I hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving (if you are here in the U.S.) last week. Did you run out to shop during the day or the night - or did you at least wait until “Black Friday” to shop? Or are you waiting still to start shopping?
We had our Thanksgiving dinner, the two of us. I managed to bang my head - not once but twice - on the corner of the dining room table while putting away a table cover which should have been put away months and months ago - I bent over to put it in a bag and hit my head. I really screamed. Husband came in, “are you okay, and there, there’d” me and then gave me a lecture on making sure it was clear in front of me before bending over. He went back to cooking in the kitchen and I took 2 steps back and bent over again to put away the cover. I hit my head again on the same corner and same spot on my head - just less of the corner and got to listen to the lecture again. Worst of all it was the same spot on my head that I hit last month in our RV.
It was relatively easy to take out the china and items we needed. I had gone through the cabinet where it is all stored last year and donated a lot of items we did not need. Instead of needing to take out stacks and stacks of items, only one or two had to removed. How pleasant. I plan to work on the serving pieces stored in the living room next - I have better uses for the storage space there than bowls and platters we bought or received as gifts and have never used. Hmm, maybe I can finally get husband to hang two handled cups from when we were each a kid that match which are stored in the living room. He had the juice cup, I had the orange juice cup - but they match. They must have been popular cups for children back then.
The turkey had directions on it - basically we were to cook it at 325F, when the little popper popped we should test the breast with a thermometer and make sure it was at least 180F. There were also instructions to tent the turkey with foil and then remove same, and brush will oil a few times. Also on the turkey wrapping was a list of times to cook the turkey - only this said for a turkey cooked at 350F - 25 degrees higher than the instructions said to cook at. We discussed this - for a quite awhile. In the back of my head it seemed to me that I remember the same problem with the turkey from the same place last year, but could not remember what I did. We cooked it at the 325F with the logic that it could always be cooked more, but cooked not be cooked less if it was overcooked. About a half hour longer than the chart said (for cooking at 350F) the popper popped and I checked the turkey breast with a thermometer and it was 180F and rising. We took the turkey out and set it aside on the kitchen table to “set”.
In the interim we finished cooking other food items and had our soup. Husband then went to carve the turkey. The turkey breast looked wonderful as he carved into it - but as he went beyond the breast - the turkey was terribly undercooked. He finished carving the breast - moving it to another platter to do so. He then cut up the rest of the turkey - wings, legs, dark meat - and we placed it all on two oven trays to heat it further. I ended up with the 2 extra trays and 2 extra platters as a result of all this. We are not sure what went wrong - should we have cooked it at 350F instead? But the popper popped and it was the correct temperature on the thermometer. Husband has written a letter to the supermarket’s owner (this is one of those of stores where the owner’s photo is all off and he does the ads himself and is actually involved in his company day to day) asking what happened.
The dishes and all were washed Thanksgiving night. I have put all away. When I put my large platter back in the basement, I took out my “everyday” Christmas dishes and glasses. I washed them and we are using them. I move some of my normal everyday dishes higher in the cabinet - where I can’t normally reach stuff - to make room for these to fit in.
We had the leftover turkey etc for the second set of leftovers tonight. There is at least one dinner’s worth of turkey left - but that is all. It will either be eaten early next week or will be frozen.
We do not go shopping on Thanksgiving. We don’t go out for Black Friday sales either. Okay, one time husband wanted a small laptop that was going on Black Friday sale at a chain electronics store and we went and waited in line for it. He did get the laptop, but then again, it was still on sale at the same price - and in stock - the following week. It was not worth standing in line in the freezing cold. This store was rather well organized. There was a line. Items which were limited had coupons for them handed out to people by employees walking along the line, so the coupons were handed out to people based on where they were in line.
We have many times, including this year, while out on Friday to have lunch (at Wendys of course) and run errands gone past empty looking stores and malls by the time we went out. I had needed to renew a medication at the Walmart pharmacy and figured it would be ready over the weekend, but we were called Friday afternoon that it was ready decided to see how bad the crowds were. It was empty! Items which had been put out late Wednesday sealed up until the sales started, were still plentiful for the most part - husband started rooting through the DVDs. We have been in Walmarts again since then and still sale items are still in their displays - either less people came in than they thought would do so, or they intended for the sale items to be available long beyond last Friday.
