Hello? Is everyone OK out there? You’re not in a turkey coma, are you? You didn’t actually shop till you dropped, did you? You survived the weekend?

Fabulous!

I’m glad to see you safely on the other side… welcome to The Holiday Season!

I couldn’t be happier. Giddy. Beaming. Twinkling. Spakling. Christmas gets me totally geeked up. I will seriously listen to Christmas music 24/7 for the next month. While baking, shopping, decorating, reading Christmas stories with my kids, eating, planning, travelling, wrapping, sleeping. Yep, sleeping.

Back to the shopping. For several years, my husband and I (and expanding family) have hopped on a flight first thing Christmas morning (after his work on Christmas Eve is done) to spend some holiday time with our families halfway across the country. This means that I do the vast majority of my Christmas shopping online so I can have everything shipped directly to my mom’s house and not have to worry about getting everything in my bags for the plane.

This means I have to shop early – I hate (and honestly REFUSE) paying for rush shipping, so I have to get done early.

So at this point my Christmas shopping is pretty much done (no haters, all you shopping procrastinaters). One of the things I like about online shopping is finding fun little gifts in fun little stores (stocking stuffers are a well-honed art in my family). One such fun little store I recently discovered is Uncommon Goods. I spent way too much time parusing this mix of fun, bright, eclectic… well… uncommon products. There are some great puzzles and books for kids, fun jewelry and home decor stuff, and lovely (and hilarious) kitchenware, among other thing.

Look at these fun plates with recipes written by children on them. I think the “Orange Cake” recipe might be my favorite.

Anyway, I could provide a dozen links to cute and fun gifts on this site. My one hang-up (ok, semi-hang-up) is that a lot of it seems a bit on the expensive side.

So, if you need some help jump-starting your shopping, or you’re a shopping superhero and you have just one or two things to finish up, or you’re completely done and you deserve a little reward for yourself… I forgot where this sentence was going.

Oh yes! I’m giving away a $25 gift certificate to Uncommon Goods for you to shop as you will!

Did you see something you like? All you have to do to win is leave a comment answering this question:

Who do you have the most fun shopping FOR?

Do you love finding that perfect little something for your spouse? Making a veritable mountain of toys for your tots? Gathering the pieces for a homemade something for your mom or grandma? A lovely inside joke for an old friend? Just tell me which person on your list lights a spark under your shopping fire, and you could be shopping for them with a free $25 at Uncommon Goods!

A few details:
One entry (comment) per person please.
No entries after 9pm Wednesday, December 2.
Winner will be drawn at random and announced Thursday, and receive an electronic gift certificate to Uncommon Goods for $25.

Giving gifts is fun – good luck!

ps – Uncommon Goods is not sponsoring this giveaway and has no idea who I am – I just stumbled on their site and enjoyed myself shopping!

I completely failed to get a single picture of our dinner for twenty last night. I didn’t get any portraits, any candid shots, or even a snapshot off our new 10+ foot table that we got of Craigslist for $100 and refinished. I didn’t even touch my camera last night for several reasons:

1. I forgot to give my husband explicit instructions to get it out and take a few photos.
2. I was making/hosting dinner for twenty.
3. I was simultaneously putting two toddlers to bed and making last-minute dinner preparations.
4. I realized last-minute that even though I had a table that dominated the room, plenty of chairs, and plates for all, I was woefully short on silverware.

So I don’t have any photographic proof, but I actually think our Thanksgiving Warm-Up was a lovely success. Here’s what I ended up making:

Hickory smoked turkey (on the Weber charcoal grill)
Cornbread stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy (from the smoked turkey drippings – oh my)
Sweet roasted acorn squash wedges
Turnip gratin
Cranberry sauce
Pumpkin bread
Apple pie with ice cream
Pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream

I think that was all of it. Plus a friend brought the biggest and most delicious salad I have ever seen. And there was plenty of champagne, and another friend brought a couple dozen raw oysters plucked from the bay over the weekend.

I seriously died a little bit inside when I saw those oysters and realized I couldn’t eat any, what with being pregnant and all. No slurping of that salty, oceany, yummy oystery goodness for me. *sniffle*

Since I wasn’t eating fresh oysters, there were really two stand-out dishes for me. One was the pumpkin pie – I’m usually a bit ambivalent about pumpkin pie, but this year I used a recipe from Cooks Illustrated. If you have never heard of America’s Test Kitchen or their Cooks Illustrated magazine/web site/cook books, you are missing something amazing. This pumpkin pie was perfect.

