Daisy Is Dishing Out a Prize---Come Enter My Giveaway!

It's Friday night, and I have two things on my mind that I want to blog about.  The first item on the agenda is that I am hosting a sponsored giveaway on my Smiling With Daisy blog that I wanted to share with my readers here.  Some of you who read both of my blogs may already be aware of it. 

I am giving away to one of my readers either a Corelle Coordinates 4 piece casserole set in the Callaway pattern like this

 

or an iittala Origo Orange server bowl like this.

If you are interested, pop on over to my Smiling With Daisy blog and find out how to get yourself entered.

Now as for the second thing on my mind, it is that I want to dance with somebody. (I bet you already guessed that, didn't you?)  It IS Friday night, you know.  Come on and dance with me!

Now, what are you waiting for?  Go on over to my other blog and enter the giveaway!!  You can't win if you don't enter!  Hope you all have a good weekend!

Christmas Past (part 2)---A Baking Frenzy, Package Patrol, Fuzzy Lights, the Arm Tickle, and Cream of Wheat

 

As a little girl, I remember how my Mom liked to bake year round, but between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, she was in a baking frenzy.  She baked batch after batch of cookies of all kinds.  She made rolled and sliced refrigerator cookies, drop cookies like chocolate chip and peanut butter, cut-out sugar cookies, and cookies shaped like trees and wreaths and stars made with a cookie press and decorated with colored sugars.  She made nut balls, cinnamon snicker doodles, miniature pecan tarts, date pinwheels, chocolate coconut filled cookies, and M&M cookies.

For Christmas each year, she also made several different kinds of candy.  She made chocolate-covered cherries, million dollar fudge with walnuts in it, buckeyes, peanut brittle, and pink divinity made from strawberry or raspberry flavored powdered Jello gelatin mix.  There were some years when she also made chocolate covered coconut candy from mashed potatoes and chocolate covered mint patties.  It was amazing the number of sweets she churned out every December.

Once she finally decided she was done baking, then she would begin making up plates full and trays full and little boxes full of the cookies and candies that she had made.  She gave these to our neighbors, the mailman, the lady who delivered our newspaper, any relative who happened to come to our house over the holidays, people my Dad worked with, our teachers at school, the minister at church, and many others down through the years.  In spite of how many she gave away, plenty remained for us to enjoy over Christmas.

The days just before Christmas were charged with excitement as we speculated about what presents might appear for us under the tree on Christmas morning.  The gifts we got for each other as family members would slowly start appearing under the tree in the days before Christmas.  We weren't allowed to touch the packages.  We did anyway, of course, because we were kids and the temptation was too great.  

So my brother, sister, and I were constantly on package patrol and busy tattling on each other, "Mom, she's touching the packages!"

"No, I'm not!  Besides, he did it first!"

Then, of course, Mom would have to give us the speech about how we had better be good because Santa was always watching us, and he would know if we misbehaved.

One thing I can remember doing, that, when I look back on it now, probably will sound a little odd.  I have worn glasses since I was in first grade.  Yes, I began wearing them at the age of six.  I can remember after we had the Christmas tree up with all the different colored lights on it, that I would sit on the couch or chair near to the tree and just stare at it.  I loved all the colors and the sparkling silver tinsel that reflected the lights. I was easily distracted by shiny things then (and still am now!).  

After staring at it for a while with my glasses on, then I would take my glasses off and stare at it some more.  I loved the way the colors of the lights went to soft focus and blurred all together.  With my bad vision, the tree branches would fade into the background when I took off my glasses.  All I could see then were the fuzzy rounds of colored light all blending together.  It seemed so magical to me.


Christmas morning would finally arrive.  We had to be quiet so as not to wake Mom and Dad.  We were allowed to look in our stockings, but we weren't allowed to open any presents until after our parents were up and everyone had had breakfast.  It was so hard to wait, and we were so impatient!  

