There are people who absolutely live for Christmas, its an obsession through-out the year….planning, shopping, baking, decorating, a little bit here, a little bit there, with the full throttle Christmas preparations reaching a feverish pitch right around this time of year. I’m not one of those people. I did attempt the ‘Martha Stewart’ thing a few times, trying to actually make my own Christmas gifts. One year, all the females in my family were treated to the same home-made gift. Under the tree, were big green garbage bags, each labeled with the names of my sisters, mom, and sisters-in law. I can still picture all their faces when they opened the big green garbage bags (I didn’t know you could get giant Christmas gift bags). Inside, was a big mess of tangled twigs and broken pieces of dried flower. Yes, I had carefully crafted dried flower hangings (with flowers from my own garden) to give as Christmas gifts. By the time the dried flowers were stuffed into bags and placed under the tree, they had all but turned into twigs and dust and fluffy stuff mixed with seeds. I think one arrangement even included a dried grasshopper. Someone told me later that there’s some kind of aerosol spray that protects and hardens dried flowers…hmmm…that would’ve been useful information BEFORE-HAND. If you have a home-made-gift-turned-disaster story to share, email me back. ssharkey@939bobfm.com
I was watching the Rachael Ray show the other day, and she was making stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey. One day I plan to cook a turkey, who knows, could be this year, could be sometime next year, so I was quite interested in her stuffing lesson. She had a huge frying pan, she fried up some onions in EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) , some sage, she threw in some dried cherries then crumbled up 6 cornbread muffins and mixed it all up. And that was it!!! She served it on the plate next to some turkey. I immediately made an alarming observation. Rachael Ray’s turkey stuffing never saw the inside of the turkey. Yet, she kept calling it ‘stuffing’. Its not ‘stuffing’, if its never been ‘stuffed’ into anything. C’mon, Rachael, nice try, but please, you can’t fool us.
Like many people, I have lots of framed photos on the mantel over my fireplace. None of the frames matched, so I went shopping this week and found the perfect frames, made of wood, painted with a greenish ‘milk paint’. The frames were from the ‘Prairie Wood’ collection. I took them home, put the photos into the new frames, they looked beautiful. When my husband got home I showed him the frames, and told him that they were from the ‘Prairie Wood’ collection. Hmmm. Interesting. Prairie WOOD. It was pointed out to me, that the prairies are not really known for their wooded areas. As a matter of fact, you can drive for a day without seeing a tree. I sure hope that my frame collection isn’t the remnants of the only tree in Saskatchewan. I wouldn’t feel so bad if my frames were made out of wheat.