When we woke up today I noticed the temperature was 61F - 61! I pointed this out to husband and suggested that today was the day to put up our outdoor Christmas decorations. He agreed. We checked our box at the post office, had lunch at Wendys and came home. We keep our outdoor decorations on a platform in the top of the garage. We used to have everything there for Christmas, but as we have aged and it is not that easy for husband to climb on a ladder and get everything - much is heavy - down, I moved the rest into our basement. He can now stand on his worktable (after clearing it off enough) and get the, only, two boxes of lights and wires, three potted artificial poinsettia, and 3 light up candy canes down. No more balancing on a ladder to hand me things. Much safer. We have some wreaths, swags, and such in our shed, but are not putting them up any longer - maybe again in the future.
We put the poinsettia in the same stands that hold our flowers the rest of the year. Husband made these poinsettia in pots. We bought artificial poinsettia which could go outside in the weather and 3 pots to fit the holders. He then bought a couple of cans of spray insulation - the kind that is a foam and expands to fit what it is in. He filled the pots and we added a poinsettia to each. The foam was topped with fake greens and they look great. 5 minutes and they are out in place.
We put lights on our bushes and a dwarf spruce tree. (The dwarf tree is now over 6 ft tall, I am so glad that I talked him out of a full size one.) Of course two set of lights did not work when tested - one of the ones which goes on the bushes and one that is red and white and goes around the white plastic pillar of our mailbox a bit of a candy cane look. We have in the boxes with the lights two electric boxes which stick into the ground. One is placed on one side of the front of our house and the other is placed on the other side of the front of our house. A long flat outdoor extension cord is plugged into the outdoor outlet and run across the front of the house, over the top of the stairs (under the door mat so no one trips) and the electric box on the side away from the outlet is plugged into it - and then the lights are plugged into the electric box. The electric box on the side of the house near the outlet is plugged into the other outlet in the wall box and the lights on that side of the front of the house plug into it.
After we put out and plugged in the lights that worked, we drove to Walmart to buy replacement. No white and red lights - no red lights on their own. We came back, put up the new light set on the bush that was short a set. Husband then took the red and white set into the garage, plugged it in and started shaking it. One half started working. So we wrapped the lit half of the strand around the mail box pillar and dropped the rest on the ground.
The wreath we bought last year for the front door was in the basement with the rest of the “in the house” decorations. The former one was decorated by husband as a copy of one we saw and liked at Colonial Williamsburg - only we used plastic fruit instead of real fruit so we could keep reusing it. The problem is that it had to hung on the outside of the storm door as it did not fit between the door and storm door - this involved annually rigging strands of fishing line around screws in the storm door and trying to adjust it so we could still see through the peep hole of the door - and remember we both on the short side. The new wreath has lights on it - lit by batteries with a timer so it is on for 6 hours every night at the same on and off time. Went up in less than 20 minutes with a magnetic hook on the door - and it is out of the weather, unlike the old wreath which if got covered snow might break free and fall.
So our house now looks presentable to the world. Husband is still trying to figure out where we could put one of those projector decorations - but the front of our house is just not set up for it.
Notice that because fixed place for the Christmas decorations in the garage and plastic boxes to hold the lights, wires, and plug in boxes for them, as well as an assigned spot in the basement to hold the Christmas decorations, it was easy and quick to find everything and put it out. The empty boxes in the garage were stacked on each other with the bags that the lights were kept in stored inside, relatively out of the way so that when we go to take down the lights - they will be easy to find again and then they will be put back up in garage along with poinsettia and the candy canes so that next week we will find them again.
Sometime next week I will put away my few Thanksgiving decorations in the house and then I will start putting out the Christmas ones. This year the holidays seem to be going okay.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
As you take out your holiday decorations and other items try to leave the packing in a way that it will be easy to find and put everything away after the holiday. If it is all a mess - try to figure out while you unpack items how you can better store them away at the end of the season to make them either to access next year, while not being in your way all year.
No comments:
Post a Comment