Today I am prepping a brine for the New Year's turkey. The next door neighbors have a nice smoker, and we have a $10 turkey so we are going to brine it and smoke it and pick it apart and be home early in the evening on New Year's Eve. That means it has to go in the brine tomorrow. I wanted "fresh" thyme and sage and I need horseradish for my homemade cocktail sauce. I chose today to dig that because it has been the warmest day on the forecast for quite awhile. Of course, there is still a layer of snow encased in ice. This is by no means the first time I have dug horseradish in the freezing mud. Last year I was able to dig it on a warmish, sunny day. Today... not so much.
It doesn't really feel cold out but it is melty and it sounded like it was raining when I went out because everything as far as the eye could see was thawing and dripping ice. Now, a couple hours later, it is actually raining and the ice is gone. The snow, however, has turned to glacier.
I knew there was a nice bunch of thyme ....there.....
And sage.... there....
And I had the choice of a couple of spots to dig horseradish.
It wasn't hard to find and the ground is not frozen. The most challenging part was that my kettle kept trying to skate away from me on the ice. It wasn't even really muddy.
Whatever you dig up that you don't want you just throw back in the hole and cover up. It will grow again in the spring. I gathered that mess into a plastic bag and stuck it in the hydrator. I will shred it Wednesday afternoon. There is nothing better than cocktail sauce made with fresh horseradish.
We got a quarter inch coating of ice which is enough to be pretty but still keep the accidents and the power outages to a minimum. This morning when we awoke it was 27F 26F 25F (and dropping fast) We are expecting deliveries so we were out before breakfast spreading sand on the driveway. The bare gravel is actually more treacherous than the aerated ice pack we had created by sanding earlier this week. I have Yaktrax on a pair of my tight fitting garden clogs so whenever I go out I can wear those and carry "good shoes". They really are amazing. I've been clippety-clopping all over the ice in my cleats.
Here are a few scenes from this morning. Every nature photographer in three counties is hoping for some sun before this melts but I fear they will be disappointed. It is actually overcast and foggy out.
At least the deer won't eat them unless they like popsicles
We are in the middle of a rare Great Lakes ice storm. Currently 30F and raining with gusto. Landing as ice. It makes for a colorful radar map.
I can see from the window that the shrubs and trees are well coated. We're fine because we have a whole house generator, no place to be and plenty of movies on DVD. I just took a batch of Tollhouse cookies out of the oven.
I do love dramatic weather, I admit it. But I also realize that it can be dangerous and inconvenient for a lot of other people. I've got a pair of shoes with YakTrax on them and we have plenty of sand to use on the driveway. We have already sanded twice this week which melted everything nicely. Now we will have to start all over again.
The earth has tilted back and we are officially on our way towards spring. But before those seed catalogs start rolling in let's take a quick look at some cozy Christmas touches. I used to go all out with the Christmas decorating. In addition to the tree I would put up decorated and lighted garlands and then walked around the house squinting to make sure that each room glowed from every angle. I spent a day or two adjusting timers so that everything came on within a few minutes of each other. I hauled boxes up and down from the attic and in and out from the front porch until it looked like we were moving.
Every room of our house still gets a holiday touch, but somewhere along the line I remembered that back in the day we did not have to have decorations covering every surface to know that Christmas was on its way. All you had to do was close your eyes and breath in the scents of holiday preparation.
My grandmother prepping a turkey on the wood stove in the kitchen
The only decorations my grandmother put up were a tree, a candelabra in the window next to the door and a Nativity. And those didn't come out until about a week before because of the life span of real trees in a wood heated home. You could smell cookies and pumpkin pie, greeting cards lined the doorway and Christmas music played quietly from the old radio in the kitchen. I actually smelled that Christmas smell the other day when I came in from shoveling snow. Our house still smelled of breakfast pancakes and cinnamon from Glögg and molasses from cookies.
And snow has a smell. It really does.
So anyway, here are the decorations that made it up this year.
This is how the table centerpiece turned out. We enjoyed it every suppertime until the tapers were used up. Now I've swapped it out for my single pillar candle which takes a lot less time to light and blow out each time and doesn't risk setting off the smoke detector.
