Blogmas '22 Day 3: Family Christmas!

Our family Christmas celebrations have varied wildly over the years. When we were little (we meaning my brother and I—this was before my sister was born), we spent Christmas in Pittsburgh with my parents’ families. Christmas Eve we usually spent with my dad’s family, and Christmas Day with my mom’s family. (Back then my mom still had siblings living at home—she’s the third of eight kids. Dad is the youngest of three.)

The big special thing, though, was that Santa came early to our house. We did Christmas at home before we left for Pittsburgh. And yes, I really did love telling my classmates that. :)

Once my sister was born, the celebrations became different. One year my Grandma D came down ,but most years we were at home. Mom sang in the choir and played the flute for Midnight Mass, so we went to an earlier Mass, then came home, then mom left for midnight Mass. Once I was old enough to help dad (er, “Santa”) set out toys, that was my job, and Bryan had to keep Melanie from trying to get downstairs! After college, I sang in the church choir at Midnight Mass.

When I was in junior high, we started a family reunion on my mom’s side a few days after Christmas, which took place in various hotels. For the past 10 years or so it’s been here in town, but we haven’t rescheduled it since the pandemic—but there have also been weddings and graduations, so we’ve been able to see each other outside of the holidays, which is nice. There are so many of us that we don’t fit in anyone’s house anymore!

So Christmas at home now looks like this: we go to 4:00 Mass, have dinner after, and then exchange gifts with my brother and sister-in-law at their house. This year, the best gift was baby Hailey—their daughter! She was due to arrive in early January ut she decided she just had to spend Christmas with us, so I spent most of Christmas Eve this year with a newborn sleeping on my chest.

That’s a pretty good way to spend Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day is very relaxed—I spend the day with my parents. We open gifts and have food and generally hang out all day, usually with some football or A Christmas Story thrown in. This year was Madeleine’s first Christmas, so we FaceTimed with them a few times. It was so cute to see Maddie celebrate her first Christmas!

How does your family celebrate Christmas? Tell me about it!

My parents love Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, and “Winter Was Warm” is one of my mom’s favorite songs from it, so….here you go!

Blogmas Day 2: Christmas Food!

The two recipes I make every year for Christmas, without fail, are these two recipes from Ina Garten:

Hermit Bars (like gingerbread) : I don’t do the glaze on them, to cut down on unnecessary carbs. :) Feel free to try it at your house if you like! (For sixteen bars, they’re 20.6 carbs each—that’s without the glaze.)

Hermit bars with tea, December 23. It was -5 that day! (And that was up from -8!)

Blueberry (at our house!) crumble bars (47 g of carbs per bar (if you make 12)). I leave out the almonds because the granola I use has almonds in it, and I also leave out the confectioner’s sugar.

Blueberry crumble bars

I’m including the carb count for my fellow folks-who-need-to-know-that :)

For today’s music, it’s music AND video! Enjoy the dancing Candy Canes of New York City Ballet while you have some treats!

Don't Forget About Advent

Botticelli, “The Annunciation”

Lately there’s been a whole cascade of encounters that have made me think that we need to talk more about Advent.

People saying Christmas ends on the 26th; people being burnt out on Christmas by Christmas Day; and housekeeping plans that tell you to take the tree and decorations down starting the 26th so you can have a “clean house” by January First are all a part of this.

We have forgotten about Advent.

Now, I’m guilty of wanting to play Christmas music in December. :) (This is because there is SO MUCH GOODNESS of it that it takes months to listen to fully!) I put my tree up after Thanksgiving. It’s true. My grandparents put their tree up on Christmas Eve. So I realize that it may not seem like I’m big into Advent.

But I love Advent. I love keeping the baby Jesus out of the crib until Christmas Eve. I love the readings of Advent, and the music of Advent. I love the delicious waiting, as Mother Mary Francis says. * (Link goes to my all time favorite Advent book!)

We need to re-adjust. We can decorate slowly. We can save the parties for the actual Christmas season, which begins Christmas Day and goes for at least twelve days! In the old church calendar, Christmas was a forty day season that ended on Candlemas! (February 2) Yes, you can keep your nativity up that long (and your tree if you’re like me and have a fake one that won’t catch fire!)

Are there things we can do during advent to prepare for Christmas? Of course. We celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. We light the candles on the Advent wreath. We leave shoes out for St. Nicholas. St. Lucy’s Day is a great day to celebrate the coming of the Light of the World and to make St. Lucia Buns!

