The Thanksgiving Grind

This Thanksgiving, Chris and I traveled home to see my family. The night before Thanksgiving lunch, my mom and I set out to make cornbread dressing, and we discovered we didn't have any corn meal. You know, the corn meal to make the cornbread that goes into the cornbread dressing? 

I offered to drive to Kroger and fight the fight of everyone else who had forgotten one ingredient the day before Thanksgiving, but before I got in the car, Mom said that she did have polenta. Polenta is just a larger grind of corn than corn meal. 

So you know what? I ground (in the food processor) the polenta to get it closer to corn meal. 

And it worked! The cornbread came together perfectly. I felt very pioneer-like doing this successfully. 

But I didn't get a photo of the finished cornbread dressing. I was much too busy eating. I was able to get a group shot, thanks to my new remote control for my camera. 

A pretty good looking group.

And, yes. I did cut my hair again. It's even shorter than before, and I'm loving it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My art box

When I was much younger, I was given this: 

Inside is this:

My mom gave this art box back to me several weeks ago. Do your parents and/or grandparents do this to you? They've been holding on to all your old stuff, and they plot to reunite you with things you had long since forgotten about? So re-entered my art box into my life.

As I'm working on my new wall in the dining room, I determined I would attempt to make a piece of art. I'm really no painter at all, or sketcher, drawer, sculpture or the like, but I figured worse case would be just throwing my art away. I already had the supplies!

For my project, I focused on the watercolors. I have no idea why. They just spoke to me. 

A few days ago, Google's homepage was pea pods that spelled Google. Pea pods are special in my family, relating to a baby counting book I would always want to read involving a pea pod with one falling out. 

So I saved the Google homepage. 

I enlarged the image and focused on one pea pod. Then I outlined the edges so I could trace them. 

I played with the watercolors on a scrap of the same paper I was painting. 

And then I painted a pea pod. 

It dried a little brighter than I planed on, but for my first water coloring attempt, I find it to be a keeper. 

I've added it to my dining room wall; however, I'm waiting on a few more prints before I unveil the completed wall. For now, I'm just focusing on the fact that I painted a pea pod with water colors from approximately 1987. 

Family Christmas

Just wanted to share these pretty photos from our Christmas with my family. Unfortunately, Chris took all the photos this time so he's not in them. 

It's good to have family!

More Christmas

I let my build-up to our Christmas decorating wane, and now you probably don't care. But, here it is anyway. 

I moved somethings around this year, and added a few new pieces. 

This is our sideboard in the dining room this year.

I put all of our glass pieces together, and purchased a few new ones from Hobby Lobby, and made a collection. That's the biggest Martha Stewart lesson: instead of having glass items (or whatever) all over the house, put them together to highlight a collection. It's Martha Dramatic. 

You can also see that I used ornaments we already had. My grandmother had given me a set of all clear and gold ornaments and balls. Some years I put them on our tree, but this year, I decided to use them as a collection. Martha Dramatic. 

The red fabric is actually napkins. I used them last year for Christmas dinner. Put them all together! Martha Dramatic.

Here you can see a few of the glass items. The center piece is a vase, to the right a martini glass and to the left is a piece I bought at Hobby Lobby for 60% off. And, yes. That's glitter. Red glitter that I filled the glass with. Did you know Martha loves glitter too?

Here you can see my Christmas People? It's not Christmas without them, and you can see a few other ornaments I included. The gold balls of course, and that's a snowman sitting on the red fabric. It's difficult to see, but there's also a snowman in the small glass. Collections, people!

Oh there he is! And yes. He's sitting in glitter.

Behind our front door is a nook, and this year I put our little tree there. Last year it was on the sideboard.

With the tree is a ceramic Santa Clause

And a set of carolers.  All from my grandmother. 

On the little tree, I put some of our smaller ornaments, and my all-time favorites: my gnomes. Yes. Also from my grandmother. I LOVE them and their personalities.

How can you resist that belly?

And our big tree. Right in the window where everyone can see it. 

These are two of my favorite ornaments on our big tree. Again from my grandmother. They are both the nativity scene, but I mostly love the details. You can't find ornaments like that anymore.

And our mantel with stockings. The Allison and Chris stockings were made by my grandmother!

hi Grace. 

So that's the inside of our Christmas house. 

I think I have to say thank you to Jenny. My grandmother!!!

It would be pretty bare without all her stuff. 

THANK YOU AND MERRY CHRISTMAS

From My Husband

My husband is IN LOVE with Christmas. It's definitely he's favorite time of the year. 

Today, I received this link from him, and I had to share. 

I didn't know my family could dance so well together!

Click HERE for Christmas joy.

Thanksgiving Success!

Thanksgiving 2010: Success!

This is my beautiful turkey. Can you believe it? It cooked and looked so pretty. And it was tasty too.

Here I am taking the turkey out of the brine. 

Jack poured everyone a little champagne

And we had my deviled eggs as hor d'oeurves

Here's me and Jenny and Thad. So glad they were able to come!

Here's my family minus Chris, who is behind the camera.

Jenny taught me how to make dressing.

And then it was time for the big reveal.

I was so proud of how pretty this bird turned out!

The next morning, we all met back up for some breakfast.

 And after everyone had eaten their fill, and we said our goodbyes, it was time to clean!

 

The turkey was huge, and I knew I wanted to make stock, so I spent some time chopping up the turkey carcass, and placed half in each of two pots.  

 After two days, I was able to cook 4 pots full of stock. I refrigerated some of it and froze the rest. I know it's going to be delicious, and save me so much money at the grocery store. 

This evening I cleaned up all the turkey remains and packaged up the rest of the stock, when I came across the wishbone!
 (This is a Christopher Cook photo)

So we had to split it.

And I won! I got my wish, but I'm not telling what it was.