Holiday weekend!

Thanksgiving weekend was, as one might expect, pretty relaxing and fun. To balance out the three feet of snow we got earlier this month, it was beautiful and clear all weekend - as well as very, very cold. (Brian was disappointed - he'd wanted to go skiing but temperatures were in single digits while wind gusts were upwards of 40 mph for most of the weekend - not great weather for skiing if you're cold wusses like us.) The sun's been nice, though it's scheduled to cloud over and warm up later this week, possibly to well above freezing, in which case it'll be interesting watching all this snow melt. I guess we'll see what happens.

Thanksgiving dinner itself was awesome, thanks in no small part to the wonderful cooking talents of Jeanne as well as her visiting mother and sister. It was good to be with friends for the holiday, and (for once) to not be sick over the weekend - yay Vitamin C! (We'll see if I can keep up the trend next year, though - I seem to have a habit of getting knocked flat on my back every other year over Thanksgiving weekend.) And my pies (both pumpkin and pecan) were given glowing reviews, which I was a bit relieved about - I'd never made pecan pie before (not being a big fan of it myself) and the recipe in The Joy of Cooking seemed remarkably simple. But it actually came out pretty durned good, if a bit rich for my taste.

The rest of the weekend was mostly spent relaxing, with a bit of holiday shopping tossed in (we avoided going out much on Black Friday, although we did head to Fred Meyer because they were having a sale on socks - sounds romantic, I know, but I needed new socks and managed to nab some pretty nice ones for $1 a pair). The annual Public Market was going on as well; we braved the crowds and our perseverance was rewarded with a really awesome present for my mother, a pretty neat present for my godmother Emily, some general stocking stuffers, and one helluva pair of kielbasas for lunch - huge, thick, juicy and bubbling hot. The woman who made them used to run a really good little lunch/late-night-snack-type place downtown, in the building that burned down a couple years ago. I don't know if she's found another permanent location yet, but she's at pretty much every event-type thing that includes food vendors, and I try to get something from her every time I see her set up shop - I have yet to be disappointed with the quality of her food (for all it's carnival-style Dibbler-esque guaranteed-instant-heart-attack fare).

Saturday night and Sunday were a little more interesting. We spent the evening pulling out the tree and putting up lights and such; but after stringing the twinkly colored lights on the tree, we realized that the vast majority of our ornaments were ones we'd inherited from my mother, mostly in blue and purple colors. Since we had all these warm and colorful lights for the tree, we decided to go to Fred's the next day to see if we could find some pretty glass balls and such in warmer colors. Sunday came around, and we went to Fred's, only to find all sorts of Christmasy candy, housewares, and decorations, but no ornaments; either they'd squirreled them away in some other section of the store or hadn't gotten any in yet. So we headed to Costco, since last year they'd had some really pretty glass ornament sets, but the story was the same - they had wrapping paper, bows, ribbons and lights (including the dreaded singing lights that I cringe over every year), but no ornaments. Desperate, we hit the Nugget Mall, which contains is our town's lone Hallmark store; they had lots of specialty ornaments, but no pretty, inexpensive glass baubles. Finally, we found what we were looking for at Jo-Ann's, of all places - they had a whole shelf full of glass balls in various colors, including some very pretty artistic-type ones - some red ones with candles and holly and "Yule" painted on, some icicle-shaped ones with a pretty holly-and-glitter pattern, and (my favorite of the bunch) some clear glass icicle ones with (of all things) oak leaves painted on. Brian also found some very pretty mercury-glass ornaments that I thought were going to be too heavy but actually look quite nice. Toss in the shiny red and matte green balls that we bought for background, and the tree ended up looking quite lovely.

Mood-wise, I've been persisting with the general blahness that's pervaded my mood lately. It's not anything I'd categorize as full-blown depression - I'm functioning just fine and haven't felt hopeless or anything. But I feel vaguely irritated that I can't remember the last time I felt really cheerful, and the last time I can remember feeling happy and warm and content was several months ago. Ah, well. Hopefully some holiday cheer will help. If nothing else, looking at the tree last night helped me feel a bit better.

