Christmas Shopping

Each member of my family has their own thoughts on holiday shopping and gifts. We don't always agree.

K-boy: Can you take me to the mall? I want to show you what I want.

D-boy: You should shop on Cyber-Monday!

M-girl: I'll put the expensive things that I want on my Santa list. Then you and Dad don't have to worry about it.

BadDad: Let's only use cash for Christmas shopping this year.

Me: Maybe we should only exchange homemade gifts this year. Wouldn't that be fun?

Sigh! If only I had a bunch of elves to help me.

Black Friday

I think I'm missing the shopping gene. You know the one obviously possessed by the hordes of people that are shown on the news, battling the crowds for a bargain. I've seen the commercials, received the flyers in the mail, and waded through the special offers crowding my inbox. All of them urging me to hit the mall on Black Friday, all of them leave me feeling...like staying home.

It's not that I have anything against shopping on Black Friday. It's just that I lack the sheer dedication to shopping that's required to get up in the pre-dawn hours and wait in the chilly dark for a store to open. Oh, and I hate crowds, especially pushing, grabbing crowds trying to search for the same things as me. There are the long lines at the register too, I can do just fine without those.

I haven't gotten my holiday shopping done yet. I haven't even started in fact. I'll choose my times to venture out and spend though. With any luck I'll be able to find time to go during off peak hours and have a calmer, or at least less frenzied, shopping experience.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving, a busy and happy time around here. This year was a little crazy for us, but we managed to pull off our feast with only one burned finger (me) and one set of crutches (BadDad).

My hubby had knee surgery yesterday.Of course that meant no traveling for us this year, and no guests either. For someone like me, who cooks the entire meal from scratch, being tied up at the hospital the day before Thanksgiving wasn't ideal. Thankfully my family stepped in to help and our dinner was saved.

This year K-boy had to help me with getting the turkey in and out of the oven. BadDad usually handles that but there's only so much that a guy on crutches can do.

M-girl made the centerpiece.

D-boy, my little chef, helped me cook. He also set the table. Notice the enormous stack of extra napkins. This kid plans ahead. He even arranged a special chair for BadDad to prop his bad leg on.

I cooked.

And cooked.

After I burned my finger making the gravy, don't ask, my hubby balanced on his crutches and finished carving up the bird. 

In the end, we had a wonderful meal together.

Hmm. It's clean up time. Now where did everyone go?

A Quick Hello

Just dropping by to say a quick Hello. So far November has been a busier than usual month at our house, and I haven't carved out as much time for blogging as I'd like to. Much of my time has been spent in the car, driving the kids around...well, that and teaching them.

It's performance time again for their drama group, which makes our schedule crazy. On top of that the quarterly reports were just due to the school district, and the usual activities don't stop simply because we're busy. I'm sorry that I've been falling behind on responding to comments and reading the wonderful posts of my fellow bloggers. I'm looking forward to cooking Thanksgiving dinner next week, it will feel restful by comparison!

Pumpkin Birthday Cake

M-girl, my little pumpkin girl, just turned nine. I can't believe it's been that long since she was born! She actually went 'easy' on me with her birthday cake request this year, and asked for a pumpkin shaped cake.

I followed a suggestion to use two bundt cakes as the pumpkin, with a stem made of cupcakes.

Since I only have one bundt pan, this turned out to be an all day project. If I were to make such a cake again, I would probably use fondant instead of frosting to give better definition to the shape.I finished the frosting part mere minutes before we sang Happy Birthday, but the result was cute and M-girl was happy. Whew! Birthday season is done around here...just in time for the holidays!