All three of these are Urban Threads designs.

I’m not super happy with the pictures, but it was one of those times when I took a whole lot of pictures and I still couldn’t find ones that do justice to the colors of the objects being photographed. :::shrug:::

So, I only made 5 out of the hoped-for 20 ornaments, but I’m absolutely okay with that. I made other things and did other things instead that made me as happy as making ornaments for every single family member would have. There are always plenty of stitchy opportunities throughout the year!

I woke up this morning (several times, actually!) to the smell of dressing being made. My sweet hubby offered last night to make it this morning if I’d leave him the list of ingredients — he’s made it before, so I didn’t hesitate to take him up on his offer. It’ll sit in the fridge until tomorrow, tempting up to eat it before Christmas Eve dinner at my mom’s rolls around [g]. Everything else we’re cooking will be quick and easy, so I find myself with a lowkey day today — no complaints! I can actually do a couple quick last-minute “because I want to” Christmas-related errands, before I start working on desserts later tonight. Very nice.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I wish you an enjoyable Christmas, and safe travels if you will be traveling away from home. Happy Holidays!!

My baby brother turned 38 this past week, so I took a break from embroidering ornaments to embroider a couple hankies for him.

First up, since he is a Star Wars fan, I embroidered a Storm Trooper on one corner of a hankie, and Darth Vader on the opposite corner.

My brother and my hubby both have a common interest in pistols, so hubby helped me narrow down pistol ideas from some free coloring book pages I found online. One drawback to stitching on store-bought men’s hankies is that they are so thin that I find it difficult to stitch nice, straight lines, so the lines of the pistol aren’t exactly what I would choose them to be, but I think it still turned out nice-ish.

I’ve busted out a few more ornaments and have one more to go before Christmas. I didn’t get all the ornaments made that I wanted to, but I got some other non-Christmas things done that it felt good to get done, so all in all I’m happy with which ornaments I completed. I have lots of ornament ideas for next Christmas, and some of the embroidery designs I had planned to stitch as ornaments this Christmas will actually translate just fine to birthday presents (ie, they’re not holiday-themed designs), should I choose to do that instead. So many stitchy ideas, so little time!!

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There’s been lots of movie watching happening around here:

~ Star Trek — Hubby & I watched this tonight. I wish they’d omitted the sexual innuendo, because I think kiddo would enjoy the rest of the movie. It took a while for me to get into this flick, but once I did I really enjoyed it. It was fun seeing how the main crew members of the Starship Enterprise came together.

~ Night at the Museum 2 — Dud.

~ Reign Over Me — I like when Adam Sandler does more serious parts, and this is one of those movies. A great cast and a good plot about how people deal with tragedy in different ways.

~ My Sister’s Keeper — I’d read this book several years ago, but didn’t retain too many of the plot specifics, so the events in the movie were more or less new to me. The movie focused a lot on the sick sister, and I can’t recall if the book did that also or if there was a better balance between the two sisters’ stories — for those who read the book and also saw the movie, do you recall??? This movie was a real tearjerker, much as I knew it would be, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Alec Baldwin in a less showy role, and I thought Joan Cusack was fantastic (as she usually is).

~ Long Way Down — This is a tv documentary in which Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman take a motorcycle trip from Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa, a ride of approximately 15,000 miles (sore bum, anyone?!!) over a three-month period. Hubby and I watched the first disc last night, and are looking forward to watching the other two discs. I haven’t followed much of Ewan McGregor’s acting career, other than knowing him as young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars movies, but in watching this documentary he comes across as a funny and genuine person (and the Scottish accent is quite nice too!), and apparently he is a good singer to boot.

We’re changing things up a bit for our extended family’s Christmas Eve dinner menu this year. As we all sat around at my mom’s this evening talking about which foods sounded good, I had to chuckle when I saw that our desserts list was as long as the list for the rest of the meal. Yep, we do love our desserts!!

Looking for some sweets ideas? Maybe one of these will tickle your fancy.

~ Paula Deen’s Banana Pudding (tried and true and a family favorite!)

~ Smitten Kitchen’s Salted Brown-Butter Rice Krispy Treats (a new recipe, but you can’t hardly go wrong with rice krispy treats, and butter + salt = perfection)

~ Pretzel Treats (to satisfy the chocolate lovers) (Thanks to Tracy for this one!)

~ Pumpkin Pie

~ Mamaw T’s Lemon Icebox Pie (recipe passed along from my paternal grandma)

~ Coconut Cream Pie (Mom’s making this)

~ Divinity (if I make this, I’ll use this recipe)

Trust me, we could’ve gone on and on coming up with ideas, but one of us (that’d be my hubby, not me!) noticed our desserts list was about to surpass our list for the rest of the meal and figured it’d be okay to quit adding desserts [g].

