Holiday Food

From Our House To Yours

Merry Christmas!

He Had a Rough Day

Poor Floyd came in yesterday morning sneezing and with runny eyes. My first thought was that he might have caught a virus and I made sure he stayed away from the girls and that we changed our clothes and washed our hands carefully after dealing with him. Today we took him to the vet to have him checked out. It turned out that he does not have a virus but was in a fight and had his nose scratched up on the inside, that made him sneeze and his eyes water. Poor baby. I was amazed at how good he was at the vet. I am not sure he has ever been to a vet before. Everybody cooed over him about how pretty he is and what a big boy he is. He sat perfectly still on the exam table and ate up all the compliments. He did not even flinch when the extremely nice doctor fixed a little tear in his ear that had started to bleed. We took him to Sheets Pet Clinic on a recommendation by a lady from the SPCA and I am glad we did. They are very nice and not too expensive. After all that stress, a nap was in order (of course after a good meal). I am so glad he does not have a virus and can therefore be with the other cats. Now we can all relax and celebrate Christmas. Phew!

Today's Project

A new ironing board cover. I used this tutorial and it went together quick and easy.  The fabric came from my stash, I think it is from Ikea, it is a bit thicker than usual quilting fabric and I bought 1/2 yard of cotton batting at 50% off. Well, I guess I no longer have an excuse for not ironing. ;-)

Quilting

This is an unplanned Christmas project that I made this week. I saw the pattern and could not resist it. :)

Brown paper packages tied up with string

And each one of them contains a handmade gift. Some will go on a long journey and some will stay closer to home.

I also bottled some of my homemade vanilla essence to give as gift.

A Crafty Morning

I spent some time this morning making gift tags and wrapping presents. The letters on the tags are courtesy of Martha Stewart and they are printed on colored paper that is more than 17 years old and well traveled. I bought it to print the program leaflets for our wedding.

A Lovely Gift

My friend Coleen sent me these beautiful placemats and napkins for Christmas. The little pineapple ornament is already on my tree.

A Little Baking for the Holidays

Snickerdoodles

Chocolate Crinkles

Peanutbutter Oatmeal Rounds

Knitting

I made up a few cat toys to give my kitties for gifts. There is a little bit of catnip in them. Pattern can be found here. 
 

My scarves for Special Olympics NC are finished and ready to be mailed.

And another batch of slippers is waiting to be mailed also.

Snow

A bit early for my taste, but here it is.

Christmas Decorations

The big tree - this year in gold and handmade ornaments.

The mantel - my dolly in his new outfit, a few candles, my favorite nativity scene, two brass tea light holders and my little porcellain children around a small gold wire tree. A small wreath wall hanging above it all.

My pretty candlemat on the table with a very old candle on it (most of time it actually has Miss K. on it, anything quilted laying flat is automatically a cat mat in our house.)

 My kitchen tree - tiny ornaments and cookie cutters.

Rainy Day

The weather was dismal today, not cold, but grey, wet and windy. A perfect day for being 'domestic'.
I started with cleaning the bath room and the cat box, a weekly chore, usually done Monday or Tuesday. Then I had a date with Lily (my sewing machine).
I made flannel blankets for the cat girls. I recently found a bunch of flannel fat quarters in one of my fabric boxes and decided that they were just the right size for cat blankets. So, two fat quarters and a piece of batting makes one happy cat.

Isn't it great when your gifts are being so appreciated? The picture is a bit blurry because I took it through the window of the back door so I would not disturb them.

Then I made a pillow cover out of a large piece of Christmas fabric with cats. It was too cute to be cut up for something else and it was big enough for one pillow and I even have some left over.

I prepared a template and the fabric for tomorrow's project and then I baked a batch of scones (vanilla and chocolate chip) and washed the dishes.

The weather got worse in the meantime and it is getting rather dark. I hope we don't get a storm. When the cats come in by themselves before I call them there is usually something brewing.

Busy Weekend

We had one of those stay at home - work around the house weekends and we got a lot done. We brought the Christmas decorations down from the attic, put up the tree, decided which decorations to use this year and then put the rest back into the boxes and back up into the attic.

Here is my Christmas engineer, trying to figure out what is wrong with the lights (well, we bought them at a yard sale, after ours got stolen from the storage unit we rented while we lived in the apartment, and have no idea how old they are). He managed to find a broken wire and fix it. :-)

We also finished our Fall cleaning. Del washed the kitchen cabinets and the woodwork, mopped the floors, cleaned up the cat mud room and washed the dishes. He also dug up the last of our parsnips, some of them put up quite a fight.

I washed and hung and folded laundry, changed the bed linens, baked bread, cooked and put up the decorations.And I squeezed in a bit of knitting.

Sunday night we treated ourselves to some gingerbread from Germany and hot mulled cider. A good weekend, for the next one we have some out-of-the-house activities planned.

Day 3 after T-Day

Turkey Chili

And that was the last of our tasty bird for this year. The rest of it was eaten cold on sandwiches and shared with the cats.

Two More

Two pairs of crocheted slippers made with the yarn left over from the scarves for Special Olympics.

Day 2 after T-Day

Turkey Cannelloni

Day 1 after T-Day

Cooking a whole turkey for two people and four cats is a bit much even when the bird is not too big. So, on to the leftovers. Today:

Turkey Frittata with Green Salad

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving meal.
On the menu:

• Cold Turkey
• Cole Slaw
• Potato Salad
• Cranberry Sauce
• Cranberry Pear Pie with Oatmeal Streusel

After hearing how everybody likes turkey better cold the next day for several years now we decided to give it a try and had a cold Thanksgiving dinner. Worked well for us. An Miss K. liked it too.