here comes santa claus . . .

Dan has a Santa suit. I made if for him when Jack was a wee boy. This year he got a chance to wear it to a family's house in our neighborhood who has never had an American Christmas (they're from Africa). Before he went to their house he had the boys sit on his lap. Luke was afraid of him and in his high chair eating, no pictures of that.

Charlie was a little nervous to sit on his lap, even though he's seen Dan get dressed in the suit.

Sam was giggly,

And Jack gave him a big kiss!

gingerbread crinkles

Maybe you can't call them gingersnaps because they're not hard. I don't know, but chewy ginger cookies is a boring name. I need a better one. These are my neighbor gifts and Dan's favorite cookies. (Thanks to Pam, I'm changing the name of these cookies to gingerbread crinkles.)

The recipe (which I got online from someone named Judd Antin):

2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup dark molasses

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375. Whisk first 7 dry ingredients together, set aside. Beat shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg, molasses, and vanilla to shortening sugar mixture and mix until just combined. Mix dry ingredients into wet one cup at a time. Form dough into 1 inch balls and coat balls in sugar. Bake for 9 - 11 minutes. Golden and cracked is a good sign. Makes 2 1/2 - 3 dozen.

gingerbread contest winner

Thanks Marianne for reminding me. Combined with the results from the facebook poll the winner is . . . me and Dan! Ours was the one with the red and green roof.

Jamie and Katie did the pink and brown one, which actually has a very cool roof (though not water tight because the shingles started from the bottom) and a lovely rock veneer wall ala 1972 made of skor bars.

Dad and Andy did the gumdrop one. It started out pretty bad, but then Dad fixed it all up while Andy watched TV. Plus the chimney is super cool (not to mention the gumdrop facade, which you all fell for.)

Mom and Emily did the purple and green one. Emily was a tiny bit of a perfectionist and wasted lots of candy scraping off and starting again. But they had a very lovely roof, a very cool chimney, and a very cool green m&m thing going on (I'm sorry I don't know the architectural house part name.)

I think we should do it again next year! Thanks Em for the idea.

peach pit jelly

I think you use 25 peach pits. Apparently you can also use the skins of the peaches. You just put them in a pan and cover with water 2 inches over the pits. Then you bring to a boil and continue to boil for 10 minutes or until water becomes red. Strain pits and skins and use the juice for jam. I just followed directions for peach jelly on my pectin instructions. The first time I made these they were an even prettier red on the top and gradated to orange on the bottom.

neighbor gifts

I like doing neighbor gifts, but I don't do it every year, depending on the craziness factor. This year (and last year) I had the ingenious idea to make peach pit jelly (you steep the pits in water and get this lovely tasting peachy juice). I never got to it last year but I bought all the jars. So I did it the other day and it only made 6 cups! My list is a little larger than 6 so I need some more ideas. I was thinking cookies, since they're easy and the kids can help too. What are some of your neighbor gift ideas? I think the kids will like to get in on the packaging and giving too.




Gifts I've done in the past: my own salsa, my own shortbread cookies, and my own caramels.

green Christmas idea

I love Ready Made magazine. This month they had a whole page on green ideas for Christmas. I can't find it right now, but the best one was this:

Instead of using those new clothing boxes to wrap clothes in, just use a cereal box. I've already put 2 sets of pjs in 2 big cereal boxes and they work perfectly. Reuse baby.

holiday mix tape

I've added a new holiday mix on the sidebar. This new one has some of my favorite Christmas music. I couldn't find a few really great ones (White Christmas by Ella Fitzgerald, Jingle Bells by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Kenny Wayne Shepherd) but I did get some other really great ones. Hope you like listening to it!

ps - the old one is still there it just doesn't start automatically.

behind the scenes of "Frohe Weihnachten" 2007

Well, I think you've all received your Christmas letters by now. And thanks to all of you who think I had anything at all to do with the writing of it. It's very flattering that you think I could write such hilarious stuff. I do have to admit that (see first post) I am not a great writer. I can be funny at times, but not all at once, and definitely not in a newsletter. (PS - I have helped with writing parts of the Christmas letters in the past, but those were very small parts.) What I'm trying to say is . . . all the credit for the writing goes to Dan.

However, I will take credit for being the art director/photographer/layout editor/editor for content/printer/producer/mail room operator.

What an undertaking! When Dan first mentioned this idea, we were on our way home from Spokane at Thanksgiving. I was trying not to freak out at the idea of trying to get these done before Christmas. I was really thinking it would never happen if Dan was in charge. But around Dec. 15th he mentioned it again.

The first thing to figure out was the glasses and turtlenecks. We don't own one turtleneck in this household because, as you may or may not know, I hate them. (Actually, now we do own one turtleneck, for Luke. We didn't have any baby friends with black turtlenecks.) Luckily we were able to borrow some just to shoot the pictures. Dan really wanted different glasses for everyone, but I'm not sure where he was planning on getting those. There were only 3 pairs of glasses, which we shared. So we started taking pictures.

We had to bribe the boys to do it. We recruited Jack first but he started crying when we told him it required wearing a turtleneck, slicking back his hair, and wearing silly glasses. (I think he thought he would be made fun of - cute little Jack.)

Sam was easily bribed with 2 quarters. His shots were pretty good too. I think at this point no one else wanted to take pictures and probably we were working on several other things at the time because it was the weekend. So another week went by . . . (and I was still trying not to freak out.)

The next time we decided to take pictures I had just about had it (I was freaking out). I was ready to send this picture (or one like it) on one of those photo cards which would read "due to a fight, there will be no letter this year."

This just wasn't funny enough for Dan. It was at this point that he decided to get up from reading (because that's what you do when you want a Christmas letter to go out before Christmas and there's only a week left, and some of those days in the week are the actual holidays and no mail goes out) and take the rest of the pictures (meaning I took the rest of the pictures - but he did get out of bed). I think we bribed Charlie with candy and Luke was perfect, of course. Jack joined in after he saw that we were all doing it and that it was actually funny. We were pros at that point, so our pictures went quickly.

For someone who's not a writer this post is becoming lengthy! So - I'll sum up. Formatting pictures took a while because we still had to figure out how to do it. Our computer wouldn't turn on after a power outage and we weren't sure it ever would (it did after the letters were sent). Luckily I had emailed Dan the photos before that happened. Trying to line up the photos took me at least 10 hours and lots of swearing because I wasn't doing it in the right format. When I handed it over to Dan it took him 10 minutes. I printed a whole box of photo paper (the nice kind) with my color ink cartridge on empty. It ruined the whole box. It took me a few days to figure out what was wrong (why would you need a color cartridge to print B&W?) Many hours and many dollars later, we finally got it done! I hope you all enjoyed it! We may never do it again!

PS - even with all the problems . . . I love technology . . . always and forever.

Christmas pjs

I love stripes! When I saw these red and white ones, I had to get them. I wish the stars weren't there, but what are you going to do when you're at Steve and Barry's and they're only $8 a pair and they're the only red and white stripes around? They didn't have any in Luke's size, but luckily I found his at Gymboree in the same shopping trip.

great gift

Emily E had us for Christmas and made these little guys for the boys. I'm not sure she'd ever do it again, but aren't they great? Names (from L to R above): Max (Jack's), Smelly (Charlie's), Mappy (Sam's). They each named their own.