ta-da!

Presenting...

Our Christmas Tree!

 

Do you like it? I put on some Christmas music this morning and had a very fun hour. :o) That's three 100-light strands (1 clear, 2 multi), and I'm really pleased with how it turned out - it's even better in person! And the tree topper? It's an ornament I found at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I KNOW. Perfect, right? I just wedged a couple branch tips inside it and put a twist-tie through the ornament loop. Is it Christmas yet? :o) :o) :o)

feminist housewife

I love being domestic. No, really - my June Cleaver streak is a mile wide! Not much makes me happier than puttering around the house, doing dishes, cooking...you know, generally nesting and being creative. I love making the house a welcoming place for E to come home to, or wake up to, depending on the day. It's not all deep-clean, all the time, though - we're both prone to clutter (two Chaos Muppets with Order Muppet tendencies), so mostly I just try to stay on top of things and straighten them out as needed.

Over the weekend, I did simple, not-noisy things. Dishes, sweeping, straightening, and cooking. Oh, the cooking! Back in 2008, my sister emailed me a quiche recipe. I tried it, and loved it, and then totally forgot about it until a few days ago. We already had eggs, milk, baby spinach, onion, and pie crust, so I picked up some shredded mozzarella and some smoked pork jowl bacon (just trust me, it's delicious, and was cheaper than the other bacon). Pre-baked the pie crust and the bacon (not together), chopped and sauteed the onion, wilted the spinach. Cheese in crust first, then onion and spinach, then chopped up bacon. Mix eggs and milk, pour into crust, bake for an hour or so...and then devour. It's delicious with salad, too, but we didn't make it that far, lol! And best of all, I must've had too much stuff in the crust, because only half the egg/milk mix fit - so I made another quiche the next day!

Quiche #1, Pre-eggs....

And ready to eat! Doesn't that look tasty?

And the fun didn't stop there. Oh, no. You see, back in August, the Fest workers woke up one morning to Dutch Apple Cake for breakfast, and it was so good that I started researching recipes as soon as I got home. A couple weekends ago, E took me to Erie Orchard, and I picked out a bag of Northern Spy apples. (We also got cider and doughnuts. And foam swords. And we fed the goats and chickens!) Yesterday, two of those apples (and one Honeycrisp) turned into a super-easy, super-yummy Dutch Apple Cake of my very own! No pictures, but never fear - I'll be making it again very soon!

I had to come home to mom's and do laundry last night, but I left the house in a mostly-welcoming state: the dishes were done, there was quiche in the fridge and cake on the table, and the bed was turned down, pillows fluffed. E works so hard...I love doing little things to make her life easier, make her feel appreciated.

Bonus Pic:

CHICKENS!!!  :o)

progress

The pickles are delicious! Crisp, sweet, tangy...everything a pickle ought to be. My favorite part is when the vinegar asserts itself and punches you in the mouth. :o) I chopped a few of them up and had them on my burger last night, sooooooooo good!

The purging is at a standstill for the moment, there's just been too much other stuff going on - work picked up a bit (yay!), I'm on the home stretch of a second hat that has to be mailed out early next week, and this past weekend we helped two tiny Italian grandmothers make 38 quart jars of tomato sauce (E went back on Monday and they made another 38 jars, 20 of which are ours. Double Yay!). I made a batch of liquid laundry soap (it works out to under $2 for 128 loads, instead of dropping $14 on a bottle of Tide that will only do half as much), and we love it. I have 4 clients today, plus a house call for a neighbor...a full afternoon of clients tomorrow (and possibly a full morning as well, won't know til later today)...one client on Saturday...furious knitting and cleaning to be done at E's...and then I have to help keep E awake on Saturday night. She has to sleep all day on Sunday, because that night she starts her new job!!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!! It's not a huge pay increase, but she'll have more hours, more opportunity for overtime, and best of all, full benefits. We don't know yet if they offer same-sex partner benefits, and I'm not holding my breath, but it's within the realm of possibility. Most importantly, this means we are one giant leap closer to living together! It could even happen by Christmas! Which, uh, brings us to this:

 

After all that talk about stuff and de-cluttering, I bought a Christmas tree. In my defense, I've been looking for a long time, and this tree (with shipping) was only $35!!! Isn't it cute? It's 3.5ft tall, the branches are pose-able, and it's made to look more like a real tree - note the brown trunk. I love the little pine cones, and the openness. It's the perfect little tree for us, and I can't wait to decorate it! My plan is to wind a strand of white lights up the trunk for extra glow factor, and use the multicolored lights on the branches. Thanks to my parents, who planned for the future, I already had my own box of ornaments by the time I was ten, and every year, my collection grows...so, not all will fit on the new tree, but since most of them already get a home on Mom's tree, it's not a problem. 

CHRISTMASCHRISTMASCHRISTMASCHRISTMASCHRISTMASCHRISTMASCHRISTMAS!!!!! 

It's my favorite holiday. I love everything about it - the lights, the music, the food, the time with family. The sense of anticipation in the air, the way the cold and snowy nights feel hushed and sacred. The fun of making or picking out exactly the right presents for the ones I love. The decorating, oh, the decorating!!! We didn't do much at all last year, and I'm not planning to go overboard, but.... :o)

Happy Thursday! 

***edited to add:  Tree with white lights!! What do you think? ***

stuff.

***We interrupt this blog post to bring you an important Pickle Update: There are now six pint jars of pickles sitting on the kitchen counter, in the final phase of production (marinating in their sugar/spiced vinegar syrup). Judging by pre-jarring sampling, they are going to be super tasty! This concludes your Pickle Update.***

Remember how I've been meditating on the concept of Enough? Well, the flip side to Enough is Too Much, and it's a problem. Not that I'm a hoarder of any kind, understand, just...well...I'm in the house I grew up in, so there's 30 years' worth of stuff to sort through, never mind the stuff that I brought back from living on the west coast, plus stuff that has continued to accrue since the move home. I've already done one purge of my bedroom, with round two currently in progress, but the real problem is the basement, and working down there is...well...there are cobwebs, and it's lonely, and there are definitely spiders...

Purging is HARD. I'm sentimental, and there are memories attached to everything that has managed to stick around. I also love to be surrounded by things that have meaning for me, things I love, things that make me smile. Nothing wrong with that, but since I'm crammed into one room, most of those things are piled atop each other or in boxes because there's nowhere for them to sit. (Eventually they'll have homes at E's, but she's got her own purging to do, and space is at a premium until we convince her parents to remove most of her Nana's furniture.) And we're not even going to discuss the books, lol...at least those have both form and function...

Anyway. Yeah. I'm trying hard to downsize, mostly in preparation for moving in with E, but also because OMG HOW DID I END UP WITH ALL THIS STUFF NOBODY NEEDS THIS MUCH STUFF EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!

Simplification. I'm working on it.