Christmas Eve

The long awaited day is here....Christmas Eve.  I believe we are ready for the festivities to begin. I've enjoyed a lovely week of baking, spending time with the kids and relishing in a slower pace. We attended hubby's office carry in lunch yesterday and enjoyed good food and good conversation. Today everyone is home and we will have our traditional meal before attending Mass tonight. The gifts are ready to be opened. The food is purchases and ready to be cooked. The camera is ready for its work. We are as prepared as we can possibly be!

I did manage to read another book this week. I snapped up Lili St. Crow's third Strange Angels novel, "Jealousy" and plowed through it. The oldest is now set to read it.  St. Crow is awesome as always. Gosh, can that woman write one mean story. Up next is "Beautiful Darkness" the second book from the duo of  Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I had the pleasure of meeting these two gals when the visited our library last year. Fun ladies and great presenters. The book starts off quickly and given more time, I'd be tearing through this one at a fast clip also.

I returned and then checked back out the Judith Rock novel, "Rhetoric of Death" and plan on reading it next weekend after our company departs. We are looking forward to my brother and his family visiting for a few days.

Merry Christmas to all!  May Love fill your hearts all year long and may tonight and tomorrow remind us all how important Love is.

let the countdown begin

We had a very busy and productive day yesterday for the very first week day of Christmas break. The kids cleaned the house for me, I did the laundry, and we made another batch of Christmas cookies. Success!!

I'm off to the library this morning with the middle kid in tow to stock the bookstore. It has been doing great business the last several days and I've been told it has some 'holes' on the shelves. Well, we can take care of that in short order. Then we will reward ourselves with some Starbucks and then off to the grocery store we will go to get some things we need for the next several days.

I. Have. A. Plan.

I began reading "The Rhetoric of Death" but it is due back at the library now, so I have to return it unfinished. I will need to check it out again as I'm enjoying the story. Another amateur sleuth mystery, but this time set in Paris in the 1600's.

Okay..off to do what needs doing.  Posting may be sporadic over the next two weeks as I enjoy a more relaxed routine.

jingle bells

Just a few hours and the kids will officially be on Christmas break. Yeah! They are very excited, which makes me excited. The girls seem to be surviving their finals and the boy has parties all day today in middle school. No big tests to study for in his world.....yet.

I have a couple of errands to run this morning and some groceries to purchase. We have a weekend of baking planned and not much else scheduled.

All is well.....I hear the bells jingling off in the distance....Christmas time is coming!!!!!

Happy Friday.

homebody

I stayed home all day yesterday and loved every minute of it. I think I'm turning into a hermit. It was so nice not to have to rush somewhere, squeeze things in and watch the clock. I made a delicious pot of vegetable beef soup. I baked a really yummy winter spice cake. The Christmas music was on and the good smells of cooking food filled the house. The dog was snoring away in his comfy chair. It was pure bliss. It will be the last quiet day like that until the New Year.

Today won't be so laid back. I have several appointments to keep and the evening concludes with the youngest kid's first ever band concert. Sixth grade band concerts are interesting events. The bad notes, squeaks, squeals and snorts make for some rough moments, but the progress you can hear when the Spring concert rolls around makes this winter time endeavor worthwhile.

My homebody self will be put away as we enter into the three weeks of holiday frenzy. I will bring her back out in January.

baking up an event

I've decided to do some big holiday baking this year. When we traveled two years in a row, to Indiana one year and to Europe the next, I didn't do much baking. I think I might have made two holiday favorites and that is it. I did a little more last year, but with visiting my folks after Christmas, I curtailed the cooking then as well. I knew my mom would have plenty of yummy treats and by the time we got home, I'd be ready to scale back on the fun food consumption.

This year we are keeping our happy bums at home and I'm baking/cooking up a storm. Made some fudge yesterday. Think I will try some Dickens Christmas cakes today. A slew of other yummy treats are also scheduled to be made once the kiddoes are finished with exams. Skillet cookies. Apricot cookies. Cutout cookies. Kieflies. The list goes on and on.

I enjoy making these holiday treats when I have the time to enjoy the process. Like many things in life, doing something is often more fun when you aren't on a major timetable or have to rush through it. The activity moves from being a chore to being an event. 

I like events. I don't like chores. So, we will be baking up an event starting on Saturday. The ingredients are purchased and ready. The rolling pin is waiting. I've even dug out all of my Christmas CDs and put them in one pile so we can be inspired as we create.

Let the 2010 Baking Event begin!!

the joy of netflix

Netflix is my guilty pleasure. It streams right to my TV through our Wii system. I also get movies in the mail from them. Yesterday, after I ran more errands than I had planned on running, I sat down to fold laundry and watch a movie called 'Winter's Bone.'  This film won the Grand Jury award at a recent Sundance Festival and was on some movie critic's list last year. I took note of it, added it to my Netflix queue and waited. It was worth the wait. Good flick. Subtle, intense, heartbreaking, interesting. Really well done.

On the other end of the spectrum, we've been watching 30 Rock, from the beginning, episode after episode. Definitely not subtle, but laugh out loud funny. Tina Fey is a genius and when you watch this show, it is pretty darn obvious why it swept the Emmy's year after year.

Not sure what I will watch today, or if I will watch anything, but Happy Tuesday!!

grave goods

I have such a book crush on the Ariana Franklin series featuring medieval lady doctor Adelia Aguilar. I love these books. In the third story, "Grave Goods", Adelia is traveling with her friend Emma and is summoned by Henry II to examine the bones from two skeletons found in a crevasse near Glastonbury. Rumor has it that they might be the bones of Arthur and Guinevere. Henry wants an answer and Adelia is soon wrapped up in not only a mystery involving the legendary king, but also several other unexplained events.

This was book number 96 for me this year. Yeah!! 

Not sure what this week will bring. I have a hair cut scheduled for today. A lunch scheduled for Thursday. A beginning band concert to attend that same day. No soccer for the girls as it is finals week and the coaches took pity on them. Plus, the weather is supposed to be brutally cold here....nightly lows in the teens just isn't normal for this region. Brrrrr.

We watched a good portion of 30 Rock's first season last night via Netflix. Hilarious. Had us all laughing.
So, as we slide into the Christmas holidays.....lots of random things going on. Sounds good to me!