It really wasn't that exciting to open our stockings anyway.  They held the same things every year.  Down in the toe of our sock was an orange and a handful or two of mixed nuts in the shell.  On top of that was wrapped store-bought candy like Hershey's kisses, candy canes, and perhaps a chocolate covered marshmallow Santa.  We liked it, of course, but the main event was still to come--the opening of the gifts under the tree.

One year when I was still quite young, (I would guess I was probably about five years old, but I don't know for sure.) I remember sneaking into Mom and Dad's bedroom to see if they were awake yet. I was tired of waiting and wanted them to get up.  My brother and sister warned me that I had better not do that and that I would get in trouble for sure.  I ignored them and went in anyway.  

I stood next to the bed and stared at my Dad trying to determine if he was really asleep or just keeping his eyes closed and pretending to be asleep.  I couldn't tell so I took my index finger and very slowly and very gently ran it down my dad's forearm from his elbow to his wrist.  In my child's mind, I thought that if I did it very softly that he wouldn't feel it if he were asleep, but that he would feel it if he were awake.  Well, he really was asleep until my little finger tickled down his arm. It woke him up.

"What are you doing?" he asked me.


"I'm seeing if you're awake," I answered him back.


He laid there and looked at me for a while, still groggy, trying to wake up, and feeling quite puzzled, and then he started laughing.


My brother and sister could never figure out why I didn't get in trouble for waking up Dad that day.  Well, it was Christmas after all, and I was the youngest and Daddy's little girl, I suppose.  Every Christmas after that, though, he told about how I had come in and tickled his arm that day "to see if he was awake."  He found me to be quite amusing, apparently, although I hadn't intended to be!

Once the parents were finally up and out of bed, we had to eat Cream of Wheat for breakfast before we could start opening any of our gifts under the tree.  My Mom had gotten it into her head that we needed to have a good breakfast that would stick to our ribs before we started scarfing down Christmas candy.  Cream of Wheat was her breakfast of choice for us.  In the later years, once we kids were teenagers, she softened some on the "Cream of Wheat for breakfast" rule and began serving her homemade cinnamon rolls with powdered sugar glaze icing for breakfast instead.  Well, it WAS Christmas, after all.

Christmas Past (part 1)---A Drunken Fly, Dueling Branches, and a Squeaky Church

We put up our Christmas tree this weekend as you can see in the picture above.  Doing so brought back memories of putting up the tree at home with my family when I was a child.  The following paragraphs relate some of those memories.

When I was a kid, the Christmas season began when my Dad went up in the attic above our garage and hauled down the big brown cardboard box that held the artificial Christmas tree.   We assembled and put up that tree every year.  He'd bring the box in to the living room where we had already moved the furniture around to make room for the tree.  Mom always wanted the tree in front of the window so that the lights from it could be seen from outside. 

We'd put the naked, green, wooden pole (that looked like a broom handle and that served as the tree trunk) into the tree stand and screwed it in tight.  Then Dad would sort out the branches by size and by the colors painted on the stems.  

Every year during this process one big, slow, old fly would emerge from the cardboard box and start buzzing in loops around the room like he was drunk or lost or both.  We assumed that he had been hibernating in the branches, but I was always puzzled by the fact that there was just one and not more.

Dad handed the branches to us one by one and in order so we could stick the color coded wire stems of the branches into the corresponding holes on the trunk.  Along the way to getting the branches into the tree trunk, my brother and I would invariably end up in a "sword fight duel" brandishing the branches as our weapons of choice.  My sister, who was the oldest, refrained from participating in such silliness. 

The top of the tree was all one piece that screwed into a hole in the top of the green pole trunk.  We'd put all the extra little  wiry circles of greenery (that looked like the heads off of toilet bowl brushes) around the parts of the pole that you could still see to cover it up.  Down at the bottom of the tree, under the branches, there was a plastic fake wood piece which slid on to form the trunk.  Nothing says Christmas tree quite like a piece of plastic painted to look like a tree trunk at the bottom of a green broom handle with green toilet bowl brush heads clinging to it!  

