Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

The Shortest Day of the Year

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice! 

Here in Alaska that's a big deal, at least for me it is, because it means that we will once again start gaining more daylight instead of losing it!  And that's something to get excited about because I absolutely HATE driving in the dark.

According to a national weather service website, our official sunrise yesterday was at 10:14 am.

Here is what our back yard looked like at around 10:15.

Here is where the sun was at around 2:00.

You can see that it doesn't get very high in the sky this time of year.

It basically just skirts across the bottom,

But if you go further up north, like in Fairbanks, the sun just rolls on the ground across the horizon.

And the official sundown was supposedly at 3:41 pm.  

Here it is starting to get dark already.

According to the website, we had exactly 5 hours, 27 minutes, and 45 seconds of daylight.

Being our shortest day of the year, we lost less than one second.

(The day before that, we lost 12 seconds.)

The good news is, today we GAIN a whopping 11 seconds!  Woo-HOO!

But those are the Anchorage figures.  Just driving up north for a few hours, and those figures change.

I'm sure you all heard stories of those places way up there that don't see the sun at all.

So how did I spend my short day yesterday?

Dipping in chocolate, of course!

Oh, how I love these marshmallows!

Yummy PB balls!

Yesterday I wanted to get all the chocolate-dipping goodies out of the way.  Today I'm going to tackle the baking part (cookies).  And I am given 11 more seconds to get it all done.

Yay!

We pretty much keep the lights on our Christmas tree glowing at all times.

I've been kinda disappointed in Beanies Weenies.  I was hoping to get a lot of laughs out of her while yelling at her to stay out of the tree, but she pretty much ignores the tree.  At first she kinda chewed on some of the branches, but she basically just pretends it's not even there.

Bossy, ignores the tree too, but when she finds a lap to sit on, that's where she'll be.

Yup, I found her sitting on Santa's lap.  She's probably asking him for a lifetime supply of bacon bits.

Can you tell by looking at the window that this picture was not taken 

between 10:14 am and 3:41 pm?

Well, I'm off to the kitchen now!

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy the sun!

December 14, 2016

 Christmas is coming fast!

If only I could be as tension free as my cats.

I know it's not very exciting to stare at a photo of someone's stack of envelopes, but this is why I haven't been posting for the past couple weeks.  

Christmas cards take a long time to make.

I always try to aim for 50, but usually end up with less than that because I end up messing some of them up.  This year I ended up with 46 that were good enough to share.

You don't have to be very good at math to figure out that I messed up 4 of them, which means 4 less people didn't get one.

Wait, is that a double negative?  I mean, 4 less people will get one.

You know what I mean.

Anyhoo, I got them all mailed out yesterday, and what a good feeling that was to walk away from the Post Office with empty arms! Now it's time to move on to my Christmas baking.

I'll be back after I can finally walk out of my kitchen.

Thanksgiving 2016

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I hope you all got to stuff yourselves like I did!

As usual, we went to the church potluck, and boy, did we have a good turnout this year!  I'm not sure I've ever seen the crowd this big before.

I'm so glad we do this every year because staying home on Thanksgiving is boring.

It's way more fun spending Thanksgiving with my church family.

 

 There was lots of good food to choose from.  This is one of those times where you end up stuffing yourself, no matter how much you think you'll be able to control yourself.

After eating, we all headed into the auditorium for the big talent show.

Keith started us off with the story of the Pilgrims.

About halfway through the story, he stopped abruptly because he forgot how the rest of it went, so Jake tried to help him out.  When Keith couldn't remember anything more, he said, "...and that's all I'm gonna tell you."  And he walked off the stage.

Here is August reciting "Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie".......

I didn't think anyone even knew that poem anymore.

The funny thing about this year was that there were a lot of little kids that kept randomly getting up on the stage and poor Jake could do nothing but squeeze them into the schedule.  

Here we have 4 kids singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".  

August was VERY passionate about it!

Then Jake tried to prove to Mallory that 7x4=23 and proved it in three different ways.

Of course, she didn't buy into his logic.

Then we had a kid playing two songs on his guitar.

He played "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and "Love Me Do".

Then Macy told us the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream about the big statue.

Then Annabelle showed off her dribbling skills.

(Jake had to eventually ask her to go sit back down by her mama.)

Then Marilyn showed us her doodling trick.  She wrote her name while at the same time mirroring it with her left hand.  That would seem kinda hard to do.  I should try it sometime just for fun.