The second was the Turnip Gratin fom Pioneer Woman. I have never held, purchased, peeled, cooked, or eaten a turnip before last night, but I loved it. Mine came out a little soupier than PW’s pictures (I think I got a little heavy-handed with my “splashes” of cream and chicken broth) but it was still delicious. I might be seeking out other ways to prepare turnips – it just seems like a good idea to eat more turnips.

And maybe the best part was that a couple friends banned me from my kitchen post-meal and there is nary a dirty dish to be seen in my house this morning. I might even share my leftover pumpkin pie with them.

The moral of the story (because every story needs a moral, right?) is that if your Thanksgiving meal isn’t set in stone yet, give turnips a chance. Yum. Yum yum. Yummers.

We’re having Thanksgiving tonight. At my house. For 20 people. Hurray!

We’re doing it tonight because a lot of our friends go home for actual Thanksgiving to be with their families, but we certainly cannot pass up an opportunity to share the joy of a turkey smoked on the Weber grill.

So yesterday I made 10 pounds of mashed potatoes, a vat of cranberry sauce, a bunch of cornbread for stuffing, two loaves of pumpkin bread, and brined a giant bird. This morning is for pies, and later today the acorn squash, turnip gratin, finish off the stuffing, and 40 other things I can’t recall at this exact moment. Plus I think I need to borrow some chairs.

Oh, and my sister, brother-in-law, and 10-month-old nephew are moving in with us today. It’s going to be a fun day!

When it’s time to play outside and the dad of your 38-pound toddler does this even up to her 85th request because he can’t resist the giggling “Daddy, let’s shoot it again!!!”…

you know you have one of the good ones.

There are plenty of other clues too, but this one surely cannot be overlooked.

Ha! Not really.

Well, I guess I did, kind of.

But not really.

A while back, prompted by the cuteness that is Jill’s homemade board books, I ordered a set of four blank board books from Blank Slate and made a black and white book for a friend’s new baby. Last week I finally got around to wrapping up her gift and realized I would be remiss to deliver a new baby gift without something small for her toddler brother.

So I got the blank board books back out and put together this little beauty. The pictures are all just clipart or basic shapes and drawings I did in powerpoint (except the rocket, which I borrowed from Jill’s black-and-white book template and then turned green). It’s elementary, I know, but I actually really like the way it turned out.

The title is “Go! Robert Go!” – here’s your sneak preview:

I really just wanted something where he could start to associate words and shapes and point out colors, and I *think* I accomplished that. So the pages are occasionally crooked (my toddler was helping me stick the stickers on, or at least that’s the excuse I’m going with) and my printer was starting to give out on the colors on the last pages so they’re a little streaky, but I still love it.

My husband’s response: “I guess it’s not very hard to write a children’s book – that’s as good as a lot of the other ones we have.” So sweet of him to encourage my random craftiness. At least I think that was encouragement.

Anyway, write a children’s book. It’s fun, and if I can do it, so can you!

Almost every Saturday morning my girls and I make pancakes (or something else a little special) for breakfast. Breakfast the rest of the week is usually short and disjointed as people wake up at different times and I’m rushing to get things done and sit down to work, but on Saturday, we take our time. The girls stay in their pajamas and hop up on the counter and we bake.

In case you haven’t had the privilege of being assisted by toddlers in the kitchen, here is what you can look forward to:

1. Prep time will take 2 to 5 times longer than normal, depending on how many times you have to start over because you do not know if, when, or how much of a certain ingredient was added.

2. Clean-up time will take 2 to 5 times longer than normal, depending on: a) if you caved and let your 15-month-old help you crack the eggs, b) if any fights broke out over whose turn it was to measure/pour/stir any ingredients, and c) if your toddler “accidentally” turned the mixer on high right after you added a big bowl of flour to the mix.

3. Regardless of how things turn out, your toddlers will insist the food is the best they’ve ever tasted and the pride will be gleaming on their faces as they share their creation (so keep smiling, even as you grind through a giant piece of egg shell).

