Yeah - Christmas Season

We had our first Thanksgiving alone with no kids this year and lo and behold - we survived. I think my monthly trips to see everyone in the NW has helped. I cooked and Louie actually worked a day shift and made it home in time to eat at 6:30 pm !! I have been reading about Heritage turkeys this year and had to try one. I called it my 'organic, free range, heritage, flying turkey'. Yes Virginia, turkeys can fly. Not far or high but they can fly. The Heritage birds are raised on open fields and glean what they eat from the field not from bagged grains. It is healthier and the birds are what turkeys used to be. The ones in the mass turkey farms are injected with growth hormones and antibiotics and are raised for wide breasts which is the white meat - but they are so out of proportion that they can't even have a good time before they die. Poor things. The heritage birds get to have a good time and are treated very well all through life and when they are put down. I eat meat so the least I can do is buy and support farms that do it the right way. I also froze brioche bread I got on my last trip to Seattle and made the stuffing with that and Italian sweet sausage, mushrooms, fresh herbs from my garden, dried cranberries and organic celery and onion. I added the cursory mashed potatoes with Parmesan and cheddar cheese, and creamed spinach. I bought the fresh cranberry/mango sauce but it was super. We had a terrific dinner and we had enough food to last this whole week - I have one more meal left of the white meat and plan to do open faced turkey/cheese sauce sandwiches. Yum.

We had four days off this past weekend and I was so busy. I cleaned the house and did tons of laundry - at least it's still warm enough outside to dry the clothes but it takes a bit longer now. I went through all the closets and purged - 8 bags worth of purging - with clothes and old Christmas mistakes going to a favorite charity. I was then ready to get started on decorating. I keep promising it will be less this year that in years past and so far so good. No lights on the house per se - but I did put up a wooden Santa and lighted tree - we also have a small doe that is lit and this year I added multi colored glass balls to the inside hollow. I saw it done at a shop we go to in Snohomish and tried it at home. It looks so cute! I did white fairy lights on the small bushes too - so the side yard is well lit for the holidays. We have a double gate where I hang 2 plain green wreaths with red bows and cow bells. If someone else wants to add white fairy lights to the trees in the side yard they can, but I'm done outside. I came home from Seattle with all kinds of Christmas stuff and put it all through the house. I'm painting ornaments, and have some paper stars to make, plus I sewed new tree skirts for us and for Reyna and her family. We plan to contribute to charity this year and keep the gift giving to handmade items. Keep it simple and try to have less stress and more fun.

I will go to Seattle again December 13th for 4-5 days. I can celebrate Christmas with the kids then. We plan to take Elsie Quinn for her first carriage ride and then the carousel plus all the lights up 5th Avenue and the store windows. It will be so much fun.She seems to love the trees and lights. They put their tree up this past weekend and Elsie was quite a big help. We should try to make some cookies and decorate them too. It will be wonderful being up home for some holiday cheer.

The big trip is in January when Atticus comes out to join this crazy bunch of people we call family. They have decided on Atticus Ryan Ronald and we all gave a cheer. They picked another great name. Elsie Quinn and Atticus Ryan. Wow.

Reyna called last night excited about snow falling. Here, we're just glad the temps have finally cooled off to the mid 70's with nights in the 40's and 50's. I thought for a while I'd have Christmas in shorts on the deck because we were hot up until Thanksgiving. For the past week we're doing much better. It's actually chilly in the morning! If it continues to cool down we can actually have a live tree again this year. With it hot outside the poor tree would die in a couple of days of 90 degree heat.Thank heaven. Louie would hold his breath and turn blue without a live tree. We all have our holiday "thing" I guess.

Wishing you all a wonderful pre-holiday season!

Love to all

Hannah

Dreaming in Colors and hoping for snow...

On The Home Front

It was a very productive weekend. I discovered that with the TV completely off, and no music playing I stayed on track and got so much done! Thank you screen writers for making me turn off the TV and craft and sew all weekend. I'd break for dinner ( just a snack) and get right back at it and when I'd look at the clock it was 10PM!

