OK, it’s WAY past my bedtime and I have good reason to believe that this blog has been hacked! I am going to bed now so that I can attack this bitch clear-headed tomorrow. Stay tuned, this could get ugly… literally.
Hi! I am not dead, just distracted. It always seems to happen around the holidays, but perhaps more so this year. All I can say is, SORRY! Anyway… You’ll have to excuse the crap-tastic photo; I forgot my good camera at my parents house a few weeks ago, and must wait until they bring it next time they visit (which is thankfully next weekend).
This tiny dish contains the last bits of the THIRD batch of candied pecans I made. I think I made at least 7lb of nuts in total this year! They made fantastic gifts and just about everybody asked for the recipe. I can’t take full credit for it because I found it on allrecipes.com, but I added a little bit of my own twist. Instead of plain old white sugar, I used organic sugar. It has a slight molassesey flavor to it that I like. I also added a splash of vanilla to the egg white mixture because vanilla is awesome. All other directions were the same.
1 egg white
1 tablespoon water
1 pound pecan halves
1 cup *organic sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
*1/2 teaspoon vanilla (I guessed on this measurement)
Directions
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Grease one baking sheet.
In a mixing bowl, whip together the egg white, water and vanilla until frothy. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Add pecans to egg whites, stir to coat the nuts evenly. Remove the nuts, and toss them in the sugar mixture until coated. Spread the nuts out on the prepared baking sheet. Bake at 250 degrees F (120 degrees C) for 1 hour. Stir every 15 minutes.
I leave you with a photo of the “Humping Santa” as I affectionately called him. He appears to be doing something highly inappropriate to that snowman, or maybe I just have a sick mind. Hope your holidays were wonderful! See you again in the new year. :)
As I write this, I’m cooking up some sugar coated pecans in the oven… My take on the “Consumables Christmas” inspired by Kris. Except I’m in a panic because I’m trying to make a bunch of them before I go down to NJ tomorrow afternoon. You see, this year we’re having Christmas with the in-laws. Which means that I have to have all my family’s gifts ready tomorrow!! I am sorely ill-prepared for the trip, made worse by the fact that I’ve had shit to do nearly every night this week — tonight included. Last night, Mike and I trudged thru Toys R’ Us, glassy-eyed and bewildered; trying to find something for my nieces and nephew. UGH! Let’s calculate, shall we, the time I have to:
Factoring in that I have a reunion happy-hour thing with some old co-workers at 5, and then Sayokan at 8, I’m pretty much screwed. We’re supposed to leave after I get home from work tomorrow at 1. I highly doubt that’s going to happen. Plus, I dragged out my Christmas tree and decorations last night, and they will continue to sit on my den floor until next week when I have a moment to breathe. Did I mention I love Christmas!? I just have to keep thinking, “SERENITY NOW!” It’ll be my mantra from now until after New Year’s. Guess I really shouldn’t be sitting on my ass typing a blog post right now…
What about you guys? Are you feeling stretched too thin this Holiday season?
I hope all my US friends had a fantastic Thanksgiving; there’s really so much to be thankful for! And now, back to our regular programming.
I realize I’ve been slightly absent here lately, and I’m sorry! Several things are the cause. 1. I just haven’t been feeling myself: sort of sick, sort of grumpy. So the last thing I want to do is bore you with my complaining. That gets old quite quickly. You may not know this (or maybe you do), but I am a champion complainer. No comments from the peanut gallery. ;) 2. I have a new job. I landed a part time gig as an in-house designer at a local company. I’ll be working mornings 9-1. Today was my first day. Woo! Hello regular paychecks! If you follow my twitter, you’ll know that Mike promised me a new pair of shoes for getting a new job. LOL. So I picked out an adorable pair from DSW of all places. Usually, I don’t find anything I like among their sea of brown and black shoes. I swear, you could walk down an aisle and find about 50 pairs of sensible brown loafers that were all relatively identical. BORING. These are anything but boring, IMO. The color in the picture below isn’t exactly true – they’re more olive green than brown in real life. Me likey!
If they look a little scuffed it’s because I already wore them once on Thanksgiving.
So this is my latest creation: the shiny shapeless sack.
How’s that for alliteration of S-words!? Anyway, I had been shopping at JoAnne for some fabric to make a dress (a project that is henceforth on hold) and I saw this fun, shimmery fabric on the clearance pile. I thought it would be perfect material for a pretty holiday blouse. Then I was searching for the ultimate pattern for aforementioned blouse. I couldn’t find much that I liked in ALL the books I thumbed thru. Finally, I settled on Simplicity 2594, mostly because Simplicity patterns were a dollar that week.
The first thing I realized when I started working was that the shimmery fabric was much too heavy for this pattern. It reminds me of the satin pajamas I used to have when I was a kid. The kind where the reverse side of the satin was soft and flannel-like. This isn’t quite that heavy, but it has the same soft warmth to the back. The second thing was that I added about 2 inches to the length of the pattern, but I think it’s still a bit shorter than I’d like it.
All in all, it wasn’t a difficult pattern, and I might try it again sometime with a sheer fabric. I’ll probably still wear the blouse for holiday parties, but it definitely needs a belt. I opted not to make the belt because the shiny face of the fabric wouldn’t knot very well. But I could easily make one out of a contrasting fabric. Also, it doesn’t look too bad layered with a fitted tee underneath.