4. The next time you find yourself in the kitchen all alone, you may be relieved not to be answering the question, “But why is it salt, Mom?” but you will still miss having a reason to name each ingredient and measurement out loud as you go along.

Yep, it’s almost always extra time, extra work, and extra mess, but I’d still choose one of my toddlers as my sous chef any time I step in the kitchen. This isn’t Top Chef afterall – it’s a chance to spend time with my kids and share the joy of preparing a meal and serving others. And if worse comes to worse, well, we all love an excuse to pop in on the pancake house down the street (even if this was Top Chef, I wouldn’t be able to top their cranberry pancakes)!

Here’s to the weekend,
Amber

I had a plan to write a very lenthy, very involved, highly enlightening review on the Svan High Chair we have had for about two years now. It was going to be detailed, informative, cutting-edge, and inundated with relevant (and adorable) photos.

But my computer, who often thinks it knows what is best for me even more than I do, is boycotting the majority of the pictures. I don’t know why. I prefer not to try and decipher my computer’s motivation – it’s disturbing.

So I’m giving you the short version of the Svan High Chair review. And it will be no less enlightening.

Ready?

Here’s the bottom line: If you see a picture of the Svan high chair and are positively smitten with the look of it, and can’t imagine the dire consequences of another large plastic piece of baby gear marring the picturesque landscape of your kitchen or dining room, and you have a stack of money lying in a pile on the floor going to no good use at all, go ahead and get the Svan. It works, you won’t hate it, and your toddler will probably like sitting in it when she outgrows the high chair stage and can still use it as a toddler chair.

If you are ambivalent about (or confused by) the look of the Svan, have resigned yourself to the reality of large plastic pieces of baby gear dominating every space in your home, and would rather buy yourself a new camera lens or a ridiculous pair of pointy-toed boots with your $300, pass on the Svan. I guarantee there are at least a dozen high chairs listed on your city’s Craigslist for $15 or less that work just as well and probably clean up a little bit easier. And there are just as many cute old wooden toddler chairs in your nearest thrift store. And all your baby will know is that you are a happier mom (due to the pointy-toed boots in your closet) and he still has a perfect vantage point in his less-expensive high chair from which to launch his food about the room.

That’s it. The shortest review you will ever see from me. But I couldn’t leave out the couple adorable photos that my computer let through the front door:

Hallmark of the Svan: a very tiny tray (although let’s face it: even the large ones do little to restrain the mess-making capabilities innate in every baby).

Hallmark of my daughter: an impossibly goofy look. That is one thing I’ve really enjoyed about the Svan: it turns out I take a lot of pictures of my kids when they’re in a high chair, and the ones in the Svan just look nicer.

So a couple days ago, my husband, my Anglican priest husband, came home from a meeting and said,

“We need to decide where we want to live the rest of our lives.”

I can’t really explain the circumstances that prompted this, partly because I wouldn’t actually know how and partly because if I did it would be long and boring to most of you, and I try (try, mind you) to avoid being long and boring.

Note: Nothing bad happened. He’s not fired or anything. And we aren’t leaving tomorrow, but in the next few years.

But it wasn’t a joke. He was serious. He is serious. In the next few days, weeks, we need to bust out a map of the US of A and pick our ideal place to… settle down. Raise our family. Live.

This is nuts – nobody gets to do this.

I kind of like where we are now.

But it’s a little boring here – as soon as our kids grow up they’re going to jet, and fast. That’s why I said “jet”. And it does get a little isolated.

And we don’t have any family here. But I don’t really like the places we do have family. And our family isn’t likely to be there forever either.

So we just need to pick a place.

Nuts.

But fun. Fun for sure. And nuts.

Umm… anyone have any suggestions? Did you choose where you are, or did life just take you there, and either way, do you love it? Tell me you love it.

It’s a brilliant fall morning here. I thought I had the flu on Sunday, but it was either a really fast flu, or some sort of short-lived food poisoning/aversion, or just another lovely pregnancy side-effect. Either way, I feel better and I’m really happy about that.

My stomach is feeling better, but for some reason my head is spinning in forty different directions this morning. Just look – this is seriously what’s going on in there.

