The Goose Is Getting Fat

Last week was my birthday.

Thank you.

Here is how I celebrated:

1) Mr. C went to a local recycle-heavy nature center and made crafts from recycled objects.  Which was lovely and all, except that I just wasn't too thrilled that all those saved cd's, paper towel tubes, fabric scraps, cotton balls, etc. were now being turned into junk for my own home.  (FYI: the reindeer above -- which I actually think is kind of cute -- was NOT made at the nature center; I guess I neglected to take photographic evidence of the art atrocities Mr. C created there before I . . . accidentally . . . misplaced all that shit.)

 2)  While we were at the nature center, I tried to make a lovely Christmas wreath with materials they'd set out for us.  After about 2 whole minutes, I got tired of trying to form the boughs into a circle shape whilst Mr. C hung on my legs and begged to go, which explains the clump of greenery you see above.  I was going to hang it on our front door, but it was too big.  So it's on the side of the house instead.

2)  We visited Bee at the Market, where I bought cranberries.  You'll see why in a minute.

3) I went to a holiday ice skating show.  It was by the same folks I blogged about last year.  This year, for a change of pace, I decided to be more mentally nice while watching the show.  (See, bitching whilst blogging does help me mature!)

4)  VERY EXCITING!  I stuffed pillows and comforters into my new space-saver bags!  DO I KNOW HOW TO PARTY OR WHAT?!!

thank you, Taste Of Home magazine!

5)  I made a Cranberry Cake with Tangerine Frosting.  Friends came over to help us eat it.  One week later, I still find myself dreaming of its tangy goodness.

6)  With the leftover candied oranges, I made these.  I am sad to report that any candy-type things that are citrus-flavored still give me the heebie-jeebies, even if they aren't artificial.  (What's up with that?)

7)  My ex-parents-in-law-by-marriage took Bee and me out to dinner at a swanky restaurant.  The waiter made a huge production of pouring wine for the entire table, then managed to crash the wine bottle into the ex-father-in-law-by-marriage's full glass, breaking it and spilling wine all over, then trying to imply that it was the ex-father-in-law's fault for moving his glass just as the waiter was setting the bottle down (which -- I think -- is challenging to do when one's hands aren't anywhere near one's wine glass).  We all were amused by the incident.

Now that my birthday is over, I can move on to Christmas.  Which means I only just got our Christmas decorations up yesterday, less than 10 days until Christmas.  Which is fine, except that:

1)  I had 16 pouches to empty all at once from my home-made advent calendar

2)  There just doesn't seem to be a point in spending large quantities of money on a tree we'll have for less than 2 weeks, so we just cut a bough from our arbor vitae and stuck it in a bucket.

3)  If I'm too lame to decorate even the tree, there's no way I'm going to string lights (and waste electricity) on the front of the house.  But I did do a little something:

the garage

the streetlight at the end of our driveway

the walkway to our front door

the chicken yard

Bee's trailer (decoratively parked in our front yard)

Whew.  I'm exhausted from all that hall-decking!

Now all I have to do is bake 2 different types of cookies and a couple of Dixie Pies by Wednesday for Sugarbee Cookie Company participants.

Pecan Spritz Cookies made with the cookie press my lovely sister got me for my birthday.  Yay!

Since I'm keeping ahead of this week's baking, I'm actually enjoying it.  I've been putting on my Awesome Christmas Mix CD I made a few years ago and baking. 

There's something about Nat King Cole singing in the background that just makes creaming butter and sugar so much more enjoyable.