But the solemnity, the season, of Christmas begins December 25. It’s not over December 26. It’s a season. It’s a big old period for joy.

And likewise, Advent is a season—in preparing for that joy. For making our houses “fair as you are able” (People Look East)

Leila has a wonderful post about this, and it’s a great idea to incorporate some of these into your Christmas. I’ve tried to do this as well—I love the cocoa party idea, for example. Even if you’re single like I am, you can still celebrate the 12 days! I used to love taking time off after Christmas not just for our family reunion but for unwinding around the house and reading all my Christmas books!

If you’d like to celebrate Advent this year, just a note: Advent doesn’t start December 1 and go through the 24th. (I see this a lot.) It properly starts four Sundays before Christmas—this year it starts November 27. It’s movable, just like Lent’s start date is movable. So the first Sunday of Advent is November 27, the second is December 4, the third is December 11, and the fourth is December 18. Yes, we have the longest Advent possible this year, because it’s four full weeks! Sometimes the “fourth week” is really just a few hours, since the fourth Sunday of Advent can also be Christmas Eve.

If you need candles for your wreath, you can check here and here.

Living the season liturgically gives us time to prepare, and time to enjoy. It’s not all crammed together in a stress ball of madness!

BONUS: Here’s my favorite version of Veni, Veni (O Come, O Come Emmanuel):

Blogmas Day 8: Happy New Year! (With one of my FAVORITE Christmas songs!)

Today’s a Marian feast day, hence Marian photo!

Welcome, 2022!

I hope that all of you have a New Year that is full of joy, happiness, blessings, and good books.

The USCC offers this prayer service to bring in a new year.

Today is also the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God., so we’re going to have some Marian Christmas music.

This song is one of my favorites! Give it a listen!

This is sadly not captioned, so the lyrics are here.

Blogmas day 7: Goals for 2021

Since it’s New Year’s Eve I thought it was a good time to slot the “new year’s goals” entry into the blogmas calendar.

I don’t make resolutions. I make goals. I discovered Lara Casey’s Powersheets in 2015 right after I’d left my job at the Senate, and they literally changed my life. I wouldn’t have written—or published!—my book without them!

(No I don’t get paid to say that, I just LOVE THEM)

So ever since then, I’ve used them to set goals for the year. The Powersheets break these goals down into monthly “tending lists”, which are broken down even further into Monthly Action Items, Weekly Action Items, and Daily Action Items.

I do the “prep work” in November and December, and I usually write out the tending list for the next month on the last Thursday of the month, which was yesterday.

So here are my goals for 2022! (I’m summarizing here. There are some things that I keep to myself, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. :) )

1) To be healthier by doing workouts I enjoy, and giving myself grace as I learn new things.

2) To have secure finances by tracking daily spending and fine-tuning my budget so that I can increase my savings.

3) To “re-create” my home to reflect my taste, personality, and needs.

(THIS is basically my aesthetic)

Yesterday I made my tending list for the month: (yes I blurred some things out :) )

Each goal has a color attached to it as you can see here. The hot pink is for spiritual growth—that’s a never-ending goal, so I don’t purposely “set that” as a goal each year.

Monthly Action Items

Create healthy snack list: This is harder than it sounds for me. As I’ve written before, one of the hardest things for me post transplant has been the food adjustment. Before transplant, I was never really hungry. You read that right. Never. I might like some things, but I didn’t crave food, or really get hungry.

Post-transplant….um, that changed. :) Which was GOOD! I grew an inch and a half! My body was so malnourished that it took everything I was throwing at it, and I physically filled out. But…I didn’t know how to really eat. And also I’m on prednisone forever, which messes up hunger cues. So before when I was never really hungry, now I’m never really not hungry. I could always eat something.

Throw diabetes on top of that, and it’s messy. So one of the things I want to do this month is create a healthy snack list and then stock my house according. A healthy snack, for my purposes, is one that combines protein+fat+carbs (Yes, people like me do need to have carbs. Fairly regularly, actually, or else the blood sugar plummets and that’s not good either.).

The January Cure is a thing Apartment Therapy does. It’s a 20 day house cleaning/organizing challenge.

Wellness challenge I am all signed up for!

February budget: I use EveryDollar (the free version) and I love it!

Retreat Day: I do this monthly. It’s a day when I turn off my electronics and read, work out, and look over my goals for the next month.

Confession: I’m working on going to confession once a month. So I write it down here so I don’t forget to do it!