This summer, one of my projects was to start line drying my clothes. I remember how good things smelled when I was a kid and wanted to see if I could do it for that reason as well as energy savings. I keep trying to be more green for the planet and not for the reason my husband says - he's green too - "I like to save as much green as I can...."

For months I have tried to think how my grandmother used to do things. On wash day she'd pull out the old wringer washer, fill the wash tub with hot clear water and get to work. Sudsy water in the wringer and load the clothes - go back upstairs and make a pie crust, start bread dough to rise - throw the pie crust in the ice box, go back down to the basement, stop the machine, start the wringer, push clothes through to clear water - push clothes with wooden pole to rinse, swing wringer arm over empty tub with basket waiting for wrung out clothes. Lug the basket up stairs, around house and hang on line. Hope for a breeze to dry them quickly. Go back downstairs, re-heat water in wringer and start process all over, while baking at least 2 pies and 2 loaves of bread, cleaning the house, fixing a dinner from scratch, with the only canned items used being the ones you put up "last season". Then, when the first line of clothes were dry, 75% of the time the ironing board was up with the iron ready to go so she could iron everything (even the sheets and towels, which were used as training for me to learn how to iron) at various states of dryness, thus eliminating the need to sprinkle the clothes prior to ironing. IF she had to sprinkle the clothes it took a lot longer, because they had to marinate in the freezer for an hour to get that professional laundry look.

Oh yeah, I forgot about starching shirts - that was another tub with water and starch added that the shirts were dipped into prior to the final wringging out - and they had to be watched as they dried because they had to be damp to iron. Instead of bleach she used bluing to get whites white along with a cup of 20 Mule Team Borax. I use the Borax in my laundry today too - it's the only thing that works on AZ water and keeps the yellow out of my white loads.

I'm exhausted just writing this down! She did it every week from the time I can remember until she was in her 70's. She canned, baked, sewed without patterns, played piano and Hammond organ professionally at church and funeral homes (- don't ask) and still had time for me whenever I needed her. She did it all without complaint and with a smile.

I started hanging my clothes outside in mid-July. It was a riot just figuring out how to hang the clothes line. In my childhood everyone had permanent lines in their back yards that lasted year round. In the spring you'd wash off the line or replace it, but the T poles were in cement and lasted a lifetime. I didn't have that luxury, and being in an HOA regulated community I had to find a way to keep it on the down low, so no one could see it and bust me. It had to be close to the back door because I for one did not want that walk my Grandma had with each load. I checked the internet to find out solutions, (the Amish were the biggest help), went to Wal-Mart with my list of necessities and came home with the line, pullies, spacers and hooks. I laid it all out on the living room floor and had to figure out on my own how to put it together. I set it up between the poles of our patio cover and made it so it could be taken down and kept out of sight when not in use. With the heat we have, my clothes were bone dry in 15 min. - 20 min. for heavy towels and 30 min. at most for jeans. I was beside myself. For the most part, the outdoor smell was still nice, and if I used vinegar and fabric softner things were soft but had body. Well, I just knew this was the motherload of conserving on electricity. In some way both my huband and I were being green, green and more green. I didn't expect to see a savings right off the bat with the August bill, but by Sept. I figured I'd see something. Well temps in Sept and October were over 110 degrees 25+ days so the A/C was taking a real load. I waited for the October bill, and still saw no change worthy of all my effort. I was disappointed but still felt there was a change - I was just missing it. Out of frustration I wrote the power company explaining my dilemma . They wrote back - and said "Thank you for contacting us through aps.com in regard to your recent electric bills. We appreciate the recent efforts you have made to conserve electricity.Keep in mind that during the hotter months of the year, over 60% of electricity is used by your air conditioner, so our record-breaking temperatures these last three months have had the most significant impact on your electricity usage. By analyzing your electric usage based on the number of days in each billing period, we can provide a better comparison of 2006 to 2007 energy consumption as follows:
Oct. 2007 statement shows 1306 kWh used in 28 days, or 46.6 average kWh per day-average outdoor temperature was 87 degrees
Oct. 2006 statement shows 1497 kWh used in 31 days, or 48.3 average kWh per day-average outdoor temperature was 82 degrees
Sept. 2007 statement shows 2237 kWh used in 32 days, or 69.9 average kWh per day-average outdoor temperature was 95 degrees
Sept. 2006 statement shows 1921 kWh used in 29 days, or 66.2 average kWh per day-average outdoor temperature was 89 degrees. As you can see, showing the information in this way makes it easier to see that your efforts have succeeded in reducing your energy consumption ------despite outdoor temperatures being higher this year than last...." That's all I needed to keep on keepin' on.

