Exceedingly Mundane

Saw this over at Dawn‘s blog the other day and thought I would swipe it. Love these things, so much fun! Thanks Dawn

Holiday: Christmas or New Years? Ooh, Christmas, definitely. I love it all – the tree, the decorations, the music, the movies, the food, etc. All but the stress of shopping, that is. New Years is not a big thing for us at all. We don’t even go out, just stay home and watch TV or a movie.

Cookies: Sugar or Gingerbread? Gingerbread! Love it!

Decorations: Santa or Snowmen? Snowmen, definitely. I even blogged about them earlier here and posted a couple of pictures of some of my snowmen.

Decorations: Reindeer or Elves? I’d have to go with Reindeer on this one.

Colors: Red or Green? Wow, can’t pick, love both of those colors. But at Christmas, I do like a lot of red. My tree has a lot on it, and I try to find snowmen with red on them (most of them have blue).

Colors: Gold or Silver? Silver. I have a lot of red and silver on my tree.

Tree Topper: Star or Angel? An angel. I’ve had her a long time and love her. She’s not expensive, but she’s still special to me. She’s the only thing I’ve ever put on my own trees as an adult. Plus, Tim always insists on putting her on last. The very last thing, he won’t let me put her on till the very end 😀

Stocking Stuffer: Fruit or Candy? Hmm, well I think I got a little of both growing up, but these days, I’d definitely go for the candy. Chocolate, please. 🙂

Tree: Real or Artificial? Ours is artificial. We got a new one this year and it’s prelit, which is really nice, a lot less work! I like the smell of a real one, but not the hassle of watering, needles, disposing of it, and the practical side of me doesn’t like paying for a new one every single year.

Cartoons: Charlie Brown or Rudolph? Rudolph

Movie: It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol? Definitely It’s a Wonderful Life. I owned it on VHS and now own it on DVD and try to watch it at least once every year.

Stocking Stuffer: Jewelry or Gift Card? Either would be nice! Tim doesn’t do stockings usually. Whatever I find in my stocking is something I have bought and put in there!

Christmas List: Naughty or Nice? Of course I’m nice! Not a naughty bone in my body 😆

Drink: Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot Chocolate, hands down

Holiday Ghost: Past, Present, or Future? Past, I guess… not sure about this one!

Vacation Spot: North Pole or Winter Wonderland? Winter Wonderland. I love snow and cold weather as long as I don’t have to be out in it long or drive in it, hehehe. Love curling up by a big fire, with some hot cocoa.

Holiday Song: Jingle Bells or Silver Bells? I like them both, so this one is a bit hard to pick between. I’d have to go with Jingle Bells though, more upbeat and fun 🙂

Holiday Song: Silent Night or O’ Holy Night? Love both of these too, but O’ Holy Night is definitely in my range more than Silent Night. I heard O Holy Night the other day on the radio and then was singing it all afternoon, even in stores. I probably scared a ton of shoppers 🙄

More Fun: Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? Well, ours are different every year. It depends on when my brother-in-law has custody of his kids, and whether or not my family is out of town for the holidays. It changes from year to year, so I really can’t pick. My absolute favorite is any time I can be home for Christmas. We’re normally gone from sunup to midnight to other people’s houses, so any time at our own home is the best and most fun for me.

Lights: Clear or Multi-Colored? White lights everywhere, inside and out

Ornaments: Bulbs or Bows? Bulbs

Tree Decor: Ribbon, Popcorn, or Garland? I don’t have any of these on my tree!

Gifts: Wrapping Paper or Gift Bags? Some of both, but I end up wrapping the majority of mine. Only small things or really really large things usually go in gift bags.

Better To: Give or Receive? To Give

I won’t tag anyone specifically with this, but please feel free to play along if you’d like. I’d love to come read your answers, so leave me a comment that you’re going to play and I’ll be over to visit and check it out.

Merry Christmas!

I decided this morning to go ahead and participate in BooMama‘s Christmas Tour of Homes. She very graciously sponsored a tour of homes earlier this year, in the fall, but I didn’t get a chance to play along.

I’ve been trying to take some pictures of a few things around here for the last week or so, and the pictures have not been turning out like I want. I have been trying to take pictures of our new tree and all of our outdoor lights at night, and even using a tripod, they are coming out blurry. It bugs me 🙂 But, I thought I would play along anyway, and post a few pictures of our little home at Christmas. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy your stay!