Weekly Action Items

These are all health related:

Meal plan: I used to be good about this and then I slacked off. I generally plan for 4-5 days of meals so I have some flexibility if I just don’t feel like cooking and instead have PBJ, or my parents invite me over for dinner or a friend wants to go out!

Weigh: Every week. Yes.

Barre 2x/week: This isn’t barre like pure barre or barre 3. This is ballet barre, using YouTube videos. And no, I don’t mean an entire barre, which is about 45-50 minutes. Right now, my goal is 10-15 minutes of barre twice a week. This isn’t all the exercise I do in a week, but I want to make sure I do these, so that’s why they’re a weekly goal.

Daily Action Items/Habits:

BIAY: the Bible In A Year podcast. I started last May, so I want to make sure that I keep going! (Folks, this is amazing. I love doing it. (Here’s a post on what I’ve learned so far—I need to write another one of these!)

January Cure Items: This is the daily accountability for the January Cure Monthly item.

Budget check in: This used to be called “balancing your checkbook”. :) But this is where I reconcile my budget with my actual spending.

TA-DA! That’s my January tending list and my goals for 2022! How about you? What goals have you set?

CHRISTMAS MUSIC: “In The Bleak Midwinter” from Renee Fleming and Rufus Wainwright

Blogmas Day 6: Christmas Food

Our Christmas breakfast, for as long as I can remember, breakfast has been cinnamon rolls and sausage. I look forward to this meal all year. They’re just the Pillsbury type, and the sausage varies—now we use turkey sausage—so it’s simple, but it’s great, and I really appreciate that mom still makes it for me, now that my siblings are married and spend Christmas with their spouses (or, in Melanie’s case, she can’t get home for Christmas, because she’s going to have Maddie any minute now. :) ).

I usually make two Barefoot Contessa recipes for Christmas: The raspberry crumble bars (you can use any flavor of jam!) and the hermit bars (spicy gingerbread). I don’t make the icing for the hermit bars, because I think they taste great enough on their own. I’ve also made Giada’s citrus biscotti in the past. Mom is also a huge fan of snickerdoodles, so she would make those sometimes too.

Our dinner has varied greatly through the years, to the point that there really isn't anything we have every year, with the exception of Schwann’s peppermint stick ice cream! And if there is a party during the season, I will make THE GUINNESS CAKE.

I almost always get a cookbook for Christmas now—and have ever since I moved out after college, although my first cookbook (that wasn’t an American Girl historical cookbook!) was Betty Crocker’s Quick and Easy, which I still have, and used when I lived in an apartment, briefly, my senior year of college. This year I got Half Baked Harvest Super Simple, so I will be marking the recipes that I want to make, and then making them over the next week and a half or so.

Do you have Christmas/holiday food traditions?

Christmas music: If we’re talking about food, then we probably need a carol with food in it :)

Let’s have “The Christmas Song” sung by Nat King Cole, huh? :)

Blogmas Day 5: Christmas As A Kid

I’m not sure whose Christmas tree this is. :)

You can read all the blogmas posts here!

As a kid (I mean up until about the age of 9, I think), we spent Christmas in Pittsburgh. That meant that my brother and I got our Santa gifts early, which made us very happy and made our classmates very jealous. At the time, there weren’t as many grandkids as there are now, so my brother and I were pretty spoiled with presents by our grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

We would arrive in Pittsburgh on Christmas Eve and stay at one grandparents’ or the others that day, and then spend the next day with the others. I seem to remember that we usually spent Christmas Eve with Dad’s family—his two sisters, their husband, kids, and my grandmother (my grandfather died when my dad was 20). Being southern Italians, they did the Feast of the Seven Fishes for a long time—I don’t think they it when I was old enough to actually partake, or they did, and the kids just didn’t get the food. Gifts were after dinner in the living room. Bryan (my brother) and I were (and still are, but with the addition of Melanie!) the youngest grandchildren on this side of the family, so we got most of the gifts (I think?). I do remember adults opening things as well, but being a kid I didn’t really pay attention!

at the Heilmann Christmas party. L-R: Diane [Patty’s mom!], Jeff, me, and Julie holding my screaming brother.

The Heilmann Christmas was multi-parted. My great-grandmother lived in a nearby apartment building and we would have a Christmas party there in the building’s “party room”, which you see above. This was also the location for a lot of my early birthday parties. (Remember, not a lot of grand kids on this side, lots of people who wanted to spoil small children.)

