Several of us have hit some of the Christmas festivals around town. That's always fun: nifty ethnic foods and lots of handcrafted gifts. There's a weekend bazaar right down the street from me with lots of local vendors. It's always fun to see what's for sale there. This year it was mostly smelly candles and soaps, of which I'm not a fan and a ton of unique jewelry. It was all beautiful but I make my own jewelry. There was a surprising lack of hand knit items, which I'm always on the lookout for. These days, if you want the fun Christmas events, you have to go to St. Paul. Minneapolis has given up on fun. In fact, right now, our city council is more interested in banning anyone having any fun at all. They're willing to destroy your business to do it. It's all in the name of "public health", of course. Just like the pandemic shutdowns; even though mountains of evidence show that they did far more harm than good, our city nannies still think they're smart enough to tell the rest of us how to live. (hmm...my linkage function doesn't seem to be working right now.)
But St. Paul is rockin!
Last weekend, a bunch of us went to the German Christmas festival on Summit avenue. It was a lovely sunny day and the Christmas crowds were out. BoopityBoop got to pet some real, live alpacas! Then they came back to my house and we baked cookies and worked on the doll house for an hour before Katie had to whisk them off to their next Christmas party.
I've begun baking Christmas cookies with limited success. I made peanut butter cookies and accidentally doubled the milk, which made them too flat to support a kiss. Katie suggested throwing in m&ms rather than a kiss and that worked beautifully! In fact, the over-milked peanut butter cookies had a terrific texture: light and crispy. We ate them all. Then I made a batch of peanut butter kiss cookies that turned out perfectly. We've eaten all of those, too. I did manage to save some of the Ice Box Swirls I made.
This was a new recipe that someone gave me. I thought they sounded good and they are but I should have read the directions before I bought the ingredients. Several of the steps would have caused me to bail on the whole idea, beginning with "chop up a cup of dates".
Even if I had been really gung ho on date cookies, I have too many recipes for really outstanding cookies to put time and effort into cookies that take this much work; chopping dates, cooking dates, mixing up dough, rolling out dough, cooling date mixture, spreading it on the rolled out dough, rolling the whole thing up into two whale sized slugs of cookie batter, putting them in the fridge over night, slicing them up and baking them only to get...
fig newtons.
Yes, I like fig newtons but I can buy them anywhere, any day of the year. And I've never thought they were soooo good that I'd be willing to spend several hours over the course of two days to make my own. (Home made pasta is another thing I don't understand.)
So that recipe has been tossed.
Zach and Sara bought a house right before Thanksgiving. It's a lovely old home in a great neighborhood over the river. They live exactly a half mile from my brother Joe's house! #6 is absolutely thrilled with it! She now has her own room and she can't seem to get over the amount of space they now occupy. She spends her days just running from one room to the next, and sliding around on the hard wood floors. I offered to help paint all the rooms as a house warming present. I love painting rooms: immediate gratification + adding personality to a room is a blast.
The house is at least a century old but the kitchen was redone sometime in the 80s or early 90s. It's small but well laid out and the cabinets and appliances are high end. Behind the kitchen is a mudroom/butlers pantry with more cabinets and two huge windows overlooking the back yard and deck. Sara immediately went out and chose all new colors for the walls. I painted #6's bedroom before they moved in.
Last week I painted the kitchen as well. The first color Sara chose was a lovely sunny yellow that she hoped would brighten up the room, which was painted taupe. She wasn't sure she liked the yellow when I got the first coat up. I told her to let me do a second coat, to really give the color a fair shake. There's not much wall space as it's mostly soffits, so it didn't take long. I did the second coat and we all agreed it looked simply grizzly with the finish on the cabinets. Zach named it "diarrhea splash". That's the thing about color: the most beautiful color in the world won't look good in the wrong space with the wrong woodwork. We went back to the drawing board and got several dozen new paint chips and chose a new color. We'll use that yellow someday, on something else. It might look on the porch.
The second color they chose is bright and lovely; Alluring White, by SW. It's the color of a white wall reflecting the sunrise. It took me less than two hours to completely repaint the kitchen. I don't know if we'll do the back entry the same as the rest of the kitchen or not. It gets more light so it might be fun to go with a different color. I'd love to refinish or paint those cabinets. As I said, they're very good cabinets but the orange oak finish that was so popular in the 80s doesn't fit the style or vintage of the house. If we stained them dark, they'd be more in keeping with the rest of the house. And of course, if we painted them, we could really make that kitchen something fun! Either way, lots of work but work I enjoy.
The living room and dining room have lots of big, gorgeous windows and the wide woodwork you find in houses of that era. They also have a beautiful, heated front porch, which adds tons of living space. Hardwood floors throughout the first floor are gorgeous and look like they've been well cared for. The woodwork on the windows needs some TLC but I told Sara we'd wait till Spring, when we can open all the windows to polish them up.
I can hardly wait to start painting the living and dining rooms! The colors Sara has chosen suit the house itself beautifully. It's already pretty but with fresh, warmer colors it will be simply gorgeous. I love that Zach and Sara aren't afraid of color!
Friday I went to Ty's place. He and Megan were going to a concert so I spent the night. For the most part it was just me and Kitten. Xena and Babalouie both went to the local high school basketball game with friends so they weren't home until later.
Kitten performed her entire Christmas concert for me! She wore her beautiful Holiday dress of black and white plaid with a red satin sash and black velvet shrug. She sang all five of the songs she learned at school, complete with dances and hand gestures. She's quite a performer!
Then we watched a movie together and her siblings came home from the game in time for stories and bed. Oh, our team won by 30 points so both kids enjoyed the game.
. My kids and siblings have been texting photos of their Christmas trees and decorations when they get them up. I'm the only one in the entire family who hasn't gotten my tree up yet. Jay's been working like an elf on the outside of the house: spruce tops, which he decorated and lit, line the deck. The white lights on all our fences have been joined by holiday colored lights. The chairs in the front yard are now festooned with bells, tinsel garlands and lights. All we need is some snow to look like a winter wonderland!
But inside the house, it's still business as usual. Today, I'm planning on getting my mantel decorated and at least a start on the tree. It took me nearly a week to get it all up last year. I'm not as young as I used to be and it's a lot of work. Plus, I feel like I just took it all down. I swear, years take about 10 minutes these days.
The good news is that I've got plenty of strings of lights for my tree this year. I like a lot of lights.
I'm also going to bake cookies while I decorate, so today is going to be a good, good day!