s easier than a cat or a dog to deal with, right?

It should be, but at the moment I am afraid I’ve killed it, neglected it beyond repair. I hope not. I hope I can save it. I don’t know why I didn’t look up the proper care of it when I bought it, instead of thinking I’d bought a plant that needed nothing but whatever nature gave it. My naivete is astounding at times.

Live and learn, I guess. We are all a work in progress.

Love and light.

Lazy day ahead

Sunshine, warmth and precious time

To nourish my soul

By Deborah E. Dayen

Picture from Google Images

Leftovers. We’ve been eating them for days. I am sick of them. And there’s more…..what to do? Throw away perfectly good food? It bothers me to do this, but at this point, I think we both are sick of turkey, and stuffing, and turkey soup. Maybe not Dan so much as me. He is still liking the stuffing.

I did get accolades for the dinner. Best stuffing, best twice-baked potatoes, best pumpkin pie ever. They said. It did turn out well, I have to admit, but it always does. My ex-mother-in-law’s recipes. I gotta give credit where it’s due. Her son may be totally screwed up, but the woman could cook. And taught me how to do what she does for the most part, when it comes to Thanksgiving.

It turned out to be a nice dinner. But by the end of dinner, since we cooked the whole thing, carried it next door to his mother’s house, and then back after, and did ALL the clean up because we were the only ones who could, we were exhausted. It took a couple days just to recuperate, and catch up on sleep. But I’m not complaining, I like doing it. Dan helped with everything. All the chopping for the stuffing, and cooking the sausage and helping me get it seasoned correctly. We literally spent 3 days in the kitchen together, and didn’t have one issue. In fact, it was enjoyable. It was wonderful to make preparing Thanksgiving dinner a joint project.

There was some drama going on with my family, though I wasn’t aware until after. I told my sister that maybe it’s being emphasized by Mercury being in retrograde because someone told me that Mercury was in retrograde. However, I just checked and it’s not, not until Sunday. Must be something else bumming people out, like the ismercuryinretrograde.com says. I was happy that the drama does not involve my life, for a change, but sad that it’s going on at all.

Now, the Christmas decorations are going up and it’s really nice to have someone to do that with, who enjoys it as well. I made the mistake of putting my decorations in my shed, where they’d be dry, last year. Not realizing the problem with bugs and critters that Florida has. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time washing out some of the old handmade ornaments that I’ve been keeping, and other stuff, like Christmas stockings and leaving them out on the deck to dry. But the lights all went up and more stuff will get finished today. It’s all good, because I went through the stuff and really sorted out what I didn’t want to keep. Thinned it out a lot, and figured out how to keep it in the house. Helps to have a tall man in the house who can reach high shelves.

Last week we had a few showery days, Thanksgiving being one of them. Since then, the weather here has been gorgeous. I still take delight in being in shorts and flip-flops at the end of November. We’re talking about going to the beach tomorrow or Wednesday. Just puts a smile on my face that that’s a possibility. The water in the gulf is probably down to 70°, so might not stay in it too long, but hey, that’s as warm as it ever gets in New England. I’m a little spoiled now I guess. But it will be a good day to refresh our tans.

Love and light everyone.

When I was young, we used to use the term “hot box” to describe the non-stop performing of some task. Like “hot-boxing cleaning the house.” Meaning, you start something and get so in the zone that you don’t stop til it’s complete. Don’t ask me where it came from. Maybe some obscure reference to non-stop pot smoking back in the day when I did those kind of things (like 50 years ago). But it seems to work in a lot of situations.

Yesterday, Dan and I were hot-boxing cooking. We’re making TG dinner for his family. We made the stuffing for the turkey, which was a joint project. Dan did a lot of the real work of it, chopping, cooking sausage, etc. I made a 3-layer jello mold. I know it’s a little old fashioned but then, I’m old, lol. The top layer is raspberry jello into which I put round cream cheese balls, maraschino cherries and banana slices. The 2^nd layer is orange mixed with vanilla yogurt, kind of a creamsicle type of thing, and the third was lemon with peaches laid inside it. A simple thing to make, but you have to remember to keep checking it to add the fruit before it fully solidifies. You snooze, you lose.

Then I made a cookie sheet of twice-baked potatoes. I have more to make this morning. When we were done, it was time to start dinner, so we poured a glass of wine and made some Italian sausage and meatballs and pasta, and a salad, and called it a day. I was happy to sit down and watch TV for the evening.

This morning, in addition to the 2^nd load of twice-baked potatoes, I am making a pumpkin pie. I bought a couple sugar pumpkins about a month or so ago, and cooked them and froze the pumpkin. It’s a pumpkin chiffon pie. Instead of using condensed milk, I beat up 4 egg whites and fold them into the pumpkin mixture. It’s really good, and lighter than regular pumpkin pie. I am a little nervous though, because I haven’t made a crust in a couple of years. I hadn’t been able to make one down here, because I had no place to roll out the dough. Dan bought me a beautiful pastry board though, so now I have to do it justice and not mess it up. Pressure pressure.

When we’re done we will pack it all up, and take it all to Dan’s house. Tomorrow we’ll stuff the turkey and make the gravy and veggies.

Tomorrow night the kitchen will be closed til Sunday. I think.

Thing is, I LIKE cooking Thanksgiving dinner. It sounds like I’m bitching, but I’m not. When my sister said she didn’t feel like having a big TG (last year she had a whole bunch of neighbors in) she also felt I should make it for Dan’s family because his 91 year old mother had done a lot for me. I remember telling her, “Well, ok. I really want to make it for someone!” So now, when I sit down and think about how much food one cooks and consumes on this holiday it makes you think you’ve been working hard. Whatever it is, it is a labor of love.

I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving. It’s very cool to have a holiday just dedicated to giving thanks. One thing I know, is there is always something to be grateful for, even if it’s just your breath.

Love and light to everyone.