A perfect Storm

Literally and figuratively. We've also been getting a minor amount of work done on the house. And I'll get to that in a second. First I'll explain the storms...

Literally speaking, the weather's been really crazy; I didn't get any sleep two nights ago while the dog panted, paced and shivered through the same series of storms that caused those terrible tornadoes in Oklahoma. The storm system had stretched out by the time it reached us, so it wasn't quite as nasty, but Simon still shivered and panicked every time it thundered. Poor pup.

Figuratively speaking, the time became right to plan a trip to London later this year. I won't get into too many details except to say that we've been saving for this for years, the exchange rate is at a decade low, and airfare plummeted. We'll be tightening our belts big time when we get back. I used to live there and like to go periodically. The kiddo's never been. So a lot of time has been dedicated to planning for that. One little nice bit of info I will share, though, is that some airlines will continue to "rebook" your flight at lower fares if you ask without charge. We booked our tickets thinking they couldn't possibly go lower; then they did go lower on the same flights, same airline. So I looked into it a bit and found that they allow changes up to the first day of the trip. You are charged the difference if there is one, or credited with the overage if there is one. Pretty sweet.

So, on to house issues. Notice anything different?


Besides being a messy counter, it is now a counter with trim! But it's a pretty thick trim. We had to cover up the area over the dishwasher, due to accidents removing the cabinets when we gutted. I think I like it, but I'm not sure. For that reason, we only installed that piece and haven't sunk the nails or caulked. I'd also still like to sand the doors and bottom cabinet bases to make them a bit more natural and a little less yellow. It's a pretty piece of wood-- we decided on a chamfered profile:


I think I'm happy...

Just a lazy afternoon

This is pretty much how we spent the entirety of last week:


Fayetteville, where I work, got the brunt of that mega ice storm-- so much so that the university closed for 4 straight days, and the day before saw a lot of people heading home early to avoid getting caught in the ice. Fort Smith on the other hand, got 4 inches of rain in 24 hours. Which then turned to ice. So we stayed at home inside all week. The puppy decided that maybe this inside thing isn't so bad after all...

The Audacity of Neighbors

About 6 months ago, our neighbors across the alley stole our dumpy black trash can and replaced it with an even dumpier, dented, smaller black trash can. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and use the moment as an excuse to buy a new, nicer can with wheels. Life has gone on as usual.

Yesterday morning I went to take out the trash. I forgot to bring in the can a few days ago, so I carried the bag out to the alley. And there I saw that the neighbors have now taken the opportunity to upgrade to our new wheelie can-- and...wait for it...replace it with the first can that they stole. Wow. They stole one, waited for us to get a newer one, then stole the new one and replaced it with the first stolen can. So I took all their sticky garbage out of MY can and left it, open, in the alley, and took BOTH of my cans back. Then Adam told me I couldn't leave them with no trash cans. So I gave them the dented, dumpy, small changeling trash can they left for us the first time.

And then the garbage truck never came because sometimes they pick up on holidays and sometimes they don't. So my wheelie can is still at risk in the alley.

Sheesh. Simon really gets worked up over these neighbors because there's always cars coming in out of their driveway through the alley. He hates it.

Not a lot of work on the house going on-- my car was broken into last week, so I finally got the window replaced. We've been doing some cooking-- I have a recipe to post shortly. And the dog ate some cooked and splintered rib bones, so I was on poop watch for a while.

There was a skunk on the porch today. Eek!

But it's Inauguration Day-- so let's all enjoy it!

Let's play catch-up

Last you heard from me, I was preparing to fork over a few good holiday recipes and get a little housework done. And then my hard drive crashed. Fatal, nothing spinning, dead as a doornail hard drive crash. So yeah. It's up and running now, and I took lots of pictures in the meantime...

Baking Day
I had such high hopes for delivering these great recipes with step by step pictures. And I started out in the right vein.

Here's the sifted flour and butter/sugar for pecan butter balls-- those melt in your mouth powdered sugar covered cookies:



Here's the butter for 4 recipes worth of almond English toffee:


And the melting sugar and milk for candied pecans:


But then, before I knew it...Oops! All done!

Bagged, canned and ready to go.

But I will still give you one recipe...

Orange-Candied Pecans and Cranberries

1 cup packed brown sugar
3 Tbs condensed milk
1 Tbs butter
1 tsp orange zest
2 cups of pecans
1 cup dried cranberries

Combine brown sugar and condensed milk in saucepan over medium-high heat (see pic above). Bring to 234ºF (softball stage).


Once you've reached 234, turn off heat and stir in butter and orange zest. Add pecans and cranberries until coated. Pour out on wax paper.


Once cooled, break pecan halves apart and bag. I ended up adding a little more than 2 cups of pecans and however many cranberries looked good. You can see that the above is more than one recipe. That's maybe 4? Anyway, easiest thing in the world and magical.

Holiday Business
The kiddo finally got to paint the ornaments I mentioned in the last post:


We hosted Christmas Eve dinner and munched on ham for several days of leftovers. For Christmas, Adam's folks got us a new toaster/convection oven. I'm loving it so far. And my mother got us an espresso machine. It's a much nicer one than I'd have ever bought for myself, and being a former Starbucks employee/Kool-Aid drinker, I've been having a great time fiddling with it and making fancy beverages. It's a wonder that with the DAILY whole milk lattes since Christmas morning I haven't gained 20 pounds. It was lovely.

For New Year we went to friend's house. She has a passel of kids so there was much Rock Band being played and much rum punch being imbibed. By the grownups, of course. Fizzy grape juice for the little ones and ummy yummy Ro-tel dip.

