Cookie Tree

We celebrate the Professor’s Swedish heritage every year at Christmastime by having a Santa Lucia dinner. This year we celebrated the feast on Christmas Eve. Our menu always includes Swedish meatballs, a seafood dish, lingonberries, and flatbread. The other many dishes vary from year to year. This year, I set out trays of assorted cookies for dessert, and the showpiece was a towering cookie tree.

Sometime during this past summer in my garage sale ramblings I had found a set of graduated cookie cutters for making the tree, and I thought Santa Lucia was a great time to try it out. It worked beautifully: the recipes for the sugar cookie dough and the glaze used for icing the layers were very tasty.

Christmas Morn

Emmanuel, God is with us.

Christmas Decor: Finished

The last bit of Christmas decorating is on the dining room buffet.

Altered Window

A friend gave me two of her old windows when they had their old ones replaced with new, energy-efficient windows.

After removing the hardware, I primed and then painted one window black. I couldn’t decide on white or black, but ultimately I went with black because I like the contrast with the soft yellow walls in my family room.

Once propped up on the mantel, I decorated around it with our Swedish Christmas items. I love how it turned out!

Yule Log Cake

I have wanted to make one of these Yule Log Cakes for many years and finally, last night, I had the event to make it for. We were invited to a dinner party with a group of friends and I was asked to bring a dessert. What better time than this to try my hand at making the cake? It turned out well; I just forgot to take a photo after it was decorated. I simply poked silk poinsettias into the cake across the top.

My Brilliant Idea

I had an “Ah-Ha!” moment today as I was making lunch. I wanted to grind up some chicken meat for a sandwich, but it’s always such a chore to clean out the blender after doing a little blending job. I don’t like digging the tiny bit out of the bottom. Then I noticed that the screw-on blender base looked very similar in size to the top of a canning jar. I wondered….

I grabbed an empty canning jar and set the blade unit on the mouth. It fit perfectly. Then I tried the base piece of the blender (the part that screws into the machine), and it screwed on smoothly. Perfect!

Next I set the jar into the blender and turned it on. It whirled away!

So I was in business. First I ground up that chicken meat in a quart size jar. That’s the jar I grabbed in the beginning so I just went with it.

Then I moved on to nuts in a pint size jar. I like to store ground nuts in the freezer, and a pint size jar is just perfect. Now I can chop them up and stick them in the freezer, all in one container.

The Last of the Turkey

Using up the last scraps of turkey, and assorted veggies, I made this turkey pot pie for supper tonight. Very comforting for a cold autumn night.

It Is Finished

Finally, 6 months after I started, our house is painted. Complete. Done. (I’m not doing the laundry closet or the pantry. They can stay their existing color.)

I finished painting the kitchen this afternoon in the same soft yellow as the family room, living room, and dining room. The rooms all flow one into another so a cohesive color makes sense. And I like the cheery yellow, soft enough to be a neutral.

That’s not to say that the kitchen is finished yet. It is not. We currently have no ceiling lights in the kitchen or over the table, and the ceiling has a large crack in it that needs repair. Oh, and then there’s painting the cabinets, replacing the laminate counter tops, hanging some artwork, installing a towel rod or hooks, repairing the wood floor, and many other details I can’t think of at the moment.