As the days get colder and I become painfully aware of the temperature inside and out, I start thinking how much I would love a working fireplace. Shortly after we moved into our house, the fireplace had a huge leak and it turned out we needed a new chimney cap and new flashings. “Mr Sweep” did our repairs and told us that our fireplace was unsafe and unsuitable for fires, and that we shouldn’t use it. We weren’t really planning on it, owing to the fact that the previous homeowners had caulked the damn thing shut — probably because of the chilling draft it emitted.
Like most homeowners I often daydream about what I would fix or upgrade if I had any money whatsoever. At first, at the top of the fireplace list was a pellet stove. I like that they are environmentally friendly, burning wood/corn pellets cleanly and efficiently. However, I learned that not only are they expensive to buy/install, they can also be costly to maintain. They require annual servicing by a professional and with many moving parts, repair can be expensive too. Not to mention the fact that pellet availability can sometimes be scarce. Realistically speaking, a pellet stove probably wouldn’t be a good solution for us.
The other route is an EPA certified wood-burning stove. Every year they create a list of stoves that are earmarked for efficiency and emissions. They are somewhat less expensive, and don’t require the same kind of care that a pellet stove does. How awesome would it be to have a fire during the day instead of running the furnace?? Then of course there’s the perk of snuggling up on the couch to watch the fire burn.
Alas we have no money, and as I learned, our furnace is probably in the last few years of its life. According to the furnace cleaning guy, average lifespan of a furnace is 15 – 20 years, and ours is 16. While it’s still working well, we should probably sock away some spare money for a new one at some point in the not too distant future. :( Oh well! I’ll still continue to have these pipe dreams of someday being able to enjoy a warm fire on a cold day.
So I’m feeling sort of grumpy lately. And instead of complaining about all the things I COULD complain about (which turns out is quite a bit), I will take this opportunity to post some more pictures of my cats that I recently took with my new camera, because everyone is desperately interested in my pets. HAHAAHAH! Ok, I just cracked a smile there. Actually, I know that this is sort of faux pas, but I don’t care.
Apparently I am incapable of photographing Bella unless she’s sitting in front of the slider. I guess she just likes it there. I imagine she’s saying, “Is it dinner time yet? If I sit still long enough, will there be treats?”
George is my grumpy old man. He simply wouldn’t look at the camera for me to take a picture, as if to say, “Woman, I don’t have time for your foolish photographs! I’m busy scheming a hostile takeover.”
When I was much younger and more ambitious about seeking out new music I would stay up late on a Sunday night and try to stay awake thru “120 Minutes” on MTV. While most of my other classmates were into Pearl Jam or some other popular band, I craved something different, and I’d go to great lengths to find music out of the mainstream. I had a couple of friends with whom I could compare notes about the newest stuff we found. Lord knows, Z100 didn’t play the kind of stuff we wanted to hear. I also patrolled the local CD swap shop; the only store I knew of that had a bonafide “Alternative” section, and the only place to buy second-hand.
These days, I take a much lazier approach to new music. I listen to XM or Pandora and mark the occasional song that piques my interest. On rare occasion, I stumble upon a new artist completely out of the blue. One such example is Kate Miller-Heidke. I think somebody twittered a link to this video a couple of months back:
I thought, “Hey, that’s a cute song… She’s got an incredible voice!” I did a little more digging, and discovered her YouTube page, and promptly watched most of her uploads. I immediately fell in love with this song and video!
At this point I was hooked, I HAD to have her album with that song, but the only place I found it was as an Australian import on Amazon for 38 bucks. YIKES! Lucky for me, I have a friend studying there, and he bought it for me. Phew, crisis averted! Now it’s on regular rotation in my iTunes.
Kate’s talent seems just about endless… her songs have an often unapologetic honesty to them that I just haven’t heard from many other female artists (perhaps I’m just not listening to the right ones). Also, her classically-trained soprano voice makes an occasional, unexpected appearance in a lot of her songs, which is really a treat for me! Check out the video of Kate covering “Psycho Killer.” It cracks me up every time!
I just checked yesterday, and she released a new EP on iTunes (including the Facebook song), but “I Can’t Shake It” isn’t on there. However, it’s a nice selection of her repertoire.
One of the movies on our Netflix queue was the original Alfred Hitchcock “Rear Window.” We finally got around to watching it this weekend, and loved it – 4 stars out of 5! Hitchcock was the suspense story-telling master! But one of the pleasant surprises for me was the costume design.
Grace Kelly was a gem on-screen with her high couture wardrobe: sumptuous fabrics and beautiful mid-century design! I just kept staring at her outfits with envious longing. The black and white ball gown she wears early in the film was spectacularly drool-worthy. Why can’t women dress like that these days!? I supposed the modern woman doesn’t have much opportunity to really dress up. Also, so many events have become “casualized” (if that’s even a word).
The other outfit I loved was the celery-green suit! Every detail about this ensemble is perfect: the pillbox hat, the sexy back-bearing halter blouse, the chunky, jingling bracelet. I want it all — including her tiny waist-line. :) Better get me a girdle!
So I have this luscious piece of scrap wool from a hat I made FOREVER ago. I don’t even have the hat anymore since it was slightly small to fit my head AND my bushy hair. I recently rediscovered it in my scrap bag and I’ve wanted to do something special with it ever since. I thought a skirt would be just the thing, but there’s not even enough to do that! Perhaps I could use it as contrasting pockets, or maybe even a little ruffle like this awesome anthropologie skirt I’ve had stashed in my “inspriation” file.
I just don’t know that I’d get much wear out of a fancy skirt like that, but then again, I just might! I know some of you are super-crafty, what would YOU do with the scrap??