I don’t remember sequence, exactly, but we would open gifts at Grandma and Pa’s (mom’s parents), and then at some point there was the party at Nana’s, which wasn’t far away. Diane and her family (my Aunt Sue, Uncle John—mom’s brother—and her sister, Megan) lived in St. Louis and it was always a lot of fun to see her, since we’re only six months apart in age. Julie (seen above at the right) is the oldest grandchild, I’m second, and Di is third. (Also, the first child in every family on my mom’s side was a girl, too!) We spent a lot of time playing Barbies. (Well, Di and I. I don’t think Julie was into Barbies.)

I loved the way we spent Christmas. It evolved, of course, as we got older, but it was really magical when I was little, especially getting to spend so much time with my relatives.

Gifts I remember getting? A Sesame Street sleeping bag and a banjo (also Sesame Street), and the My Little Pony Pink Perfume Palace! (I loved that thing so much I took it to Walt Disney World when I was seven. It was my carry-on. I’m not kidding.)

Christmas Music: TWOFER!

1) O Come, All Ye Faithful, from the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph!

For some reason, I remember singing this at my grandparents’ church. I don’t know if it actually happens, but I have a very strong memory of it (I was wearing a white dress with navy blue anchors on it). So, I’m sharing this one today!

2) I should’ve posted this yesterday since it was the feast of the Holy Innocents—Loreena Mckennit singing the Coventry Carol.

Blogmas Day 4: Books of Christmas!

OK it is time for THE BOOK HAUL.

I always get a lot of books for Christmas—either as gifts or because of gift cards to book stores. :) I have actually ordered some more books that haven’t arrived yet, so those will probably show up in next week’s Yarn Along! If I’ve read it already there will be notes. If not, just the title and a link.

(All book links are affiliate links!)

The Ballerinas, Rachel Kapelke-Dale. A former soloist with the Paris Opera Ballet returns to set (choreograph) a new ballet on its dancers. She wants to use two of her former friends in the ballet—especially Lindsay, who she hurt years ago and now wants to make it up to her. The suspense is in what our narrator actually did, as well as the machinations of the other characters who swirl around her, including a former boyfriend and the ghost of her mother, who was a former etoile (star, the highest level a dancer can achieve at the Paris Opera Ballet). There’s definitely a tinge of Black Swan to this one, but I found it incredibly propulsive and couldn’t put it down on Christmas Day.

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr

Drums of Autumn 25th Anniversary Edition, Diana Gabaldon. The fourth installment in her Outlander series, this one takes the Frasers (Claire, Jamie, and Ian) to America to settle. It also involves Brianna, Jamie and Claire’s daughter, whom Claire left behind in the 1960s. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it! This was the basis for season four of the TV show.

Outlander Knitting: I’ve looked through this, not enough to really digest any of the patterns, but there’s a variety of things here, from accessories to home items to some garments. Now that I can do stranded color work (more on that next week!) there are projects in this book that I can do, now which is very exciting.

Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: I fell in love with Tieghan’s first book Half Baked Harvest, which I picked up in Houston during my summer trip, so naturally I asked for her second book for Christmas! There are lots of good things in here so I’m looking forward to going through it with my post-it notes and marking recipes I want to try. (All my cookbooks have tons of post-it notes in them, marking recipes I want to try. I use a lot of post-it notes!)

Now for (some of) the Amazon books!

The Ballerina Mindset, Megan Fairchild. As you know if you’ve read here for any length of time, I love ballet. So reading Megan’s book as definitely something I wanted to do! She’s a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, has acted on Broadway, is earning her MBA, and has three kids. Whew! I’m really excited to dive into this one.

The Island, Victoria Hislop. I saw this book on The Duchess of Cornwall’s (Camilla, Prince Charles’ Wife) Reading Room feed. If you’ve not heard of it, the feed showcases books that the Duchess loves with there being several books a season”. It’s a great way for me to expand my literary horizons! The Island was featured in season 4, so I put it on my Amazon wish list. It involves Greece, leprosy, WWII, and family ties—sounds pretty good!

Christmas fact: Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents (it’s also the wedding anniversary for two of my friends!)

Christmas Music: Linda Eder with the Broadway Gospel Choir , “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

(Fun fact: This was one of the “traditionals'“ in my high school choir. We had two of them, and one of them was this one, which we called “Do you hear what I know” because, let’s be honest, it’s hard to remember the order here, people!)

