Here followeth a Casa de Crazy Thanksgiving Day Tradicion:
And a new addition to the tradition:
We hope you have a pleasant, tasty, mellow, comfortable, not-at-all-contentious Thanksgiving day if you are in the USA and an all around good one if not in the USA or not celebrating.
Here's the link of you want to view full screen: Alice's Restaurant and Thankful
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Thankful
I have a few traditions on Thanksgiving. Not many - the menu, recording the Macy's parade so I can watch it and fast-forward through all the crappy pop music, commercials, and talking heads to see the twenty minutes of balloons, floats and high school bands I'm interested in hidden among all that junk (although I will have to forgo that pleasure, this year, alas, unless Mom remembers to record it for me to peruse at her house another time), and my list of some things for which I am thankful, in no particular order and in no way complete:
The house in which I live
The Evil Genius
The house in which I live
The Evil Genius
Mum
Sprout
Gypsy, K2, Mizz A, Kit, Sam-I-Am, PJ, Mizz Beth, Martha 'n' Milo, Avalon, and all of my friends who put up with me when I am most myself and therefor least likable. They are the net beneath me when I fly and fall
Bread
The scent of leaf loam and woodsmoke in the crisp autumn air
Books, music, and art
Clean, plentiful water
Clean air
Clean clothes
Freedom
Nature and the ways she finds to show me something new of herself every day
Words
Song
Dance
Adversity, that joy is all the sweeter (Okay, okay, the joy is sweet enough, so basta with the adversity for a minute, please)
Every creature and plant that I consume to sustain myself, because without the life I take, I would have no life to live
Love - that it exists at all is a wonder, and I feel blessed to know it in many forms
Chocolate, gift from the Gods (yes, even the perversion called "candy bar") (Mmm...candy bar...)
Honeycrisp Apples
Strong hands
Strong spirit
Strong will
Laughter
Cussed determination not to curl up and die just because life can sometimes be a succession of truly awful, bleak, and desolate days...but sometimes it isn't
The Internet
You
I hope you have a blessed day, and that the things for which you're thankful outweigh the things for which you're not.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all, from us at Casa de Crazy to you out in the Blue Nowhere and beyond.
Sprout
Gypsy, K2, Mizz A, Kit, Sam-I-Am, PJ, Mizz Beth, Martha 'n' Milo, Avalon, and all of my friends who put up with me when I am most myself and therefor least likable. They are the net beneath me when I fly and fall
Bread
The scent of leaf loam and woodsmoke in the crisp autumn air
Books, music, and art
Clean, plentiful water
Clean air
Clean clothes
Freedom
Nature and the ways she finds to show me something new of herself every day
Words
Song
Dance
Adversity, that joy is all the sweeter (Okay, okay, the joy is sweet enough, so basta with the adversity for a minute, please)
Every creature and plant that I consume to sustain myself, because without the life I take, I would have no life to live
Love - that it exists at all is a wonder, and I feel blessed to know it in many forms
Chocolate, gift from the Gods (yes, even the perversion called "candy bar") (Mmm...candy bar...)
Honeycrisp Apples
Strong hands
Strong spirit
Strong will
Laughter
Cussed determination not to curl up and die just because life can sometimes be a succession of truly awful, bleak, and desolate days...but sometimes it isn't
The Internet
You
I hope you have a blessed day, and that the things for which you're thankful outweigh the things for which you're not.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all, from us at Casa de Crazy to you out in the Blue Nowhere and beyond.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Counting Down
It is Saturday of Thanksgiving week and there is much happening here at the Casa.
The kids and I are terrorizing the cats...er...tidying up a bit. Poor Casa de Crazy is a right mess as a result of some serious depression, chaos, and stress (so what's new?), and it WILL BE CLEAN for Thanksgiving. Or, at least, the parts our guests will see will be clean. I hope.
This is a somewhat traditional post for me - every year I write a little something about this week, as it is the lead-off to The Silly Season (aka Christmahannukwazakuh) and often one of my busiest here at the Casa.
So, here we go.
Saturday (today) - Bread baking for the dressing, and housekeepery. Oh, lort, the housekeepery. Also washing all of the dishes, bowls, and platters for Thursday since they're the "good" dishes* and sit all year until I pull them out for Thanksgiving. They're in a cupboard, but still.
Sunday - More housework. Lort, the housework. Then there's the laundry. Oh, lort, the laundry. There may be more dishes, too, because right now I have to hand wash them all. Thomas Turkey comes out of the freezer and transitions to the fridge, as does the turkey stock for the dressing and the gravy.
Monday - cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning (I move slowly, the Casa is enormous, and I am not a good housekeeper so when we DO clean, it's a job). Grocery shopping, because there's nothing like looking for obscure ingredients at the last minute. Panicking about the butter - is two pounds enough for the day? Gah! Making sure the table linens are washed and ready to use and pulling out the "good" flatware**.
Tuesday - Quilt guild (I'm bringing a quilt to baste, hurrah) and veggie chopping.
Wednesday - volunteering at the HaHC and then helping Mom set up for the Mistletoe Market, then making mashed turnips and carrots ahead of time and getting the dressing assembled. Make s key lime pie.
