Decorating Ideas for Your Christmas Tree

Each year at Christmas-time, we have such a wonderful time decorating our tree together, and we treasure the bonding and the memories we create. We place each ornament delicately on the tree and fondly reminisce about past Christmases, vacations that certain ornaments represent, and friends and family who gave us ornaments as gifts. We stand back to adore our creation, and rejoice that the wondrous season of joy is beginning. And then . . . certain children rearrange the ornaments, bunching them all up into one side, or categorically grouping them by type or color. The ornaments become barbie toys, hair accessories and projectile missiles. I grudgingly put them all back on the tree where they belong, only to have the same process repeated on a daily basis.
Now I know this is all hard evidence of my lack of parenting skills. I really should be able to control this behavior. But reading "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" regularly makes me averse to any Nazi-mom behavior around the holidays. So this year I spent $20 on a 3 foot lighted tree that the kids can do WHATEVER they want with, as long as they DO NOT touch the big tree. Here are some pictures of what they have done. Maybe you will want to recreate their decor on your own trees:

New Book Blog

I have gotten my blog on books started--Chain-Reading. Check it out!

Crockpot - Taco Chili

In the last month I've only tried three crock pot recipes--things have just been whirlwindish and I also have joined a group that exchanges dinners monthly, so I have been using those for dinners and the dinners from our family casserole exchange (only my own are left!) We've also had quite a few "eat-what-you-can-find-and-make-yourself" nights. My scanner is not working so I'll just type in the recipe that was good:

Taco Chili

1 lb. lean ground beef
2 cans (15 oz.) petite diced garlic seasoned tomatoes
1 can (15 oz.) chili beans, undrained
1 can (15. oz.) whole kernel corn, undrained
1 envelope taco seasoning

Brown beef. Drain fat. Combine everything in crock pot. Cover and cook on low 4 to 6 hours.

This was so similar to Taco Soup that we all like, only easier. Half of us liked this better, half liked Taco Soup Better. But since everyone ate it, I'll go with this easier version. We served it with tortilla chips, cheese and sour cream.

The other two recipes, Brown Sugar BBQ Chicken and Citrus-Salsa Chicken, were both the kind that you just stick the chicken in the crockpot and cover with sauce. They were okay, but I wouldn't make them again.
I was just counting how many recipes I have left to try (47!), and realized I made another recipe that we liked, and it's way easy:

Cheesy Ham and Potatoes

2 pkg. (5.5 0z. each) au gratin potato mix
2 cups diced cooked ham
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, drained and chopped (we didn't add this but it sounds good)
3 cups water
1 can condensed Cheddar cheese soup

Coat slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray. Place au gratin mix, ham and peppers in cooker. In large bowl, stir water and soup to combine. Pour onto potato mixture. Cover. Cook on low 7 to 8 hours.

This recipe is only as good as the potato mix you buy. We liked it, but the mix I got seemed a little salty. I grew up on packaged au gratin potato mix--I would make it as my dinner a lot growing up-but if that sounds gross to you, you probably wouldn't like the recipe.

Listening Library: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

(This may be the last book review I do on this blog--I think I'm going to set up a separate blog for all of my literary excesses. After vacation, though.)
This book was the Pulitzer Prize winner in 2004. I've tried a few other winners, but had come to the conclusion that these prestigious book awards usually indicate a pushing of the envelope in disturbing ways that I don't care to read about. But with this one, I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty much G-rated material, uplifting and deeply thoughtful. John Ames, a preacher in 1956 Gilead, Iowa, knows he is nearing the end of his life. The novel is a letter to his almost 7-year-old son who will not know or remember much of his father. He writes of his family's history, his thoughts on life and religion, and tells of some difficult experiences he has had learning forgiveness. This is one of the few audiobooks I've listened to that I loved the voice of the narrator. This was a good one to listen to, and reading it around Thanksgiving was appropriate, because you see the things that are important to John Ames at the end of his life. I checked out the books so I could quote some of my favorite passages, but there were just too many. It's far from a plot-driven book, but I see it as one that can sit on your nightstand and be read a little bit each night.

