Stickin' It to the Groceryman

The Great Twenty-Ten Put Up

4 lbs red grapes, frozen
4.5 lbs bing cherries,pitted & frozen
2 lbs Rainier cherries, frozen pits and all
1 gallon raspberry jam (canned by Hubbie)
48 oz Strawberry Orange jam
48 oz Strawberry Orange syrup

Twenty - Ten Harvest Totals

12 pickling cucumbers (that were quickly turned into pickles)
3 Purple Cherokee tomatoes
5 oz cherry tomatoes
5.25 lbs German Butterball potatoes
5.5 lbs 'Russian Banana' fingerling potatoes
2 lbs 'Candy' onions
3 lbs sugar snap peas
4 oz rhubarb
1 gallon bag of salad greens
Razzies: 5 lbs (that have entered the door to be counted)
1 lb blueberries

Shazam...try to beat that 2011! Please do...especially if i plant 11 tomato plants again!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

You're the fairest of them all!

We found this today in a consignment shop in the mall. It's the first vintage mirror I've seen that had frame and silver both in good shape.

The owner was willing to make a deal.

I can't wait to see what it looks like in our dining room!

Elves in the Kitchen

Busy day today.

We're putting the new oven through Christmas Boot Camp.

2 pans of manicotti, 3 different cookies, an apple cake, quick bread, crackers, and chocolate coated candy canes.

Whew! Thank goodness it all doesn't stay here!

Pictures to come.

Christmas :: Seattle Style

On Wednesday, we headed to Seattle with our dear friends for a theater production of Lyle the Crocodile. I had mentioned to my friend that i would like to show Riona around Seattle while it's all dressed up for the holidays. If you're there, it's something you should see. And you don't have to stay up late for light displays, since we are getting dark here around 3:30 to 4pm.

Here are some highlights of our tour:

The Space Needle all decked out with it's Christmas Tree on top.

Different holiday nutcrackers displayed all around town.
Outdoor lighted walkways at the Seattle Center
The Macy's Star (formerly the Bon Marche' Star) at 5th and Pine

and the gingerbread displays for charity by the famous local chefs:

this one is a tribute to the house boats on Lake Union

The city is looks great when it's all decked out for Christmas!

For more Sunday Stills holiday decorations, lookie here.

Washed Away

What a weekend! I think we are all still recouping; Moose most of all at our place. I can't imagine what it must be like for the families in the area dealing with major flooding...especially this time of year.

Stories of people canoeing through Snoqualmie, tweets from Wsdot about the Tolt River flowing at 6500 cfs just a few hours after the rain started (flood stage on the Tolt is a mere 2500 cfs., Moose discovering that the info presented to him on the estimated amount of flow in the Green River was way too conservative. Thankfully the Green River Valley and the Howard Hanson dam survived this latest lashing from Mother Nature.

Of course, because our culture is so business-centric, you don't hear many estimates on the number of people who live or work in harm's way in the valley. But you hear numerous times that the nation's second largest industrial area this side of the Mississippi exists just in Kent's portion of the valley. That alone is scary, especially in a recession period. Who insures the businesses that stay in a flood plain? What does that do to the price of goods coming out of this area?

All that seems trivial though, when I see pictures like this from my friend who lives on the Green:

those lite green things at the bottom of the picture? her deck rail. Above that, those black things behind the bushes? Sandbags. Her backyard is actually about 5 to 6 feet lower than the levee that those sandbags sit on. And her house isn't on stilts. Thank goodness her main living area is on the 2nd floor of her home, but truthfully, who is going to stay in their residence when their backyard (and downstairs) could be filled with 5 ft. of water??

Moose's Bunting

One more...that's it. I promise. If i don't stop myself, i'm never going to get any of the baking done. :)

Which in other news.....

Inaugural Run

Our oven went out while i was making our Thanksgiving dinner for the three of us. I know, it was such an obvious thing for an oven to do. Ahekk!

So it's been a trying 3 weeks, but we've finally returned to normal cooking procedures around here. Hooray!

Thank goodness, Moose installed it just in time for today's math lesson: baking brownies!

