This is my sideboard in the dining room. I put some small cranberry ornaments in a pedestal bowl which Mr. MarthaAndMe bought for me for Valentine’s Day. I love displaying ornaments in other ways and feel very Martha-ish when I do. I’m not wild about the teapots, but they are the only Christmas ones I have, so for now they will have to do.

Our dining room is quite small, so this small little chest is tucked in a corner, right next to the sliding glass doors to the deck (you see the drapes behind it a little).

We have a chair rail around the room. The top half is a cornflower blue. The bottom half has been painted again and again and I can’t get the right color. I’ve even taken things in to be color matched and it’s never right. I hate the color – it’s too bubble gum for me. I really want a nice cranberry color, but I can’t find one.  Well, maybe in the new year I will.

This is my sideboard in the dining room. I put some small cranberry ornaments in a pedestal bowl which Mr. MarthaAndMe bought for me for Valentine’s Day. I love displaying ornaments in other ways and feel very Martha-ish when I do. I’m not wild about the teapots, but they are the only Christmas ones I … Read more →

This is my Christmas teacup collection. When I was a child, each year my grandmother gave me one for my birthday. You can imagine how I felt as an 8 year old, opening a china teacup. But now I’m glad I have the collection. Some of them have been broken and glued back together. I also am constantly looking for more that are not red, since most of the rooms in my house use pink or cranberry at Christmas, not red.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. As always, we will be having a fondue party. This year, I’m going to make Martha’s version, from her site. I just got back from the grocery store where I bought everything we need.  If I can locate my Season’s Eatings special issue magazine, I want to make the onion dip with the potato slices for dipping. Somehow the magazine is missing at the moment. If you have the recipe, would you email it to me? I’m tearing my hair out here trying to find it.

This is my Christmas teacup collection. When I was a child, each year my grandmother gave me one for my birthday. You can imagine how I felt as an 8 year old, opening a china teacup. But now I’m glad I have the collection. Some of them have been broken and glued back together. I … Read more →

In the post-Christmas shopping madness, I came across these:

They were clearance priced and then 50% off the clearance price, so I think I walked away with all of this for under $15.  The green trees in the front are glass which is painted on the inside with sparkly stuff.

Next year, I want to put together a tabletop display somewhere with the tree toppers (and maybe I’ll run across some more before then). How would you display these? I don’t think the green glass trees and tree toppers go together, so they probably will be separate. Any ideas?

In the post-Christmas shopping madness, I came across these: They were clearance priced and then 50% off the clearance price, so I think I walked away with all of this for under $15.  The green trees in the front are glass which is painted on the inside with sparkly stuff. Next year, I want to … Read more →

Here is one of the boxes of Martha’s candy I’m giving away this season. I’m using Martha’s boxes, which I found at Walmart. I think I got the last package the store had, back in early December and I’ve never seen them again, so I think they sold like hot cakes.

Here is one of the boxes of Martha’s candy I’m giving away this season. I’m using Martha’s boxes, which I found at Walmart. I think I got the last package the store had, back in early December and I’ve never seen them again, so I think they sold like hot cakes.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. This is a busy weekend for us with family gatherings, shopping/returning trips, and lots of time needed for reclaiming the house after the hurricaine that is Christmas.  I do almost envy Martha her spa trip, which she said she and her daughter were taking over the holiday!

This is our snowman that looks like a penguin. A wind storm came and blew his hat away soon after the photo.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. This is a busy weekend for us with family gatherings, shopping/returning trips, and lots of time needed for reclaiming the house after the hurricaine that is Christmas.  I do almost envy Martha her spa trip, which she said she and her daughter were taking over the holiday! This … Read more →

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Every year I buy a gingerbread house kit and we decorate it (if you’re going to buy a kit, look for the ones that come with the plastic tray with the channels in it – this way you can assemble the house and decorate it right away since the channels keep the walls up). This year, I didn’t buy one, planning instead to make my own. That’s what Martha would do after all. Well, here we are just a few days before Christmas and I never got around to it. I did actually find and print out the recipe on Martha’s site, but I was discouraged by the fact that the template made 5 tiny gingerbread huts instead of one big house.

The great gingerbread debacle of ’08 came to a head the other night when the children complained about us not having one and how much they wanted to do it. Sigh. So Mr. MarthaAndMe made a quick stop at Bed, Bath and Beyond and grabbed a kit.

We assembled it as tradition dictates. Mr. MarthaAndMe does the actual construction. Each child gets to do a side to his or her specifications. I do some of the front and try to create some kind of uniformity. The dogs wait under the table for pieces of candy to drop.

This year, I followed Martha’s lead and made gumdrop snowmen, like she has on page  53 of December Living. I’m rather proud of mine (Mr. MarthaAndMe says he appears to be French with a beret and scarf) and mini-Martha made a fishing Cyclops.

This gingerbread house isn’t nearly up to Martha’s standards (the kit didn’t come with very much frosting, so the house seems kind of bare to me), but we had fun making it.

My Snowman

Cyclops fisherman

Every year I buy a gingerbread house kit and we decorate it (if you’re going to buy a kit, look for the ones that come with the plastic tray with the channels in it – this way you can assemble the house and decorate it right away since the channels keep the walls up). This … Read more →

Martha has a variety of homekeeping tips on page 136 of December Living.