Now, I need to learn how to do canning and preserving and I also did sewing and cleaning this weekend all the while hanging the clothes out to dry and save green...both kinds. Now I need to learn how to can and preserve.....

Be well and enjoy the flowers...the bees need them.

Love,

Hannah

Dreaming In Colors

DreaminginColors.etsy.com

It's almost Thanksgiving -

Where has the year gone? Of course, living in the Phoenix area we are still having summer weather - over 90 degrees every day. Enough already. I want to feel frost and cold air on my face and wear sweaters and an overcoat. Instead, the summer clothes are almost worn out from over use this year. In my office we keep the thermostat so low I wear jackets and sweaters just to remind myself it is indeed fall.

Every day when I'm driving home and stuck in traffic, I call Reyna (daughter) and we relive what we've done that day. It's almost as good as having her still living here but not quite. She listens as I go off about being Green and how the bees are all dying and we must save them. Her dad's causes are 'W' and exercise and mine are being eco savvy and saving things....like the bees. Two thirds of the bee population have died off this year and when one first hears about it one might be inclined to chuckle, but think about all the things in our daily life that are a result of the bees doing their thing. Without pollination we have no fruits or vegies! I'm taking this very seriously and have planted my entire backyard with flowers - so the poor bees that are still alive have a safe harbor in the sea of desert around me. No one gardens in my neighborhood so I am their only sanctuary. Scientists have been working overtime on the dilemma of the bees and it appears to be a multi-leveled problem including stress and memory loss caused by pesticides. Well let me tell you - I'm doing all I can to help out.

The other news is my last trip to Seattle two weeks ago. I got to drive up to Bellingham and see my son, Javan and his partner Terina and daughter Teilani. It was a first time seeing Teilani and she is a doll. She and Elsie were best friends instantly and played and shared toys and sippy cups like they'd known each other since birth. Elise just turned a year in October and Teilani was a year is June. That is great for them growing up together and being friends for life.

I plan to go up to Seattle again next weekend and then again in December and of course for two weeks minimum in January to welcome Goonie - my first grandson. I need to get trained on how to survive a day taking care of an active toddler ending with Elsie in a good mood and ready for bed on schedule. Her mother gets exhausted and is 30 years younger. What hope is there for me?? With 8 days training under my belt I'll feel a bit more confident.

Reyna has been busy getting Goonie's nursery put together. She's doing a Pirate theme. It looks so cute - she's a craft diva and has done so many cute things in a Pirate vein - the best is a song lyric she put on a wall "picture" and all kinds of nicknack's that are so cute. Goonie is going to love his new room.

I keep trying to get to my Etsie site to add knitted hats, but working all day and then getting home after 7 PM most days makes it tough. It took me all day Sunday to take and edit new pictures of everything using a better camera and then Photshop editing them - by the time I was done the evening was well underway and I was pooped. There needs to be an additional day to the week or 30 hours per day. I'm not even busy compared to some people. Reyna gets to read her email and scrapbook after 9PM when Elsie is down, and my friend Jennifer does all her jewelry making from 10 PM - 4 AM. I guess if I could get by on 4 hours sleep there would be no problem. Unfortunately, they have shown in studies that sleeping less than 7 hours a night can make you fat so it's 8 hours min. for this kid. I feel like an old person going to bed at 9:30 PM but if it allows me that piece of pie, so be it.

Hope this letter finds you all well and happy.

- Happy Thanksgiving -

Dreaming In Colors