Here’s our front door with garland, lights, our wreath, and you can even see the icicle lights that are on the roof peeking down (yep, sorry, this is one of those blurry ones!):

I love snowmen and have them scattered around, even one at the front door, to greet everyone:

We got a new tree this year, artificial but prelit:

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care (on my snowflake holders from Crate and Barrel, I love these, they were a surprise a couple of years ago from my husband!):

I put out my Snow Village pieces, but broke them up into two areas this year. We got a new entertainment center when we got our new TV earlier this year, and it has a wide area at the top, so we decided to put a few of the houses up there:

We also put out garland with lights and red bows on our deck railing, out back. I can see the deck from the kitchen, and I love being in there in the evenings, cooking or washing dishes, and seeing my deck all lit up:

I had already blogged about my snowmen here, but here’s a couple of them that I love:

And just yesterday, I blogged about my nativity that I love, as it has very special meaning for us:

I didn’t take a picture of our kitchen table, which has a metal tree decoration with tea lights and a nice red and green plaid tablecloth on it right now. It’s full of bags and mail and I just didn’t take the time to clean it off! 🙄 I want to post some pictures of some of my favorite ornaments, but I’ll save that for another day.

Hope you enjoyed the visit, thanks for stopping by and … Merry Christmas! 😆

I’ve been trying to take a few pictures of our decorations and tree, and some of my favorite ornaments and things, to post here. I wanted to make a separate entry about our nativity set, since it has such special meaning for us.

Here it is, it’s not very big, but we love it:

This nativity has a very special meaning for us – my husband’s mother brought it back for us from Bethlehem. She went on a tour of the Holy Land, which has always been her lifelong dream, several years ago. Thankfully, it was before 9/11 because I don’t think any of us would let her go now. 🙂 She loved it, and brought back several nativities, including this one for us. It is all hand made, out of olive wood, and the designer even wrote Bethlehem on the side of the stable roof:

We love nativities, and love what they represent. I would love to have this one by Willow Tree/Demdaco, but I don’t think I would ever want to spend that kind of money on it. 🙂 I would also like to get a larger ceramic one, with some color, but I simply don’t have room to display anything else! I do love my little nativity though, and put it out every year.

Merry Christmas!

Beau has had two baths already this week. He seems to be wanting to dig in the mud, run down into the ditch near our house, and worst of all – find dead things like birds behind our house and either eat them or maybe roll in them. 😥 He was smelling really bad yesterday afternoon, so Tim gave him another bath. He got one on Monday because he was a bad dog and got down in the ditch to play in the mud. 🙁

Beau does NOT like to get a bath. It’s nice weather here, in the upper 60’s and 70’s, so it’s not that he’s cold. He just doesn’t like to have the water from the water hose streaming down on him. I didn’t get any pictures of the bath this time. Instead, we dried him off as best we could with towels, and then brought him in the kitchen and wrapped him up in an old sheet, to finish drying off. He didn’t like it very much!

I finished a really wonderful book last night, the first in a series of 5 books by Beverly Lewis, called the “Abram’s Daughters” series. The first one is entitled “The Covenant” and introduces us to the Ebersol family, an Amish family living in Lancaster PA during the 1940’s. Abram and Ida have 4 daughters – Sadie, Leah and twins Hannah and Mary Ruth. I believe each of the books will continue to focus on this family, the daughters, their extended family and the Amish community.

As I expected, I really enjoyed this book. I had not ever read a Beverly Lewis book, but from what I had heard and read, I wanted to like it, and I did. I enjoyed the slow, simple pace of this book, and the reflections into the Amish way of life and their beliefs. This book was a great choice for me to read this time of year, when everything else is so frenetic and hectic and fast-paced. This book helped me to relax, slow down, and remember the important things in life – faith, family and my beliefs. I am very much looking forward to finishing this series and also reading more books by Beverly Lewis. I think she will eventually become a favorite author of mine. 🙂

For the record, that makes #68 this year, with a total of 23,603 pages read. Up next is the second book in this same series, called “The Betrayal”. I can’t wait to get started!

P.S. After I finish the second one, I will have to decide what to read next (I don’t own the remaining 3 in the series, but I’ve asked for them for Christmas… so I have to either wait or check my local library!). I got some books for my birthday that I want to start, but they are another series (by Christian author Leisha Kelly, has anyone read any of her books? I was attracted by the book jacket cover picture and the synopsis on the back!) and I’m not sure if I want to start another series before I finish the several I have in progress already. I’ve started books in the No 1. Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith, the Cedar Cove series by Debbie Macomber, the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich and then there’s a ton of other books I want to read (either that I own or at the library). Decisions, decisions. Or as I love to say “So many books, so little time!” 😀

I don’t have anything all that interesting to blog about, so I thought I would do some bullets of some of the random and mundane things going on with us:

Laura was on vacation last week, but is back now and once again hosting Menu Plan Monday. Cruise on over to her blog and check it out! I love surfing everyone’s menus for the week and getting some good ideas and good recipes 🙂

Here’s the tenative plan for the week at our house:

Sunday – we had meatballs subs for Game Night 😀

Monday – Grilled honey mustard chicken on wheat sub rolls, pasta salad, glazed carrots

Tuesday – baked ham, Pineapple Casserole, mashed potatoes

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in. He voted for tomato soup and grilled cheese last week, so I’ll insist on breakfast food this week (eggs, oatmeal, cinnamon toast)

Thursday – whole wheat pasta with alfredo sauce and grilled chicken, homemade bread, veggie

Friday – Date Night or maybe Italian Sausage Soup and bread

Saturday – out of town for a family get-together

Sunday – Game Day food, maybe buffalo wings or burgers, not sure yet

I haven’t played Sindee’s By the Way Sunday meme in a while, so I thought I would catch up with the last two week’s installments. Some great seasonal questions she has been posting. Thanks Sindee!