Then Lucy sang a song.  I have no idea what song she sang and I couldn't understand a single word.

Ellie said that her talent was messing up her sister's Rubix cube, so she showed us how she does that.

Then her dad bragged about Trisha's talent saying that she knew how to solve those things really fast, so he set up a contest between her and Riley.  Trisha won of course.  Poor Riley had no idea that he would be chosen to compete in that.  I was pretty amazed that Trisha could solve the Rubix cube so fast. I gave up on it years ago.

Then Jason attempted to shoot a cup off Trisha's head (with a Nerf gun), holding his cap over his eyes. He missed both times, even though he claimed that NERF stood for Never Ever Really Fails.

Then August wanted to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".  Again.

(Poor Jake.......)

Then Lydia and Clara dressed in costume and recited a Bible verse and a poem.

And lastly, Dave recited a poem.  He always writes his own poems.

During the whole entire talent show, I was wondering where Chuck was cuz he wasn't sitting with us.  Turns out, he was way in the back vegging out in one of the rocking chairs.  That turkey does it to him every time.  Even now as I type this, he is laying on the couch in a turkey-induced coma.

So that was pretty much it.  It was a really fun day.  It's always fun to see the kids growing up and doing different things every year.  And it was nice to be able to do this in our new building cuz we didn't have to move all those chairs out of the auditorium, which made things so much easier.  I was in charge of the drinks, as usual, and I don't mind doing it, but it sure is a test on my patience when people keep getting in my way.  If there's anything I miss about the old building, I miss having my own space when I'm making the drinks!

Oh, and by the way, we decided to host the State Lectureship again this year, even though we just had our turn two years ago.  But since no other congregation could do it, it was up to us.  If we didn't do it, there wouldn't be a Lectureship this year (in April), and we didn't want to break the tradition - this will be the 52nd one! It'll be fun, but a lot of work!  Last time me and Chuck helped with the food, and that was fun, but Chuck doesn't want to do that again this time.  Maybe I should volunteer us to be in charge of the drinks the whole weekend.  Between me and Chuck it wouldn't be too hard, and that is what we are used to doing anyway.  It's sort of our forte.

And now I shift gears and start focusing on Christmas.

I actually bought a couple Christmas gifts already.

But right now my priority is to get to work on my Christmas cards.

Last weekend Chuck wanted to go to the cabin, and he wanted my help installing some insulation, so I sorta had to go.  But I knew it would be too dark to do anything by the time we got there (the sun goes down early these days!), so I brought along part of my Christmas cards to work on.  Since Chuck had nothing else to do, I actually got him to help me color my elves and penguins.

Chuck sitting at the cabin coloring??????

I knew I had to take a picture because I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.  He is one who doesn't know how to relax, but while we were coloring and listening to the radio, I asked him, "Isn't this relaxing?"  He wouldn't admit it, but didn't deny it either.

All the elves and penguins also have to be cut out, but I knew that would be too much to ask of him, so I am working on that part myself.

Well, PW is getting some games out, so I'm gonna get out a piece of pumpkin pie and play some games now.

I hope you all had a very nice Thanksgiving!

November 10, 2016

First of all, tomorrow is my son-in-law's birthday, so I just want to say "Happy Birthday, Isaac"!

Now that I got that out of the way........

I hope you all exercised your right to vote yesterday. Did you get a really cool sticker like mine?

Voting for President in Alaska is almost a joke for a couple reasons.  For one thing, our state is only worth 3 electoral votes, so no one ever pays attention to us.  Secondly, besides Hawaii, we are the last ones to close our voting booths, and the next President is always already chosen before our votes are even done being counted, so I don't know why we bother.  I guess it just makes us feel good with the illusion that we can actually make a difference.  Shya, right.......! Is it even mathematically possible for an election to depend on our 3 points?  Will there ever be a day when the suspense is hinging on Alaska?

As for me, even though my vote is a "joke", I do it anyway just because it's one of those rare times when I can actually say my 2 cents worth (is it even worth that much?).  If nothing else, I get the satisfaction of being a part of a big picture, even if I'm only in the blurred background, and even though the decision has been made before my vote is even counted.

"Your vote matters" they say.  Well, not here it don't.

We are just the "johnny come lately's".

I'm just glad the campaign is over, and now I hope that the country can work towards unity once again.