Blogmas Day 3: Knitted Christmas Gifts!

These aren’t really surprises, but I do want to talk about the two things I knitted for Christmas gifts this year.

The first was a blanket for my niece, Madeleine.

I’ve given some notes about this before, I think, but I want to talk about it more in-depth.

I worked with my sister to select the colors—I gave her a choice of yarns, and she chose the yarn and the colors for the blanket. This yarn is Rowan Baby Cashsoft Merino , in colors teal, rosy, snowflake, and lavender. These go with the aesthetics of Maddie’s nursery, but they’re also colors that can grow with her, because I don’t like to make just “baby blankets” that have typical baby colors. My siblings and I adored our baby blankets, so I wanted something that would be good for a little girl, tween, or teenage (or even adult!) Madeleine.

This yarn is also great because Maddie lives in the Rocky Mountains, where temperature changes can be fast and brutal! The wool, acrylic, and cashmere blend will provide warmth and softness. (I would not have used this for Patty’s blanket, because she lives in Texas where it is HOT.)

The pattern I used is my favorite Sully, but I made some alterations to it. I don’t do the picked up border because picking up stitches is fiddly and I don’t really like it. But to prevent curling, I did a 4 stitch garter stitch border on both sides of the blanket. It still curls a bit, but it’s not as bad, and I like the bit of whimsy it adds to what is essentially a stockinette stitch blanket (with pearl stitch detailing in the color change rows).

I didn’t block it, because I like how it looked off the needles and I didn’t want to mess it up with blocking. Sometimes in blocking things like a blanket or a shawl, the blocking can be….weird. It can be stretched too much, it canasta be “off”. Now, I know that’s partially my fault! :) But I didn’t want her blanket stretched out. I liked the effect as it is, which you can see above.

I mailed it wrapped in plastic wrap and I also included a care card, so my sister Melanie knew how to wash it, if needed. (I always include a little care card with knitted gifts.)

The second gift is a simple scarf for my friend, Amilia.

This yarn is a super, super soft alpaca silk blend. It is very pretty—much prettier in person!

However, I have a hard time knitting with it because it is so slippery!

So I decided that I would use it for a very simple pattern—make a long, garter stitch scarf that gives Amilia styling options and allows her to just love a useful accessory in a beautiful yarn.

I called this pattern “Ripples” and it’s super basic. It’s just 25 stitches cast onto size 9 needles, and then I knit in garter stitch until it was the length I wanted it. Easy-peasy.

Christmas fact: Today is the feast of St. John, apostle and evangelist!

Christmas music: From Linda Eder and the Broadway Gospel Choir singing “Silent Night”.

Blogmas Day 2: How I Spent Christmas

Christmas Eve chez moi

Christmas Eve started with Mass, where I read the first reading (and loved doing it, it’s so good), and then we had dinner at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, followed by presents and the traditional Christmas Eve viewing of A Christmas Story.

The Emma Bridgewater pottery my brother and SIL got me—I collect it! And how awesome is the personalized cocoa mug?!

Afterwards my parents dropped me off at my apartment, where I spent Christmas Eve working on some knitting projects for me and watching Muppet Christmas Carol, which is truly a classic. I also re-read some of my favorite Christmas novels.

Christmas Day

My dad picked me up and we had breakfast before opening our gifts.

We always have sausage and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and it’s my favorite breakfast of the year!

One of the 12 Days of Christmas plates from my mom’s set.

After that we opened presents! I got one very special present that deserves its own post, so stay on the lookout for that!

Christmas booooooooks! :) (And I got Amazon gift cards, which also lead to—more Christmas books!) I will talk all about the books later during Blogmas!

We had an easy lunch, followed by a game of Harry Potter Scrabble where we used all the tiles. I am proud of our accomplishment! My mom is amazing at word games, so she won, as I expected. (I am not very good at word games, which surprises people, because they think that being a writer I’d be good at word games. I’m not, really. I tend to think of bigger words that don’t fit on the board!)

We had dinner and then I went home to spend the rest of the day.

Christmas fact: Today is the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr!

MUSIC: Two today!

Mannheim—this time it’s O Holy Night.

Loreena McKennit’s awesome version of “Good King Wenceslas”, which takes place today, “On the feast of Stephen”. It will make you want to dance!

