Christmas tree update and a giveaway

So our live Christmas tree has been up for several days now, and it's still standing! No cat climbing the trunk. No dog knocking it over with her behind. Last night we added the ornaments, and we have our fingers and toes crossed that the animals in the house will continue to leave the tree alone. 

In other news, who wants $50? Everyone, right? Who wants $50 at Snapfish? Everyone, right? I'm very excited to announce that Snapfish has offered a $50 gift card to one of my readers. It's very exciting because Snapfish has just launched a new line of home decor items, created by Genevieve Gorder, host of “Dear Genevieve” and judge on “Design Star,” both on HGTV. Don't you love her?

I've got my eye on a canvas print. 

It's the holidays. You want to freshen up your house for parties and/or the new year. You want this gift card. How do you get this gift card you ask? Leave me a comment on this post telling me what is top on your wish list for Christmas. A new purse? Peace on Earth? A car with a big red bow on it? Tell me all about it. 

You can leave your comment until December 7th at 6pm. After that, comments will be closed and a random winner will be chosen. Yay! 

Happy holidays!

Trimming my first real tree and taking bets on my cat

Say hello to my first live Christmas tree. It's in the midst of being lit. 

It's a real tree!

With tree stems, seed looking things and everything.

Grace doesn't seem to think much about it. She sniffed it a bit while it was drying out in the garage, but she seems kind of over it. 

But what about this guy? 

What's he looking at? Is he eyeing the tree? Does he have a plot to take it over and climb to its very top? 

We're not sure either. So the tree will sit, lit and waiting, two days before an ornament touches its branches. If the tree survives two days, surely Porter will no longer care. Surely. 

So what's your vote? Will the tree survive a cat's curiosity? Leave me a comment and tell me your vote. Happy holidays!

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!

Ceramic magic

A few Saturdays ago, I met a group of women at a paint-your-own-pottery shop in Germantown, Paint A Piece. 

I've visited shops like this, mostly in SeaSide. You pick your ceramic piece and paint it. Pretty simple. The nice thing is that the shop has all the paints, and they fire the pieces in the kiln for you. 

Last year in SeaSide, I wanted to make a ring holder, but they didn't have the piece. I don't know if you think about a ring holder a lot, but I do. I always think how I would use one by my sink so that I could put my ring and small jewelry on it while I'm washing my hands/face/etc.

Paint A Piece did have a ring holder, so I was all over it!

I decided to try one of their pottery glazes. It paints on a totally different color than it fires in the kiln. The nice thing is that they have some built-in textures and colors. I chose the glaze called Robin's Egg. We have brown and blues in our master bedroom, and I thought the ring holder would fit in well in our bathroom...next to my sink. 

This is what it looked like when I finished it at the shop:

Questionable I know. The white inner ring you see if a white treatment that I was told could lighten the area you put it on but the other glaze color would remain. 

My ring holder was ready in just a few days, and it looked like this! 

Can you believe it? I'm really happy with it, and I find the pottery glaze amazing. How did it transform so completely? You can see the lighten inner ring too, which I'm really happy with. 

I also did the bottom because you have to cover the entire piece with the glaze, and I added an A initial with the year. 

I had a fun time at the shop, and I'm really happy with the results. I could see doing this again!

Book Review: Sea Change by Jeremy Page

I just read Sea Change by Jeremy Page. I found this book to be very intriguing. The overall premise is sad: Guy loses his wife and child. There you know. By the way, his name is Guy, not just a descriptor.

BUT, he keeps them alive in his mind and grows their lives' stories in his diaries. He continues to write about his family as if they are all still together for five years while he lives on a boat at sea. As a writer, I found it interesting that you could keep someone alive by writing about them. Could you really keep your life as you knew it going in your writing? I enjoyed the idea that his writing took on a life of its own, and there were times that even he was surprised by the outcomes, as if some other force was really writing the story...much like real life.

If you are a writer, I highly suggest you reading this book. If you're not a writer, you will still learn some life lessons from Guy, his diaries and his life on his boat. If you read it, come back and tell me the significance of the bird in the box....just wondering.

Go here to learn more about the book and talk to people who have read it. 

I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own.