Christmas of 2005 I volunteered to do The Dinner for 10 extended adult family members; I planned a relatively simple meal & it should have been a breeze. Christmas morning, DH's nephew decides that his vegan girlfriend can join us after all - terrific, I'm serving tenderloin & the stores are closed so where do I get vegan food for someone I've never met. SIL saved the day by bringing trophy sized shrimp for appetizers & we saved some for her entree. First crisis averted. Then everyone (except me & SIL who are scurrying like rats to get food ready) are in the greatroom/kitchen drinking, eating shrimp & opening presents & DH cuts his finger on a new pocket knife. Blood is flying & about the same time, a bowl of vinagrette gets knocked out of the frig sending an oily mess everywhere. Finally, dinner is ready & everyone is seated. I plated & served the 1st course of oyster stew with the last 2 bowls given to an elderly lady & myself. I guess most of the pepper had settled to the bottom of the pot & we got the dregs; she choked on the pepper & had a huge coughing spell. Next, the entree was put on the table & it wasn't until later that I realized that I placed a huge platter of very rare tenderloin directly in front of the vegan! In the meantime, I went to pour red wine only to find that DH & his BIL had drunk all except 1 bottle of the good stuff, leaving the rest of us with an amount equal to communion. We decided to take a break before dessert & DH went to the basement to feed the dogs while everyone was settling in the living area. We waited, & waited, & he didn't come back. Finally, I went downstairs & found out that he had passed out on the couch & was dead to the world. That was the last time I've done Christmas Dinner for a crowd. I have no plans for future Yule festivities for this bunch, either. I just remembered: on his way out, BIL missed the step down to the public sidewalk & broke a bottle of port.

Santa was so good, I/we feel a little guilty. MIL buys us literally a carload of gifts. Most of the stuff is wonderful and we are appreciative, but there are a couple of things we don't know where we are going to put them, and they're really not our style. They're from ebay, so they're really not returnable. We have asked her to please cut back, but that hasn't worked. She buys items throughout the year. OTOH, new fun things: Digital remote meat thermometer. I opened it early so we could grill the tenderloin. Yes, I asked for a new meat thermometer, LOL. Some iPhone accessories: a cassette adapter so I can broadcast through the speakers in my older Mustang and listen to the Sirius. His friend has this, and it works really well. It's called iDeck. It's also a hands-free phone device, so very useful. He also got me an armband so I can use it for exercise. The "big" gift was a Kitchenaid mixer in Ice color. It was between the Ice and Cobalt blues, but Ice seems to be the better color. He is interested in using the meat grinder and sausage stuffer, so it's more of a gift for us than for me alone. I don't mind getting kitchen/cooking related things for Christmas since I enjoy cooking. MIL got me the new Bobby Flay cookbook, and someone on the kitchens forum said to try the carmelized onion pizza. I can make the dough in the new mixer.

You know, we didn't price laminate because I was removing it, and had ALWAYS had it everywhere I ever lived. I wanted something different. I can tell you that our best granite quote was $5,000, and solid surface from Lowe's would have been a little over $2,000. We wanted an undermount sink and I didn't like how they looked with the laminate displays at Lowes, plus I really didn't want laminate at this time. However, with laminate you can purchase it, install it and you're done. With butcher block, you have to put on multiple coats of your finish. Allowing drying time and completing each coat is time consuming. We were able to purchase our butcher block for right around $600. Ikea sells great butcher block as well however, it would have cost an additional $350 to have it shipped to our home and I would have had to buy it sight unseen, something I wasn't comfortable with. Another low cost option to consider could be concrete. I have a friend who installed it in her brand new home and it is lovely. I saw a blog at one time of someone doing their own concrete counters right over their laminate and it really turned out nice. It was very low cost. You also could always do a countertop treatment of some sort or install sheets of laminate over your current counter. These options weren't a possibility for us because our sink hole had been cut out by our previous owner way too big, and we had some water damage from our leaky faucet. We had to completely replace our counters. A friend of ours that just completely renovated their kitchen installed tile counters. They are beautiful, I just wouldn't have wanted to deal with the grout. I will look for the concrete counter blog and post it if I can find it.

Thanks everybody. I am going Sunday to the brunch and will gain a true perspective then. Following a passion and all . . . I am a musician, but I'm a bit in the cracks there as well. I do still play in one group in my old town an hour away. The options here are either the really good group where someone pretty much has to die for a spot to open, and the come-all band that has way, way too many folks playing on my instrument. But then these folks don't really socialize outside of the rehearsals, so . . . Tish - thanks for the invite, and you are so correct about the hiking. So. Much. Hiking. And I agree there is potential in some of the other interest groups. But it is a challenge I think with a single mingling with couples (pinkmountain was spot on with that). Maybe not as taboo here in the west as it would have been if I were still back in the South, but not ideally what I was looking for. Single women are my comfort zone at present. Baby steps and all.