Day: November 30, 2009

Monday Stuff

Have I Mentioned …

Karen

1. I now have a new way to cook a turkey thanks to my sister-in-law. Are you ready for this?

Upside down. I KNOW! How radical is this?! But here’s what she discovered – cooking the turkey with breast side down forces all of the juices to pool at the breasts and makes them juicy and tender. In addition, the legs and wings just fall off, so that eliminates the whole carving ritual. (Unless you LIKE the whole carving ritual, which, if so, forget I said anything).

You can find the recipe here.

And yes, we’re going to try this in the next several weeks because HELLO?! December is turkey month! (Well, not officially, but it is if I say it is! *grin*)

2. RSS Readers, there’s a new Christmas theme at my blog, if you’re interested. Just a little fun and whimsy for the holidays. I’m currently working on a new design for the upcoming year – that one will go live January 1st (which is also my blog anniversary! FIVE years! w00t!)

3. I ordered the Barlow Girl Christmas album. I ADORE these girls (Christian rock group) and I can’t wait to hear them sing some Christmas songs. I’ll post a few of them for the “Christmas Song a Day” thing I’m starting tomorrow!

Here’s a cute little video about how the girls kept having all sorts of problems while trying to record their next album. Think Satan was trying to prevent them from moving forward?

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about "Barlow Girl", posted with vodpod


(RSS readers, you’ll have to click over to see the video. Sorry!)

I’m glad to see, he was not successful.

Here’s one of my favorite songs by them – actually, it’s one of my all-time top 10 songs EVER.

Never Alone

4. By the way, you knew I was giving a copy of the Pioneer Woman’s Cookbook away, right? ‘Kay, just checking.

5. Did you guys see the Burka Barbie and the Sugar-Daddy Ken? Wow, just wow.

And we wonder why our kids grow up to be disturbed. CLUE!

6. A very short, eye-opening story on abortion.

It makes you think.

7. I was very excited to read this:

Carina Press is now accepting submissions for our digital publishing line.

Our mission is to connect readers with authors who write the stories they want to read. We will be introducing the bestsellers of tomorrow.

Carina Press will feature books from talented authors in all genres of romance, erotica, science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, women’s fiction, and more. If the book of your heart fits into a niche that has very little shelf space in a traditional bookstore, Carina Press is eager to read and potentially publish your story.

This sounds like something RIGHT up my alley. I plan on submitting something to them sometime in 2010.

Please hold me to that.

8. Will you be signing the Manhattan Declaration?

In essence, it’s a pledge to stop compromising Christian values, curb political correctness (because it’s killing our country) and to get back to core Christian values that helped build our great country.

Personally, I don’t feel it’s necessary to formally sign something like this. I’ve already made the commitment to publicly denounce the political crap that is taking place in our country right now.

The lines have been crossed, people have pushed us too far – enough is enough.

Life

Another Turkey Gets Eaten

Karen

There’s really not much to say about Thanksgiving, we got together, we ate too much, we laughed too much and then we went home. 😀

Thanksgiving2

We have a family deal – we get together with Kevin’s family for Thanksgiving and then reserve Christmas for my family. It really works out well for us because that way, we’re not doing the holiday shuffle.

If you have more than one family, either biologically or by marriage, then you know ALL about the family shuffle.

We all take turns hosting Thanksgiving dinner. We do this to save my mother-in-law’s sanity and she’s worked so hard for us for so many years, that she deserves to take it easy and just ENJOY the holiday for a change. (Not that she really sits around, she brings the pies every year – this year, she made 15 pies for 19 people!!)

We gathered at my sister-in-law’s house. Kellie has a beautiful home and an outstanding sense of home decor and I thoroughly enjoy going over to her house just to see what sort of new and interesting thing she’s done to her house this go-around.

She tried a new painting technique on her music room walls – she painted them one color, and then using a darker, coordinating color, she used a trash bag to “texture” the walls. They look absolutely stunning and if you stand back, the walls look like leather. It’s really quite unique.

Thanksgiving4 We spent the first several hours just playing catch up with everyone. My other sister-in-law and her husband just returned from a trip to Jamaica, so they had quite a few stories to share with us.

My nephew showed up from Texas with his new girlfriend (who’s cute as a button and oh so sweet!) and we spent more time catching up on our very busy niece and nephews’ lives.

My brother-in-law was the official photographer this year and took this picture of me and Kevin:

Thanksgiving5

I think it might be one of the best ones we’ve had done together. (In fact, I liked it so much I used it for my Facebook profile picture and put it in my sidebar). He used a fancy-smancy flash, the kind that actually attaches and you can angle up so that there is less face glare, and when we got home, we realized that we had a similar flash from my old Olympus camera that actually fits our Canon Rebel! Now I’m really looking forward to taking holiday photos! (And would you believe that the batteries in that detached flash actually STILL work after about 18 years of being dormant?!)

After dinner, we played the annual board games and I laughed so much I actually gave myself a headache. We played Scattergories and Luck of the Draw. I did great at Scattergories, but WOW, I really stink at drawing. But it didn’t matter because we were all pretty bad (save for my brother-in-law, who’s an artist by trade. Poop head).

It was a fun day full of warm laughter, genuine fellowship, and scrumptious food.

Thanksgiving-family

Next year will be our turn to host Thanksgiving dinner – and I’m already planning, if you can believe that. 🙂

I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Remember, there’s SO MUCH to be thankful for if we just train ourselves to recognize the little things and remember that family is everything.