Handling the artificial branches made my hands feel scratchy and dry.  I didn't like it much then, and I still don't like it now. I was always glad when we got done assembling the boring, dark green, fake fir.  I much preferred decorating it with all the colorful, sparkling ornaments to putting it together.

Once the tree was upright and completely assembled, next came the lights.  That was my Dad's job.  Mom always made a big fuss and stew about that.  She didn't want us kids to mess with the lights.  She  was worried that we'd get electrocuted on them, or break the glass bulbs, or get the wires tangled, or maybe all of the above.

The bulbs were the big old-fashioned kind and were multi-colored.  There were no strings of all-white lights on our tree and none of those little blinking, mini ones, either.  Once Dad got the light strings wrapped around the tree, he hooked the final string at the top to the electric cord for the angel topper which made her light up as well.

With the lights all strung on and everything lit up, next came the first half of the ornaments.  Generally, Dad would bow out for this part and take a seat on the couch to watch the rest of us.  Mom would take over and be in charge then. She had bags of unbreakable ornaments that she would hand out to us kids to place on the branches.   She untangled them and made sure they all had hooks. It was a big hodgepodge of both handmade and store bought ornaments that we used to adorn the tree.
  
There were some that I remember well that were the sought out favorites of us kids.  One was a little gold saxophone that was covered in gold glitter.  There were also some very colorful little iridescent painted birds perched on little metal clips that we all wanted to put on the tree.  Another type of ornament we scrambled for was what I called the beehive ornaments.  In my child's eyes, they looked like beehives, but they had multi-colored panes and were edged with silver.

After we kids finished putting on the unbreakable ornaments, Mom and Dad worked together to put the glass ornaments on the tree.  These were very fragile and delicate.  We kids weren't allowed to touch them for fear we would break them.

Once those were on, the last thing to do was to put the silver tinsel on the branches. I didn't like doing the tinsel.  It seemed to take forever.  We were told to put each little strand on separately over the branches and to make sure they were hanging down straight so that they looked like icicles. The tinsel was always charged with static electricity and would stick to everything---our clothes, our hands, our hair, and the other tree ornaments. It was frustrating to try and put it on the tree.  

My brother hated the tinsel task even more than I did.  He quickly grew bored and tossed the glittery strands by handfuls onto the tree.  Mom would get after him and tell him he couldn't put any more of it on the tree because he wasn't doing it right.  This was just fine with my brother and perhaps his plan all along.  Shortly after my brother was dismissed, I'd find an excuse to slip away from the tinsel chore too.

Mom and my sister would finish up the tinsel.  Dad generally disappeared off to the garage to work or to the couch for a nap right after the glass ornaments were done.  I guess he didn't care much for doing the tinsel either.  When they finished with the tinsel, my Mom would wrap an old red blanket around the bottom of the tree using it as a makeshift tree skirt to cover up the metal stand.  

The only other decorations, besides the tree, that I can remember having as a kid were our stockings that we hung from the mantle above the fireplace and a wind-up plastic music box church that lit up and played the song, "Silent Night."
  
The stockings we hung were our own, not fancy ones made from felt with our names embroidered on them, but ones we wore that we got from our dresser drawers.  We always hung up a knee sock (back in the day of the knee sock!) in hopes it would hold more candy.  We stuck them up with tacks into the wood of the mantle.

The plastic church stood about a foot high, and Mom put it in the same place every year on one of the end tables next to the couch.  There was a light bulb inside of it which made the church glow when it was plugged in.  It also had a wind-up music box inside it with a key to be turned on the back.  When we wound the key, the music box played the song, "Silent Night."  

The only problem was, after every three or four notes, it made a noise that can best be described as something between a squeak and a creak that sounded like "REEET."  It became a tradition and a standing joke to wind up the church and sing along with it.

"Silent night, REEET, Holy night, REEET,   All is calm, REEET, All is bright, REEET."

When we came to the "REEET" noise, we would widen our eyes, turn our heads at an odd angle, and make a silly face.  We kids considered this great entertainment.  Mom and Dad would just laugh, roll their eyes at us, and shake their heads.