Hair

I got my hair done on Tuesday, and it's quite a bit lighter than normal. When I got home, the kids all looked at me as if I'd sprouted broccoli for ears. When I went to Mutual, many of the fifty some people there commented on my hair. A fourteen-year-old boy asked me, "Did you dye your hair, it looks pretty." But did my husband notice in the three hour span of time before I pointed it out to him? Of course not. Should I be feel overlooked or neglected? This all made me think of the movie Sabrina. Pre-Paris Sabrina is a little nerdy looking, and when she returns, hair cut short and sophisticated, nobody recognizes her except for Harrison Ford (whatever his character's name was). He knows it is her, because presumably he sees her as having always been beautiful. (Insert romantic sigh.) So I'm just trying to give Dan the benefit of the doubt, and assume he did not notice the difference in my hair because he just saw me as the sophisticated, beautiful wife (LOL) that I always am, whatever color my hair may be. And I am hoping that I don't look too much like a freak.

Book Review: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

This is a simple, direct, and short read, and yet it makes you stop every so often and ponder your own life for a few minutes before you continue on with the fable-like story. "To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation" is the central theme of the novel. It is about a young Spanish shepherd boy who sacrifices many things in order to go on a quest for hidden treasure at the pyramids of Egypt. Along they way, he learns to follow his heart and not give up his desire to discover his Personal Legend. He learns to trust in himself and the power of the love of an Egyptian girl. And of course he learns that the treasure is not what he imagined it would be.

I learned that I am only vaguely aware of what my "destiny" or Personal Legend might be. In an interview in the back of the book, the author (a Brazilian Catholic) says, "Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend." Blogging? Reading? Blogging about reading? That can hardly be considered "destiny" material can it? Many more personal questions arise as you read this book, and it's a good opportunity to reevaluate where you are in your life, and if you are headed along the right path--the path that God intends for you to be on.

Future Victoria's Secret Model???

She may wear bras on her head. She may stick out her tongue a little more than is necessary. She may even disagree with a few points of parental guidance. But . . . my wonderful daughter Kaylynn is always doing things that brighten my day. On Friday, I left for an hour from a completely disasterized house, but when I got home, Kaylynn had picked up, vacuumed, swept and had the others unload their assigned dishes from the dishwasher. I was so happy when I got home, I wanted to cry--tears of joy, of course. So when your teenage daughter (or possibly son) parades around with undergarments on her head someday, just take a deep breath and remember all the good that she does (and grab a camera, quick!)

Bookworm Banter: Withering Heights - An Ellie Haskell Mystery

This book, written by Dorothy Cannell, was one that caught my eye in the new book section at the library. I didn't know if I would even have time to get to it, but that's what I love about the library--if I don't read it I can just return it, free of charge (unless I turn it in late, then I just view the fee as a "donation" for the library. The library has gotten a lot of support from me over the years.) Several of you know that I should be reading The Hummingbird's Daughter for the book club on Friday, but I needed a book small enough to read at Disneyland, and HD is quite large. Withering Heights is more petite in size making it a bit more portable.
This was such a fun book to read. It is a mystery, and it's only mildly suspenseful, but the author's witty and funny writing made it totally enjoyable. It is very light and quick reading for those times in life when that is all circumstances will allow, or after you have idiotically listened to 20/23 hours of The Idiot. It's sort of like Boxcar Children meets Murder She Wrote. My brain is lazy this morning, so I will copy a bit of the jacket info:
"Ellie Haskell--the formerly plump girl turned Thin Woman and happily married mother of three--is also a sometime sleuth and a Gothic romance addict. When her husband's young cousin, Ariel, turns up unexpectedly and begs Ellie to come to the Yorkshire moors to investigate some strange events at the house that her family has recently bought with their lottery winnings, Ellie can't resist--especially since Cragstone House sounds like the delightfully musty manors she reads about in books."
As long as I am copying, here's an excerpt from the book that gives you a little taste of her writing:
"Cragstone House lacked a north tower, or the remnants of an ancient keep, so beloved of my heart in fiction. But in other ways it was splendidly suggestive of dark doings, fueled by unbridled passion....I could picture it gobbling up normal sized houses for breakfast, and, like Oliver Twist, asking for more: just one small cottage...or maybe two...to keep things going until lunch."
At one point in the book Ellie is jealous of an old (gorgeous female) acquaintance of her husband's who shows up unexpectedly, and she muses, "We were passing the man with the sheepdog I had noticed on our arrival. I no longer cared about their romantic appearance. I hated romance. It was the root of all evil. From now on I would read only nonfiction. My favorites would be appliance manuals."
Dorothy Cannell's first Ellie Haskell mystery is called The Thin Woman, and I'm definitely going to read it, that is after Hummingbird's Daughter, Twilight, and The Memory Keeper's Daughter. Of course I also have some Christmas crafting I want to do, so I don't know how long that will be. The kid's being off track gives me so much more time, but it also trashes the house even more so than usual. So it will be a choice of read, paint, or clean. Which would you choose?

