WHAT A HOLIDAY WEEKEND

Wow, it was a busy holiday weekend. One I don't think I want to repeat. Thanksgiving was super busy as only did we do a dinner for the kids at our house but we went to Matt's brother's as well for his family's gathering. My son's work schedule was repeatedly changed for working that day (he works at a restaurant). First they had him scheduled from 3pm to 4am, then he was supposed to work 3pm to 11am, then 3pm to 9pm and finally ended up working 3pm to 6:30pm. Crazy!!! We had to drop him off at work early to not be too late to Matt's family dinner. His family had initially scheduled their dinner for 1pm and then changed it to 2pm so I scheduled dinner with the kids for 6:30pm. My daughter asked that morning if we could back it up until 7:30pm. No problem, I put the turkey in as we walked out the door with plenty of time for it to slow roast in the oven. Thankfully I'd baked the pies and pumpkin bread the night before.

Unfortunately, instead of putting the food on the table at 2pm as we'd been told, his family didn't end up eating until 4:30pm, which is when we'd planned to be leaving to go home. We ended up leaving their house after 6pm as they were serving the desserts. My son called while we were driving home to say he was off so I dropped Matt off to start peeling potatoes and such and I went and got him. We ended up eating at 8:30 with the kids - only 4 hours after we'd eaten a full dinner at his brother's. The meals were way too close together time wise and we ended up feeling bloated and uncomfortable. I think next year we'll only do one dinner per day and either we'll do dinner with the kids on Thanksgiving or we'll do it on a weekend day that works for everybody.

We stayed home Friday as I refuse to go out with people in that type of shopping frenzy. We did venture out for what we thought would be a safe trip to visit a couple furniture stores to look at dining tables. We were in the first store roughly 20 minutes at the most - 20 minutes. We came out to discover after starting the car that someone had sawed my catalytic converter off and stolen it - 18" of my muffler was gone. We're talking about a vehicle that was parked in front of a store, in plain site, at 3pm in the afternoon, on a busy street and nobody saw anything. We went back into the store since I didn't have my phone with me and the store personnel said one of their employees had the same thing happen two weeks prior. The officer when he showed up said they'd been doing it all up and down that street and they hadn't been able to catch them they were so fast and that he was getting tired of writing up the same report. Thankfully we weren't robbed or carjacked or anything but there's still a sense of anger and violation. Fortunately the insurance will cover it as partial theft. Matt says that due to the way that they cut the pipe I'll need a whole new exhaust system as well as the catalytic converter. He put a test pipe on with extensions so I could drive it until we can get it fixed. Insurance claims will be out tomorrow to look at it. As I said at the beginning, don't think I want to repeat this holiday weekend.

SOCK KNITTING

As it gets cold my thoughts turn to keeping my feet warm, which means I start thinking about knitting socks. I finally took the plunge last year and tried knitting a pair of socks, which turned into 3 pairs of socks before the winter was over. The second pair I knitted was my Christmas gift to Matt last year and he loves them. I've gotten the hang of it and this pair that I started 2 weeks ago is going a LOT faster then I thought they would. I had actually thought I might have this one done this weekend but as usual fates decreed otherwise. I apologize for the poor quality of the picture but I was using my cellphone. I'm really happy with the colors of the yarn as I bought it primarily due to the fact that I liked the yarn color name; Nymphadora Tonks. As a Harry Potter lover who couldn't love a yarn with that name? The colors are a lot darker then they appeared when I got the skein so I'm very happy. I'm using 2 circular needles, size 3. I prefer this method to using 3 or 4 double pointed needles. I would like to try the Magic Knitting method using a single 30" circular needle that you can knit both socks on at the same time. I'm hoping to attempt the method sometime this winter. I'll keep you updated on that experiment.

CHICKEN A LA ORANGE

I found myself watching $10 Dinners Sunday even though I hate the show. Anyway, for the first time she had recipes that I found interesting enough to try; Chicken a la orange and crispy potatoes. We made both last night. They were absolutely delicious. We modified her recipes based on our tastes. For example she only used salt & pepper to season the potatoes but we added seasoning salt and fresh chopped rosemary to kick up the flavor. We doubled the sauce recipe and reduced the honey she used. Matt suggested trying some agave syrup in the sauce the next time for some of the honey. She used 3 chicken breast with bones but I found markdowns on a package with only 2 breasts with bones and a package of thighs so we used both packages for the 3 of us. The boy went back for seconds and amazingly thirds. He's already 5' 11" so I'm praying he's not getting ready for a growth spurt again. Total cost of the chicken and potatoes was roughly about $6 to $7 which fed 3 of us plus there was enough left over for my lunch today. I had thought about preparing some green beans but we're having green bean casserole for Thanksgiving in a couple days so I decided to fore go them.

Fall has been such a busy time and I've neglected this blog horribly. Hopefully I can get back into a posting schedule again. I don't know why it's easier to post on Facebook compared to here, but for some reason it is. So here's an update on what I've been doing:

Completed some crocheted snowflakes to put on the Christmas tree this year. I think I've completed about 10 of them and probably have enough thread to do at least one more. I'm hoping to take some pictures this week and post them. It's a beautiful brilliant white thread with a white metallic sheen to it. I really like it better than the white with gold or silver threads in it.

I'm in a dilemma over what to do with the baby blanket I have been working on for one of my female soldiers who had her baby in July. I waited until the last minute to start it and ended up having to purchase yarn that I wasn't entirely thrilled with because I couldn't find anything in pink that I liked. Now I absolutely hate the feel of this baby afghan and I just can't seem to make myself finish it. I don't know if I should just finish it and give it to her anyway, start another one with better yarn, or just purchase her something. As I said its a dilemma.

With fall weather came the desire to start knitting a pair of wool socks and so I'm using the last skein of merino wool yarn I bought last year to make a pair. I think I bought the yarn because I liked the color name - they named an entire group of yarns after characters from Harry Potter and this one is called Nymphadora Tonks. I'm really like the color a lot better now I have the skein balled and about 6 inches of the cuff knitted. I'll try to post pictures of this also.

I recently started reading everything on Mary Jane's Farm web page and for my birthday present to myself purchased a membership into the Sisterhood program. I'm really looking forward to it. I'd picked up Mary Jane's magazine eons ago when it was in its infancy and it just did not connect with me enough to subscribe to it. Now it does. I've also started looking into finding a local chapter in my area to be able to meet other like minded women and to learn new skills. Maybe its resonating with me now because I have a man that appreciates and encourages my skills in these areas.