(I will not gloat.  I will not gloat.  I will not gloat...)

Now that Halloween is over, I can start working on shrinking the size of this pumpkin patch sitting on my table.

One by one, I am using them up.  I plan on bringing it down to one or two pumpkins by Christmastime, to use for a holiday pumpkin pie. If there's still any left after Christmas, I will probably cook, puree, and freeze because it will just seem super inappropriate and out of place to have pumpkins as part of my Valentine's holiday.

That just doesn't work.

Speaking of pumpkin pie, I have conducted a recent experiment, just out of curiosity.

I saw this evaporated goat's milk at the commissary and wondered, "can I use that in a pumpkin pie?"  Since I am trying to replace dairy products wherever I can, I thought how nice it would be if I could substitute regular evaporated milk for evaporated goat's milk.  (Goat's milk came up "red" on my food sensitivity blood test, but the number wasn't near as high as cow's milk).  But my biggest question was "will it make the pie taste funky?"

I search all over the internet and couldn't find any satisfactory answers because the opinions going both ways were about 50/50.  So I looked up the product on Amazon and entered my question on their website, asking if it can be used in pumpkin pie and will it make the pie taste funky?

I actually got two replies.  One person said it's gross - don't do it.  The other person said, Yes it makes the pie nice and creamy (but said nothing about the taste).

Since I wasn't getting any satisfying black or white answers, I decided that the only way I'm gonna know is to just try it for myself.  So I held my nose and dove in, hoping for the best.

Here are the results of this kitchen lab experiment:

The texture of the pie turned out nice and creamy, but the taste remains questionable.  At first, I didn't taste anything weird at all.  But the more bites I took, the more "goaty" it tasted.  By the time I ate the last bite, there was enough goat taste accumulated that I was starting to make faces. The next morning I had one for breakfast, and it didn't seem as bad, so maybe it just needed to be refrigerator chilled.

My third piece, I only detected it a little bit and might not have noticed it if I didn't know it had goat milk in it.  So in all fairness, for me, it could've been mostly psychological, and/or it might just be something to get used to.  Chuck said he didn't notice anything at all, and PW ate a couple pieces and never said anything (I never told her what was in it).  So I don't know. From a scientific point of view, I would have to say it's "inconclusive". Maybe I will try making a pie using half regular and half goat.

As for making potluck drinks at church, I am getting pretty used to things now the way they are, even without my own sink.  But we ran into another problem.

This coffee pot has served us well for several years now, but it went on the fritz.  So we had to quickly improvise with making and remaking and remaking a regular 12-cup size coffee pot, which meant that during potluck, I had to stand by the coffee pot so I could refill it when it got empty (which also meant I didn't get to eat until mostly everyone had gone through the line - but that didn't bother me).  So Chuck took this coffee pot home to see if he could maybe fix it and get it working again.  In the end he said it was toast. So we chucked it.

At the church building, in the back room of the kitchen, there was this other old coffee pot sitting on a shelf that hadn't been used in a long time, so the next Sunday we tried to get that one going.

Did you notice it's sitting on my kitchen counter, and not in the church building?  Can you guess why?  We couldn't get it work, which meant spending another potluck "babysitting" the 12-cup coffee pot, and refilling it when it got empty (and being the last one to eat).    So we took this coffee pot home, too, and Chuck cleaned it out, and we ran some vinegar through it twice.  It took several tries, but I think we finally got it to work "good enough".  Our plan was to try to use it this Sunday, but last night I got a phone call from a couple at church saying "We bought you a new coffee pot!"  

YAY!  

I'm thinking I might make a little thank you sign with their names on it and display it by the new coffee pot this Sunday, so everyone who drinks coffee can appreciate them.

Okay, next subject:

After Halloween was over, I put my jack-o-lantern on the back porch right outside the door, intending to throw it out in the weeds for the moose to eat.  Well, I never got around to doing that.  So last night while we were gone at the commissary, PW was sending us texts and photos of two moose (a mama and a half-grown baby) that got up ONTO OUR PORCH!  and starting eating that pumpkin!  I wish I was home at the time so I could've gotten pictures of the moose on our porch, but this is what's left of that jack-o-lantern. They ate the WHOLE thing except the stem.

Besides that, the only sign of Halloween left here is my quilt that I'm still working on.

