Have a great trip and a Merry Christmas Skybird! Thanks for all your facilitating and knowledge on this forum -- you help make it a great success.

I'll be roasting a turkey, using an awesome dry-cure rub I found in Sunset Magazine a few years ago. This will be my fourth time making it, and ever since discovering it, my wife has really enjoyed Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners (since she doesn't have to do the roasting herself!). OK, well she really likes the turkey, too. I'll also be baking my famous dinner rolls and probably baking a small apple crisp with my last apples from my trees.

Man, I'm getting so domestic in my old age! :-)

We'll all wave as you fly over, Skybird. We're doing smoked cornish hens, baked grits, and a dish my wife makes with chard and bacon.

Merry Christmas to all.

A Very Merry Christmas to all!! We go over to the inlaws Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we stay home and enjoy the day. My husband has been working out of town, so we will probably pull out some movies and just pretend we have a fire while the kids take off with their loot. They are teenagers now so it is all video games and MP3's. The days of cute are way over. I make a turkey almost every other weekend (we raised 12 this year), so I will make a brown sugar ham for Christmas. Next year I hope to have one of our geese to cook. We had one a few years ago and it was the bestest!!

Have safe trips all and
MERRY CHRISTMAS

Billie

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Steve and I will be at home with our 3 fur-babies and 2 foster puppies I just took on this week. (I know, I need my head examined.) But they're settling in, so I think it will be a very merry couple of days.

We're sitting down tonight and pulling out our French cookbooks. We thought we'd do something different for Christmas dinner this year, so it will be a French feast. Somewhere in there we'll probably find a use for the last of my garden potatoes.

Skybird, send some of that snow north!!!

And God bless you, Skybird and Everyone!

I'll be having Christmas dinner with dear old Dad and others but will be leaving it up to my daughter. She's promised to play elf even tho' there may still be some need for my culinary skills.

Remind me next Summer to be sure and bring you the music of the Drifter's "Under The Boardwalk" but for now and in this season, you may wish to enjoy "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" with the Drifters and Joshua Held!

digitS'

Oh the sun beats down and melts the tar up on the roof
And your shoes get so hot you wish your tired feet were fire-proof

Under the boardwalk down by the sea
On a blanket with my baby, is where I'll be.

I wondered who would be the one to start the Christmas thread, and think it is very appropriate that it was you Skybird! I'd like to echo Steve's thanks for your participation in this forum. I've learned alot from everyone here, but especially from you!

Well, the school programs and parties are over now, the kids are out of school, and the shopping is all done, so I'll be in the kitchen this weekend making all sorts of unhealthy things. I had hoped to wrap the children's gifts after they went to bed tonight, but we had a sugar cookie making marathon last night, so I fell asleep on the couch out of shear exhaustion.

To me, turkeys are too high maintenance for Christmas Day, so I reserve those for Thanksgiving. We will be having a ham, corn pudding, a broccoli casserole, and some type of custard/chess pie.

Hot wassail anyone?

Merry Christmas to all!
Bonnie

We'll be having 3 good friends over on Christmas Day for vegetarian Indian food.
We're also trying this holiday with no gifts.
We bought for others, just not ourselves.
We'll see how it goes!

Happy Christmas and all the wonderful winter holidays to all of you!!!!
Hmmm, we are not planning to do all that much, really.
I just went back to work after about two years of not working. OY, vey!
I am tired now and suddenly have new respect for weekends and holidays :)
I think we will have a simple dinner, stuffing is a must, everything else will be whatever we feel like having...silly us!
Gifts are light, we are waiting till January because I am so busy and just have not had time to think or participate in gifting...
Paintings for my family, but, oops, I did not mail them in time...sheesh, I did not even finish painting them in time...

Ah, winter winds are blowing us around and threatening to pile up another mountain of snow, like last year. This time, we have been very diligent with the shovel, so maybe it won't get to a height taller than me!!
We also took on another dog and will have even one more in a few days :) One is our friends' dog, Zeus, and we swap dog-watching. Oh, he is a complete gentleman of a hound. The one coming shortly is our other friends' dog, Sara. She is always welcome at our home.
I love the idea of you taking on foster dogs, Alice! Someone has to do it and it ought to be someone nice.

Have a great holiday, all!!!!
Jennifer

I am off work Monday and have all the shopping I need done, so just planning to enjoy the four-day weekend. A little play and hobby time, a few chores, a lot of relaxing and holiday cheer. We had some friends over for raclette last night but otherwise it's just my husband and three cats. We go light on the gifts and just enjoy the tree, yummy food and other seasonal stuff.