Holiday weekend!

Thanksgiving weekend was, as one might expect, pretty relaxing and fun. To balance out the three feet of snow we got earlier this month, it was beautiful and clear all weekend - as well as very, very cold. (Brian was disappointed - he'd wanted to go skiing but temperatures were in single digits while wind gusts were upwards of 40 mph for most of the weekend - not great weather for skiing if you're cold wusses like us.) The sun's been nice, though it's scheduled to cloud over and warm up later this week, possibly to well above freezing, in which case it'll be interesting watching all this snow melt. I guess we'll see what happens.

Thanksgiving dinner itself was awesome, thanks in no small part to the wonderful cooking talents of Jeanne as well as her visiting mother and sister. It was good to be with friends for the holiday, and (for once) to not be sick over the weekend - yay Vitamin C! (We'll see if I can keep up the trend next year, though - I seem to have a habit of getting knocked flat on my back every other year over Thanksgiving weekend.) And my pies (both pumpkin and pecan) were given glowing reviews, which I was a bit relieved about - I'd never made pecan pie before (not being a big fan of it myself) and the recipe in The Joy of Cooking seemed remarkably simple. But it actually came out pretty durned good, if a bit rich for my taste.

The rest of the weekend was mostly spent relaxing, with a bit of holiday shopping tossed in (we avoided going out much on Black Friday, although we did head to Fred Meyer because they were having a sale on socks - sounds romantic, I know, but I needed new socks and managed to nab some pretty nice ones for $1 a pair). The annual Public Market was going on as well; we braved the crowds and our perseverance was rewarded with a really awesome present for my mother, a pretty neat present for my godmother Emily, some general stocking stuffers, and one helluva pair of kielbasas for lunch - huge, thick, juicy and bubbling hot. The woman who made them used to run a really good little lunch/late-night-snack-type place downtown, in the building that burned down a couple years ago. I don't know if she's found another permanent location yet, but she's at pretty much every event-type thing that includes food vendors, and I try to get something from her every time I see her set up shop - I have yet to be disappointed with the quality of her food (for all it's carnival-style Dibbler-esque guaranteed-instant-heart-attack fare).

Saturday night and Sunday were a little more interesting. We spent the evening pulling out the tree and putting up lights and such; but after stringing the twinkly colored lights on the tree, we realized that the vast majority of our ornaments were ones we'd inherited from my mother, mostly in blue and purple colors. Since we had all these warm and colorful lights for the tree, we decided to go to Fred's the next day to see if we could find some pretty glass balls and such in warmer colors. Sunday came around, and we went to Fred's, only to find all sorts of Christmasy candy, housewares, and decorations, but no ornaments; either they'd squirreled them away in some other section of the store or hadn't gotten any in yet. So we headed to Costco, since last year they'd had some really pretty glass ornament sets, but the story was the same - they had wrapping paper, bows, ribbons and lights (including the dreaded singing lights that I cringe over every year), but no ornaments. Desperate, we hit the Nugget Mall, which contains is our town's lone Hallmark store; they had lots of specialty ornaments, but no pretty, inexpensive glass baubles. Finally, we found what we were looking for at Jo-Ann's, of all places - they had a whole shelf full of glass balls in various colors, including some very pretty artistic-type ones - some red ones with candles and holly and "Yule" painted on, some icicle-shaped ones with a pretty holly-and-glitter pattern, and (my favorite of the bunch) some clear glass icicle ones with (of all things) oak leaves painted on. Brian also found some very pretty mercury-glass ornaments that I thought were going to be too heavy but actually look quite nice. Toss in the shiny red and matte green balls that we bought for background, and the tree ended up looking quite lovely.

Mood-wise, I've been persisting with the general blahness that's pervaded my mood lately. It's not anything I'd categorize as full-blown depression - I'm functioning just fine and haven't felt hopeless or anything. But I feel vaguely irritated that I can't remember the last time I felt really cheerful, and the last time I can remember feeling happy and warm and content was several months ago. Ah, well. Hopefully some holiday cheer will help. If nothing else, looking at the tree last night helped me feel a bit better.