Day 106: On the road

The thing about travelling in the evening in the winter is that it is so dark out.  I have trouble reading in the car without feeling queazy, so quickly I'll just post these shots that I took of the oncoming lights.  Couldn't use a flash, camera couldn't be held steady because of the road, and everything outside was also moving.  Made for kind of a cool effect, though. 

Hubby likes this one the best.  Looks like lightning.  But my favorite is this next one.  It's probably because the lights appear to be wishing everyone Merry Christmas!

Ugh.  Gotta go.  Although I have to say that having a wireless card is in one word...

AWESOME!

Day 105: A bit of this and that.

I'm torn about what to post today, so here are a couple of things.

First of all, the cookies I made today.  Chocolate peppermint candy canes.  First time I've tried this, and I'm going to do it every year.  Sooo good!

And next are the photos that I wanted to take yesterday.  The lights were on tonight!  YAY!  We walked across the street to the neighbour's on Sunday to bring by some Christmas baking, and I noticed the icicles  on this side of their lampost.  Yes, the other side has the nice big red bow--but the icicles looked so pretty with the light shining through.

Does anybody know why the autofocus wouldn't work, though?  Too dark, maybe?  Not sure. 

It'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.  We'll be en route to Chicago for the holidays.  But I will prevail!  That's part of the 365 day challenge, yes?

Day 104: tree topper

The photo that I was going to take today ended up being a no-go. The lights were on when we left for Julia's concert tonight--but they were off when I got home from babysitting a friend's kids.  Soooo...I'm afraid a rather busy photo of the tree topper is all I've got.  I really like the tree topper, though!  It's made out of big cinnamon sticks hot glued together.  I've had this topper for years.  OK--this TYPE of topper.  It's easy, and if the tree falls over, it's easy to relace.  I'm all for ornaments that are easy to replace and that are good dipped in hot chocolate.

Day 103: Winter Gems

One thing has led to another, and I STILL don't have a normal computer.  Everything is pixelated almost beyond recognition, and it looks like I should be playing PacMan on an Apple IIe.  When I fired everything up last evening, I noticed that this "new" hard drive is 5 years old.  Uh.  Not cool.  So when customer service  opens this morning, guess who's getting a call?  I noticed all of this last night when I was uploading photo of the day, so stopped that to call Dell, and at 12:30 am I got off the phone, only to hear Adam coughing up a storm, so spent the night with him.  Oy.  So, to continue, here is my post that I started, but did not complete, yesterday due to extenuating circumstances.  The photos WERE taken yesterday, and I started to post when everything went south.  Does that count?

*****
(written December 20, 2009)

We have had the most beautiful snow the last couple of days!  Yesterday the kids and I went out while it was still snowing (which it did all day) and packed down our sledding hill.  I didn't bring the camera coz I wanted my baby to stay dry.  But this morning I went out and caught a bit of it.  I wish you could have come with me--it was a lovely morning.  Church was cancelled again today. The call was made last night, when it was still snowing enthusiastically.  So we had another free day.  Spent it baking, bringing Christmas goodies to friends, and playing with puppets.  And going for this morning's walk.

And I'm soooo excited about the photo I'm going to take this evening!  I dragged everything out to do it last night, only to have a dead battery pack.  I have to wait until dark, so I'm hoping that it will work out.  If it does, it's going to be really nice.  Unless everything melts today.  Which would put a kibosh on my plans. Fingers crossed!  Have a lovely day, all.

Day 102: Jenga

Every few days I play a game or two of Jenga with Julia, if she's ready for bed in time.  Here are a  few quick photos from tonight.  From the second to the last picture, it looks like she was the one who caused the stack to tumble, but I have to admit that I was the culprit.  Twice.  Of two games.  Oops.

***
Hard drive in, but they were going to call me between 10 and 11 pm to reinstall antivirus--and it's 11:30 and no call in sight.  Grrrr.  I will catch up soon--I promise!

Day 101: chocolate desperation

Cadbury chocolate trumps Hershey any day of the week. There's just something about that Hershey chocolate aftertaste that is unappealing.  Living in PA, that's pretty blasphemous, but it's the truth.

That said, at Christmas time, when things get hectic and you need a quick chocolate fix:

M&Ms, calling from the top of the bookcase, are just the thing.  Especially if they're Christmas colours with some mint flavoured ones thrown in.

Yup.  That's juuuust right.  Now back to wrapping and writing cards.

***Don't forget the "kitchen fiasco" contest.  I mean, I don't blame you if you don't want to eat the jam, but you can maybe give it away yourself?  To someone who, perhaps, deserves a culinary surprise?  ***

Day 100: More canning. And a spur-of-the-moment contest.

Yet another post to do with canning.  Really, I never ever do this except at Christmas. 

Christmas Conserve:

Finely chop three oranges, unpeeled.  Revel in the refreshing citrus scent on your hands.

Add one package of fresh cranberries

Dump in a pot with 14 oz crushed pineapple, undrained, and 3/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots.

Add 5 cups of sugar and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes.  Crush some of the cranberries as they pop.  Makes everything a lovely red colour, yes?

Add 1-1/2 packages of liquid certo--because you couldn't find the one package of pectin crystals called for, and the liquid says one package isn't enough if you have less than 7 cups of sugar.  So you wing the pectin.  Bring to a rolling boil and boil for 1-1/2 minutes.  Remove from heat. stir and skim off any foam.  There wasn't much.  Ladle into sterile jars and put on the lids.  Proces in boiling water bath for 5 mintutes.

Admire the lovely Christmas colours, especially when paired with the hot pepper jelly.

Then take a BIG mouthful of the remainders, since you saved a bit for yourself, and promptly SPIT IT OUT because, although the recipe didn't say too, you should trim as much pith off the peel as possible, or it'll be inedibly bitter, at least to my tastebuds.

Repeat recipe, only removing much of the pith this time.  Much better.

Anybody enjoy bitter orangepeel?  I'll send you some really pretty jam.  Seriously. Let me know if you'd like some of the first batch, because I really would rather it didn't go to waste.  Maybe we should make a contest out of it.  That seems to be the thing to do these days.  If you leave a comment about a cooking fiasco of your own, I'll randomly select 3 commenters (I'm hoping maybe I'll have that many!) and send out a jar of really pretty, and usually really tasty, Christmas jam.  I'll close the contest on Sunday evening at 11:00 pm, so I can try to get them out before Christmas.  Only three winners, because of shipping, boxing, etc. etc. and so on and so forth.

If there are any takers.

I'm trying to think of something diabolical to do with some of the other jars.  Any ideas?

*******

I also want to apologize for lack of comments lately.  As you may know, my hard drive on the laptop where I work is toast, and this computer is a bit of a beasty and also used by hubby to apply for work.  So my time here is limited.  The good news is that the new hard drive came today.  However, the computer company was supposed to call me at 8:15 this evening to guide me through installing, but of course they did not, which means I will have to go through that on-hold for hours routine tomorrow.  But then I'll have my computer back and will do some catch up.  I haven't even had time to peruse your posts much, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you've been up to.