Unveiling

Well, I can finally share a few of the homemade items from this Christmas. Above are two of the four pairs of earrings I made (as you can see, I made them way back when there was still grass to be seen).

Above is a watercolor paining I made of Kurt Vonnegut, as a gift for my Vonnegut-obsessed husband.

And I baked and batched up a number of cookie tins (with homemade tags) as gifts this year, featuring chocolate/hazelnut shortbread, Russian tea cakes, mini chocolate-covered nut cups, and of course cornflake wreaths (the very last of which I will devour today with my lunch).

I also made a few other little things here and there...mix CDs, homemade gift certificates, cards, scrapbook page, etc. I think I'll expand the homemade gift-giving even more next year. Yes...it takes more time and it's far easier to just go buy something. But I had a lot of fun making things, and one can't deny it saves money. And really nothing took very long. All four earrings took maybe 30 minutes total, and even the watercolor was only about an hour's worth of work. Probably the biggest hassle was baking cookies, but my plan for making the dough ahead of time and freezing it receives two giant thumbs-up.

Sorry the photos aren't so great...I have yet to master low light close-ups. I think I need to use a tripod.

Hope you had a great Christmas! In my next post I'll share the absurdities of our romantic get-away in Minneapolis. And hopefully I'll have updates on HP. But for now, I'll leave you with this heartwarming Christmas tableau, where my various office desk totems (loch ness monster, three-legged pig, and green sweater bunny) gather around the roaring fireplace and decorate their Christmas tree.

Ready for Christmas

Just a couple photos of our tiny apartment all dressed up for Christmas. Actually, the bathroom is the most Christmas-y area of our home, but it was impossible for me to get a decent angle for picture-taking. Just imagine what the bathroom in little Cindy Lou Who's house must be like...ours has that kind of stripey, sequiny, Suessian thing going on, only perhaps a bit more downmarket. Anyway, our little cave is glittery and cheerful.

I've been done with shopping/wrapping for a little over three weeks now! Internet shopping is my favorite invention EVER! Like a million times better than sliced bread and the cotton gin and pasteruization. Kind of. Anyway, I needed to finish early because the confluence of busy end-of-term Registrar's Office duties, plus end of semester grading, would otherwise make the shoehorning in of Christmas tasks an overwhelming nightmare. Which means all I'm left with is baking.

As for baking, this year I decided to make the cookie dough early and freeze it! This Christmas the code word is "efficiency." I don't know how that will work, though. I've got the dough protected by literally four different layers of various kinds of wrapping material (wax paper, cling wrap, foil, and freezer bags). If that works out fine, then on baking day (Wednesday night) I just have to form the cookies and bake. Who knows how they'll turn out, but I can at least confirm that the dough tastes amazing!

Once I make it through this week's nastiness...final grading and Friday's 14-hour day (commencement)....Dave and I are rewarding ourselves with a weekend get-away booked at a swanky hotel in downtown Minneapolis! That's our Christmas gift to each other this year ~ time together. With cocktails, room service, and a hot tub! Hope you have relaxing rewards planned for yourself as well over the coming week.

Have a merry Christmas!

Thanksgivingness

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Ours was "ok," as Thanksgiving is for me usually (sad to say) kind of a hassle...not that I ever really have to DO anything, but my memories seem to center on women doing all the work while men sit on their asses and watch football. It's not that way anymore, certainly, but I still persist in thinking of Thanksgiving as a gender-unfriendly obligation and an annoying pebble in a perfectly-good stretch of time off. That sounds very ungracious about a holiday meant to celebrate gratitude, I know. I did enjoy watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, though, as I do every year -- the only show that is more fun to mock is the Miss America Pagent. I like to watch closely and rate performers on their lip-synching abilities. Rick Astley was the big lip-synching loser this year. And the long weekend was notable, also, for the almost absurd number of chores we managed to cross off our list. I realize now that me + Dave + joint weekday off = superpower efficiency (E=dtw).

As for what I'm grateful for....there are some big ones this year. But I also like to appreciate the little things. Below are some smaller, rather random, things I'm grateful for at this precise moment:

- Sinclair Lewis (I'm reading...and very much enjoying...Main Street right now)

- Burt's Bees lip balm

- Glittery Christmas ornaments

- Yardsticks

- The adorable bunny that lives in the bush outside our apartment building

- Dave's warm, strong hands

- Emory boards

- Grilled cheese sandwiches

- Swifter wet jet

- Strangers who say "hi" when they walk past you

- Rain, the neighbor's dog

- Ice cold milk

- The organ in "Autumn Sweater" by Yo La Tengo

- A fresh box of Kleenex

- Having a student ask me what my favorite book is...and actually seem to be interested

- Warming my hands on a mug of tea

- Periwinkle

- The amazing dream I had last night (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jude Law were playing
Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, only Byron and Shelley in this case were also members of a vampire cult led by Oscar Wilde and they had to solve a series of crimes taking place amongst a consortium of Cure fans residing in a spooky mansion isolated in the prairie wilderness...and themselves falling prey to the vampiric poets). So grateful for that fantastic blending of the cultural debris in my life....historical research of Frankenstein, commercials for Twilight, my circling of The Tudors DVD set in the latest Acorn catalog, my husband's citing of The Cure as a favorite band in an interview he did for the Hill-Murray student paper, the setting of Main Street, and I'm not sure how Oscar Wilde made his way in there except I do own an Oscar Wilde action figure that was recently dusted.

- A lunch hour where I'm momentarily so carefree that I can spend my time blogging and worrying about which particular cookies to bake this Christmas!

I hope you also take time to appreciate all the little things that contribute in their own wee way to your happiness, comfort, and satisfaction.