1. I love the smell of Pam spray for Baking. It smells like cupcake mix from a box. I think. Whatever it smells like I really enjoy it and am very glad someone made it up. I have to make a concerted effort not to spray it just for fun when I’m not actually baking anything.

2. I am unbelievably fed up with debating in my head whether or not to track down the H1N1 vaccine for me and my kids. How do people make decisions like this? You don’t get the vaccine and one of your kids gets really sick and maybe that could have been avoided or you get really sick and can’t take care of your kids or there are pregnancy complications that result. Or you do get the vaccine and one of your kids gets really sick and maybe that was caused by the vaccine or you get really sick and maybe you would have been fine without it. Am I going crazy here?

3. I have eaten about 30 baby carrots this morning. I have eaten about 30 baby carrots this morning because I keep compulsively getting up from my desk and walking to the refrigerator every five minutes, and once I’m there, the choices are to get a handful of chocolate chips, swipe a bite of cream cheese frosting out of the container with my finger, or grab a couple baby carrots. I am trying really really hard to choose the baby carrots. I know some of you are going to say I could always just close the refrigerator and walk away, but honestly, that does not seem to be an actual choice today. I think I’m turning orange!

4. I am no longer capable of hula-hooping. I don’t know if it’s because my belly is getting too big or because I am just old or because I have no coordination whatsoever right now, but I can’t do it. Maybe that’s not really a bad thing, and better to know now than after entering a hula-hooping contest.

5. Bon Iver is my favorite band ever. Today. But ever. I might listen to For Emma, Forever Ago at least 73 times today. And love it every time. Music is so good.

6. I have to log on to work in 4 minutes. Blech. If I had more than 4 minutes I would make a list of the top 100 things I would rather be doing than working. Let me just say that going to the dentist to get the pain in my jaw inspected and scaling the mountain of laundry in my room would both make the list.

7. There is a tupperware container on my counter into which I put scraps for the compost pile. Last night when I was cooking dinner (chicken tikka masala – my favorite dinner ever) there also happened to be a similar-shaped (although entirely different color) tupperware container sitting on the counter into which I had put some delicious sugar cookies. It was into this sugar cookie container that I placed all the onion skins I had after dicing onions to begin my masala sauce. I did not notice this until this morning.
Onion-flavored sugar cookies are not going to be breaking out in any cookbooks anytime soon.
At least it means I didn’t have cookies for breakfast.

8. My kids are adorable. And sweet and perfect and fun and smart and interesting and adventurous and wonderful company. I can’t wait to have another. Their dad is pretty great too.

I’m very sorry to have subjected you to this rambling, but lucky for you I have to go to work now. Maybe that’s why I have to work…it’s all for you. : )

It’s Halloween! I have pumpkin muffins baking in the oven and my two little peanuts are preparing for an exciting night of trick-or-treating as Dora and Boots by taking a nap. So I thought I’d put up a post about some sea shells.

It made sense in my head at first.

We stopped by the beach a few evenings ago to collect some seaweed to dump in the garden. Seaweed is super smelly (and heavy, by the way) but a great natural fertilizer.

This particular beach, after a lot of rain and storms in the last couple weeks, was chock full of washed up shells. I don’t know why I love them. I have never successfully made a useful (or even pleasant) craft out of them. I always pick them up and they end up in a junk drawer somewhere. So this time I decided to try and take a few pictures instead. It was…um…let’s say mildly successful? Oh what do I know – you can see for yourself.

This one is kind of ho-hum. I thought the color of the shell was so much more vibrant in person. And why did I put it up in the corner of the picture like that?

Ditto to this one (ditto? I’m sorry I think it’s still 1991). The setting sun was making some spectacular colors on the beach, and I pretty much failed to take advantage.

This one I like because it kind of looks like it’s glowing from the inside out. A seashell jack-o-lantern! See, I know it’s Halloween.

I feel like this one might be showing you some leg. Or it just has some sea stick stuck in it.

This was one of my favorites. Until I remember that whatever was living in this before it was pried open was probably a seagull’s dinner. Actually, that doesn’t bother me so much., except I might wish it would have been my dinner instead.

Doesn’t this look like a curled up snake winking at you? It doesn’t? Look again, I would swear it was a curled up snake winking at me except I picked it up and it is definitely a shell.

Happy Halloween By The Sea,

Amber