We normally head off for the holiday, like a ton of you do, and spend about three or four days out of town with family for the holiday. This year, that didn’t really work out for us, so we stayed at home and created our own Thanksgiving holiday as best we could. We had the turkey, the dressing which was MADE FROM SCRATCH, like, I made the cornbread that went into the cornbread stuffing FROM SCRATCH, appreciate it NOW, the green bean casserole, and the pumpkin pie. We went to a lot of trouble for a meal that lasted about thirty minutes and required a lot of cajoling on the part of two very small people to just try the dressing for heavens’ sake before you start howling about how you don’t like it.
Next year – frozen pizza. I’ll make the pie again, though.
While everything was roasting and baking and cooling, we managed to get some Christmas decorating started.
That is our brand new, frabjulous Christmas tree. It has a billion tips and a four hundred thousand lights or something, and I love it. I mainly love it because it does not look like a large version of a Charlie Brown christmas tree. While he was doing that, I turned into Martha Stewart and slapped up some garland and poinsettias around the house.
I can’t just, you know, bake and cook the entire holiday. I have some leftover fabric from the Half Squares quilt top that I put together, and with the help of a tutorial, I’m attempting my first applique. So far, I think it’s okay, but we’ll see when I give them away as gifts. I’m on the watch for Present Face. Giving handmade gifts is always a tricky thing, because while there are folks out there that appreciate the time and effort, there are other people that thing that handmade = cheap or dumb. You have to be careful and choose your receipients wisely.
The worst part of the whole thing was figuring out a way to get all of the little leaves cut out without losing my mind, but one Lifetime sappy movie later, I managed to get it knocked out. I’ve sewn some of them onto the canvas I’m using for backing, and I’m happy to report that I only have to pick out the stitches on one of them and redo it. I plan on making two of these suckers.
We finished everything up with a trip to a nearby zoo; the kids had never been, and were appropriately excited. Especially when this dude slipped into the water and came up close for a little heart stoppping fun:
He was inches from us, just kinda…I don’t know, trying to decide if we’d taste good if he could get to the other side of the glass. I’m sure I’d be pretty damn tasty, Mr. Crocodile, but I think I’ll skip the taste testing portion of the visit.