My Christmas Wishes

I wish I could say that I am the author of the lovely sentiments in my Christmas wish for you; they are from a card in a box of Christmas cards that I bought several years ago. Though I'm not the author, I try my best to walk in the path of those teachings. My wish for all of you, my dear friends, is that you will always live with hope, peace, love, and understanding in your hearts, and that you will spread those most valuable gifts wherever you may roam.

Merry Christmas!

T'was the week before Christmas

When Christmas comes around my door,

The decorations don’t put themselves in place.

They hang around my tables and floor

In boxes and bins, staring me in the face.

There are ornaments with meaning sentimental,

And angels too still to fly.

It’s a good thing they aren’t rental,

I’ll get around to them by-and-by.

Oh, if only some Santa Claus elves,

Would visit me during the night.

They would take the tinsel off the shelves,

And dust my home with fairy light.

What’s that I see when I rub the sleep from my eyes?

Did some magic in the night occur?

If the elves came from my wishes and sighs,

They must have performed in a scurrying blur!

Oh, yes, now I remember my stake!

I’m the one who placed them there.

I must have been Bearly Awake,

When at last I positioned the ornaments with care.

If only it all would happen with such ease, 

I would already be feeling rested,

But we know fairy tales don’t really appease, 

And by this time next week, I’ll be bested. 

~Susan D.~

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

To all my dear friends here

A very Merry Christmas!

Christmas movies make me happy

Holiday Faves is the theme for this week's Monday Movie Meme hosted, as always, by The Bumbles. Oh dear, how can I pick just a few?

Little Women (1994) is the one I want to watch when I decorate the tree. I know that purists  prefer the 1933 version with Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett, or even the 1949 version with June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O'Brien and Janet Leigh, but the newer one is a sentimental favorite because it's the one that Aimee and I watched and cried over together when she was a teenager. And it's just prettier. And let's face it...Christian Bale is a much better actor than Peter Lawford.

This year I couldn't watch 'Little Women', because the VCR is broken, so I watched another longtime favorite....White Christmas. Sure, it's kind of hokey and Bing Crosby got a little carried away with the stage makeup and the settings are totally unbelievable, but the main reason I watch this year after year is for Rosemary Clooney's singing and Vera Ellen's dancing. And who doesn't love the last scene when the whole crew dresses up in their beautifully lush Santa-inspired costumes to sing 'White Christmas'?

On everyone's list is A Christmas Story. There are so many memorable lines in this movie that it would take all day to quote them here, but my favorite is "Fra-gee-lay. That must be Italian!". I even have it written on a box of fra-gee-lay stemware in my basement!

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, another perennial favorite of the whole world it seems, has topped many a list. Who doesn't love to laugh at the "old-fashioned Griswold family Christmas"? Again, too many gut-laugh-worthy lines to mention here, but I bet you can guess my favorite one:

Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?

I've never been able to memorize that one even though I drive my kids crazy when I say every other line along with the actors!

One Magic Christmas is relatively obscure, but I love its message of hope for a despairing mother. It's a nice take on 'It's a Wonderful Life' (a fave, of course) with excellent performances by the under-appreciated Mary Steenbburgen and Harry Dean Stanton who portrays Gideon, the angel.

Honorable mentions:

Elf (I love Zooey Deschanel)
Miracle on 34th Street (the original and not colorized)
Home Alone
Christmas in Connecticut

Christmas Portraits 101....

...or Why I Will Never Be a Children's Photographer.

Rule No. 1:  Three days prior to Christmas portrait event there will be no running by children whose portraits are being taken (that includes tripping and bumping heads on hard basement stairs.)

Rule No. 2:  Scissors will not be left in full reach of said children thirty minutes prior to Christmas portrait event, resulting in one previously long-haired blonde girl who now sports a pixie-ish emergency haircut.

Rule No. 3:  The portrait hack artist will not mess with the camera settings prior to said Christmas protrait event resulting in strange pictures because she could not get the camera to go back to its normal state.

Rule No. 4:  The photographer will not attempt to create studio conditions when all she has to work with is a king-size sheet and a 42" plasma television on a stand.

Rule No. 5:  The photographer will, prior to the event, take the maximum amount of Advil allowed.

The girl with the nice bruise between her eyebrows.

Kaitlyn

Gaige practicing his yoga while Nathan attempts to distract him.

Nathan caused a lot of laughing.

Matthew was a whole lot easier last year when he would stay put. This year he just wanted his mommy!

It's like herding cats. Seriously.

Out of hundreds taken, here are a few that made the cut.

Gaige

Nathan

Kaitlyn

Lauren

(the previously long-haired girl!)

Matthew

Best cousins, best friends.

Oh well, there's always next year!

