Tis The Season: The Prelude

The prelude or introduction to the holiday season is Thanksgiving. We had our great friend Michelle up from Stuart, Florida for the weekend and then invited a few others to join us.

The table was set with our holiday china.


Here is Richard carving the turkey for dinner,,,,,well that is what he is supposed to be doing.


The next day we dragged our tired selves out to a local tree farm to choose and cut our tree.


Here is the son of the tree farm owner cutting our tree down for us. The tree is almost 8 feet tall.


Here Michelle and I are putting the lights on.


Richard feeding Michelle chocolate chip cookie dough.

Tis The Season: Lights, Camera, Action

So, here is our Christmas tree, ready to be adorned.



The finished product. Unlike previous years where I take a lot of time and put an almost obscene amount of lights on the tree, this year Michelle convinced me to "cheat". We got the lights on in record time and then all the ornaments. It turned out very well.


Michelle and I worked together and got the garland up on the stair rails, all the way to the third floor. Then we put up the bows and some ornaments.


The stockings got hung by the chimney with care,,,,,,except that I am one stocking holder short. Wal-Mart here I come.


Liliuokalani is quite the suck-up to our guests and Michelle was no different. Here they are sharing a chair while trying to watch TV.


And of course,,,by the end of Saturday night Richard and Morgan crashed out as is usual on a weekend.

Tis The Season: The Warm up

Living where it can get as cold as 16º below zero without the wind chill and 8 feet of snow is the annual average you learn to take advantage of beautiful fall days in November to put up the outside decorations.

The weekend of the 13th of November we headed outside. Armed with bows, faux garland, lights, staple gun and extension cords we set out to decorate the front of the house.

Here is Richard wrapping garland around the front porch stair rails.


This past weekend I headed back outside and wrapped lights around the front porch stair rails so they would match all the post lights in the yard.

After that I headed inside. Since we have a guest for Thanksgiving it was decided that all the Christmas decorations would be moved out of the storage area over our master bath, which can only be accessed through the guest room.

After several trips I got all the stuff out for Christmas and stacked it in the other guest room.



While it is an impressive pile it does not include another tote and 2 liquor boxes which hold all of the outside decorations,,,,nor the 2 yard stakes or silk Poinsettas.

It is an interesting project:

Step 1) Take down and store all the fall and Thanksgiving stuff.

Step 2) Take all of this stuff down stairs and work your way back to the third floor decorating as you go along.

Photos of the results will be coming soon.

Cookbooks

I have been following this great food blog lately. Debra, takes one cookbook a month and each week makes one recipe out of the cookbook and then reviews each dish and at the end of the month, the cookbook itself.

Well,,,,,,,,,that got me to thinking about all the cookbooks I have. Many of which I have never used, some I have never even flipped through.

I sat down on Sunday afternoon and made a list of all my cookbooks, not counting the ones for Christmas cookies or cake decorating and I came up with a list of sixty-eight, yep you read that correctly 68 cookbooks.




No wonder Richard says I can't buy anymore cookbooks. Then again this list does not include all my cookbooks onboard Hale Kai. I think I have about a dozen there.



So below is a list of all my cookbooks. Like Debra I will attempt to make one recipe a week for a month out of each cookbook. Some of the cookbooks I use on a regular basis but will try new recipes out of them. This should be interesting.

If a certain title should catch your fancy let me know and I'll try to get it on my "to be used soon list".