Not a blog break . . . a break from around-the-house stuff!!

Several times a year I do a big house clean-out, and this week is one of those times. It needed a top-to-bottom cleaning, so I’m doing that — wiping the dust off the walls, cleaning off the ceiling fans, wiping the dust off the baseboards, all that fun stuff that gets done about once a year.

When we painted the dining room and living room a couple weeks ago, we didn’t put anything back on the walls. So yesterday I took everything off the walls in the master bedroom, the hall, and the bathroom and started from scratch. I made an effort to hang as many things as possible in rooms they weren’t previously in, and I’m really liking how it’s turning out. It’s a nice way to freshen things up, and to really *see* the things on the walls.

I spent a lot of time in our spare room earlier in the week, cleaning out and sorting through stuff and reorganizing and getting it as ready as I can, at this point, to become my office/craft space. I’ve decided I won’t repaint it right away — once stepkiddo’s leave is over and he heads back to California, I need to get in there and bust out some paperwork that I’ve procrastinated doing since before Thanksgiving. I’m pretty sure hubby can get me a simple desk/worktable built by year-end. I’m so looking forward to being able to spread out oodles of paperwork and be able to walk away and shut the door on it, with it still strewn all about — it’s so distracting to have to pick it all up before I’m done, then when I go back to it I have to spread it all back out and try to get my mind back around it all. Same with crafting! Anyway, I will eventually repaint the room and track down some new curtains, but it’s dropped a ways down my priority list for now.

Today / tonight I’m emptying the bookshelf at the end of our hallway and taking it completely out. It’s a faux built-in bookshelf — handy for storage, which there’s just not enough of in older homes like these!, but I’ve always thought that end of the hall would look better without the shelves there. So I’m finding new homes for the books and knick-knacks currently housed there, and removing the shelving system entirely. Our hall is paneling (fortunately it’s light-colored, but it’s still too dark for a hallway), and we will get around to repainting it one day (hopefully in 2010) — already the hallway looks much nicer and bigger without the shelves I’ve already taken down.

I’ve sort of run out steam though!! Yesterday I worked in the front yard all afternoon, raking and picking up leaves, trimming back bushes, and just generally getting the yard spiffed up for the winter. Then last night I worked til 3:30 a.m. on the inside of the house, got up today and got back to work on the inside and worked on it until a couple hours ago, when kiddo and I decided to go rent some games for him and movies for me, then we ate dinner and I haven’t found the oomph to get back up and get busy again since then!! I will definitely finish removing the hallway shelves tonight, then prop up my feet and watch a movie and do some stitching.

I still have a couple full days of cleaning out, shuffling around, reorganizing, and thorough cleaning to do, but then it’ll be done and can be ignored for a good long while!! (Although a wee bit of shuffling will happen after the Christmas tree comes down, but that’ll only be an afternoon’s worth of work.)

It doesn’t feel like Christmas Eve is a week from today. It doesn’t feel Christmasy to me yet. Maybe that feeling will kick in when I start cooking for Christmas Eve dinner? I hope so. Maybe it would help, too, if I dig out our Christmas music CDs and start listening to them. I’d love to be able to put the wrapped packages under our tree because that makes it feel Christmasy to me, but I don’t for two reasons: (1) kiddo asked me years ago to not put them out — for him, out of sight = out of mind — he’s not a nosy kid, so if he doesn’t see the presents, he won’t go searching for them; and (2) our dogs would have the wrapping paper tore off and shredded much faster than it took me to wrap everything!

Okie doke, I’m off to finish up the hallway bookshelf deconstruction. Nope, my oomph still has not returned, so I’m just adopting Nike’s slogan to “Just Do It”, even if I’m moving a little slower than I was earlier today [g].

READING

~ Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett — Loved this book. I didn’t read anything about it before I read it, and I think that allowed the story to unfold quite beautifully for me because I had no expectations. It’s a slow-moving story, but that makes sense as you read it. It did tug at my heartstrings from time to time. I had lukewarm feelings about the very, very end, but otherwise found it to be engrossing and enjoyable.

~ Magician’s Assistant, also by Ann Patchett — Coming on the heels of Bel Canto, I’m finding this book a little more difficult to get into. As with Bel Canto, I didn’t read anything about this book beforehand, so I have no idea what to expect as I read through the story.

~ Kathy Griffin: Official Book Club Selection — All in all, I’m a fan of Kathy Griffin’s comedy, and I do catch her show and specials on Bravo when I can. I enjoyed this book, with my favorite chapter being the one containing some of the emails between her and Steve Wozniak — they’re witty and funny in their communications with each other, and you can see there’s a genuine fondness for each other (he has gone on to marry someone else, but he and Kathy Griffin apparently remain good friends).

WATCHING

~ White Collar — This is a TNT series about white collar crime (it’s fictional, not reality), in which a FBI agent and forger / con artist work together to solve crimes. There’s also a subplot involving the con artist, but I didn’t see the pilot episode so I’m not totally sure of the dertails of that plot. I caught the second through last episodes of Season 1 on Hulu and, since there was a nice plot twist on the season finale, I’m looking forward to Season 2’s premiere in January. I like who-dunnit stuff, and this is a nice change from the grittier Law & Order: SVU (which I bailed on temporarily partway into Season 2).

~ Pushing Daisies — I’m watching Season 1 on WB’s website. This is a quirky little comedy that I knew only a little about before I started watching it — what I thought it would be like and what it actually is like are vastly different. It’s much, much more enjoyable and much funnier than I expected. Not to mention, the fabulous Kristin Chenoweth is in it!

~ Julie & Julia — It pains me to say this, but I did not enjoy this movie. I mean, yes, Meryl Streep was fabulous as Julia Child, but I expected that and she absolutely did not disappoint. But I found the movie, as a whole, disappointing. I had read Julie Powell’s book, Julie & Julia, several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it; I just don’t like the movie adaptation.

~ RocknRolla — I watched this primarily because Gerard Butler’s at the top of my Hollywood Hotties list, but it turns out the movie is chockfull of a great cast of actors. It’s a crime thriller + dark comedy, both things I enjoy in movies, and I got a big kick out of it.

~ American Gangster — I’d put this one off for a long time because it’s long and I wanted to be able to watch it uninterrupted. I thought both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe did a great job in their roles, and I found the whole movie enjoyable.

~ Lars and the Real Girl — This was nothing like what I expected. It was a low-key movie with a really sweet message. I would not have enjoyed watching it at the theater, but to watch at home while I was stitching worked out perfectly.

COOKING

~ Baked Lemon Pasta — I can’t say that I’ve ever had citrusy pasta before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect with this, but hubby and I found it tasty. The recipe as written made a 9×13 pan of pasta, which was way too much for two people, even eating it as leftovers, so next time I’ll half it (which will still give us leftovers).

~ Roast Chicken (stuffed with lemon, thyme, onion, and garlic) — This is a Tyler Florence recipe I’ve probably linked to before, but I thought I’d link to it again since it’s become my go-to master recipe for roast chicken. This time instead of laying bacon across the breast while the chicken cooks, I omitted the bacon completely and rubbed the chicken well with olive oil and then salt and peppered the outside really well. The bird always turns out tender and juicy, and there’s a subtle taste of lemon and thyme in the meat — actually, the meat closest to the bone tends to have a much stronger flavor of thyme and lemon, which we enjoy.

~ Pasta Carbonara — This is a dish I’ve heard of forever, but had never tried until I made it a couple nights ago. Pasta tossed with bacon, onions, eggs, cheese, and butter — a real cholesterol buster, for sure!! It was tasty (even subbing chicken broth for the white wine) and quick to prepare, but I’m not a fan of uncrisp bacon so if I make this again I’ll fiddle with the recipe in a way that allows the bacon to remain crisp.

~ Vanilla-Roasted Pears — I haven’t actually made this yet, but plan to in the next day or two so thought I’d go ahead and include it. I’m the only pear lover in our house, so this’ll be just for me!

~ Buttered Rosemary Rolls — I made these, without the rosemary, the night I made roast chicken and baked lemon pasta, and we all loved them so much that I’ve made them at dinner the last couple nights as well. I just make them in a glass pie pan (I’m not a fan of cast iron), and I omit the rosemary because (a) kiddo wouldn’t eat them with the rosemary on top, and (b) I probably wouldn’t either (even though I do love rosemary). If I opted to include any herbs on top, I’d choose thyme or another herb that’s more delicate than rosemary. Something we really love about these is the little bit of kosher salt sprinkled on top of the rolls (after they’ve been brushed with butter) before they cook — the salt really gives a nice flavor and texture contrast to the butter and bread. Like Pioneer Woman, I use the Rhodes-brand frozen uncooked rolls. I put them in my glass pie pan about 4 hours before I think I’ll be ready to cook them, and it works just fine. That last hour of thawing / rising time, they begin to smell soooooo good!!