~I Know It’s Christmas~

By the way…

Complete these sentences…

I know it’s Christmas when I hear…Christmas commercials on TV and Christmas music on the radio or Music Choice channels on our cable system

I know it’s Christmas when I see… our tree and Snow Village up in our house 🙂

I know it’s Christmas when I feel… a bit stressed about going shopping and getting it all wrapped 🙁

I know it’s Christmas at my house when… oops, see above… when our tree, Snow Village and outdoor lights are up!

I know it’s Christmas in my town when… we see our neighbor’s decorations and lights. Just love to turn down our street and see it all lit up!

And here’s last week’s questions, which I wanted to go back and do… more seasonal fun!

~Let It Snow~

By the way…

Does it snow where you live? If not, have you ever seen snow in person? Well, we get maybe one or two light snowfalls where I live, per DECADE. Tim and I have been married 10 years and we’ve had snow once or twice at most. I think we’re about due and I’m hoping we get a little this year!

Do you like snow or do you consider it a nuisance? Oh, I love it! I get cold, but I love to go out and play in it, take pictures, watch the dog play in it, try to build a snowman, throw snowballs and make snow ice cream. I’ve done those things so few times in my life (maybe 5 or 6 total, in my lifetime), that they are all tremendous fun for me. 😀

Do you have any experience with shoveling snow? Nope, never shoveled a lick of snow. Don’t have a clue how!

Have you ever built a snowman? Tim built one during one of the two snowfalls we’ve seen together. I helped a little bit, but mostly took pictures!

If you had a choice would you prefer Christmas with snow or without? Oh, definitely with. What little snow we’ve had in my life has never been near Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

If you could hit anyone with a snowball right now, who would it be? (all in good fun) Well, probably Tim, but I’d love to toss some snow at our new dog Beau and see what he would do. I feel relatively sure he has never seen snow and I’d love to see how he reacts and what he does! 😀

On a related note, I do have one memory of snow from my childhood. I can remember standing at the double glass sliding doors on the back of the house I grew up in, looking out at my two older sisters out playing in the snow. I wanted to go out, but I had these cumbersome metal leg braces on, and my mother wouldn’t let me go out and get in the snow with them on. I can remember standing for so long at the door, and the glass was so cold, and I just wanted to go out and she kept saying “you can’t go out, Stacy”. I was soooo upset!

It’s been really, really cold here the last couple of nights. I think we might have even broken a record, or come really close to it, one night. We don’t normally get to around 20º at night, but we have several times here lately.

Tim usually lets Beau out for his nighttime bathroom break before he goes to sleep. He told me that he’d started “tucking him in” when he gets on his bed to go to sleep, after coming in out of the cold. So, you know me, that sounded like a Kodak moment if there ever was one, so I had to get a picture of Beau, all wrapped up 😀

Oh, and I’d like to add that I’ve tried this before, tucking a towel over him to wrap him up. He gets up and shakes it off, or pulls it off with his mouth. He seems to only tolerate it from Tim. He loves and adores Tim and will do anything he asks of him. Me, not so much. Beau is definitely Tim’s dog! 😆

Yesterday was really cold. We barely hit 40º and I was chilly all day. I had already planned my menu earlier in the week, and had checked the weather (being the slightest obsessive-compulsive planner that I am!) and had planned to try a new recipe for soup for Friday night. It turned out really good! I found this recipe over at Miranda‘s blog, via the Slow Cooking Thursday meme that Sandra sponsors each week. Thanks Miranda!

The recipe is for Chicken Taco Soup, and I have entered it, with my comments, over on our main site. Click here to check it out 🙂

P.S. Sorry about the picture! Tim was ready to eat and I didn’t even think about taking a nicer looking picture of our bowls filled with soup. Only afterwards, when I was going to dish up the leftovers for lunch today did the thought cross my mind …. Gee, I should have taken a picture of this yummy soup for my blog!