Thursday - Turkey goes in to bake. Dressing goes in to bake. Green beans are steamed. Finishing up any last minute cleaning. Children are shooed outside to frolic. Friends and family trickle in. Set the table. Fill the water pitcher. Watch TV and baste the turkey. Make food, food, more food. Start Dutch apple pie baking and thaw chocolate silk pie thawing (because Marie Callender does pie so well, I'm happy to let her). Serve. Eat. Coma. Dessert and coffee/tea. More coma. Play games. Pack leftovers to go for guests. Eat more. Sleep well.
Friday - Mistletoe Market at the hahc, peddling hand crafted goods.
Saturday - More Mistletoe Market, then teardown and home to wilt.
Sunday - Rest. Possibly interspersed with napping.
How is your week shaping up?
*These are dishes that Mum and I bought one piece at a time from a grocery store a long, long, looooong time ago. Service for fourteen including serving dishes, either free or bargain priced with purchase of a certain amount of groceries. I love them. Not fancy, but pretty and simple and I like them.
**Not sterling, but some rather lovely and solid stainless steel flatware from the Oneida Company, back when there was a Betty Crocker catalog and we clipped Betty Crocker points from boxes and saved them in a tin on top of the refrigerator. Service for twelve, and some day I hope to expand it and add more serving pieces and other cutlery, but that'll have to wait a bit because it's a discontinued pattern and getting the pieces I'd like to have will cost a small fortune. I adore my pattern, bought a few pieces at a time through the mail with little bits of cardboard and postage paid.
Just a wee side note - I typed and edited this with a malfunctioning keyboard. Several keys, including the "a" don't work. To get around the problem, I copied the "a" and pasted whenever I needed it. Do you know how many words need an "a"? Me, neither, but it's a lot.
The kids and I are terrorizing the cats...er...tidying up a bit. Poor Casa de Crazy is a right mess as a result of some serious depression, chaos, and stress (so what's new?), and it WILL BE CLEAN for Thanksgiving. Or, at least, the parts our guests will see will be clean. I hope.
This is a somewhat traditional post for me - every year I write a little something about this week, as it is the lead-off to The Silly Season (aka Christmahannukwazakuh) and often one of my busiest here at the Casa.
So, here we go.
Saturday (today) - Bread baking for the dressing, and housekeepery. Oh, lort, the housekeepery. Also washing all of the dishes, bowls, and platters for Thursday since they're the "good" dishes* and sit all year until I pull them out for Thanksgiving. They're in a cupboard, but still.
Sunday - More housework. Lort, the housework. Then there's the laundry. Oh, lort, the laundry. There may be more dishes, too, because right now I have to hand wash them all. Thomas Turkey comes out of the freezer and transitions to the fridge, as does the turkey stock for the dressing and the gravy.
Monday - cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning (I move slowly, the Casa is enormous, and I am not a good housekeeper so when we DO clean, it's a job). Grocery shopping, because there's nothing like looking for obscure ingredients at the last minute. Panicking about the butter - is two pounds enough for the day? Gah! Making sure the table linens are washed and ready to use and pulling out the "good" flatware**.
Tuesday - Quilt guild (I'm bringing a quilt to baste, hurrah) and veggie chopping.
Wednesday - volunteering at the HaHC and then helping Mom set up for the Mistletoe Market, then making mashed turnips and carrots ahead of time and getting the dressing assembled. Make s key lime pie.
Thursday - Turkey goes in to bake. Dressing goes in to bake. Green beans are steamed. Finishing up any last minute cleaning. Children are shooed outside to frolic. Friends and family trickle in. Set the table. Fill the water pitcher. Watch TV and baste the turkey. Make food, food, more food. Start Dutch apple pie baking and thaw chocolate silk pie thawing (because Marie Callender does pie so well, I'm happy to let her). Serve. Eat. Coma. Dessert and coffee/tea. More coma. Play games. Pack leftovers to go for guests. Eat more. Sleep well.
Friday - Mistletoe Market at the hahc, peddling hand crafted goods.
Saturday - More Mistletoe Market, then teardown and home to wilt.
Sunday - Rest. Possibly interspersed with napping.
How is your week shaping up?
*These are dishes that Mum and I bought one piece at a time from a grocery store a long, long, looooong time ago. Service for fourteen including serving dishes, either free or bargain priced with purchase of a certain amount of groceries. I love them. Not fancy, but pretty and simple and I like them.
**Not sterling, but some rather lovely and solid stainless steel flatware from the Oneida Company, back when there was a Betty Crocker catalog and we clipped Betty Crocker points from boxes and saved them in a tin on top of the refrigerator. Service for twelve, and some day I hope to expand it and add more serving pieces and other cutlery, but that'll have to wait a bit because it's a discontinued pattern and getting the pieces I'd like to have will cost a small fortune. I adore my pattern, bought a few pieces at a time through the mail with little bits of cardboard and postage paid.
Just a wee side note - I typed and edited this with a malfunctioning keyboard. Several keys, including the "a" don't work. To get around the problem, I copied the "a" and pasted whenever I needed it. Do you know how many words need an "a"? Me, neither, but it's a lot.