Well, Christmas is over. Did you have a good Christmas? I will tell you about ours in a little while.
Did you find all the gifts you had bought to give to people? I admit it, once when my youngest sister was young (she is 12 years younger than me) my husband and I forgot to bring her gift when we got together with my family for Chanukah - terribly embarrassing and of course we had to get the gift and bring it to her later that week.
I finished decorating our two main trees on Thursday. I did the rest of the decorating, including a small tree with the brass ornaments we have received as contributors to Colonial Williamsburg over the past few decades - they were taking up too much room on the main tree, we have 2 duplicate ornaments and put one set of them on the main tree and the rest on a small tree in our dining room.
Friday afternoon I also went to wrap the gifts. Since we bought few gifts this should be a fairly quick process. When I can I put our gifts to ourselves into recycled small Christmas gift shopping bags (the bags were received with gifts from others in the old days when we traded gifts with others). I thought I had plenty of Christmas wrapping paper as I had not made any notes under “Christmas” in my “buy” shopping list in my cell phone. Oh no! Just a bit left on one roll. I had plan to wrap our gifts as husband was busy upstairs and I could wrap the gift I had for him that he did not know about without him seeing it. Plans changed due to the shortage of wrapping paper. It was more important to nicely wrap his niece’s gifts. I laid out the Barbie for one and DVD set for the other on the paper and cut the paper and wrapped the gifts. I then needed paper to wrap the scarves husband had made them, which I then planned to put into two of the recycled bags. I laid out the rolled up scarves and cut a large enough piece to go around the larger scarf, which was, of course the thicker of the two rolls. Luckily, there was plenty to wrap both scarves. I then went up to talk to husband about the exact wrapping and including a photo with each of the scarf while it was being made. He got all excited as he was not ready to wrap the scarves and had to print laundry instructions for them. I told him to calm down and not rush - but of course he did. While he was doing so I went back down and wrapped in the paper which was left, two of his gifts and used small pieces of the wrapping paper which had been left over in the past to wrap a couple of pieces which I planned to put in his stocking. The other items, which were small enough, I put into other of gift bags. I put all 4 of my 4/$1 hair clips in one bag for me. He came down and we wrapped his nieces gifts. His gifts and my one gift when into 2 regular paper shopping bags (mixed, I did not take a bag just for my bag of hair clips) and the 4 gifts for his nieces into another paper shopping bag. Did not want to chance forgetting a gift for a niece as I did with my sister decades ago. The bags were set aside in the dining room out of the way.
Saturday afternoon I got ready for Christmas Eve dinner. I put the ham in the oven and careful read the directions for the other items I was making 3 hours before we planned to eat.
I then took out the ornament I had embroidered for my husband. I was unhappy with it when it was assembled and decided it needed a decorative edging. I sat and braided red pearl cotton (a type of thread). I then stitched the braid around the front edge of the ornament - made it much better looking. I then wrapped it in tissue paper, having run out of wrapping paper, and added it to the bags of husband’s gifts. I then returned to my cooking.
One of the things I was making as a side dish is something called dried corn. This is a Pennsylvania food. Corn is dried by heat for storage. When it is cooked it is soaked to bring it back. In the past we had bought the canned - ready to heat and eat - version. The one company that makes this item had shut down several years ago and finally someone had bought up the business and was making it again. When we were in the Lancaster, PA area we had bought the canned version and also a version in a package. We have made the canned version and it was not what it used to be. For Christmas we decided to make the packaged version. This version is just the dried corn itself, so it has to be soaked for use. I had misread the package and had thought it would be soaking and cooking for an hour and then another 5 minutes after adding milk - oops, it was to soak for an hour and then cook for 40 minutes plus the 5 minutes after adding milk. Luckily I caught it in time - and hour and 45 minutes would be just about 15 minutes longer than when we would sit down and we were having soup first. It came out pretty close to what we had before.
We had meat tortellini in chicken broth for the soup. Not much involved in cooking same, boil the tortellini, add to the chicken broth when same almost heated.