We’ve seen a few movies lately that have been on my want-to-watch list. Granted, they are older movies that we never got around to seeing or renting, but still… they were movies on my list that I wanted to see. You know, we haven’t rented a single movie from the rental store (and no, we haven’t signed up for Netflix yet either!) since we got our new TV! We got digital cable at the same time, along with our cable company’s offer of free HBO. So, we have like 15 HBO channels at the moment and have just been watching movies there, or on our cable system’s “On Demand” feature. One day, we’re going to go wild and do a Pay-Per-View movie! Woot! 🙄

Anyway, we love to watch movies. I’m perfectly happy to watch them at home. I like to rent them or have them where I can stop for bathroom breaks, to answer the phone, let the dog out to go to the bathroom, stop and fix popcorn, etc. Tim is the polar opposite of me. He likes to go to the theater, spend lots of money to sit there and eat expensive popcorn and diet Coke, and not be interrupted in the big dark theater. I guess that’s why we’re such a good pair, we like different things and are both fairly willing to compromise. I go with him (we saw Casino Royale at the theater on his birthday, two thumbs up, good movie!) and he stays home and watches movies on HBO or DVD with me.

I was in Target the other day and saw this microwave popcorn popper. I have been wanting to buy one of those electric, air-machine popcorn poppers, but I just honestly don’t have room in any cabinet or pantry shelf for it. So, I compromised and thought I would give this thing a try. We really like it! I put some plain popcorn (Orville Redenbacher brand, thank you!) in it, no oil or salt, and pop it in the microwave. I wanted to start doing this because I thought this would be healthier for us than the microwave bags. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I feel like it’s better for us 🙄 We do spray some fat-free butter on it, and then sprinkle on some toppings, but still, I think it’s probably a little better for us 🙂

So, in summary, the purpose of this post was to say that I have been trying to have “popcorn and movie” night lately. We’ve watched some movies I have had on my list for ages, and I’ve popped us a big bowl of popcorn. We’ve seen “The Perfect Man” with Hillary Duff and Heather Locklear (cute and sweet and pretty clean), then “Transporter 2” (just like the first one, mindless action, but we like it!), and then a couple of nights ago, we finally saw “Cheaper by the Dozen 2” on HBO. I am planning on us watching “Polar Express” on ABCFamily Saturday night, but we’ll see if I can get us to stick to that plan. Tim is not big on planning stuff to do at home on the weekends.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you like popcorn with your movies? Do you pop it at home, and if so, do you do microwave popcorn or something else? Also, what was the last movie you saw that you liked?

Have a great day!

Friday, December 08, 2006
Feast One Hundred & Twenty One

Appetizer
Which language would you like to learn and why? Well, I took French in high school and college and have forgotten most all of it. French is a beautiful language and I’d like to learn it, but the practical side of me would have to answer Spanish. We have a growing Hispanic population in our area, and it would be much better for me to learn some Spanish.

Soup
What’s the funniest thing you’ve heard or read so far this week? A movie we watched the other night, I guess 🙂

Salad
Which movie was so bad you couldn’t watch the whole thing? Reds and Any Given Sunday spring to mind

Main Course
If there were a holiday in your honor that didn’t use your actual name, what would the day be called? Procrastinator’s Day 😆

Dessert
Name one movie which is coming out soon that you would like to see. Probably The Holiday with Kate Winslet, but realistically, I’ll probably have to wait to rent it.

I don’t suppose anyone missed me or our main site (Hambones.org), but we were down for a while. Tim came back into the computer room last night to work on something and came back immediately to the kitchen (I was making bread) and said “Hambones is Dead.” I walked into the computer room and could smell stuff burning. Ack! Anyway, a few parts and several dollars later, we are back online.

I’ll try to blog a little something else later, and also try to check on some other blogs. With the holidays and everything going on, I’m a ways behind on reading all of your lovely blogs and leaving comments. 🙂

Have a great day!

Happy 13th Birthday to our niece Brittany! We saw her last weekend for a surprise birthday party and won’t be able to see her today. But we wish her all the happiness in the world, and I think she knows just how much her Uncle Tim and Aunt Stacy love her. Or I hope she does 🙂

Here’s the birthday girl, blowing out the candles on her cake:

Happy Birthday Brittany!!!

I’ve blogged before that my favorite fast food type place is Sonic. Tim and I both love their food, plus we love how convenient their food is packaged. It makes it a lot easier to travel with their food the way they wrap it up and the containers they use. We often pick up their food on the road when we are traveling around or going back and forth to visit family. Which we did this past weekend, and I decided to splurge and try their new cheesecake bites:

They were good! Nice and gooey and the strawberry dipping sauce was nice to have with them. We usually like to try most of the new monthly or seasonal offerings that Sonic has. We’re usually not disappointed. I will say though, that I was hoping to see something like they had last year or the year before – a gingerbread shake or blast. I LOVED those things and got several of them the last time they had them. Sigh, I guess I’ll just have to hit Starbucks instead!