Cwaazy Cwis-mas

It was a Great Party!



At least we had one adult in the house...

Every Christmas is the same, but different

We put our tree in the great room this year, a good plan because Patrick slept on the fold out couch in the living room. It is a smallish tree this year, but the lights are reflected in the glass corner windows.



Where the tree was last year, the nativity set is center front. The girls loved being able to rearrange the scene. One minute Baby Jesus is in the loft, the next minute, K puts all of the sheep in my slipper to keep them warm through the night.
These ceramic pieces have been well loved by children through the years - ears missing, a horn chipped off, multiple glued fractures. That's Okay with this grandmother.



Peace on Earth, Good Will to All.

Home.

Safe, and well hugged by his mother, for two, no three days. Verifiably healthy and whole. The best gift.



And he brought his dear friend. Makes it easier to say goodbye again.



What did we do? We watched movies that Pat brought (District 9, Up (which I loved!), and Lost season 5) we ate too much, he read and rested, we talked and opened presents, we looked at phone photos of his kitten, we went out to dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant with Tony and the girls, Mom took his picture, we hugged goodbye.

Recipe: (Roll and Cut Out) Sugar Cookies

Our little baker's helpers made Christmas cookies for Santa. 'A' wouldn't sit still enough for a photo, confirming the effect of too much sugar on 2-year olds, but 'K' seems to be enjoying herself as she shows off her handiwork.



The girls took home gingerbread cookies and sugar cut outs for their daddy and mommy, and to leave a few for Santa on The Big Night. Mission accomplished.
This is my new favorite recipe for a rich, short-but still soft- Christmas cookie.

RECIPE: Christmas Sugar Cut Outs

Sift together into a bowl and set aside:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

In a stand mixer bowl, combine thoroughly:
1 cup butter, softened
1 three-ounce package Philly cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup sugar

Beat in:
1 egg
1 tablespoon vanilla

Then gradually stir in the dry ingredients, at medium speed, until incorporated. By hand, form the dough into two balls, wrap and refrigerate for an hour or so.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Roll dough 1/8 to 1/4" thick.
Cut out shapes and place on parchment-lined baking sheets.
Bake about 7 minutes, until the bottoms just begin to show color.
Cool pans a minute on racks, then remove cookies to rack and cool.

When thoroughly cool, decorate with icing as desired.
Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Recipe: Gingerbread Cut-out Cookies

I made the sugar cut out dough (above) and this dough for gingerbread boys on Friday, and refrigerated it so we'd have it ready for the girls to cut, bake and decorate.
The MOST fun about being a grandmother is when K comes over and tells me she wants to do a 'project'.

This recipe for Gingerbread Boys has been our favorite for 33 or so years.
Now A grabs one in her little fist, runs around the table, and chants,
"Run, run, run, as fast as you can!
You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Gingerbread Boys

Sift together, and set aside:
3 cups flour (you can go 2:1 A.P. to whole wheat)
2 t. cinnamon
2 t. ground ginger
1 t. ground cloves
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda

In a stand mixer bowl, cream together:
1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
1 egg
1 t. vanilla extract

Stir in dry ingredients until well incorporated. Form dough into two flattened balls, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Roll dough on a lightly floured board, to 1/4". Cut shapes and place on parchment.
Reroll and cut rest of dough.
Bake 8-10 minutes.
Cool 2 minutes on sheet before removing to rack to cool.
Makes about 8 big Gingerbread Men and a lot of small ones.

We had to do something crafty for Christmas

I've seen this one everywhere on the web this year. I first learned to make Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments from the Herb Society, when we made homey decorations one year for decorating the 1880's Eldridge House at Crossroads Village. If you want to make some, they add a non-caloric but delicious scent to the seasonal festivities, here's a thrifty tip: buy your cinnamon, cloves, white glue and applesauce at the dollar store.

Recipe: Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments
(not edible)

1 c. cinnamon
1 Tbsp. ground cloves
2/3- 3/4 c. applesauce
2 tbsp. thick white craft glue

Combine ingredients, drizzling a little glue at a time until dough reaches the right consistency for rolling, not too wet, or crumbly. Work 2 to 3 minutes (knead) or until smooth. If it is too dry, add applesauce, if too wet, add more cinnamon. Knead ball on cinnamon-sprinkled surface until it holds together well.

Roll out (with cinnamon sprinkled rolling pin on cinnamon sprinkled surface) to 1/4 inch thickness, do not roll any thinner. Cut shapes with cookie cutters.

