. . . Natalie Jane joined our extended "family." I've taken it upon myself to share these photos, because my dear and fabulously brave and strong friend, Carol, is way too busy raising an energetic (and chatty) 2-year-old and nursing/burping/diapering/placating Natalie to update her blog for a while. Could this little peanut be more perfect???
1.Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper, because I think it's more festive and looks more quaint when the gifts are all piled up under the tree. Bags tend to be too tall and therefore have to be placed next to the tree, which just isn't the same. Unless, of course, there are so many presents crammed under there that they're pouring out from underneath. That's a different story altogether.
Charlie Brown Christmas. It's iconic. Or The Year Without a Santa Claus (the stop action one with the Cold Miser and the Heat Miser). Or White Christmas. Oh, oh, or Meet Me in St. Louis. But I'll watch and find enjoyment at just about any cheesy Lifetime or Hallmark Channel holiday movie. It's a guilty pleasure.
house, sleeping in my own bed, too. I imagine once we have kids we'll prefer being at home.
Ah, pretty. And hanging the stockings and putting out the little wooden Rudolph helped, too. My grandpa Christensen designed it himself, handmade them, and gave one to each of his sons and their families. But this is the original that he kept for himself. After he and my grandma passed away it was given to me, and it's one of my most cherished things.
Ah, that's pretty, too, is it not?
I was born on the last day of the year--2 weeks late, which means my mom and family missed out on celebrating Christmas that year with brand spanking newborn little me. But that didn't stop my Aunt Jill from initiating what has become an annual tradition: Gifting the still in utero Spacebaby (me) with her first Christmas ornament. Every single year since then (and sometimes for my birthday or other occasions, too) she has given me an ornament, so that by now (being as I am in my 33rd year) I have quite a collection. Especially since years ago I began collecting them for myself as meaningful and memorable tokens of my various travels. Here's a tour of the tree, highlighting a few of my favorites.
My Nutcracker ornament was from Aunt Jill. It's made entirely of wood and is hand painted. As such, it's a tad heavier than your average ornament and almost always lives at the top of my tree each year where it can perch upon a lower branch.
She gave me this lervly little hand-blown glass ornament the year I bought my house. I wish my house actually looked like that and was, say, nestled on 3 acres in--oh, I don't know--Portland or the Rocky Mountains. But whatever.
This pretty blue and white porcelain orb I bought for myself at the Rijkesmuseum in Amsterdam a few years back. Looking at it makes me think about how proud I was to traipse around the city all by myself for 4 days, doing what I pleased when I pleased. What a great trip that was. 
Aunt Jill gave me this cutie earlier this year at my bridal shower to commemorate . . . well, I guess it's obvious. I got married. Finally. She'd probably been holding on to this baby for a good 8 or 9 years. 
In this shot you can see a few of my favorites. First there's the sparkly Eiffel Tower. No, I haven't been to Paris--yet--and when I do get there I'll pick up another French-themed ornament. But this one I got in Denver quite a number of years ago while out shopping with Carol. This one's bittersweet because while I love the ornament, whenever I see it I think about how much I miss my sweet friend in Colorado . . . Then there's the official White House ornament that I got at the JFK museum in Boston (the oval one behind the candle). And one of my all-time favorites of the tree every year: The little gold candle holders and candles (juleys!) that B sent to me from Denmark what seems like a lifetime ago. (I even light them sometimes. Ssssh, don't tell my dad.) Every year when I place them strategically on the tree I'm reminded of how much I'm loved and how grateful I am for bosom friends.
This one of Pooh and Christopher Robin was from Aunt Jill, and I've had it for many years. It's a longtime favorite and I imagine always will be. At the end of every Christmas season I'm loathe to pack it up again for another year and am always tempted to keep it out. Something about the soft pastels and the heartwarming pose just make me feel soft and cuddly inside. Perhaps someday if we're blessed with a little Spacebaby of our own I'll take it out for good and display it in the nursery.
For me, though, the highlight of the tree every year is the angel. She belonged to my grandma Christensen who always displayed her on the entryway table at their house, sourrounded by angel hair "snow." So when we'd arrive on Christmas Eve, she'd be one of the first things I'd see as my grandma and grandpa (along with their little pup) came to the door to greet us with hugs. Seeing her each year is like having a little piece of my grandparents back again for the holidays.
Merry Christmas, everyone! May God bless us all.
Just beautiful. And a truly enjoyable time with family. I hope all of your Thanksgiving days were just as blessed and your meals just as satisfying . . . .
Now before anyone accuses me of being mean, let me just say that this is posted above exactly as it was sent to me by his loving mother and father (with just the name of his city deleted, because I'm a dork and nervous about revealing too much personal info). I don't know about you, but I'd take a date with this handsome fella anytime.