Blogmas Day 1: Merry Christmas

Just popping in to say Merry Christmas to all of you and your families! I hope you have a wonderful day. :)

One of my Christmas traditions is not listening to this song until Christmas Eve on the way to Mass. I don’t know why. Growing up, my parents had all the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas tapes and we would listen to them going to Mass, so maybe that’s why. But this always makes me think of that drive, down a street that was lit by the milk-gallon lanterns that people put out and seeing all the lights aglow in all the yards. So I hope you enjoy it!

BLOGMAS!

I know a lot of video bloggers do “vlogmas”, which is videos beginning Dec. 1 and going through Christmas (or thereabouts). I decided I’m going to do “blogmas” BUT through the 12 days of Christmas! Wheee!

I’ve never done this but I have done daily blogging challenges before so this isn’t a new thing over here—but it is something I haven’t done in awhile.

Not sure exactly what the content will be, but I’m sure it will consist of books, family, knitting, movies, and recipes, so that sounds like a good start!

Seven Quick Takes--January 15, 2021

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Hello, all! Welcome to the Friday Quick Takes. :) Glad you’re here.

We’ll start with some Patty, per usual….

No, I did not make that really cute sweater, her grandma (my Aunt Sue) did. :) She’s almost 7 months old!

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We could talk about politics. But the thing is, I’d rather not, because I spent so much of my life in it. And at this point I am glad I am out of it. I will, however, repost something I wrote over the summer about how we deal with current events. Here you go.

I really do think that we have to think about what we say, pray about what we say, pray about what God is calling us to do. Not all of us are called to be big shaking world changers. Food for thought.

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Sort of attached….I know a lot of people are talking about leaving social media. I can understand that. If you want to stay in touch with me and the blog—which means you get all the posts, the giveaways (one next week!), notifications, and news—please sign up for my mailing list. I do not send spam. :) You get blog posts and my newsletter sent to your inbox, and you also get subscriber goodies!
And also, publishers look at the “engagement” authors have with their audience. So a healthy email list is something I can show publishing houses to say that people actually, you know, read what I write?

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My Book’s Birthday is on Jan. 24, and I’ve got giveaways! On Monday the first one will go, and then I’ll be doing another which is more Lent focused in February. I’m excited.

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In other news, I’m really happy because one, hockey is back (even if the Pens did lose to Philly last night) and two because I’m sleeping again, yay body! It’s so nice to have energy!

In other health news, my “group” of people here in Ohio is set to begin receiving the COVID vaccine on January 25. I’m registered with my local health department and OSU (Ohio State) is also setting up a site for their patients, so I’m not sure where I’ll get it or which one it will be . I guess it’ll be whoever calls me first. I you are in Ohio and want more information on the vaccination process, you can read it here.

What I’m hearing is that we (meaning immunocompromised folk) might not get as much protection as the rest of you from it, because we’ve broken our immune systems on purpose. But even some protection is better than none.

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Some books I’ve read lately and really liked: Miss Austen, Piranesi, and The Exiles. If you want some good fiction reading, I highly recommend these!

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My tree is still up, yup. I try to keep it up until Candlemas, which used to be the end of the Christmas Season. We’ll see how long it stay up. :) But some of the other things can start to come down. I don’t have too many Christmas decorations but some things like the pillows can move back into storage until next year.

How about you? Is your tree or nativity still up, or have then been packed up?

Merry Christmas!

I hope you and your family have

a joyful and merry Christmas!

Love,

Emily

Christmas Baking!

I don’t do a lot of baking for Christmas. I don’t make cookies because it’s just me here and I don’t need 4 dozen cookies sitting around. :) But there are two things I like to make and bring to my parents for Christmas Day celebrations, so I thought I’d share them with you!

The first one—which you see above in its unbaked state—are these Crumble Bars, from Ina Garten. She uses raspberry jam in hers but I’ve found any type works as long as it’s good jam and not like, basic store brand jam. I use Stonewall Kitchen a lot of the time, or Trader Joe’s preserves. The other tweak I make to the recipe is I don’t use sliced almonds. The granola I use does have almonds in them—you can see them in the photo—and if people want it, they can eat it, if they don’t, no biggie. :)

The second are Ina’s Hermit Bars. These are basically like gingerbread but cut like biscotti, so they’re really good and easy to make. I don’t do the glaze because I don’t need any more sugar in my life. These are great and people really like them! I also don’t chop up the crystallized ginger unless it comes in really big chunks like mine does this year. If you get it in the spice aisle in the jars, it usually comes in fairly small bits so you can just add them whole. The other great thing about the hermit bars is that you can make them ahead of time. I’ll make them tomorrow, wrap them in plastic wrap in the fridge, then bring them to room temp and slice them on Thursday before I go to my parents.