House Business
We did actually get a little done. I got a couple of coats of poly on the countertop trim and made a little progress on the remaining kitchen crown (one little fussy corner is giving me hell). I also started painting that hellish green window in the kitchen, at which point we made some decisions. The kitchen is being finished in alkyd paint. If we lived in a perfect world, I would do the trim throughout the house the same way. But there's circumstances beyond my control. First, I was told by two POs ago that they stripped most of the trim. It now only has one or two layers of paint on it. This was less than ten years ago, and they were living in the house. It's not a high gloss. I'm betting it's latex to begin with. Also, WE live in the house and alkyd is stinky and toxic. And finally, I would have to confine the cats for DAYS depending on the weather and I'm just not interested. We've already given the baseshoe a thin coat of alkyd, so I'll probably want to sand and prime with Zinsser 123 to make sure the latex will stick. Eh. I'm ok with it.

Adam got the garage cleaned and fairly organized, which was a feat of mega proportions and we got the basic box of the gable vent built:



The slats are one more recycling of the garage door boards. And the 2X4s were salvaged from another project. We'll get it permanently set and then trim around it. First I want to paint it. This thing was a monster-- 42" across, and nobody makes a stock size that's horizontal like that.

That's the main stuff. Mostly, we sat on our butts or cleaned or baked. And going back to work is tough now. Really tough.

What's the best kind of Christmas tree?

Are you partial to Douglas or Fraser?

I'm partial to free, myself.

About 5 or 6 years ago we found that Lowe's always overstocks their trees and if we wait until the final days of Christmas, we get a beautiful, full, perfectly shaped beauty for $5-$15. This has worked for us, every year since, without fail. This year, we went to Lowe's on Saturday to find 6 scraggly FULL PRICE trees-- short trees that lacked a discernable top or bottom. We prepared ourselves for 2 outcomes: a very expensive tree or a the first fake one of my life. Wait, I take that back. There was one year where I had a 2 foot fiber optic rotating tabletop tree that changed color. I bought it at the grocery store.

Anyway, We found a lovely Fraser fir at Home Depot. It ran about $45-- the signs were stacked up on the ground, so we were hoping it was on sale, but we weren't holding our breath.

We looked around the store at a few other things, and when we got back to pay for it, the tree was freshly cut, stray branches were removed, the whole thing was bagged and ready to load...and then they sent us on our way, with pocketbooks none the lighter. They told us that employees get these trees for free, and sometimes they like to just give one away. We must have looked very pitiful, indeed. It was quite a Christmas miracle.

And it is a lovely, old-fashioned tree.


We completed the decorating this weekend and tried out a new pecan glaze recipe that I will absolutely share this week. The kiddo and I (mostly the kiddo) painted some salt dough ornaments we made several years ago-- I'll post pics of those as well. We found some holiday-themed cookie presses at an antique shop 2 years ago and made a bunch of the ornaments. Then my father was in the hospital, and last year was my family's first year without Dad, not to mention the fact that we were in a mad race to get moved into the house...Life got in the way. But they are ready for distribution this year.

Lots more to do-- we are hosting Christmas Eve dinner, as Thanksgiving was such a success, thanks to the dishwasher! This means a ham and all the trimmings to prepare. The blog may just go into recipe-only mode before this week is over!

"The Crooner"

This is my grandmother's response every time I say Bing Crosby's name. Boy was he one hell of a whistler.



This is my favorite holiday movie. A Christmas Story is great, It's a Wonderful Life is a Classic, but this one has been so overshadowed by that showy Danny Kaye nightmare White Christmas. It always comes on in the middle of the night on a weekday when I can't watch. It's out on a special edition 3 disc DVD set now-- I've had it in my basket 3 times at the store this season, and yet I put it back on the shelf every time. It seems like such a frivolous waste of money. But I had a tooth pulled yesterday, so I'm going to make this a little Get Well present to myself, I think.

Not that I'll have much time to watch it over the break if we get everything done that we hope to. Which we won't. The To-Do list is always longer than what can be reasonably achieved. But it would be super nice to get the kitchen countertop trim installed and the kitchen window and door painted white to eliminate all traces of that awful green. Caulk the trim in there. We also need to fill in that ghost door. I would LOVE to have the hole in our ceiling patched. We'd also really like to build some basic bookshelves in the dining room below the buffet window sill. We have TEN boxes of books. 10. TEN. Ten boxes of homeless books.

And I still have holiday baking and ornament making left. And the Christmas tree! We've yet to buy a Christmas tree. So much left to do.

On a good note, I did get that red ribbon for the gas light while wandering around Walgreens filling my heavy duty painkiller prescription post-tooth-pull yesterday This makes the outdoor decorations complete.

Holly Dayz

Well, we finally got a little bit of the holiday spirit going on in the house. Gingerbread...


And lights:


That last shot is with a high shutter speed. I just thought it was kinda sweet. I also think that gas light in the front is just screaming for a big red bow. Maybe I'll get to it yet this year. The previous owners had nails all along the eaves, so we can't claim this one for ourselves completely, but it has made me disproportionately happy. My dad only did lights about twice the whole time I was growing up. This is a long time coming.

Adam got a ton of raking done over the weekend and the kiddo and I got the patio cleaned up ahead of a winter storm they're predicting may come through here. Great timing, considering I really need to get to my dentist tomorrow-- an hour away. I had a crown fall off over Thanksgiving, and we decided I should just get a bridge. apparently the crown's been loose for a while. But I decided to wait until the first of the year so I can use flex health savings account dollars. Then the crown fell off again this weekend and won't stay on at all. Sigh.

Good news is 2 weeks off of work coming right up. I may be half toothless for the holidays, but I will be watching daytime TV. Last year I was refinishing the floors and drywalling the kitchen. this year? Oprah. Tyra. Days of Our Lives.

This is gonna be the Best Christmas Ever.