It took me a long time to find some matching fabric for the outer border, but now that I've got it all pinned and ready for quilting, I just need to find the time to do it.  But I am still trying to decide how I want to quilt it.  I have an idea that involves free-motion quilting, but I'm not sure yet.

In the meantime, I am already trying to figure out my Christmas cards, so this quilt just might end up waiting until January to get worked on.

So that is pretty much all that's been happening here, besides a short little earthquake jolt, but that turned out to be hardly anything to write home about.  I hope you all are enjoying your Fall blessings!

Halloween 2016

You all already know that I was attempting to do a scarecrow theme this year, but for some reason, the stores don't sell a whole lot in the way of scarecrows, so I ended up leaning towards crows.  You can't really have a scarecrow without crows anyway, right?  After all, without crows, scarecrows may have never even been invented.

So this is what I ended up doing with my skeleton. PW never wants to dress up to be the "host" like Steph always used to do, so luckily I have a life-size skeleton to recruit for the job. I found the mask at Target and make him wear it, and sewed some patches on a pair of jeans that PW didn't want anymore, and put one of Chuck's old shirts on him.  And of course I had to have a hay bale for him to sit on.  I wish I had some old dried out corn stalks from someone's garden, but that's hard to find up here.

Notice the doll hanging by the neck in the window?

I found this doll at Value Village.  It talks and says creepy things when you move it around.  It is VERY sensitive - the slightest vibration will make it go off.  When I was carrying it around in the store, it wouldn't shut up because even just walking around with it vibrated it enough to say something (and it also plays creepy music).  When I was checking out, the cashier lady said "I was wondering where that noise was coming from......"  Anyhoo, I thought it deserved it to be "strung up", if you know what I mean.  That way, it would take an earthquake to set it off.

Ideally, it would be fun if I could always dress up according to my theme, as the restaurant host, but that never works very well.  I did that one year as a witch, and it was almost dangerous doing all the cooking in a witch costume - all that loose clothing getting caught on everything.

The last thing I wanna do is go up in flames as a grand finale.

Here is what my "restaurant", The Crow's Nest, looked like:

Every year it looks pretty much the same except for minor details according to my theme.

I always like the feel of the atmosphere when I walk in there.

Some of you that received my menu might be wondering what the food was.

I forgot to take pictures of the appetizers, but that was just some odds and ends of light finger snacks, and a small bowl of corn chowder, which you have already seen in one my previous posts.

Here is the Bootzaman:

VOGELSCHEUCHE MIT KARTOFFELKLOSSE

I found out that the German immigrants called a scarecrow a "bootzamon" (which later turned into "bogeyman"), so I wanted to do some kind of German dish.  Sauerkraut kinda looks like hay, so I decided to use that, and then made a face with the sausage pieces.  For the eyeballs, I shoved capers into small mozzarella balls and then put those into pieces of sausage.  The German word for scarecrow is "vogelscheuche" and the German word for potato dumplings is "kartoffelklosse".

So...."Vogelscheuche mit Kartoffelklosse" translates as "Scarecrow with Potato Dumplings"

served mit maiskolben on the side (corn on the cob).

I knew my kids wouldn't eat the Bootzamon, so I made them "Eat Crow" instead.

That one is pretty obvious.  It's just chicken wings.  The "parking lot garbage" was pieces of grilled cheese sandwich. 

For one of the desserts, I made "Scarecrow Brains" with malignant brain tumor.

It is rhubarb crisp with vanilla ice cream.

I made the vanilla ice cream myself because I can't have dairy.

I make my ice cream out of coconut milk.

The sauce is rhubarb-raspberry sauce that is Alaskan made.  

Very yummy.

Again, I knew the kids wouldn't eat that, so for the other dessert, I made "Compost Rot".

It is hot fudge sundae cake with store-bought chocolate ice cream.  I haven't had store-bought ice cream in a long time, and now when I see it, it's disgusting to me.  Even scooping it out of the box, it feels all "wrong", like it feels spongy.  That can't be real food. But that's just me.

Here is some extra "chocolate sauce" to drizzle on your synthetic ice cream if you want some:

I don't know if you can read all of that, but you get the idea.

So that was pretty much our dinner.  We didn't invite anyone over this year, so it was just us this time.  

Unless you count Bossy:

After it was all over, I had the whole weekend to start packing some stuff away, and moving some of my decorations outside on the porch to greet the trick-or-treaters.

So that's about it.  

Now, for the huge task of putting everything away.......

.......until next year.......