Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

The transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas is complete!


I toyed with the idea of putting off the outdoor decorating until next weekend given that Thanksgiving was SO early this year. But then, I saw that there is a first winter rain storm predicted to arrive next weekend – and this weekend was gorgeous. Warm even in the middle of the day.

So after two days of Thanksgiving, I did move on.

Renee played helper elf again for the harder parts requiring the ladder. Thank heavens too because I had to break the rules and stand on the very top step to place lights at the highest point above my front door.  It also helps to have two brains straining to remember the logistics of light and extension cord placement – one of us could usually get a spark of memory going!

There was still a bit of drama and, yes, a complete redo of a major segment. Just as Renee was leaving we noticed there was a strand along the long wall that was burned out. Ugh! Then we both remembered this foiling us last year too and I had discovered that the strands I used on the wall were kind of off market and not sold in local stores so I couldn’t replace any dead bulbs easily. Figures! I guess when I started switching to LED strands, I bought some online that aren’t commonly used. Last year I think I “hid” that segment on one end when we tend to have extras anyway. Then I was supposed to buy new lights for the wall at the after Christmas sales….but, I forgot.

After she left, I ran to the store, bought the necessary replacement strands and proceeded to take down everything we had put up from the back fence all the way around the long wall – double UGH! All in the dark along with some bonus cold fog. Yay.

This morning I waited until the fog had burned off and went back out to finish. Then I waited until it was dark so I could see the results. And then? I saw that the two red bows hung on the two palm trees that are the hardest to access – were each only half lit up. ARGH!

I’m ignoring those for now.

The inside will be done over the next week or so. Window frame lights and mantle/piano/TV stand are done but the tree will take time. I saw a tree posted by a friend on Facebook and now I have a bit of an inspiration for a new decorating theme. One that does not require any new purchases. Winner!

New feature – wrapped the post with strands my mom gave me. Please note that the snowflakes go all the way UP. Rawr!

View from across the street of the side wall and hillside. Those are the cooperative bows on palm trees. I cut off the rebellious ones.

New fence – much easier to hang lights on than the too low crumbling mess that used to be out there. That corner behind the peach tree was a challenge – thanks Renee for squeezing back there!

One of my favorite views – since the backyard is pretty small, with every edge covered, it just glows all around you. Plus, you can see in to the white lights inside.

More random ramblings of a cold addled mind


The photo above is my first attempt at using the panorama photo function on the iPhone. This was taken Thanksgiving morning. Go ahead and hate me because yes, I live in paradise, I know!

The girls and I went for a run at Torrey Pines. Ok, actually, the text I received went like this:

“Up for an easy run at TP?”

And I immediately thought “With that hill, there is NO SUCH THING as an EASY run at TP!”

Eh, I went and yeah it was a struggle as usual, but I just kept chugging along and made it up the hill and it was so beautiful along the beach that it didn’t matter. The waves were spectacular. And? It made us feel not SO guilty about pigging out later on for what was Thanksgiving meal #1 for me.

The family meal was Friday since 27 had to work (yay!!) Damn good reason to put it off a day.

So, random thoughts….

You gotta love cats. When I got home from Thanksgiving #2 today I went straight into decorating mode. I was thankful that the whole termite discovery set me off a couple of weeks ago into the deeper cleaning I usually have to do before putting the tree up. So missing a day due to the dual meals was not a problem.

Still, you gotta move stuff around. Bring in boxes. Generally disturb the space that the felines are used to. Of course, as long as you are not running a vacuum, they are so incredibly curious that they usually end being involved in the process whether you want their “help” or not.

The best thing though, is when you move something from one spot to another. I’m thinking “Well, maybe I should just put this cat condo in the garage because I don’t think I’ve seen either of them in it or on it in months.” The condo was in the corner where the tree will go so it had to move. I ended up moving it from the north corner of the room to the south in the dining area. Just 20 feet or so away on the other end of the back wall. They wont care, they never use it, right?

Right – move something and suddenly it is BRAND NEW!!

“What’s THIS THING? Over HERE?! Look! We can scratch the side and trim our claws! OMG! There’s a cubby hole! And…a perch! I can lay down up here and see EVERYTHING!”

I swear the two of them were scrambling around that thing for at least 30 mins tonight and I just had to laugh at their obvious joy at re-discovering the condo.

Crazy animals.

Another observation I made this week is that for some reason, as soon as the Thanksgiving weekend starts, I also re-discover something. HGTV.

It’s not JUST that the regular shows are off – many of the shows on our DVR schedule still had fresh episodes. For some reason though, rather than being content to have sports or news on in the background, I suddenly crave House Hunters and Home Strange Home, and Extreme Homes and…yeah…just about whatever happens to be on .

Right on cue I turned it on last night when I got to my room at bedtime. I’ll get tired of it and/or have cycled through all the episodes by the new year and forget about it again. But for now – “Oooh! Look! There’s a picky couple dissing every property they see and I swear if they say ‘man cave’ ONE MORE TIME..but damn that’s a gorgeous floor and hey, I like the way they used that space there I wonder if I could pull that off….!”

Maybe I’m more like the cats than I care to admit :->

Has anyone seen my Christmas spirit?


I’ve determined (ok, perhaps my body determined) that I can no longer deny the existence of the cold that has been trying to take hold since last week. I am now officially snuffly & coughy & generally cloudy headed & feeling icky and I will most likely whine about these things for a few days while I continue to drown myself in vitamin C. I am sure the 2 day burst of super warm, dry air over the weekend did not actually help the situation (WTF with the 80 degrees and less than 20% humidity?!). Of course, now we are plunging into another cold snap with possible rain so – yay?!