Great American Classics by Good Housekeeping
Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook
Weber's Big Book of Grilling
The Southern Living Cookbook
The Bounty of Biltmore - from the Biltmore Estate
John Ash Cooking One on One
The Flavors of Bon Appetit 2001
Best of Food and Wine - Holiday Collection
The Duck Cookbook
Weber's Art of The Grill
Betty Crocker's Great Grilling
The All New Good Housekeeping Cookbook
The New German Cookbook
Jewish Festival Cooking
The Best of Amish Cooking
A River Runs Backwards - The Jacksonville, FL Junior League's Cookbook
Emeril's TV Dinners
Paula Deen & Friends
Our Cup Runneth Over - Ponte Vedra Presbyterian Church Cookbook, Ponte Vedra, FL
The Mast Store Cooks
365 Easy Italian Recipes
Perfect Chicken Dishes
McCalls Cookbook
Bucca di Beppa - yep, recipes from the wonderful restaurant
Crockery Favorites
Char Broil Grill Lovers Cookbook
Beyond Burgers
Cooking with Scotch Whiskey
The Tabasco Cookbook
The Lady and Sons, Savannah Country Cookbook
Hawaiian Plantations Cookbook
The Tequila Book
Smoked Salmon
The French Chef
Better Homes & Gardens
Store to Shore - recipes from charter yacht chefs
Sip to Shore Caribbean - recipes for cocktails and appetizers from cruisers
My Bread
Better Homes & Gardens Crockery Cooking
Our Favorite Before and After Recipes - The Madison Newcomers, Madison, Connecticut
Martha Stewart
Dungeness Crab and Blackberry Cobbler
Chocolate Cakes
Garlic
Casseroles
The 4th of May
Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home
Sara Moulton Cookbook
The Provence Cookbook
The Minimalist Entertains
Ultimate Bread
500 treasured Country Favorites
Ulu Cookbook
Vidalia Onion Lovers Cookbook
Hot, Sour, Salty & Sweet
PV Flavor - Ponte Vedra Palm Valley Elementary School, FL
Joy of Cookies
Chocolate Fantasies
Nigella Bites
Betty Crocker Cooking for Two
Taste of Home Casseroles
Mediterranean
Best of Gourmet
Southern Living Annual Recipes 1995
Southern Living Annual Recipes 2001
Southern Living Annual Recipes 2002
Patrick O'Connells Redefined American Cuisine
Better Homes and Gardens Casual Entertaining
Better Homes & Gardens Mexican

Another Working Weekend,,,,

A friend of ours recently decided to have some trees cleared out from his lot a little further down the mountain from us. Not wanting to let good wood go to rot we headed down one night after work in the pick-up and loaded up the bed of the truck.

On a beautiful Saturday morning we fired up the tractor and got the log splitter going. As we split a bucket load of wood we would get it up onto the back deck and then stack it to season.

This was the result of our morning's efforts.


Since it was a perfect day I took a photo of the large tree just off our property. On this date, the 23rd of October, it was completely bare, yet only 10 days ago it was beautiful with golds and yellows. See a previous post.


This shot from the back deck shows the Burning Bushes in all their fall glory and the bare trees on the ridge behind them.


Our work done we sat on the back deck to enjoy the sun and eat lunch. Morgan used this time to nap in the warm sun.


That night there was a beautiful full moon. I got this shot as the moon was rising through some light clouds, over the mountains.


Sunday we had a very relaxing day. The biggest accomplishment was that I finished my needlepoint project. Now I have to make a pillow out of this.

Another Visit From An Old Friend

Back in October, about the 13th. A high school classmate of Richard's made the trip up from Titusville, Florida to spend a few days with us. Ken hit the fall foliage at its peak of color. See the photos dated 10/13 in my previous entry.

We spent time catching up on things, eating and enjoying the company.

I took this shot of Ken while in the kitchen watching Richard making us a pizza for dinner.


Here is Richard with the pizza he made. I couldn't get a shot of him tossing it into the air. Thankfully he never dropped it on the floor.


The next afternoon we all took a walk up to the top of the mountain, 5,300 feet elevation. Along the way we passed a home with the name in Italian. Here Ken is using his i-phone to try and translate the name into English for us.


One of the views on our way to the top of the mountain. We had perfect fall weather.


Here are Ken and Richard at the top of one of the black diamond ski trails on the mountain.


We really enjoyed having Ken come and stay for a few days and we hope that he comes back again sometime soon.