She suggests we use fabric instead of wrapping paper and recommends making sacks. They’re reusable and can be tied with ribbon. I don’t really like this idea. It’s too homey and country looking for my taste. Somehow handing someone a cloth sack doesn’t feel as nice as handing them a wrapped gift or even a pretty gift bag.

She recommends we get kids involved in decorating, making cookies and drawing pictures. I agree with this. Our kids are definitely involved.  They are each responsible for wrapping the gifts that are from them. They do the cookie decorating and gingerbread house decorating. We also have a tree in the family room that is just theirs and they put their own ornaments on it each year. When they were younger, they would decorate the outsides of envelopes or draw pictures to give people.

Martha suggests looking for alternatives to store bought gift wrap and lists all the tired suggestions of using the comics, a map, sewing patterns, etc. I’m tired of people suggesting this and really I don’t want to get a gift wrapped in newspaper. I think it’s boring and tacky.

A green suggestion in this section is to shred the wrapping paper after the holidays and use it for packing. I like that idea a lot.

The section recommends keeping universal gifts on hand for an unexpected gift situation. I don’t do this. All of our holiday gatherings are planned in advance and I don’t have to worry about someone coming over unexpectedly.

Offering your time instead of a gift is another suggestion here. I like this, but I think it has to be something the person really will use. It’s easy to say you’ll babysit or take your grandmother on an outing, but a lot of times I think the recipients feel awkward about actually redeeming these gifts.

Another tip suggests planning ahead for holiday parties by moving coats around and making space in the fridge. Not a concern here since it looks like we won’t be hosting a single thing at our house this year. A good tip though.

Creative gift cards are another Martha suggestion. She says to buy them from unusual places like bakeries, golf courses, hair salons, etc. I usually give one uncle a gift certificate to a bakery and in the past we’ve given my mother-in-law a hair salon certificate (which I don’t think she liked by the way).  These can be good gifts, but I think you have to really know the person well enough to know what they would be interested in.

The last suggestion is to start a giving folder, where you keep a running list of ideas for gifts. I have a word document on my computer where I do this. It’s a great way to jot down things that come to you through the year which you might forget by December.

Martha has a variety of homekeeping tips on page 136 of December Living. She suggests we use fabric instead of wrapping paper and recommends making sacks. They’re reusable and can be tied with ribbon. I don’t really like this idea. It’s too homey and country looking for my taste. Somehow handing someone a cloth sack … Read more →

Batter

Yesterday I made the batter for the Meyer Lemon Lace Tuiles (page 32 of December Living). It was easy – lemon and orange juice, butter, flour, sugar, and lemon and orange zest (the recipe calls for Meyer lemon juice and zest – not attainable in my neck of the woods, so I just used regular). The recipe says to refrigerate overnight. Check.

Today I got it out and put the batter on the baking sheets as directed – 3 inch circles, 2 inches apart. No problem. I was really excited

Ready to bake

about this recipe. You bake the batter then you take each cookie and wrap it around the handle of a spoon to make a tube shape. They looked crunchy and wonderful in the photos.

This recipe seemed really simple and I wasn’t worried about it turning out at all.

Silly me. Here is what I took out of the oven:

A total unmitigated disaster. There is nothing here that is usable.  It all ran into each other and did not maintain any shape at all. I threw it all in the trash.

What makes me even more upset is that this is the second batch of lemon cookies I’ve made this year that are worthless. The first ones were from a recipe I ripped out of a magazine in a Land o’ Lakes butter add for Lemon Meltaways. There was clearly a mistake in that recipe because the batter tasted like cornstarch and it cooked into piles of crumbs.

So I am 0 for 2 on my lemon cookie attempt this year. Really, this is why you should just stick with your tried and true family recipes. And from now I will.

Thumbs down on this Martha, very, very disappointing.

Yesterday I made the batter for the Meyer Lemon Lace Tuiles (page 32 of December Living). It was easy – lemon and orange juice, butter, flour, sugar, and lemon and orange zest (the recipe calls for Meyer lemon juice and zest – not attainable in my neck of the woods, so I just used regular). … Read more →

On page 118 of the Handmade for the Holidays special issue, Martha has a recipe for granola. This seemed like it would make a great gift. I ran around buying all the ingredients and began what was a simple process.

The liquid mixture

First you melt butter and stir in brown sugar, honey, salt, water, vanilla, and cinnamon. Then you stir in rolled oats, oat bran, wheat germ, raw cashews and raw almonds. You spread the mixture on two baking sheets and bake for an hour and a half. The granola looked great – golden and shiny. It stuck together just enough. You’re then supposed to mix it with dried cherries, coconut and golden raisins. Before I did that, I tasted it.

Fresh from the oven

Oh boy. Thumbs down. It was very salty and not very sweet. It needed a lot more cinnamon and sugar and maybe something else (not sure what!). It was pretty bland, although the nuts tasted good. It did have a nice crunchy texture. The verdict was that I would not give this to anyone without some major doctoring. I’m considering trying to mix it with more sugar and cinnamon to see if I can make it edible, but as of right now, this is off the gift-giving list. Thumbs down on this, Martha.

During this whole process, my Handmade for the Holidays magazine fell into a sink full of water. I think it’s probably not salvageable (although I am trying to dry it), so this might be my last project from that issue!

On page 118 of the Handmade for the Holidays special issue, Martha has a recipe for granola. This seemed like it would make a great gift. I ran around buying all the ingredients and began what was a simple process. First you melt butter and stir in brown sugar, honey, salt, water, vanilla, and cinnamon. … Read more →