Movie Review: Spiderman 3

My husband has informed me that his sister has already done a review of this movie, but I haven't read it yet--I didn't want to be too influenced! We'll see if we agree or disagree.
The first half of the movie was slow, and I was mostly glad that we didn't see too much of Mary Jane--I've never been happy with Kirsten Dunst in this role. As the second half begins (we watched half one night, half the next), there is a period of about 15 minutes where I could hear Simon Cowell's voice inside my head saying, "What . . the hell . . .was that?" Weird jazz bar dance choreography and Tobey McGuire strutting down the street like an idiot. And I have to say that Tom Hanks has got nothing on Tobey for bad hair in a blockbuster movie (when he flirts with the dark side). The end of the movie just moves into absurdity. Of course when watching a movie like Spiderman, you have to invoke that "willing suspension of disbelief." A good movie (like the first two Spiderman movies, in my opinion), allows you to do this comfortably so you can still enjoy the plot and be moved by its themes. But this one crosses the line into . . . absurdity, if I'm allowed to say that twice. I did think the sandman graphics were cool, and I enjoyed watching the Snow Patrol video on the big screen as opposed to YouTube!

Listening Library: The Idiot and The Chosen

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky: I wanted to enjoy this 23 hour audio book, I really did! I loved Crime and Punishment. I love the Russian literature I have experienced thus far. The main character, Prince Myshkin, was intriguing to me--an epileptic man who is described as an idiot because of his illness, and because he is very naive about the society he is introduced into. I anticipated great drama between Myshkin, Nastasya Fillipovna (femme fatale of the story with a miserable past who is verging on madness), and Roghozin (and evil and selfish rogue). I expected great psychological insight into the characters that Dostoevsky is known for. But it was a torturous 20 hours for me (I quit 3 hours before the end, I just couldn't handle it anymore.) It was as if someone put all of the ingredients for chex mix out on the counter but never mixed them together for me to enjoy. All I can say is that listening to this while doing laundry and housework is better than listening to my own thoughts, so it served some purpose!

The Chosen by Chaim Potok: This is a story of an unlikely friendship between Reuven, a modern orthodox Jew, and Danny, a strict Hasidic Jew. The setting is 1940's Brooklyn, where the two 15-year-olds attend rival yeshivas, and only meet because Danny injures Reuven's eye in a baseball game. (By the way, this is very difficult for me to summarize a book. I'm only doing it because someone made fun of me once for copying the book description from Amazon. I have been stuck here for about 3 minutes not knowing what to write next.) Danny is the son of a Rabbi who only speaks to him when they are studying Talmud, and he is expected to take his father's place as Rabbi. He is highly intelligent, and fears telling his father that he wants to be a psychologist. Reuven is very gifted in mathematics and logic, but plans to become a Rabbi. Each of them and their fathers have different reactions to the events in the world at the time: the end of WWII, the discovery of the Holocaust, and the struggle to establish the Jewish state of Israel. Yet the two boys manage to maintain their friendship through many tests. I enjoyed listening to this audio book despite the annoying voice of the narrator. The story is meaningful and touching in a universal way, and also gives you a glimpse into the world of Judaism. I would definitely recommend this book!

Scenes From Halloween