Preheat your oven to 350. (If you have a diabolical oven that hates you and lives to make your culinary life a living hell like mine does, then you should set it for 275-300 and pray that it eventually settles at around 350.) Cream the sugar and shortening together in a big bowl. 
Add the vanilla and eggs and blend well. 
(Ooooh, that looks like cake batter, doesn't it? Now I want cake. Sigh.) Sift all the dry ingredients and spices together. If you're like me and don't have a real one, you can use the poor girl's sifting method. 
It works just fine and is waaaaay easier to clean than my mom's old hand sifter that has little pebbles of dried flour stuck in it that have probably been there for 30 years. Add the sifted dry ingredients to the sugar and egg mixture. 
Add water, pumpkin, and the nuts and mix well. 
Pour the mixture into three greased bread pans (or a whole mess of mini bread pans or like a million muffin cups). 
Bake for 45 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean (I start checking it at 45 minutes, but it usually takes a lot longer than that to be done). When you're all finished, you'll have these gorgeous ladies smiling up at you from your counter. Yumminess! 
This makes a great gift and it also freezes well--we still have two loaves in there now waiting to be taken out and thawed for Thanksgiving with the fam.
You left Mr. Chewtoy under our ottoman this weekend, and now we're holding him for a ransom. If you ever want to see his smiling face or gnaw on his soothingly chilly wings again, you'll have to make your parents bring you over to visit us again. The payment is three blow kisses for each of us and cuddling. Lots of cuddling. Oh, and you must wear footie jammies, too, because they're adorable. (B, we also found a little blue Gerber cap that looks like it goes on a bottle or something, so if you're looking for it we've got it.)
Since Matt's been bedridden all week, some of our friends have been nice enough to send us funny emails and videos to help keep him entertained. Some of them are too good not to share, like this Brad Paisley video.
Several times a day we take it off and Matt bends his knee gently about 10 times. It hurts a lot. Here's his nifty little "bag of joy," aka a device that pumps numbing solution through a tiny little catheter inserted in his knee. 
Later today we have to remove his dressings and I have to pull that "tiny little" catheter out. Something tells me Matt isn't going to think it feels "tiny" or "little." Which is why we're putting it off and haven't done it yet. Here's his Iceman. It's a souped up Igloo cooler.
I fill it with ice and water, plug it into the cold pack in his dressings, turn it on, and it circulates ice water around his knee. It's our friend and we want to keep it forever. But if we had to choose between it and Vicodin, we'd pick Vicodin. We heart it a bunch.
While listening to NPR on my drive in this morning, I heard a piece on "Lights Out L.A."--an environmental awareness campaign that's organizing a city and county-wide voluntary blackout on October 20. Here's the deal: They're challenging all businesses and homeowners to install one compact flourescent lightbulb and turn off all non-essential lighting from 8-9:00pm on the 20th. They estimate that doing so will save 10-15% of the energy consumed on an average Saturday night. At the original "Lights Out" event in Sydney, Australia, back in March, 2.2 million people participated, resulting in a 10% drop in electricity use. It also reduced 25 tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to taking nearly 49,000 cars off the road for 60 minutes. L.A. is piggybacking their event along with San Francisco, which has been planning for 6 months (they'll be shutting off the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and other landmarks), but L.A. has to get the word out in just a matter of weeks. So start passing it on, friends! We've already replaced most of the bulbs in our house with CFLs and I'm fanatical about turning off lights, so it won't be much different from any other night at our house . . . .
. . . and looking through cookbooks for something tasty to make my man for dinner tonight. 
Which reminded me of that huge dutch oven we got last weekend. And I started wondering what might fit inside it. My beloved dvd of Gone With the Wind surely does. 
As does a gallon of milk (one of my other favorite things). 
And the complete works of Shakespeare fit quite nicely, too. 
But my trusty compy? Not so much. 
So, friends, what do you make in a dutch oven? Any recipes or ideas you'd like to share with me, because I'm at a loss here.
As usual, we parked in Pasadena and caught the shuttle bus (you'd have to be insane or a masochist or both to drive yourself to the Bowl and face that parking/traffic hell--seriously, what are those people thinking?). My sweet husband knew he was in for an interesting night as soon as the other passengers started boarding the bus. A little bit of backstory here: Matt was actually the third person down on my list of people to invite to this concert. He likes Rufus well enough and all, but enough to enjoy a concert? Of Judy Garland tunes no less? A recreation of an insanely popular and well-known Judy Garland concert revered and nearly worshiped by millions of gay men worldwide? Many of whom were sure to converge upon the Hollywood Bowl in states of near hysteria at the prospect of seeing Rufus Wainwright of all people (a modern gay icon) perform as Judy (a historically gay-embraced icon)? Mmmm, not so much. So being the nice and thoughtful wife that I am, I figured I'd let him off the hook and give him a free night at home to watch "Mythbusters," gorge himself on red meat a/o fried food, play WoW, and scratch his feet or whatever to his heart's content. But then the unimaginable happened: Neither of my dearly loved gay friends wanted to go (one because our seats wouldn't be good enough--he's a bit of a snob, but in a lovable way). Which is why my dear and supportive husband was seated next to me on that Bowl shuttle as the men started streaming on board. Finely-groomed, hair-gelled, hand-talking men, some of whom were dressed quite fabulously. Like this fella who was wearing a tight black and gold stripe sparkly sweater (that I swear to the good Lord above my grandma owned) and giant black Nicole Richie-esque sunglasses. 