Use a drinking straw to cut a hanging hole. Using spatula, place on parchment lined baking sheet. Let air dry for 24-48 hours, turning ornaments occasionally to prevent warping, or dry in a dehydrator, or, in a low oven bake at 170-200 degrees for a couple of hours until dried out. Place on rack to cool.

Sand rough edges with an emory board if needed.

If desired, paint with acrylics after completely dry. For fake frosting, use a white fabric paint.

When you pack the ornaments away, cushion them to keep them from breaking. And, if they start to lose their scent over the years, add a drop of cinnamon oil to bring back the scent.

You can use these in a myriad of ways from gift package tie-ons to tree ornaments. This year, the girls strung them on 1/8" red ribbon and used them like a garland on the front of the old dresser where we keep their books.

Gingerbread and p.j.s

The girls spent the night on Sunday, and we made a "project"... Here they are Monday morning, taking turns yawning and admiring 'our' handiwork from the evening before.




They're so cute. They pick up words and phrases so seriously. They like things placed just so, and done they way we did them last time they were here. When they insisted on staying up past Grandma's bedtime, I told them I was going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight. A week later, K surprised me by using the same phrase, as in "Gramma, A's going to turn into a pumpkin!"

Our weekend adventure

On Sunday we took K and A to a local Christmas tree farm to find a small fresh tree for our Christmas. When the boys were young we used to go out to the saw-your-own tree farm and agonize in the snowdrifts over the perfect tree, but lately I've become the master of Not Sweating The Small Things.
Last year we cut a volunteer seedling Norway spruce from our backyard, and the year before we bought a generic whatever tree from a lot. It's been a few years since we bothered to get out to a farm, and all I can say is, "Wow! Tree farms are really getting to be somethin'!"



We rode a two-horse drawn wagon out to the tree fields, visited (no waiting in line!) Santa Claus who gave the girls candy canes, fed apples to the reindeers, chased (not really) chickens, toasted and ate s'mores (the girls got marshmallow in their hair and their new hats, but they had such fun), picked out a Frasier Fir tree, rode back to the tree care area for a tree-shaking and tying onto the car while we noshed on more cider and doughnuts. The weather was warm enough to have fun with toddlers, and the operation, Trim Pine Farms, was so smoothly run, it made for a great afternoon.



Cute hat, huh? A picked it out herself - the minute she saw it she said "I have ears" and that was that. At least she wants to wear a hat this year!

She loves chickens - she remembered feeding the chickens at the orchard back in September, when we picked plantain and dandelion leaves to feed to the birds, and she began rooting around in the weeds.



Here is K talking to Santa. She actually sat on his knee twice, to get more apples to feed the reindeer, but A is still shy of Santa. She gets close, but just can't bear to sit on that lap, even for reindeer apples and candy canes.

The toad and the cardinal

This morning I heard a biographer interviewed on NPR who mentioned an essay by George Orwell, so I Googled it while drinking my first cup of coffee. And yes, it is worth reading. I'd call it timely - not timely in 'the round of the seasons' sense, but timely in 'the state of the world' sense.
It has a bit of that 'Be of Good Cheer' we should be telling each other right about now, a trace of "Heap on more wood, the wind is chill - we'll keep our Christmas merry still!" (a quote from the past which resurfaces in an economically cyclical manner and often encompasses the Christmas season).

Be of Good Cheer! There were red cardinals in the bare branched burning bush this morning, feeding on those brilliant berries, with deep snow all around.
Appreciate winter now.
Look forward to spring, but like an emergency dollar, keep hope tucked in your pocket and only pull it out to look at it when you really, really need it.

Here is that essay:

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
Essay by George Orwell

Before the swallow, before the daffodil, and not much later than the snowdrop, the common toad salutes the coming of spring after his own fashion, which is to emerge from a hole in the ground, where he has lain buried since the previous autumn, and crawl as rapidly as possible towards the nearest suitable patch of water. Something--some kind of shudder in the earth, or perhaps merely a rise of a few degrees in the temperature--has told him that it is time to wake up: though a few toads appear to sleep the clock round and miss out a year from time to time--
at any rate, I have more than once dug them up, alive and apparently well, in the middle of the summer.

At this period, after his long fast, the toad has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent. His movements are languid but purposeful, his body is shrunken, and by contrast his eyes look abnormally large. This allows one to notice, what one might not at another time, that a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature. It is like gold, or more exactly it is like the golden-coloured semi-precious stone which one sometimes sees in signet-rings, and which I think is called a chrysoberyl.