The greens dried up and berries faded, but we had it every meal from Thanksgiving through yesterday when I switched it back to this.
On my dresser
Last year I made a tiny evergreen wreath for the sleigh bells. This year I got out the rings and was going to tackle a tiny rose hip wreath when I decided to go modern with a wreath interpretation instead. I already have a new idea for next year.
Side Porch entry
My husband even has a lighted village gas station on his desk.
This is the Christmas craft I have been brainstorming this week. I started out by setting aside any older handmade ornaments from past years and hot gluing and trimming and repairing... or just tossing. I cleaned out old boxes, faded cheapo ornaments with the paint flaking off. Working with my Christmas stash is part of my fun. I love to organize and tidy up.
A few years ago I purchased a set of these Victorian styled push pin ornaments. I hadn't put them out for a few years and I was looking forward to using them. These were a popular craft back in the sixties and seventies. We had some growing up. You can still buy some of the vintage kits and make your own, but in the past couple of years they seem to be more popular and there are new kits you can get (a bit pricey). Or you can purchase vintage ones. You can go back to the roots and make your own out of costume jewelry and corsage pins.
^This^ is one that I purchased online. It looks great on my tree.
There is a really wide range of styles and color schemes to be had. Some are way too prickly for my taste. They look like angry porcupines.
There are some that look too gaudy... Although I bet they look nice on a tree.
A couple of winters ago I was at lunch with a friend and we were discussing vintage ornaments. I described the push pin ornaments. "Oh I have some of those that a friend gave me. I'll go get them...."
They were in pretty good shape but my gold ornaments are more of a champagne, and these were reallygoldyellow. And there was a lot of satin showing. Not really my taste. I made some changes, replacing yellow ricrac hangers with ribbon. But still... I didn't love them.
This year as I was going through my decorations I thought "I need to make a decision about those." Either throw them out or use them. These were obviously hand made with costume jewelry and things that were on hand and I just couldn't bring myself to toss someone's creative effort. Not when I knew they could be nice with a little work. I dug out some old pins and sequins and stuff. Maybe some ribbon would help. Or upholstery trim.
I got up on Etsy and ordered an assortment of gimp trim. Amazon had some good champagne colored pearl headed pins. I dug around in my Christmas drawer for gold string and other whatnots. I watched a YouTube video for some constructions tips.
This one didn't need a whole lot of help. I had a vision. It just needed to be covered with some texture and color.
That's better. I may still swap the pearl pins for regular pins which will disappear.
It looks much nicer. It isn't easy to get the gimp straight all the way around, but there is a whole lot less yellow and a lot more subtle glimmer. And you don't really notice its flaws when it is on the tree.
Now this one.... this little cherry red one. I'm sorry but that white ricrac just has to go!
I pulled all of the pins out. I will break these down and save the components. A magnetic tray is a huge help, as is the black Velor work surface.
I wasn't as inspired by this one but after searching through internet photos I got some ideas for a starting point. I went through my sewing supplies for some green headed pins.
It needed the fuzzies singed off with a lighter and I replaced the red beads with some clear ones I had. I had to improvise on the hanger because I need to get some cap beads,
It looks so different now. I like it. It no longer resembles a fake cherry.
Now that I've picked up a few supplies, I need to figure out some improvements for the other two. Then I may make some more from scratch. You can buy satin covered foam balls in several sizes and a wide palette of more subtle colors.
I need to get some cap beads to finish off the tops and bottoms.
Some teardrop shaped pearls...
And I can add to my collection...
My tree this year ended up having sort of a raspberry palette. Not really red. Not really gold. I have pink and white and swirls. This is only the second time I can think of that I have used more than one color of glass balls (or more than two sizes) at a time.
Last year I found a set of "tonal red" ball ornaments which had some shades of pink and then I found this photo and I loved the many sizes and colors and the way the ornaments were hung so they created brushstrokes of color with no set pattern.
I stuck with the colors that I already had, but I dug through my bins of random ornaments and brought out anything that would coordinate. And all I used was glass balls and a couple of bead garlands.
So this is what it looks like this year. Every year it is quite different, and each year I think it is the best I've ever done. But that is just because it reflects my current inspiration. Next year it will be different.
