Twinkle Lights.....

Thanksgiving was awesome. Mom, bro', husband and daughter gathered around a table full of food. It was all wonderful. It was also a big reminder of how blessed we all are. Truly a day of t-h-a-n-k-s.

The drive home from church Saturday night went from chatting about the service to 'hey, let's stop and get a Christmas tree!' as we drove past the local home improvement store. We had no plans to do the Christmas decorating this weekend, but boy how plans change! This is our first Christmas in this house and my husband really wanted to do a real Christmas tree versus the artificial we've done for years now. We have a vaulted ceiling in the main living area, so a large tree was necessary. We lugged our big 9 1/2 foot tree into the house and got it placed into the tree stand. It took us several attempts to get it visually straight up and down because the tree trunk was not perfectly straight. I decided to bring the artificial tree out as well and set it up in the foyer, so for the first time I have two trees decorated in the house. It was ALOT of work and required a quick trip to the drug store to buy a couple of extra strands of lights. We had to use every last ornament we own to cover two of them, but the trees really do look awesome. This house is quite a bit smaller than others we've lived in so the lights from the trees illuminate every corner. We glow, but what a gorgeous glow.

Giving Thanks.....

Thanksgiving
Pilgrims
move among us.
Silent, their gray lips mouth
prayers for the bountiful fields of
autumn. Feathered
Indians stand
tall in quiet corners
invoking harvest home in a
strange tongue. This is
our Thanksgiving.
Gathered together, we
are visited by the grace of
old guests.
~Myra Cohn Livingston~


Give thanks to God, whose mighty hand
Deals blessings good and great.
~Charles Frederick White~

Iron Chef Morgan....

Ok....I would sooooo get my butt handed to me on that show, but I can dream! I do want to congratulate Chef Jose Garces, who was crowned the new Iron Chef for Iron Chef America last night. I was rooting for him from day one. I had a chance to chat with him this morning and I asked him if the chefs really have no idea what the secret ingredient is on Iron Chef America or not. His comment was "I will neither comfirm nor deny that information!" HA! I just never bought into it that the chefs walked out there completely in the dark. With his Latino upbringing and cooking background, Chef Garces is certainly filling a void on that shows' panel of Iron Chefs. His first battle on Iron Chef America will be January 17th.

"What happened to my weekend?" is what I was asking myself last night. Cooking, that's what. I wish I could say I hated every minute of it, but I don't! I have a bear of a week coming up with not only trying to do prep and cook my own families Thanksgiving meal, but food for a bunch of clients too. I have had to print out a calendar so I can plan out my cooking schedule for the rest of the year. The little squares for this week are so full, I can barely read everything. I pre-cook almost everything for Thanksgiving, so that the only thing I have to do on Thursday is pop everything in the oven to cook or re-heat and grill the turkey. Today my grid shows me that I will cook and mash my sweet potatoes, cook the sausage and veggies for the stuffing and mixing it with the cornbread and biscuits I baked yesterday. This will all be done at the same time I am baking 8 loaves of bread for other clients. Wow....whatta week! I'm ready!!!!

The day after.....

Halloween yesterday was just a blast. I had front loaded all my prep for a catering job this morning to Friday so I had all day yesterday clear. Cassie and I started carving pumpkins around 10am. We did five total--one huge one with a headless horseman, 2 medium ones with a ghost face and alien and then two small ones with old-school jack-o-lantern faces. Cassie wanted to do more but she quickly realized how much work really goes into cutting, gutting and carving each one. The biggest one, the headless horseman took almost a full 2 hours to do start to finish, but it looked awesome. They alll looked great.

Our subdivision had a costume parade and cookout in the late afternoon. It was great fun to see all the smaller kids all dressed up. Parents spend a lot of money of kids costumes these days. They certainly weren't wearing dollar store costumes, that's for sure. While we were there at the cookout they handed out awards for the best carved pumpkin and best decorated house. Our house won the Best Decorated, which thrilled me to pieces! We got this cute little painted house on a stake to put in our front yard. They even put spiders on it---which is what our house is decorated with (see earlier blog). I wanted my headless horseman pumpkin to be in the pumpkin competition, but they did the judging the night before and I don't carve til the day-of to avoid premature shriveling before Halloween night.

So Halloween has come and gone and now it is November 1st. It's raining today, so the decorations will stay up one or two more days so they can dry out. Then the house makes it transformation into the Harvest and Thanksgiving theme. Time to go find my turkeys.....