Christmas Behind-the-Scenes

I know I referenced an idea I had for gift wrapping. Well, here is a picture of how it turned out. It's grosgrain ribbon (which I adore) and a red jingle bell. I did some with red 1-inch grosgrain ribbon, too.

Also, about food. I've started this thing of taking pictures of my plates of food. I know it's very strange, but here is a picture of my Christmas breakfast. This is pretty close to my dream breakfast: country ham and cheddar biscuit, honey and butter on a biscuit, and butter and blackberry preserves on a biscuit.

Here is my Christmas Day dinner plate: honey glazed ham; one of my mom's wheat yeast rolls; the two dishes I made: warm pineapple salad and hash brown casserole; and my mom's cranberry/apple dish.

The Johnsons do a really cool thing for Christmas Eve food...it's sort of like football food. Ham and rolls, dips, sweets, but enough to fill up on. I love it! I made one of Granny June's recipes. Here it is.

Mississippi Sin
1 loaf Italian bread from the bakery section of the grocery store.
1/3 c. chopped onions
1 1/2 c. sour cream
1/2 c. chopped ham
2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1/3 c. chopped green chilies
8 oz. Cream cheese
Dash Worcestershire sauce

Slice off top of bread and hollow out. Mix all ingredients and pour into hollowed-out bread. Put top on bread; wrap in foil and bake at 350 for 1 hour. Use crackers or chips to dip. After an hour, I find that I have to unwrap and take off the lid of the loaf and let it bake about 10 more minutes. At this point I just lay the lid on the baking sheet next to the dip, and I also put the pieces I dug out on the sheet too. They're delish for dipping!

Christmas Catch-Up

First, there was the Dugan Christmas the Saturday before Christmas. We got together in M'boro this year at Grandaddy and Mom Glenda's house.



The next day was the Family Christmas at TPOM. I didn't get very good pictures of the performances by my brothers-in-law at this event, but I did get a good shot of AbiLyn with her Papa.

Monday before Christmas was Cookie Night with the Johnsons. They've done this every Christmas since Mackenzie was little, and I think this may be the first year I've remembered to take my camera.




Christmas Eve we gathered again at the Johnsons' house. Here are just a few of the pictures.





After we left the Johnsons' house we headed to the lake for a first-time event. My family tried having Christmas Day at the lake, and it was really nice. David and I were able to go straight there Christmas Eve night and stay until the day after Christmas.

Notice

I promise I will have a full post-holiday rundown with pictures up here in the next day or so. We got home yesterday and de-Christmased our house, and I haven't had my camera until today, so anyway...excuses, excuses, I know!

Until tomorrow.

Christmas Eve

I am so happy to be off work now and all settled in at the Johnsons' house! We will hang out, eat yummy finger foods and dips, watch Mackenzie and Taylor open their gifts, and run out at the last minute to Wal-Mart or K-Mart for absolutely no reason.

I adore Christmas Eve with my second family!

Here Comes the Sun...Doo do doo doo

Yesterday was December 21...the shortest day of the year. It's behind us now. The days will only get longer. The sun will stay out a little bit more every day.

I am always glad to say farewell to the shortest day of the year!

Sad Day

On Valentine's Day 2006 my husband absolutely blew me away when he surprised me with a 30-gig iPod video. I LOVE my iPod. It and my phone are the two electronic devices I can't live without. I know where it is at all times.

Unfortunately, I think it may be dying. Granted, I have been very rough with it. It's been dropped countless times. I have had to completely wipe it clean and restore it at least once. It's been connected to multiple computers as I've moved from one job to another. Through it all, it's been a trooper. Well, it's not holding a battery charge very well, and I feel like it's the beginning of the end.

I just went to the Apple store, and a new one is $249. Come on, little iPod. Hang in there!

Christmas-ness

Oh, and we're having a lovely Christmas season, by the way!

Last weekend I went with Mom and Dad to Franklin for the Dickens of a Christmas festival. It's so much fun. Historic Franklin is such a neat little storybook kind of place, and when you throw in carriage rides, and people in costumes, and carolers, and kids playing the violin, and handbell choirs, and water goblet players you start to feel like you're in a movie. And I haven't even talked about all the darling shops that are open. After the festival Dad wanted to go try out Cajun Steamer in Cool Springs. I had the delicious crawfish etoufee with cheese grits, and it was the perfect finish to a cold, overcast day.

Sunday I spent the day making Christmas treats because on Monday night my sisters and AbiLyn came over to watch White Christmas. We drank hot chocolate and ate sweets and tried (rather unsuccessfully) to string popcorn for the lake Christmas tree.

The rest of the week has been fairly normal with work and trying to get on top of all the food prep and the very little gift buying we have to do. I also got inspired in Franklin last weekend to get more creative with the embellishment on my wrapped Christmas gifts. I'm pretty good at gift-wrapping, but I'm always a little disappointed in the way my bows look. It may be because I've been using the same bag of bows for about five years now. However, I had an epiphany at work yesterday, and I think I may have a darling little idea. We'll see. I'll post a pic if it's a success.

E-mail Conversations

Being that I belong to a family with a high percentage of females, any get-together requires planning. Planning for food, specifically, but also times, guest lists, etc.

My sisters and my mother and I have these long email conversations with each other about nearly every family event. Sometimes my dad jumps in, too, but it's usually us four ladies. We go back and forth, "replying to all" all day long. Even though it's for something as mundane as what food everyone's bringing to a family night, I enjoy the days that we have these conversations. It's nice to know that my sisters and mom are out there, and we're all thinking about the same thing. It's comforting in a strange, computer-y, sort of way.

Ma'am

Note to the perky girl on the phone at Papa Murphy's:

I am not a ma'am. Ma'am is what you say to your mother or her friends or your grandmother or your aunts or your pastor's wife. Don't say it to me. I'm not even old enough to be your mo...oh, wait.

Nevermind.

Picture-Worthy Weekend

So this weekend may take the prize as my favorite weekend in a very long time. It began with dinner at Camino Re Al with my family and the tree lighting on the square in M'boro. I don't have any pictures of this because I forgot my camera (argh!), but we had a blast! It was delightfully cold and Christmas-y out.

Saturday morning David woke me with the news that it had snowed. I said, "No way, you're telling me a story." He said, "No, really, look out your window." Wow! the ground and the rooves were covered with a thin layer of snow...on the first weekend in December! So, we got to go pick out our Christmas tree in the remnants of the snow on a crisp, clear, beautiful day! Perfect! We even got a discount on our tree! Here's some pics of our decorated house.



After we left the tree farm we went to eat lunch at Miller's Grocery. It was delicious as always. I had the pork chop with macaroni and cheese and broccoli casserole, and David and I split a piece of hummingbird cake. Here's some pictures.



After Miller's David and I scurried home to get our tree in the stand and lights put on it. Then he headed out for a gig, and I started decorating the tree.

Last night I went to the Oaklands Candlelight Tour of Homes here in Murfreesboro. If you've never participated in this event I strongly urge you to do so. It's really fun if you're a nosy parker like me who loves to look at houses and how people have them decorated. Basically, the candlelight tour is a fund raiser where you buy a ticket to tour seven or eight historic homes in the downtown area of Murfreesboro. A church is usually part of the tour and you also get to tour Oaklands Historic House which is decorated for Christmas the way it would have been in its heyday. The homes and the church are usually within walking distance of each other, and you just wander from house to house. I went with Mom and Dad and Grandaddy and Mom Glenda. We had a great time.

This afternoon we went to see AbiLyn and lots of other little friends in Bethlehem Treasure, the Christmas musical at TPOM. Everyone involved did a fabulous job, once again. Kudos!