Six Signs You Live in a Small Town (Truly Grateful Series)

1.  When your son's picture is in the local newspaper, someone at one of the local banks cuts the clipping out of the paper, laminates it, and sends it to you in the mail.  This keepsake arrives just two days after the paper came out--sometimes before you have even had time to read the paper yourself! Oh, and you don't even have an account with that bank!!  

Members of your church and the people that you work with also take the time to clip these kinds of photos and articles out and save them for you.

2. You have three potlucks to attend in one week--one a fundraiser at the local school for the high school orchestra, one with a church  fellowship group, and one at your work place as part of a Christmas celebration.

 These are the pineapple carrot cake cupcakes* I made for the orchestra event we attended tonight.

3. It takes you over an hour to get back from buying a gallon of milk at a grocery store that is five minutes away from your home because the town mayor, one of your son's teachers, and your dentist are all at the grocery store too, and, of course, you have to stop and talk to each one of them while you are there.

4.  Your mother is in a nursing home which means you need to maintain her yard and house that is now left without an inhabitant until it is sold.  You have been keeping up on things fairly well, but the week you need to do the final raking of leaves in her yard (after several weekends in a row of raking), something else takes up your time and attention.  When you arrive two days later on a Tuesday morning to get caught up on the yard work, you find that the next door neighbor to your mother's house has already done the last bit of raking for you.  You met this person for the first time a few weeks ago and have only talked to this person twice.

My dog Max playing in the leaves.

5.  You can drive from the far west end of town to the far east end of town in ten minutes---eight minutes if you can time it to hit the traffic lights just right when they are all green.  If you should have car trouble at any point along that stretch, someone you know will stop to offer you assistance before you even have a chance to get your cell phone out of your purse and call for help. 

6.  The guy at the pet store gives you quite a few MORE than the couple of dozen crickets that you asked for when you buy them from him for your pet lizard.  He does this because you are there in his store every week, and most of the people here are just nice like that. 

Lord, for allowing me to live in a small town and for the wonderful people in that community, please let me be truly grateful.





*Betty Crocker Ultimate Carrot Cake recipe

Music Monday--Balloon Bass and Box

I realize this is a rather unconventional choice, but it made me smile, and starting out the week with a smile seems like a good idea to me.  So this is my pick for Music Monday today. 

I think this is a worthwhile reminder too.  Don't worry about what you don't have--make music with what you have.

If you are interested in knowing how he made the balloon bass, click here.  Amazing what can be done with just three balloons.

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.





PS: Because of spamming purposes, the linky will be closed on Thursday of each week at midnight, Malaysian Time. Thank you!

The Awakening

We had the first snow of the season this morning.  It didn't amount to much at all, just a light dusting.  It was enough to make the grass look white, and it covered the tops of the cars as you can see by my son's car in the driveway here. 

It quickly melted off when the sun rose.  It was just a little taste of what is sure to come in the weeks ahead.  Ready or not, winter will be here soon.  It inspired me to write this poem.

 The Awakening

  

And so it goes,

and so it snows.

Overnight the first of winter's white

danced onto the lawn.

And so it goes,

and so it snows.

 Bright crystals, swirling in morning's light,

greeted us at dawn.

And so it goes,

and snow it goes.

Morning sun, swift, gave no warning.

In a blink, the white was gone.

And so it goes,

and snow it goes.

The clouds are breaking, but winter's waking

with the icy breath of a cold yawn.

Stop! Turkey Time!

I'm going to be working extra hours at the library for the next few days to fill in for others who will be gone.  Then, with the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of the week, I am not going to have much time left over for blogging.  As a result, I won't be posting for a few days, but I'll be back next week.

Feel free to read something in the archives from the sidebar while I am gone, if you wish.  There are a lot of lonely posts back in February, March, April and May of 2008 before I had any regular readers that few have seen.

I hate to leave you all week long with nothing new to dance to, so here is a bit of silliness especially for Thanksgiving week.  I bet you never saw a turkey wearing parachute "Hammer" pants before!

 

Hope you all have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving!