Christmas Eve (at last!)

Tree Trimmed: Check
Presents Wrapped: Check

Work Completed: Check (should be qualified with "all the work that is going to get done")

Managing the anxiety of kids going crazy with anticipation: Check

Overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of everyone: Check

We didn't send Christmas cards this year. I know, so lame. But we have a whole wall full of beautiful faces and warmest wishes. Love getting the cards from everyone...and my annual Christmas Wall of Fame is just as robust as on previous years. Thanks for the luvs even though we didn't manage to get cards out! Maybe something in the new year?!

Merry Christmas to the whole world! Even if you've never heard of Jesus Christ, and those who have but don't believe he was the savior, I wish you the blessings of this season. May your heart be filled with happiness and peace be yours. ♥

Grateful for:

1) Thoughtful neighbors

2) Generous friends

3) Joni. But she'll be getting her very own post here soon. Very soon.

THE Answer has arrived...

(This one no longer applies)

Apparently, 42 is The Answer-- to Life, The Universe, and Everything. So this is going to be a fantastic year...I can tell.

Of course, once you turn 43, it no longer applies, so I intend to enjoy it to the max! Bring it!!!

Grateful for:
1) Such an outpouring of warm wishes, love, and extreme generosity! And it's only just morning still!
2) Honest people...left my iTouch at a restaurant and they contacted me on facebook to tell me it was there waiting for me.
3) Today.

Blue's Favorite Things

So I don't, as a general rule, ever watch TV. Exceptions include sometimes when I'm when I'm flying (but not working), or if I'm flat with the flu, and every blue moon when I have a Mount Everest mound of laundry to fold...I'll put it on while I tackle the beast.

But a couple weeks ago I had a project to do one afternoon, and turned on the telly to pass the time. Oprah was on, which I have seen on occasion, but not in ages. And that day she was doing her "Oprah's Favorite Things" show...in which she (and her sponsors?) showcase products that Oprah ostensibly loves and wants to share....with everyone in her studio audience. Because everyone would love whatever Oprah loves, right?!

While it was fun to fantasize about being one of the lucky audience members who happened to be there on the right day to be a recipient of all these things, there was something so almost gaudy about it at the same time. Like it was just too much. Non-stop stuff.

Maybe I'm secretly envious, because over all I think, good for them! I don't think I'm an actual chrematophobe, but I do have to fight tirelessly against an overactive frugality monitor that makes buying something as simple as toilet paper a major ordeal. Price per square foot, one or two ply, regular or double roll. (It's exhausting to be me sometimes!)

So just for today, let's just put my pathological ways aside...and go on a little fantasy trip to a place called

Blue's Favorite Things
A Fantasy Wish List of Sorts

First, I've always had ridiculously sensitive skin. So mostly I don't do anything to it, but Estee Lauder's Idealist Pore Minimizer Skin Refresher is the most amazing stuff I've ever used on my skin. I am totally in love with it. Nothing has ever felt so nice, and I love the smell and texture and everything about it...except the price. Hence, infrequent samples from the department store make-up counter will have to do for now, but if I ever do my own my Favorite things Give-Away, you are all getting a big jar or two of this!



My next favorite thing is a product I started using when I was a freshman in high school, after discovering it in the make-up room of my tv production class. It is Max Factor's Pan-Stick Ultra Creamy (True Beige color). It has been my staple face make-up ever since, and I know, I know, it's horrible stuff! It'll clog your pores and give you boils and cancer and take 27 years off your life. Whatever. It works for me...because I have the WORLDS DARKEST CIRCLES under my eyes. I look like I'm eleven hundred years old without makeup. Old and tired. And probably grumpy, too. But this stuff is amazing at concealing my purple bags.

So that's why I WISH I'd heard they were discontinuing sales of it here in US stores earlier this year...because I would have stocked up big time. They still sell it in stores outside the USA and Canada...so if I ever make it to Australia or Europe, I'll definitely be exporting a bunch. Initially, you couldn't buy it anywhere in the US at all, but I just discovered they are now selling it at Drugstore.com. But I hate paying to shop online, and then add on shipping in addition. So I'm still digging out the dregs from my last couple tubes of it (or should I say sticks?)


The tastiest thing on my list would probably be gelato. Gelato is my favorite frozen treat. If I worked in a gelato shop, it would be disastrous for the owner. I'd probably take up residence inside their freezer case. I first tasted gelato at Harrod's in London in 1994, and honestly, my first thought was "Why don't we have this in the US?" I was positive it would be a major hit. I even spoke to the employees about opening a franchise in Chicago, where we lived at the time, but that's just so out of my realm of experience. Besides, I don't actually want to run a business, I just like eating the stuff.

It was years and years before I saw "gelato" anywhere in the states, and even then, it tasted nothing like that amazing stuff in England. But finally it's here! And we have a number of new gelateria's that have opened up nearby recently, so whenever I am able to have a mini-splurge, I try to incorporate gelato into the moment. My two favorites are Capo Gelateria and Bellissimo Gelato, and if you ever visit me, we will have to go out for some.

Spearmint Chapstick. Yes, good, old-fashioned Chapstick...the green one. Target & Walmart stopped selling it. So did my grocery store, so for a while I was stressed out that it, too, had been discontinued, like so many of the things I am a fan of. But after a chat with Pfizer corporate headquarters, I was told that Walgreens has it, so I am saved, because not only my face, but my lips, too, have sensitivity issues, and this stuff never stings or burns, plus it's nice and moisturizing and cooling. I can't go a night without it or I'll wake up with big, dry, Grand Canyon-sized cracks. Chapstick: Don't leave home without it!


And now for a very basic sewing machine. I actually have one already, but my cute little Singer Featherweight, while it still works, was built in 1962, and has absolutely no frills (here's a photo of one). Forward and backward is all it does. I adore it, and it's very portable in it's little box, but now Bunch is learning to sew, and my antiquey unit doesn't operate like the newer machines they have at school. So an upgrade would be a fun addition for her. And me, too! I've actually never used any other machine, except for the few weeks I took a sewing class in 6th grade, and I don't remember much about that experience at all.

This one is kind of random, but I am in love with rocks, trees, and water. This part is about rocks, though, and I've always thought it would be fun to have something like this unit to do some amateur rock tumbling.
We live out here in the desert, and every time I work in the yard I am digging up rocks in the soil. We go on hikes and find rocks, we travel to other places and find rocks. Sometimes we find really cool ones, and I'd love to see what lies beneath the surface. And making cool necklaces and such.


My next item is even more random, but I'm driving a 10 year old hubcapless Sienna Minivan. Hubcaps, being purely aesthetic, are not on my list of needs. But I suspect they'd reduce my trashiness quotient quite a bit. Of course if I were Oprah, I'd just get everyone in my audience a new car...forget hubcaps! But I'm not Oprah, and I really am fine with my denty car...it gets us where we need to be, and it's been a reliable little swaggerwagon for our family and the kids I haul around. Sometimes it's the little things, you know?!

Perhaps this is on my mind because of the buzzing sound that the piano tuner didn't manage to get rid of, which kept getting worse till tonight, when I actually tried to eradicate it and in the process, a screw broke off on the keyboard lid. So the buzz is on hold till I get a screw-extractor and remove the piece and proceed with my little project. But I love the piano. We are SO fortunate to have a well-used, serviceable parlor grand that we got at a church auction. But someday I hope to have a beautiful black grand piano. Black is just my favorite...it's all over my house. Our couches and shelves are black, and our picture frames. I even thought about painting the piano black...but a little research left me with no doubt about what a foolish notion that was. So it remains a brown piano. But someday...someday, a black one and I shall make beautiful music together. Without buzzing that the tuner can't get rid of.


There wasn't a funeral service, but both our desktop computer monitors have died this past few months. We are beyond grateful for the loan of a monitor from my SIL, which we hooked up to Doc's computer so we were back in business. But then my laptop started having an identity crisis. I don't know if it's is viral, bacterial, or if it just has cancer or something, but it's been on the fritz for a while, and now seems to be slowly eking out the rest of it's life. Naturally, two weeks into NaNoWriMo it died for a while. After a miraculous resurrection, it contracted a near-fatal virus, requiring a week's stay in the computer hospital. Upon it's discharge, it still gave me problems, and I don't have audio ever, and only intermitant monitor, but I managed to save all my most crucial files (loud sigh of relief!). So while I'll be sad (RIP PC! Sniff.), I won't be surprised the next time it simply won't come on. Thus, a complete wish list fantasy would include becoming a 100% Mac family. Macs for everyone! Mac Mac here and a Mac Mac there. Some svelte new MacAir number would be awesome.

And I already mentioned this a few months ago in my Dream Big post, but for a final complete, utter fantasy item, I would need to include this house on the creek! Or any house on the creek in our neighborhood. I'm just in love with the water. And the trees. And the rocks. And the sound of the creek. And our neighborhood. And so that would have to be included on any Favorite Things Wish List of mine.


What is your Big (or Monstrous) and Small Things Wish List? (cause you might have noticed that nothing on here is a need...just a whole lotta things.).


Grateful for:
1) Big dreams. There's a kind of magic in them, you know?!
2) Generous friends.
3) Harmony.

38,000 Feet Up!

I'm on a wifi-enabled jet, and so I thought I'd post my first official blog from the sky! I only have my little iTouch, since I've been dealing with complete laptop FAIL this month (hence, the book is back burnered tho' I did manage to get it saved before the crash and then the nasty virus.). (And on that topic, I think there will actually be a special place in purgatory for people who create and unleash viruses upon the world. End of rant.)

Anyway. So it's December...which has ironically always been my favorite month. I guess it wasn't that ironic~growing up in the land of sun and perennially mild weather. But that was just the first half of my life. The rest of it has been spent living in snowy winter climes, with dark mornings and evenings...and I don't really love cold dark days. But I have always loved the festive feeling of the month, and the hope of happy moments it seems to bring. While I was a kid I didn't relish having my birthday right before Christmas, these days it doesn't matter somehow. So while you'd think I'd prefer a nice June, hot July, or even a scorching August, for me, December is still the best month of all. The End.

This has been a year of trying to live by my motto at the top of this page~"Come What May And Love It"...and doing so has been part of the happiness I've enjoyed. I'm excited to embrace my 2011 motto...which I'll reveal in January. I've also been pondering what my honest goals for myself are for the coming year. It's going to be a fantabulosa year!

Well, time to land. Bye!
Grateful for
1) commuter privileges
2) friends and coworkers
3) free wifi!

Blueberry Jumble

Ever since I lived in Vermont, I have been a fan of the blueberry. So when I tasted Magnolia Bakery in New York City's Blueberry Jamboree a few months ago, I nearly died and was reborn. It was that good.

Since I live over 2000 miles from the bakery, I searched the internets and found a recipe someone had put up. I don't know if it is actually the Magnolia bakery recipe, but I kind of doubt it because parts of it didn't make sense and I had to modify it a bit.

So I noted the changes I made, and have re-labeled it Blueberry Jumble. I made it for Thanksgiving yesterday, and it was superb. I'm posting it here so that A) I know where it is in the future when I want to make it, and B) so other fans of The Mighty Blueberry can try it out too.

BLUEBERRY JUMBLE

Blueberry Topping

• 2 cups blueberries
• 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons water

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ and then later you'll need...

• 1 ½ more cups blueberries
• 1 ½ teaspoons lemon zest
  

Crust

• 3/4 cups unsalted butter--room temperature
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup toasted pecans, chopped fine and toasted ( I toasted, chopped, and then lightly toasted again)

Filling

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 pounds cream cheese--room temperature, cut into chunks
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

What You Do

Prepare the crust:

• Toast the pecans, then run through food processor to chop. If you like, you can toast a little more after chopping, to get the innerds toasted. Or you can not. But I did.
• Melt butter and combine with flour and pecans.
• Butter a large (aprox. 9" x 13") glass dish and press crust into it. Mine was oval, but rectangular would work too. A triangle would be even cooler, but oddly, I haven't ever seen triangular bakeware.
• Bake at 325°F for about 15 minutes or until it just starts to lightly brown. I had to keep mine in for about 25 mins., but it could be that my oven is way off. Just keep an eye on it!
• Cool to room temperature.

While crust is baking and cooling, prepare blueberry topping:

• Dissolve cornstarch in water and set aside.
• In a large pot combine 2 cups blueberries and both sugars.
• Cook on medium-high heat stirring constantly until sugar is combined and blueberries start to pop and come to a boil.
• Add cornstarch/water mixture to the pot and stir until mixture becomes thick.
• Remove from the heat and stir in remaining 1 ½ cups blueberries, combine gently.
• Add in the lemon zest and continue to combine gently and fully.
• Cool to room temperature and refrigerate until ready to use.
  

While blueberry topping is cooling, prepare the cream filling:

• Whip heavy cream and set aside.
• Beat together cream cheese and confectioners' sugar.
• Fold whipped cream into cream cheese mixture until combined.
• Spread cream mixture onto cooled crust.
• Top with blueberry topping.
• Refrigerate for 1 hour or until set.
• Serve cold.
• Enjoy!

Guardian Angels

When I was engaged to wed Doc, my darling future mother-in-law offered to see if her mother, Beth, would be willing to let me wear a special heirloom necklace as my “something old, something borrowed” item.

I loved Grandma Beth. I had felt a kinship with her from the start. From the moment we met, three years earlier, she had been my ally. She seemed to me to be the person who most closely matched my conviction that against all odds, Doc and I would end up marrying one day. When he left for two years on a mission, she regularly sent me cards and sweet letters, encouraging me to hang in there and making me feel like I was part of the family already.

But her health had deteriorated significantly in recent times, and was so poor by the time of our wedding, she wasn’t going to be able to attend the ceremony herself. Wearing her special necklace would be a way of having her near me during that day of days, and I was grateful for the kind offer from Doc’s mom to bring it for me to wear.

After the wedding, I had every intention of getting the necklace right back to her, but none of us wanted to trust it to the postal system. So it sat in a small manila envelope on my nightstand for a few weeks, awaiting a visit from my new mother in law, at which point we would give it to her to return to her mother.

The day she arrived at our house, she hadn't mentioned the necklace yet, but while she and Doc were talking, I went into our room to get it for her only to discover that it wasn’t there. It had been there since the day we moved in, but now, it wasn't!

I searched everywhere I could think to look, frantic about it’s absence, while she visited with Doc in the other room, but without any luck. Not wanting to be gone too long and draw attention to myself, I returned to the living room. I was praying the entire time she was with us that she wouldn’t ask me for the necklace, and to my astonishment, she never brought it up.

As soon as she had flown back home she phoned us, lamenting not getting the necklace for her mother. “But I’ll be coming out in a few months again” she said, planning to get it for sure during that visit.

I searched in earnest. I turned the room upside down looking for it. Doc was mystified by it’s disappearance as well. I emptied the nightstand drawer, took the drawer out of it's stand, looked behind, under and above the drawer…in case it had gotten wedged in there somehow. But it was simply gone.

We concluded that the necklace, in it’s small manila envelope, must have recently been knocked off the nightstand at some point without my notice, into the trash can that sat on the floor next to it, and was taken out with the rest of the garbage. That was the only explanation that made sense, but it made my heart sick. I ached with dread over breaking the news to my mother in law. As her mother’s life continued it’s slow wrap up, getting the necklace back to her before it ended seemed increasingly important.

I was wrought with stress over this. This was NOT how I wanted my relationship with my new in-laws to begin. I felt terrible guilt; it seemed like the worst possible first impression, and I was in misery over my carelessness with her treasured heirloom. Every time we spoke on the phone, it seemed to come up. The stress of avoiding the truth of the situation was eating me, but I couldn’t bring myself to concede it’s disappearance.

A few months later, my mother in law told us she was coming out for another visit. I both longed to see her and dreaded the thought…knowing that this time she would expect that little manila envelope to be placed in her hand as soon as she arrived.

I had prayed for help about what to do, but no answer had come. In the face of her mother slowly dying, I dearly wanted to avoid adding to her distress by admitting that the necklace was gone, but the day was finally upon me.

The night before her arrival, I was getting ready for bed, and like I had done a hundred times in the past few months, I opened my nightstand drawer to retrieve my lip balm, which I used every night before bed. Sitting there, right on top of my lip balm perfect as you please, was a small, familiar manila envelope. I looked over at Doc and said, “where did you find it?!”

“Find what?”, he asked.

I pointed at the envelope, almost afraid to touch it. “That.”

“What is it?” he said.

I carefully picked it up and opened the flap, then tipped the contents of it into my palm. The heirloom necklace spilled out, in exactly the same condition as it had been in those many months before when I had worn it on our wedding day.

“I didn’t put it there”, Doc told me.

After a searching look at him to make sure he wasn't teasing me, I knew this was a miracle. One of the first miracles I’d ever personally witnessed. I knew that necklace had been long gone, but now, amazingly, some guardian angel had retrieved it from the bottom of a heap at the dump and returned it in my hour of need. I did offer a most heartfelt prayer of gratitude for this tender mercy.

The next morning my mother in law arrived, and I handed her the envelope as soon as she came in the door. She gratefully received it and I was able to completely enjoy that visit. After leaving us, she traveled to visit her dear mother, where she at last returned her beloved heirloom necklace to her.

When Grandma Beth died not too long after that, my mother in law and her sister were sorting through their mother’s things. They searched high and low for that necklace. She knew it was there, somewhere, but neither of them ever found it. It was a mystery to them both, but I always felt like it’s return was only a loan. A gift, given solely to avoid incurring yet another loss during a time of grieving, and once it had served it’s purpose, it was returned to the place it had gone because of my carelessness. I've always felt like Grandma Beth knows, and she's okay with it.



Grateful for
1) The reality of miracles
2) This day
3) Audio books

Cake Week Finale

After all the other celebrations this week, tonight was the family party. Here's the chocolate fudge cake I made, with butter cream frosting and strawberry and chocolate fondant. It weighted like twelve pounds, and took me 9 hours to do. I don't plan to make any more cakes in 2010. The End.





Grateful for:
1) Creativity
2) Doc's presence at the party tonight for multiple reasons
3) My nephew fell and split his head open during the party, but he's going to be alright.

11-11-2010

Two-layer Cakes baked: 18
Batches of buttercream frosting whipped up: 18
Bowls of assorted sprinkles, candies and other deco: 9
Bags of frosting with inter-changable decorating tips: 6
Totally great kids in attendance: 21
Large pizzas consumed: 4
Liters of Soda drunk: 8
Ice cream sundae's served: 19
Nights in a row of too little sleep while flying and then baking: 7
Having a happy fourteen year old daughter: Priceless

The back of my car with the cakes loaded up to take to the party


Scenes from the party, including a number of the guests and their creations




























The little sister she never had...


Group shot of some of the guests



Grateful for:
1) Shelah & Ed
2) Good girls for Bunch to have as friends
3) Time to work on my NaNoWriMo again! (I'm a solid week behind now.)