For a few days after getting into the water the toad concentrates on building up his strength by eating small insects. Presently he has swollen to his normal size again, and then he hoes through a phase of intense sexiness. All he knows, at least if he is a male toad, is that he wants to get his arms round something, and if you offer him a stick, or even your finger, he will cling to it with surprising strength and take a long time to discover that it is not a female toad. Frequently one comes upon shapeless masses of ten or twenty toads rolling over and over in the water, one clinging to another without distinction of sex. By degrees, however, they sort themselves out into couples, with the male duly sitting on the female's back. You can now distinguish males from females, because the male is smaller, darker and sits on top, with his arms tightly clasped round the female's neck. After a day or two the spawn is laid in long strings which wind themselves in and out of the reeds and soon become invisible. A few more weeks, and the water is alive with masses of tiny tadpoles which rapidly grow larger, sprout hind-legs, then
forelegs, then shed their tails: and finally, about the middle of the summer, the new generation of toads, smaller than one's thumb-nail but perfect in every particular, crawl out of the water to begin the game anew.

I mention the spawning of the toads because it is one of the phenomena of spring which most deeply appeal to me, and because the toad, unlike the skylark and the primrose, has never had much of a boost from poets. But I am aware that many people do not like reptiles or amphibians, and I am not suggesting that in order to enjoy the spring you have to take an
interest in toads. There are also the crocus, the missel-thrush, the cuckoo, the blackthorn, etc. The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing. Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site. Indeed it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London. I have seen a kestrel flying over the Deptford gasworks, and I have heard a first-rate performance by a blackbird in the Euston Road. There must be some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of birds living inside the four-mile radius, and it is rather a pleasing thought that none of them pays a halfpenny of rent.

As for spring, not even the narrow and gloomy streets round the Bank of England are quite able to exclude it. It comes seeping in everywhere, like one of those new poison gases which pass through all filters. The spring is commonly referred to as "a miracle", and during the past five or six years this worn-out figure of speech has taken on a new lease of life. After the sorts of winters we have had to endure recently, the spring does seem miraculous, because it has become gradually harder and harder to believe that it is actually going to happen. Every February since 1940 I have found myself thinking that this time winter is going to be permanent. But Persephone, like the toads, always rises from the dead at about the same moment. Suddenly, towards the end of March, the miracle happens and the decaying slum in which I live is transfigured. Down in the square the sooty privets have turned bright green, the leaves are thickening on the chestnut trees, the daffodils are out, the wallflowers are budding, the policeman's tunic looks positively a pleasant shade of blue, the fishmonger greets his customers with a smile, and even the sparrows are quite a different colour, having felt the balminess of the air and nerved themselves to take a bath, their first since last September.

Is it wicked to take a pleasure in spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird's song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of left-wing newspapers call a class angle? There is not doubt that many people think so. I know by experience that a favourable reference to "Nature" in one of my articles is liable to bring me abusive letters, and though the key-word in these letters is usually "sentimental", two ideas seem to be mixed up in them. One is that any pleasure in the actual process of life encourages a sort of political quietism. People, so the thought runs, ought to be discontented, and it is our job to multiply our wants and not simply to increase our enjoyment of the things we have already. The other idea is that this is the age of machines and that to dislike the machine, or even to want to limit its domination, is backward-looking, reactionary and slightly ridiculous. This is often backed up by the statement that a love of Nature is a foible of urbanized people who have no notion what Nature is really like. Those who really have to deal with the soil, so it is argued, do not love the soil, and do not take the faintest interest in birds or flowers, except from a strictly utilitarian point of view. To love the country one must live in the town, merely taking an occasional week-end ramble at the warmer times of year.

This last idea is demonstrably false. Medieval literature, for instance, including the popular ballads, is full of an almost Georgian enthusiasm for Nature, and the art of agricultural peoples such as the Chinese and Japanese centre always round trees, birds, flowers, rivers, mountains.
The other idea seems to me to be wrong in a subtler way. Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves? If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him? I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer. I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and--to return to my first instance--toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.

At any rate, spring is here, even in London N.1, and they can't stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the
sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

the little mother

All the Christmas parties this year, and so much serious adult conservation about Brittany Spears' little celebrity sister getting pregnant. Like, is it our business? Like, who cares what celebrities do in their private lives? Like, is THAT all you have to think about in the season of giving?

I heard opinions from a lotta people and I'm sure you did too, but did you hear anyone mention this:
Biblical historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists say the woman who bore the child that we claim to follow was probably a young unwed mother.

Tsk, tsk.

Who was it said, Judge not lest ye be judged?
This is what I'd tell Brittany's sister - ignore the hypocrites, love your baby, and just remember, with some folk, you're damned if you do - and you're damned if you don't.
'Nuff said.
Ave Maria, love that tune. It makes my Christmas Eve.