Here's looking at you, kids!

Christmas Bonus

Cranberry-Pecan Bars

(a tried and true recipe of many years)

For the crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1/3 cup butter

1 cup finely chopped pecans, divided

For the filling:

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 beaten eggs

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped cranberries

2/3 cup shredded coconut

Zest of one orange

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 13 x 9 inch pan with cooking spray (or butter if you prefer).
2. Chop pecans in food processor. Reserve 1/2 cup for filling.
3. Combine 1 cup flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, butter and 1/2 cup pecans in processor and pulse until you have coarse crumbs.
4. Press into prepared pan. Bake 15 minutes or until light golden brown.
5. Meanwhile, in medium bowl, mix 1 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons flour. Stir in eggs, milk, vanilla and orange zest.
6. Stir in cranberries, coconut and remaining pecans. Spread over hot baked crust.
7. Bake 23-25 minutes until light golden brown. Remove from oven and cool on rack. Cut into bars when cool.

Note: it takes about 1 1/3 cups pecan halves to make 1 cup chopped pecans.

Merry Christmas, Darling

In 1970, I was a senior in high school full of romantic ideas, crazy about boys and one boy in particular. We had dated off and on for a year or so, but he was in college and understandably didn't want to settle down with a seventeen-year-old girl. That Christmas, as I was pining away for my true love, The Carpenters released a little number called "Merry Christmas, Darling" as a single. It fit my yearnings to a tee. I went to Kresge's and plunked down my hard-earned babysitting money for the record and put it on the console stereo. I don't think I removed it for two months...well past Christmas! Karen knew about my aching heart and sang about it in her clear, pure alto voice.

It wasn't until 1978 that The Carpenters came out with their "Christmas Portrait" album. By then I was happily married with a three-year-old and one on the way. There wasn't a lot of money to spare, but I had to have that album. So I saved a little here and a little there and bought it. I played that thing to death. I loved the way each song segued seamlessly into the next one. I sang along with Karen and knew every note and pause and breath. I loved that the very first thing you hear when it starts is Karen taking a breath. I loved that they included the little known first verses of several Christmas standards.

When the children (all three of them) were going to school, I would wake them every school day during the Christmas season by playing the album. It's one of Aimee's most loved memories of childhood...waking to "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear". 

When the CD came out, I retired the worn-out album (which I still have) and replaced it with the new technology. I still have the same one. I still play it to death every year. This year, I've uploaded the songs to my MP3-capable cell phone. It's the one Christmas album that I never get tired of.

Oh, you're probably wondering if I ever got together with that college boy. I did. And we've been married 37 years. You do the math.

Christmas surprises

 

The snowman in the yard is frozen hard.......

......he's a sorry sight to see.
If he had a brain, he'd complain.
Bet he wishes he were me.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful. It really is. It has been snowing lightly all day and we had finally accumulated about half an inch by dark. I haven't been outside since then, but I'm hoping it stops soon. I'm not ready for a lot of snow and as you can see below, I already have plenty of snowmen.

 

This little guy is my favorite. I can't decide if he's trying to keep his carrot nose warm or adjusting it because it's about to fall off.

 

I like the tall one because he's wearing a long wool plaid coat and a floppy hat instead of a top hat.

 

The guy in the middle is just too cool for school with those Ray-Bans! In case you hadn't noticed, I save some of the snowman Christmas cards I receive and work them into the mix.

 

The shiny-glazed family on the left was a gift from my best bud, Cindy.

 

The newest addition to my collection is a snowman nativity, which Aimee says is a little sacreligious. Really? What could be sacreligious about a snowman baby Jesus? Well, anyway, while I was arranging it into the perfect creche, Joseph met with an unfortunate accident which led to his untimely death. Plaster of paris meets brick hearth. The result is not pretty.

 

Nevertheless, Mary seems to be holding up well under the strain of that long journey, giving birth and immediately becoming a single mother. I don't know, but I think the guy holding the frankincense is standing a lit-tle too close.

 

European porcelain

I stopped by at a neighbor's Open House this morning to see what kind of Christmas goodies might await me there. I found a cute three-foot snowman skier tree to put on my hearth and add to my snowman collection. I'll put that in a later post after I have the mantel decorated.

The real prizes I found were these three pieces of porcelain.

The first is from Germany--a hexagon-shaped cream pitcher. I love the lilies-of-the-valley which is my birth-month flower. It has an iridescent glaze that you can see on the spout and near the handle.

 

This one is from France and is square with dogwood blooms that wrap around two of the corners.

 

 

The diamond shape of this little vase(?) intrigued me. It's from Vienna, and it's only three inches high handles and all.

 

 

Now I just dare anyone to say that I'm not good to myself at Christmas!