Happy baking!

Seven Quick Takes--Post Turkey

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Happy Post-Thanksgiving! I hope you had a lovely Turkey Day!

Patty certainly had a good day.

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We had Buca di Beppo. They had the normal menu (well, a smaller menu, as is usual these days) an then Thanksgiving meal which was very good. I really liked the stuffing, which had Italian sausage in it—WINNER. It was a little different than regular stuffing (or dressing, as some of you say), but I really liked it!

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OK time for business!

OK first: my ebook, Catholic 101, is on sale for FOUR DOLLARS. If you are a blog subscriber, you get even MORE off with your special coupon code! So if you aren’t a subscriber, sign up now and get the code!

This book is based on my experiences as a first grade CCD—as I was teaching the kids things, I noticed that parents and other adults didn’t know the stuff I was teaching the kids! So I decided to write an ebook about it.

The ebook is gift-able—you can email it to people!—printable, and also readable on any screen.

The sale runs through next Friday (Dec. 4), at midnight. You don't need a code or anything. Just go buy it. :)

Second, Ave Maria Press’s Black Friday deal is on. Using the code BLACK20 to get 30% off and FREE SHIPPING PLUS an Advent booklet (while supplies last) for free! You can get Living Memento Mori here.

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I got my first Christmas gift today from Tiff (aka Billy’s mom)—three books that I will probably spend the rest of the day devouring. That and also digging out in Orchard House—it’s a disaster. One of the biggest issues with not going out to shop is that I get so many BOXES AND BAGS delivered on a weekly basis. So they pile up fully quickly! So today I’ll be making several trips to the bulk trash and trash compactor.

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Normally I put my tree up tomorrow during the OSU/ Michigan game. But….that game is now next week, so my schedule is all off. :) So I might not get the tree up until next week but it’s all good, right? I would like to get the nativity set out this weekend.

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In what has become a Thanksgiving tradition, I watched Miracle on 34th Street (the original) last night while I worked on my Find Your Fade Shawl. It’s actually quite a lovely tradition, if I do say so myself.

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And speaking of knitting, this weekend I will start picking up the stitches for the cardigan collar! Wish me luck. :)

Christmas is Practically Here Seven Quick Takes

Linking up with Kelly!

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So gonna start off with—I saw Star Wars last night. No, not at midnight. At a special 5:00 “fan screening”—I did get a cool opening night pin (sorry, bad photo in dark theater!):

So that was pretty cool. And there were heated seats in the theater—talk about decadence. I’d actually been wanting to try this out, and it was like a nice heating pad feel in your lower back, so I have to say, enjoyable. And you could turn it on and off! Yes, I am easily amused.

Anyway, no spoilers here, but I think it’s the best Star Wars movie since Empire. The critics who are giving it crap? What are they watching? No idea. But it’s good.

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I am going to start Christmas baking this weekend, because I only have to make two things—Ina’s Hermit Bars, and her crumble bars—for the family to nosh on over Christmas Day. I’ve made the hermit bars every Christmas for a few years now, they’re easy and delightfully good. I don’t do the glaze thing. To me, it’s an easy way to cut down on sugar intake by removing it and thus we can have more sugar later. Right? :)

For the crumble bars, I leave out the almonds, and you can use any type of jam you like. I’m using blueberry this time.

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I’ve started a baby blanket for a friend’s baby….

Bad apartment carpet, forgive me. :)

The yarn is Knitpicks Shine Sport, which I really like (L-R: Robot, Clarity, Sky, and French Blue). It’s so smooth in my hands, but it’s not sliding all over the place (One reason I love using wooden needles. When I tried metal ones, disaster.). It’s 60% cotton and 40% beechwood fiber, whatever that is, but I figured this would be good for a baby. And it’s washable!

The pattern is….another story.

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I’m making the Quince Sully blanket pattern. Pretty, right? I looked at the “skills needed” section and thought, OK, I have all those skills. I can pick up stitches and change colors and knit and purl and totally long tail cast on (that’s the only one I do…..)….

Bought the pattern.

then read the pattern.

The pattern calls for binding off the main color sequence (stripes), and then picking up the border and increasing stitches and god knows what else, and the number 600 something popped up, and I just went oh….

via GIPHY


Whhyyyyy pattern writer? WHYYYYYY?????