We had also bought a box of potatoes au gratin. I had never made this before. I waited until the ham came out as I wanted the ham to set a bit before slicing and eating and the potatoes needed a temperature 25F degrees higher than the ham. I of course checked the ham with a meat thermometer to make sure it was cooked through. I followed the instructions for the potatoes. I took out the size baking dish needed and added the cheese mix plus butter and milk as it said. I then was to mix with a whisk - uhhh, the size baking dish it called for was completely filled and any mixing would make it run over, so I had to take it out of the baking dish, mix it and then put it back in. I careful added the dried potatoes to make sure I did not run the cheese mixture out of the baking dish. The box said that the sauce would thicken as it cooked, not really. I cooked it almost double the time with no luck - and I have a fairly quick oven and the oven had been well preheated by the ham cooking in it. We had it anyway.
Dinner in the dining room with tablecloth and cloth napkins and the good china and silverware. 3 hours of cooking 45 minutes of eating and then the clean up has to be done. I had looked up in advance the times for mass. Several years ago midnight mass was moved to 10 or 11 pm at most of the churches around here. We found one that still has it at midnight and it is a pleasant church with nicer people than the others. When I checked the times I found out that there was a midnight mass and also a 10 pm mass. Husband decided we should go to the 10 pm mass. (His choice as it is his holiday.) Clean up had to wait until we returned.
When it was time for bed husband went up and - spoiler alert - “Santa” put our gifts under the tree from the bags in the dining room. So Christmas Eve had gone fairly well.
We go to a family member of husband’s on Christmas Day. We got there and gave the nieces their gifts - which were lost in the numerous and huge gifts from Santa and other relatives. Then the host started in on the subject which polite people have been avoiding discussing, especially when they are the host and they know that their guests disagree with them - the election. Husband got so ill over this discussion that we had to go home and he had to go to bed. Short Christmas Day.
We are now awaiting New Years. I am getting ready for the change. I have made up a list of the todo’s and appointment reminders I need to put into my computer organizer for 2017. I have some entries which are annual ones and are already in the softwear data through 2020, but the daily, weekly, monthly and so on entries I put in each year as they might change and to keep the file smaller. On January 1 or 2 I will back up the file for my archive as 2015-2016. I will then delete the 2015 entries. I will then add the 2017 entries and I will be ready to go for the new year - and still have this year for reference if needed. I keep 2 years current each time and back up 2 years each time. This has worked great for me since the early 2000's.
We have renewed all our prescriptions so as we start the new medical insurance year, we know that we have a start on it and won’t have to worry about any changes not made in the insurance company’s systems for prescriptions delaying us from a needed renewal.
We don’t have plans for New Year’s Eve yet. Husband is thinking of finding out if the movie theater we go to will be open then. Normally we do not do much. We watch the ball fall here in Manhattan on TV. No, we have never gone. It is too big a crowd for us to be happy with in so many ways.
When I was a girl New Year’s Eve was confusing to me. I could not understand why it was a bigger deal than the change of any other month. I would be allowed to stay up until midnight. At that time “The Tonight Show” was done in New York City by Johnny Carson. On New Year’s Eve they would do the show live and cut away to the ball drop. I remember one year it was to be New Year’s Eve on Saturday and I was not sure if they would show the ball drop as the show was only on Monday to Friday. My parents, correctly, assure me that they would show it.
Since I am talking about New Year’s and this blog is, at least nominally, about organizing - the question of resolutions has to be mentioned. I found that I never kept any and felt bad about it. One year, some decade or so ago, I made my last resolution which was not to make any further resolutions. I do think over the past year and changes I might like to make or things I might like to do, but I do not make any resolutions - they just cause guilt when they are not kept.
Think of one thing you would like to change to make your life better or easier - and try to do it. Don’t resolve, just try.
I am going to try to do a better job of regular cleaning of the house. I used to be much better at doing so. When first married in and were in our apartment, husband would come Friday night and fall asleep early after dinner from the week. I was also working full time then outside the house. When he went to sleep I would clean the apartment. As we went along we bought the house and I stopped working outside the house and moved the accounting practice I had taken over from my dad into the house and was therefore in the house more, I started doing the cleaning on Wednesday mornings. When he left work, I moved it to Wednesday nights. I am thinking Tuesday nights might be a better choice and will see about it. It is in my calender as a “todo” and I will schedule it for Tuesdays instead. I spread the chores over the month - one week upstairs, the next down, repeat.
My best wishes for a wonderful New Year for us all.
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