A small post post: I'm proud to note that not one of my company mentioned Brittany's sister's faux pas at our festivities.

the fourteenth grandmother

Wasn't that video about the thirteen grandmothers great? I'm just dismayed that no one considered adding a fourteenth grandmother to represent the indigenous Caucasian, European women who understand the value of their cultures to humanity. We are not all of the imperialist conqueror mindset. Although come to think of it, the 'wise women' of the European landmass were systematically subjugated and murdered throughout history to silence their contribution to the perennial debate, so perhaps no one knew where to find the fourteenth grandmother... but I'm wandering off the path.

Right this moment I'm just taking a break from the festivity preparation to add to the story I began two days ago ... the Solstice, the crane, the holy day... why does the activity of vacuuming carpets lead my mind to wander along submerged paths and faint trails? Back to the thread of the story...

After seeing the crane fly over at dawn, I Googled "crane" and "legend" to find out what other cultures associate with the crane.
Wikipedia was a good place to start, and if you look you will see legends and associations and symbolism about the crane goes way back in the history of humanity. We all know about the story of the Japanese schoolgirl who made a thousand cranes to commemorate health and life and peace after the destruction of war.
But classical western culture told stories about the crane as well.

I must get my shower and get to the grocery store, but I wanted to leave you and me here with this turn in the story: the crane, which visited me on the solstice dawn, is the messenger of peace, good health, life.
Wasn't that the message of the baby who will be born again tonight?
Hopeful things to wish you all for the new year.
Let us pursue these ends: peace, life, good health.
Wassail!

Misses Holly and Ivy

A little holiday fun

"If you can't laugh about our continuing desperate need to be hip, then you aren't yet hip," she said, snapping her fingers, yeah.


Found this site yesterday while clickin' the links... pages and pages of Square Americans celebrating the holidays.
Made me smile, and hope you smile too.
That woman above is wearing my blue plastic catseye glasses.
Merry, merry.

crafters are like snowflakes

Back in the olden days (when the boys were little and the funds were short) we used to decorate for the Holidays with home crafted paper crafts - construction paper chains, colorful origami boxes, Victorian pleated fans and angels, white paper snowflakes.
There is a big home craft movement growing again among the younger generation, probably a reaction to the sameness of all that cheap imported repetitive junk we see in the stores.
Witness the success of Etsy! I could spend hours looking at all the creativity there.
(On the same wavelength The New York Times Magazine ran a story about the craft movement and Etsy this past weekend. Heres a snippet:

Handmade 2.0
By Rob Walker
December 16, 2007
The declaration from something called the Handmade Consortium materialized on a Web site called buyhandmade.org in late October. “I pledge to buy handmade this holiday season, and request that others do the same for me,” it said, and you could type in your name to “sign” on; within a few weeks, more than 6,500 people had done so. “Buying handmade is better for people,” a statement on the site read in part, and “better for the environment,” because mass production is a “major cause” of global warming, among other things. There were links to an anti-sweatshop site and a Wal-Mart watchdog site.
The pledge echoed the idealistic language of a tree-hugger activist group, but actually the consortium’s most prominent member was the online shopping bazaar Etsy, a very much for-profit entity that bills itself as “your place to buy & sell all things handmade.” Etsy does not fulfill orders from an inventory; it’s a place where sellers set up virtual storefronts, giving the site a cut of sales. While eBay rose to prominence nearly a decade ago as an endless garage sale for the auctioning of collectibles and bric-a-brac, Etsy is more of an online craft fair, or art show, where the idea is that individuals can sell things that they have made. How many such people can there be? At last count, more than 70,000 — about 90 percent of whom were women — were using Etsy to peddle their jewelry, art, toys, clothes, dishware, stationery, zines and a variety of objects from the mundane to the highly idiosyncratic. Each seller has a profile page telling shoppers a bit about themselves, and maybe offering a link to a blog or a MySpace page or a mailing list; most have devised some clever store or brand name for whatever they’re selling.
Read on here...


Like I was going to say, no two home crafters are alike, just like snowflakes. Think of two crafters, using the same ingredients and the same techniques... their hand crafted goods are still individual, they still reflect something from the personality of their creator.
There is value in making things, keeping the eye interested and the mind working. Some is art, some is not, but handcrafts speak for the individual, the unusual, the unique. The human.
Which leads to thinking about ... snowflakes...Snowflakes!
I found this site yesterday, http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com and made the snowflake at the top of this post. It's free, it's fun! Click the link and Try it! (I fixed the link, sorry!)

let the silly season begin