Anyway, besides that bit of crazy, it’s really easy to do, with a nice seed stitch row with every color change. I really like doing it. I’m just scared of the border. It might not happen.

I do not think the baby will mind if there is no border, right? Because, um, my skills may not be up to it.

Sigh….
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It’s that time….if you haven’t pre-ordered the book, please do so! If you have, MUCHAS GRACIAS!

Next week….well, OK, in January, there are fun graphics coming!!! I’m excited about them!
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Two more gifts to wrap. Well, three. Two of them go in gift bags, and one requires actually wrapping, at which I AM TERRIBLE. Oh well!

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Are y’all done shopping? Sort of done? Haven’t even started? :)

On the Ninth Day of Christmas....

Hi everyone! Happy New Year!

It’s STILL CHRISTMAS! Do not take down the tree! RESIST! (Unless you have a real one, which has become a fire hazard. Then, of course, get rid of it. But there are advantages to having a fake one, like my $20 Target tree….)

The ninth day of Christmas was always my favorite as a kid, because in the song it’s “Nine ladies dancing” and that just gave me a nice image. Also, my mom’s Christmas china has the twelve days of Christmas illustrated on the dessert plates, and “Nine Ladies Dancing” is the prettiest, so I always wanted that one. My mom, being a piper (she played bagpipes in high school!), is partial to the 11 pipers piping, obviously.

(I need to take pictures of the plates so you can see them! They really are gorgeous. I have 12 days of Christmas ornaments, but not the whole set yet—Hallmark is releasing them one a year, and they’re only up to ‘8 maids a-milking’.)

Anyway, how is your Christmas season going? Did you do anything fun? Are you enjoying wallowing in the Christmas books you got, like me? :) (Seriously, SO MANY this year, it’s an overflow of riches.)

Coming up here on the blog is a yarn along post about blocking (I know that thrills the non yarn people among you, but guys, it makes a HUGE difference, so it’s for the fabric-oriented), goals for 2019, and some writing updates…..but I just wanted to pop in and say hi with this entry.

And share this little guy’s picture, because he’s adorable. Did you have breakfast with Cookie Monster last week?

Advent pondering: At the service of His plan

I was reading my Advent devotional this morning and came across an essay that I dearly love to re-read every year. It’s so rich in pondering that I thought I’d share some of it with you, in the hope that we can bring this mindset into our Christmas and new year.

The Service of His Plan

Those who place their lives at the service of [God’s] plan never have any reason to be afraid…Every day [Mary] placed her life at the service of his plan.

When we are really placing our life at the service of his plan at the general work, then, yes, by our manner of behavior there, by the sweetness that we bring, the patience, the humility, we could rightly say, “This is the Word of the Lord.” These virtues are his ‘words”, and he is being made manifest by them….

Things were always better where [Mary] was. Things we always sweeter and calmer at the well when she was standing in line…She was the one who said, “Yes, I’ll wait. I will not add another irritable word. I will bring the loving, calming word. I will be the one who sees something extra to do, not wondering why someone takes so long at her turn, but seeing if I can help her.” She was no less placing her life at the service of the Divine plan when she waited her turn at the well, than at any other time. …

We should make the word a little less unutterable, a little more recognizable by the way we live and serve and love. …

God has a great plan also in what we call the unexpected. It isn’t unexpected to God. He planned it from eternity…There is nothing unexpected in all of creation…nothing should ever take us by surprise, except the wonder of God’s plan…

God..is saying exactly this to us…”I don’t reveal all the details of those plans because I cannot deprive you of faith. I cannot deprive you of hope. I cannot deprive you of the glory of trusting in me. I cannot deprive you of the wonder of seeing my plan as it unfolds.”…

We want to be come very intimate with him as the great mystics were in very simple, humble ways, saying, “Dear God, I don’t get this at all, but I’m so glad that you do. And I know that you have a plan and I only want to be at the service of your plan.”…

In our personal lives there is a wonder unfolding. It is wonderful to keep going forward. Even our Lady did not know the last page…let us determine in all the events of each day to place our lives at the service of his plan. This is the happiest way that a person can live.

—Mother Mary Francis, PCC, Come Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting

Christmas favorites: Books and Movies

I wrote these last year, but I must bring them back out for this year's Christmastide! 

First up: my favorite Christmas movies. 

Followed by: Favorite Christmas Books for Grown-Ups.