Post-Christmas blog

This year, Christmas started out with me feeling very ill. It might have had something to do with the cheeseburger, fries, soda and too large glass of egg nog, because on Wednesday night I felt like I was going to curl up and die.

I woke up on Christmas Eve morning feeling very queasy. A luck would have it, my father made a breakfast of sausage, eggs, biscuts, hashbrowns and gravy. The smell of fried foods wafting through the air made sure that I continued to feel as though I would curl up and die.

We opened presents, I got a set of glass mugs, an electric blanket and a Barnes & Noble gift card. Since I'm such a wimp when it comes to the cold, I'm sure the blanket will be put to good use. That afternoon, my brother and I went back to my mom's house, where I was told that I was too sick to attend the Christmas eve service at church. I knew that getting other people sick and running the risk of needing to barf during "Silent Night" was bad form, but I was super bummed that I couldn't go.

The next morning I woke up feeling better, actually able to tolerate food better. We opened presents, and everything was pretty darn spiffy. I think the best part was when my youngest brother opened up one of his presents, a periodic table of elements chart, and pretended to faint with delight. It was pretty cute.

Since I'm moving out, I was given a lot of housewares for Christmas. I've received mixing bowls, bakeware, cleaning supplies and all sorts of other good stuff.

On Christmas night i went to my sweeties house for what he said was just a family "gathering". It turns out that this gathering was Christmas dinner. I felt like such a turd for not offering to bring anything. He said that I shouldn't worry about it, but I'm used to being the guest with the best, so this did not sit well with me. I gave my boyfriends mother a scarf that I'd been working on for her since a bit before Thanksgiving. She said it was beautiful, I was thrilled. From her I received Kitchenaid bakeware, I was super pyched about this and I could hardly thank her enough.

Here's a picture of the scarf I knit her.

Prerry darn swanky, if I do say so myself.

That's all I've got for now.

Have a happy Tuesday,

C.

The Baker Within

A few weeks ago my dad said that he was more excited about Christmas food than Christmas presents. Being the good daughter that I am, I asked if there was anything he would like me to make. His request was a blueberry pie. The only problem I had with this was that I don't particulerly like blueberries...or pie.. I especially don't like pie crust, to me it's thick, bland, gritty and soggy all at the same time. Bleh.

So I hunted around on the Martha Stewart website for something better and found blueberry mini tarts. The reason these are better is because a tart crust is closer to being like a cookie. It's made with sugar, giving it a almost shortbread like flavor.

So I made them last night and they turned out like this...

Pretty darn cute, huh?

The recipe calls for fresh squeezed lemon juice and lemon zest, neither of which I had. My substitution, suggested by my mother, was orange zest and fresh orange juice. Even though I haven't tried this recipe with the lemon, I think using orange worked to my benefit. Oranges are naturally sweet and tangy, so I'm pretty sure this addition added some extra perk to the filling.

Getting the dough into the mini muffin tins was a pain in the ass. What you're doing is trying to get a piece of dough smaller than a gum-ball to coat the inside of one section of the mini muffin tin. I tried using a rolling pin to fltten the dough out, but it didn't work. I don't know why, it just wouldn't cooperate with me. I ended up flattening the dough balls with my hands until they were slightly bigger than the top of a muffin tin section. From there I pressed the circumference of my dough disk onto the top of the muffin divit and slowly pushed it down into the divit, gently pressing against the sides until it reached the bottom. Doing it this way made it much easier to coat the inside of each tin section without tearing the dough.

Here's a link to the recipe origional recipe on the martha website.

http://tiny.cc/here357

Have a happy Wednesday!

Sooo, now that I'm done with school until January, i need to figure out what I'm going to do with this delightful nugget of spare time. Some ideas:

Start making a quilt. I've recently come into a stash of vintage table linens, they're all beautiful, soft and white. But I couldn't bear to to just wipe my mouth with the napkins or have the other pieces lying on tables. So I think I'm going to make a quilt out of them. I already have a nice flannel sheet that I bought at Homegoods to serve as a backing for it. (Why bother to buy fabric when I can buy a buy a sheet that already has its edges finished and I know it's the right size?)

Another thing I can do is work on the duplex. There is cleaning to be done on the back porch area and a really ugly ceiling fan that I can paint. Both tasks need to be completed, who better than me to do it.

I can get my upholstery groove on. I have a chair and a small sofa that need to be redone. So, slipcovers are in my future. Deciding on a fabric is going to be a pain in the patoot, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Something that I'll definetly be doing is knitting. People expect handmade gifts from me, and I'm more than happy to deliver. I'm currently working on a scarf for my boyfriend's mother, it's turning out beautifully and I'm actually excited to give it to her. I've got two more scarves that I need to make, both of which I haven't even started on, so we'll se how that goes....
Holy rusted metal, Christmas is on Friday! I don't know if this has happened to you, but this holiday totally snuck up on me. Seriously, I was just standing over there *points* and Christmas was being really quiet, it snuck up around the corner and yelled "feliz navidad" at me. I nearly peed my pants, I was so freaked out.

Have a happy Monday!

C.