My holiday menu sounds vaguely like yours, Bonnie - sliced ham, broccoli, cornbread, and a nice potato gratin with gruyere, braised onions and beer.

Happy Holidays to everyone and thanks for making this forum such a fun and friendly place to come and learn! =)

Wishing all of you the very best of the season. And may the new year bring you many blessings. :)

Happy Holidays to all. We have a mixed household, me & my kids, and my bf and his wife, so we did Christmas Sunday morning with the kids, a big ham for dinner. We're all going to my parents on Christmas Eve for presents and dessert, then taking the kids to their dad's. Christmas day is going to be spent driving out to the airport to drop off my bf's wife who is going to OK to visit her mother and gma (we'll wave at you as we drive through Skybird) and then probably settling in for a long Winter day's nap (no kerchief though), but visions of tomatoes and beans will probably be dancing in my head. Solstice has passed so it's getting ever closer to spring planting.

Safe travels to all (even if you're not traveling very far)

Dafy

It snowed last night so everything is a blanket of white for Christmas day. I feel a little guilty, but I don't think it is too deep so I'm not going out with the snowblower til tomorrow.

I'm the caregiver for my Mom, and it is just the two of us this year. We open presents on Christmas Eve, so we had a lovely night with the house decorated, the fireplace going and the tree all decorated and lit. Then about 11:00 pm as I was settling into bed but not asleep yet, I heard this funny thump and a tinkling. Uh oh, that can't be what it sounded like! Sure enough, go out to the living room and the tree had fallen over. Didn't fall out of it's stand, just tipped the stand and flopped over! Luckily only one ornament broken. Unfortunately, it was one of my favorites, my duck bell. If you are now scratching your head and going, "Duck bell???", it has a bell for a body with a duck neck and head on top and duck feet for the clappers. Very cute. Fortunately I think I can glue it back together. And I was very relieved that none of the older (my grandmother's and mother's) ornaments were hurt. Anyway, just stood the tree up again, filled up the water and everything seems back to normal today.

We just had a simple dinner (lunch?) today, turkey and cranberries, asparagus, rolls and peppermint ice cream. And just for snacks, of course, we have 3 lbs. of See's candy and assorted cookies, fudge and other goodies in the house. Should be enough to last for awhile!

Forgot to mention the wine we had with lunch, which will make Mom nice and sleepy. So I figure she will plop herself down in front of the football game and promptly fall asleep, thus giving me a restful Christmas afternoon to read or shop on the computer - my sister-in-law gave me an Amazon gift certificate.

Which reminds me, Mom gave me a moth orchid for Christmas. First orchid I've tried, so anybody who has any tips, send them along. Also growing paperwhites this year (usually do amarylis). They are just starting to bloom. Look lovely. However, they are supposed to have a wonderful fragrance and while they do have quite a strong smell, I'm not so sure yet that it's wonderful. Maybe it will improve as they open more, or maybe I will get used to it.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to all of you and yours.

Merry Christmas to all of you too!

Amazingly quiet day for me. Both 4yo's have been totally engrossed in their toys all day. All the relatives are out west so just a phone call today.

We had candle-light service and sang carols at church last night. DS wanted to make a wish when blowing out the candle- he said "I wish that I could play with the little Einsteins"....little did he know that I had primed Grandma to buy him the playset for Christmas....so his wish came true this morning and he has been joyfully playing with it ever since. Grandma also sent a chest full of princess dressup clothes for DD which likewise kept her delighted. They got lots of other toys, books, playdough, paints & colors, videos, video games, regular games, puzzles, and have been happily obsessed with learning letters, problem solving, and practicing eye/hand coordination all day. I don't recall having a quieter day to myself since they were born.

My employer shuts down over this week so I don't go back to work until the 2nd. School is also out but the kids do go back to daycare as this has become my traditional week to get my house back in order & take a little time for things that refresh me like spending my Christmas money on daylilies at the Lily Auction :D ...or reading, knitting, watching (non-animated) movies, etc. I'm also in the middle of researching a career change into small biz ownership in the garden industry so have several technical books to digest and some online research to do during this break. Well worth the work if it leads me out of corporate life.

Turkey breast and dressing are in the oven. The kids never eat much of the holiday meal so I'm making it simple. The pumpkin I had in the freezer from 2006 garden is going fast now that I've discovered the kids like pumpkin muffins-very good. Maybe there will be room for new veggies from next summer's garden.

Oh, and Jung's catalog came in yesterday's mail so I have a little browsing to do.

Joyous holiday's to all of you. May each of you and your loved one's be blessed beyond belief in 2008.

BT4M