Anyhow, I pretty much crashed after the decorating frenzy on Friday and my tree currently contains about 12 ornaments. The boxes are still out and opened all around it and I have yet to find proper inspiration to finish it up. Not that the cats care as you can see above – they have already staked out their favorite new spots.

I may be the only person on a diet after Thanksgiving. Well, diet is a strong word – let’s just say I am making sure to eat my proper share of fruits and veggies every day and I’m avoiding all desserts until I can get in for my 6 months cholesterol checkup blood test. I was due in last week, but who wants to fast and deal with something like that the week of Thanksgiving? I could go this week, but well, I don’t feeeeeel welll (whine whine)…and I kind of want to at least have 7-10 days of a healthy diet in my system just to be safe. So I have not yet begun my next stage in holiday mania – the cookie baking explosion. I think that might have to wait until the second weekend of December.

Alex has made his dad and I apoplectic again over his grades and his overall attitude towards school. He has a head bang inducing 1.83 GPA right now which means that if he DID want to play a winter sport, he couldn’t. Kinda sad when you can’t even maintain the low 2.0 it requires to play sports!  Two of his teachers have contacted me about it now. One says she spoke with him and his response to her was that he “just didn’t want to do the work”. Lovely. Where in the heck does he get this idea that he doesn’t have to even try? We don’t understand and all we can do at this point is remove EVERYTHING fun from him. We’ve demanded a 3.0 GPA in order to return his Xbox and internet access and a 3.5 in order to get his driver’s permit (he’s eligible in Feb). I’m sure that means we are in for a not so jolly time with him over the next couple of months but…oh well!! He has got to get over this “I can do the bare minimum to get by” crap.

I tried to run on Sunday which was most likely not the best idea but I just HAD to try! The results were that I can barely manage 20 minutes and that I most likely need to just not attempt it again until I truly feel better. Which I hope is this weekend because I cannot stand not moving! (more whining, yes!)

My company holiday party is this Saturday and I have almost no interest in going! Free food (and it’s good) and I just can’t muster up enthusiasm. (whine whine).

It’s day two back at work after Thanksgiving and I have not made one move to decorate this place. And I normally go just as crazy here as I do at home. So far? Bah! (whine whine).

Maybe I can blame it on the calendar. After all, it IS still November. I mean, it sure seemed awesome to have Thanksgiving so early at the time. But…maybe it’s throwing me off?

Or maybe it’s just this damn cold (whine whine).

 

It’s Thanksgiving Eve, and all through the house….


…not a creature was stirring….

 

wait..wait…wrong holiday.

 

I gotta say though, it kinda feels like that other holiday-eve. The house is pretty clean. There are a few lights around the windows.

There’s food filling the fridge ready to be roasted/tossed together/crock potted:

Those are fresh, chopped green beans above the turkey – ready to be created into a green bean casserole that will be slow cooking in the crock pot for six hours tomorrow. I saw the recipe for this essentially from scratch version of the classic side dish and couldn’t resist trying it.  The turkey is brining in this:

Using a recipe from Skinny Taste I prepared the brine omitting the salt. I did use apple cider for part of the liquid. While this was boiling and then cooling down this afternoon the kitchen smelled SO FABULOUS! I did get the brining bags from Williams Sonoma as the recipe recommends and they are pretty damn thick and up to the task. Of course I still put a pan down just in case of any leaking. We will have to turn the turkey over once to coat it evenly. Tomorrow it will roast in this:

My mom gave me this years ago and while we have used it a few times, just by virtue of it’s size, it needs to be stored in an upper cabinet out of the way which means….it’s out of the way and we forget we have it! But it’s perfect for tomorrow. It will cook the turkey in almost half the time (it will be done faster than the green beans!) and it frees up the oven for other goodies. And since I only have one oven (grumble), I am very happy that I can use this, the crock pot for the beans, the stove for mashed potatoes and keep everything spread out nicely around the kitchen.

Because I’ve got all the more laborious prep work done today, tomorrow will move about in nice stages from one dish to another without very much hassle at all. Alex is here, but..well…you can imagine the kind of help a 15 year old will be! If I can get him to clean a pot or two I’ll be lucky.

The tables are not entirely set, but they are in place:

Seating for 10, all set!

The cats are ready in their own way – Chip is as confused as ever and will most likely spend the whole day in my room under the bed though he did inspect things down here for a little while:

Amber is getting herself pretty for the camera and the extra attention she will receive:

..and we heard him exclaim as he flew out of sight: Happy Turkey Day to all, and to all a good night!

The warmth of lights


I know, I know – it’s not even Thanksgiving yet! But…it’s dark when I get home now. And I am hosting Turkey Day this year and I want the house to look festive and nothing says festive like LIGHTS!

Besides, Alex will be gone at Christmas this year so this is the bigger family event of the season.

(This is where you may fairly point out that Alex doesn’t give a rats butt about holiday lights. Shut up. Let me use him as an excuse!)

And I should point out that while we DID play Christmas music while we decorated the girls’ condo on Saturday – we did NOT play music while we decorated my house on Sunday. We had a football game on the TV instead :-)

Anyway, here’s the results which I am thoroughly enjoying and I must say, VERY impressed with the photo quality. Feeling hopeful about getting decent representations of the outdoor display this year.

Dining room

Oh, I should also mention that these are pre-strung green garlands from Wal-Mart. Fingers crossed (and so far, so good) that the cats continue to ignore such things as they do with the tree and mantle and piano lights from years passed. I think they are mature enough now to leave these things alone.

Living room

Yes, the extra chairs and table that I put out for the August Moms visit in October are still out and about. Which is fine since I will need them next week.

View of all three from dining room

As you can see – there were no other lights on in the house when I took the photos. That is how we have it most nights after the dishes are done.

OK, so yes, the TV might be on but this is still a lot prettier overall.

And those who know me – yes – this is just the beginning :-)