Have i told you yet how much we love the Saxon math program??!

(incase you were wondering, i did put out the clean hand towel for the photo.) :)

More Mood (home)Movies

Here are a combination of the adult and advanced Irish dancing classes from SRS-Kent.

Didn't they do an awesome job?

Mini Me Bunting

These are a little gift for a friend who i previously agreed to a "no gift" exchange this year. Oops. whistle, whistle

Well, in recieving this gift, she'll have really been giving me one: 2 hours of busy fingers that really wanted chocolate but instead were busy sewing. Hooray! I'll have lost 15 pounds before you know it!

One more bunting to go i think today (for Moose's office...sneaky sneaky! That's what a good wife has to do when her hubbie doesn't want to display his Star Wars Christmas gear she collected for his office), then it will be time for dinner. :)

Christmas Spirit

Just a little something from Cookie Monster to put you in the holiday mood!

Deck the Halls With One More Bunting...

Fa la la la la....

Made this today in just a few hours. Wishing now i had gotten some more material so i could have made more!!

A Hand-Me-Down I Can Get Behind

Last year, i started trying to build a collection of select Shiny Brites and other Christmas tree ornaments from yesteryear. I had my parents on the look out for a couple...you never know what they'll find along their travels between the NW US and BC.

They were successful in finding a few non-coated ones at a shop for me. Then my mom mentioned that i needed to exercise caution, as she had some things in the attic that might be what i was looking for.

During the spring clean, she found what she was looking for. My grandma's Christmas ornaments. Everything in there was in decent shape for the most part, aside from a few broken bulbs that were causalities of a trip from CT to ID, via their brief interlude in AZ. Some of the tops are rusty, some of the finishes are flaking. For me, that just adds to their charm.

So this year, rather than pull out all our Christmas trimmings, we are keeping it simple. We've erected our Fake Fir and Cookie and i decked it out this week. Here are a few samples of the eye candy hanging from our tree.

An ornament depicting the town i'd love to call home...maybe it's in Vermont.

Vermont would be nice.

What can you say bad about a place with fresh maple syrup and Bernie Sanders?

These grapes are great...we have some in blue also.

This is one of the Brites that isn't coated with the silver on the inside. Curiously, there was another one that's an exact replica that is coated, so Cookie decided it was a good idea to hang them together for the chance to give her friends a quick history lesson when they see our tree. :)

Incase you don't know, there was a businessman named Eckardt in the early 1900's that started importing handblown glass ornaments from Germany, as it became popular here in the States to bedeck your trees. In the 30's, knowing a war was on the horizon that could damage his importing business, he teamed up with Corning Glass Co.'s lightblub division to make Shiny Brites. Once WWII's rations took effect, the silver lining and lacquer for the Brites where in short supply, thus leaving bulbs translucent glass.

Some of the Brites were sold plainly, straight off the assembly line at Woolworth's. Other's were taken to the businessman's factory, where they were hand painted.

One thing i've read is that toward the latter part of the war around '43, the bulbs were actually made with paper tops or cardboard as the metal caps and hooks were victims to the war's needs and stock had ran out.

One way to tell if you have pre-war or during the war or post-war Brites is the stamp on the cap.

"Made in the US of A" = pre-war/war era

"Made in the USA" = post-war

And of course, if the stamp reads Germany on it, then that is definitely pre-war. :)

I was afraid to combine any of this set with our ornaments, for fear of not remembering what's who's. However, seems the frugality of Grandma's generation will help me decipher who's are who's--she used bent bobby pins and old wire to fashion many of her ornament hooks. Some of the ornaments have simple string on them for hanging.

Makes me like this even that much better.

I wonder what my grandma would have had to say about her great-granddaughter hanging her collection of ornaments on our tree this year?

One thing is for sure, i am very thankful that my parent's saved these treasures!

A New Visitour

During the snow, we had a new little visitour to our trees out back. He made me remember that photographing birds like like trying to photograph a 3 year old.

Come on you....show your little face!

Ha ha, gotcha!

He has the most beautiful steel blue eyes.

If my bird book wasn't packed, i'd be able to figure out what kind of winged creature he is. :(