Exceedingly Mundane

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!

I’ve got that song from “The Sound of Music” in my head… raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. I heard a Christmas version of it yesterday (by Rod Stewart) on one of my Christmas CD’s:

[audio:http://www.hambones.org/blogs/stacy/mp3/MyFavoriteThings.mp3]
My Favorite Things by Rod Stewart (From the NBC Collection Christmas CD)

Anyway, it got me to thinking about some of my favorite things at Christmas time.

I absolutely love pulling out all of my Christmas decorations. I love to open up the ornament boxes and go through my ornaments. We get one every time we go somewhere on vacation, and of course, we have some that are very sentimental for different reasons. Sometimes I buy one in the summer (on vacation) or I buy one after Christmas and then put it up. So, each year when I open up my Christmas boxes, I get all excited to find a new ornament or decoration, or remember one that has special meaning to me. I really am just like a kid at Christmas when I open up the boxes and start to pull everything out! 😀

I have several Dept 56 Snow Village pieces as well, that I put out during the holiday season. I guess you could say that I was “collecting” them for a while, but then I ran out of room to display them, so that put an end to my “collecting” of Snow Village. 🙄

One thing I decided I really like a few years ago are snowmen. So, I started “collecting” some of those. Now, I use the word “collecting” very loosely – I don’t acquire massive collections of anything. I just find some that I like or have room for (which is always the overriding factor) and then once I reach my limit, that’s it. But, over the years I have collected Snow Village pieces, carolers and now snowmen. The snowmen are currently my favorite and these little guys make me smile every time I see them:

Then, there’s some others on my tree and scattered around the house:

So, that’s my Question of the Day: What are some of your favorite things at Christmas? Do you have a certain theme or decoration that has special meaning for you? Do you have a favorite decoration or stocking or angel on your tree that is a favorite you love to put out every year? Leave me a comment and let me know!

You can always tell when it’s the holiday season at my house, because I start going nuts, buying these flavored coffee creamers from Coffee-Mate. Last year, I was a total gingerbread-aholic, only buying the Gingerbread flavored creamer. This year, after trying the Peppermint Mocha drink at Starbucks, I decided to “branch out” and get the Peppermint one as well. I like both of them, and love having all of these flavors at the holidays. I haven’t tried their Eggnog flavor yet, because I’m not a huge eggnog fan. Last year, I bought a small container of eggnog-flavored soy milk and it was just so-so. Not sure I’ll go that route this year. I’d much rather have flavored coffee or hot chocolate!

When it gets to be fall and winter here and it’s chillier, I love drinking “warm” drinks. I have just recently picked up coffee (about 2 or 3 years ago), but I have always loved hot chocolate. I make my own mix and give it out as Christmas gifts to friends and family, and we always keep some for us to have in the winter. Gail and I used to make a spiced tea mix, and I might want to go back and dig out that recipe and make some of that this year, as well. Gail also makes a good cappuccino mix, and I have a toffee coffee mix from a good friend of mine that is really good. I also will drink hot tea this time of year, which I never do during the summer months. I like having a cup of hot herbal tea at night (decaf, of course) when it’s cold and I’m wanting something hot to drink.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a favorite drink you like to drink this time of year? Something seasonal or brings back memories, or just something you like the taste of. Maybe it’s a certain flavor of coffee, hot chocolate, hot apple cider, hot tea or something else? What’s your favorite?! I’d love to know 🙂

Laura is on vacation this week, and so is not doing the Menu Plan Monday this week. However, doing the menus really helps me, so I’m going to go ahead and at least sketch one out for this week. The weekend is a bit up in the air, but hopefully we’ll end up cooking at home some. We ate out a lot this past week and weekend while Tim was on vacation and we were running around most every day. I have to really curtail my eating out or those extra pounds will really start showing up soon! 🙂

Here’s the general idea:

Monday – Turkey pot pie, mashed potatoes, corn (probably using this recipe as a guideline but using leftover turkey from last week’s Herbed Turkey Breast)

Tuesday – Maple BBQ Chicken Sandwiches, Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges

Wednesday – Light Night before Tim weighs in at work. His choice – either eggs, Gail’s Crockpot Oatmeal, cinnamon toast OR tomato soup and grilled cheese

Thursday – Spaghetti with meatballs, broccoli, homemade bread

Friday – either Date night or possibly a new recipe for a chicken taco soup

Saturday – TBD

Sunday – Game Day food, probably Buffalo wings and chips and dip

No, this was not staged. Yes, I saw him laying like this in the kitchen on his bed and literally ran to get my camera before he moved.

Beau sleeping the other night:

Slowly, over the years, I have been buying Christmas CD’s. I absolutely love Christmas music, but I sort of hate to spend the money on a CD that I really only listen to for a month or so out of the year. I don’t spend a lot of money on music to begin with, and before I got my iPod, I mostly listened to the radio. But, I do love Christmas music and so I would splurge and buy myself one CD every year or two.

Then, a few years ago, I discovered the CD’s that Target marketed at the holiday season. They are called “Sounds of the Season” and they usually run them at really good prices, like 5.99 or 6.99. They used to do them by genre, and I would almost always buy the country music one. I have several of those, probably 5 or 6. I bought the NBC one last year that has a mix of music by artists like Rob Thomas, Amy Grant, Michael Buble, Gavin DeGraw, Chris Botti, etc, and I do love that one. I also have some other Christmas CD’s by artist, like Harry Connick, Clay Aiken, Celine Dion, and I have one of Billboard classics from years ago that has the original versions of White Christmas, etc on them (and it’s a great CD!) Anyway, I got excited about looking for the new music in Target this year, only to be disappointed that they’ve changed their format. Now, they have them by artist, which is great, but I really miss them doing them by genre (like country or jazz or the NBC collection). This year, the featured artists seem to be Enya, John Legend and Lionel Richie. I might want to get the John Legend one, but I looked at it, and there’s only 6 tracks on there (for 5.99, so a buck a song, which is the same as iTunes). Sigh. I always hate it when I find something I really like and then they go and change it on me 😆

Anyway, here’s some of the older “Sounds of the Season” CD’s that I have bought at Target…

Last year, I started uploading some of my Christmas CD’s to my iPod and I made a Christmas playlist. This year, I have uploaded a few more, and there are probably 2-3 more that I want to get on there. Now that I have my iHome iPod/clock radio (check it out here), I can pop my iPod in and listen to my Christmas music while I’m in our bedroom or bathroom. I also load up our CD changer in the living room with all Christmas music, so that I can listen in there.

So, that brings us to today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a lot of Christmas music? Do you listen to your CD’s in the car, on the computer, on your iPod or just around the house? Do you have a favorite Christmas CD or maybe a favorite artist that you love to hear sing Christmas music?

Friday, December 1, 2006
Feast One Hundred & Twenty

Appetizer
Have you ever flown in a helicopter? No, but I would LOVE it! 😀

Soup
What color is your warmest coat or jacket? A very old gray parka type jacket. It’s very warm, but it doesn’t look all that great!

Salad
What is your favorite rainy day activity? Curling up with a book and some coffee or tea and reading in my big chair by the fireplace. Sheer heaven.

Main Course
Describe your hands. Yucky, I don’t like my hands. I wish I had gotten my mom’s hands, but only Suzanne got those. I have short stubby hands, all wrinkly and freckled, short nails that I bite or that break off. Icky, I’m telling you, icky.

Dessert
If you could eat only one nut for the rest of your life, what nut would you pick? Tough choice, but probably walnuts. I should pick pecans, they are huge here, but I think I would have to go with walnuts.