Incidentally, he was with another guy who looked a lot like a chubbier Perez Hilton. Once everyone was settled, we pulled out . . . and made it as far as the Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, where we were promptly stopped by police and CalTrans workers informing us that the road was closed due to a mudslide caused by that little bit of rain we had last week. Thankfully, one of the other passengers--we'll call him Helpy McHelperton--knew an alternate route, as our poor bus driver was without a clue. He stood up front and directed her where to go. Coincidentally, he was wearing a jaunty driving cap that matched his jacket.
So after a short delay caused by our detour, we arrived at the Bowl. This is where I had my first hopping-in-my-seat-with-excitement moment. 
Because I'm a bad and lazy wife and didn't feel like packing a picnic dinner, we spent nearly $30 on two sandwiches, a small bag of chips, and two waters, and then made our way to our seats. 
In due time, the lights went down and the show began. Rufus came out wearing white tailored slacks, a navy velvet dinner jacket, a ruffled tuxedo shirt, and a gigantic rhinestone corsage. (It was at this moment that Matt had the revelation: Rufus Wainwright is gay? Apparently he hadn't known that before and thought the high male attendance was due to the Judy factor alone. Hehe.) He looked fabulous and started the show off with "When You're Smiling."
If you're not familiar with his music, he's well known for his songwriting and also his unique tone, various vocal affectations, and powerful full-throat delivery. He wasn't in top form this night, I'll admit; it sounded to me like he was a bit under the weather and was on the verge of losing his voice. But he was also singing all of these songs in their original keys--the ones in which Judy performed them, and that's no easy feat. So he missed a few of the high notes, but he handled it with a sense of humor and came off as quite charming. But the real excitement came in the second half. First he invited his sister, Martha (a pretty fantastic and unique performer herself) to come up and sing "Stormy Weather." The crowd loved her and she received the first standing ovation of the night. A bit later he invited his mom, Kate McGarrigle (of the McGarrigle Sisters fame), to join him on the piano while he sang "Over the Rainbow" while seated indian-style on the catwalk. (In Judy's concert, she performed it sitting on the edge of the stage.) Then the best part . . . . At one point during Judy's original show, she stepped into the audience where Rock Hudson was seated and gave him a kiss. Rufus did the same, but this time the guest of honor was none other than Debbie Reynolds! Heavens to Betsy, at this point I was hopping in my seat like mad and slapping Matt's knee, squealing repeatedly, "It's Debbie Reynolds! Honey, Debbie Reynolds!" Here she is with Gene Kelly in a publicity still for Singin' in the Rain.
No joke, people, I had tears welling up in my eyes. Matt, on the other hand, was sitting back and clapping politely. He leaned over to me and asked genuinely, "Who?" Oy! (Later, on the way home I tried to fill him in, but nothing was ringing any bells until I remembered that she played Grace Adler's mom on "Will & Grace," an episode of which we happened to have just seen a couple of weeks ago. He was still unimpressed. Sigh. That is until the following day when it dawned on me that there was one bit of info that would impress him: Debbie Reynolds also happens to be Princess Leia's mom, and I'd read online that Carrie Fisher herself was at the concert, seated right next to her lovely mother. 
That got his attention. Men.) So I was beside myself with happiness, thinking it couldn't get any better when Rufus began singing "After You've Gone" towards the end of the show, and then invited someone to come out and join him for a duet. Out waltzed Lorna Luft, looking gorgeous in a hot pink gown. 
To borrow a phrase from Pioneer Woman, "lawsy mercy!" The crowd went wild and I was yet again hopping up and down and jerking my head back and forth from Lorna to Matt back to Lorna then to Matt, looking to see if he understood what he was seeing. He didn't. I said, "That's Judy Garland's daughter!" and his face brightened a little and he said, "Oh." That sweet boy, he tried so hard . . . . Ok, so this post has gone on way longer than I intended, so I'll wrap it up the way Rufus did: When the second half was over and he came out for the 5-song-long encore, he was dressed in drag, wearing this famous costume of Judy's from Summer Stock.
What fun! I wish I could go back and see it all over again.
