Best Wishes for the New Year!

Happy New Year (and a very late Happy Holidays) from the Skeleton Crew and their Staff! Burt and Ivy have been enjoying a well deserved rest in the spare room. They're getting excited about starting some new projects in 2022 and maybe having an adventure or two.

 

Before covid, the Crew always needed to take a break around Christmas time so we could avoid giving lengthy explanations about their presence to the complete strangers who would somehow end up in our home. Although, even without them out in the open, most of our holidays end up looking a little spooky. My birthday was two weeks before Christmas and there's no way my new Minnie and Mickey were going into storage so soon! 

It's not like decorating with a broken ankle wasn't enough of a challenge this year, we also became victims of the dreaded Christmas Tree Shortage! Seriously, in spite of living in a state that is 48% woodland and is the fifth largest producer of Christmas trees in the country. To be fair, we did find a tree but it was so dry and sparse that Stewart didn't even bother it . . . too much.

After a half-hearted attempt to decorate it we gave up.

Luckily, there was no shortage of the fake variety! 

The fresh-cut tree found a good home in the backyard and got some special decorations the birds will enjoy - until the squirrels discover them.

However, can it attract enough wildlife to help Spenser give up his addiction to CatTv? 

After being unseasonably warm all month it finally snowed two days after Christmas.

Just in time for our family get together. 

 For something to do and to avoid the crowds, we reserved a dome for lunch. Even though it was 26 degrees Fahrenheit and snowing it was surprisingly warm and comfy, especially after a couple of drinks and too much to eat! Maybe we need one in our backyard?

I'm not sad to see the sun setting on this year. I'm looking forward to the next one with hope that it will be great for everyone.

Thanks for stopping by and have a safe and happy 2022!

It's Christmas Time!

It's here, the most festive season of all! It's time to put up the lights, eat and drink to excess, shop 'til we drop and drive ourselves completely crazy!

Unfortunately, I am currently sidelined from decorating because I didn't see a roll of duct tape on the stairs and ended up breaking my ankle. It really shouldn't slow me down that much but I'm thinking that going out dancing is definitely not happening this year.

Burt and Ivy stepped in (no pun intended) to decorate the sunroom tree.

Spenser made sure the virtual squirrels didn't escape and ruin all their hard work.

He was totally successful.

Earlier I had occupied myself by assembling a very charming but complicated advent calendar. It came with tiny lights that had to be snaked around square holes in a piece of cardboard then attached with small pieces of adhesive. It turned out to be the most interesting cat toy in history.

Until I found CatTV on YouTube. Another disaster averted.

An hour and a half later there was a tiny village full of Rituals products. His Madness opened the first "house", it contained a votive candle with a nice, clean fragrance. As with most Advent calendars, except the chocolate ones, we totally forgot about it after that, ha!  We can always catch up. I'm thinking it could have a lot of potential as a Halloween decoration, too. All it needs is a graveyard with a few spooky trees, a ghost and a couple of tiny skeletons. 

As always, Burt and Ivy are pretty pleased with their efforts. One done, three to go! Will they get everything finished by Christmas?

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!

As Seasons Collide!

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate! I honestly thought this pandemic would be over by now but at least it's not as bad as last year. Hope everyone stayed safe and had the best holiday they could manage under the circumstances. Thank goodness for happy plastic skeletons!    

After summer just kept on going, it was nice when autumn stuck around awhile longer, too. Unfortunately, that all came to an abrupt end when winter decided to show up on Thanksgiving.

Bright blue skies and white snow (not covered in leaves) goes a long way in cheering up the normal gloom of November - plus it provides the perfect conditions for a snowball fight!   

Since the temperatures will be plummeting into single digits overnight it was time to pick anything that was still alive in the garden. It was a pretty pathetic harvest, ha! Good thing we didn't try chucking these cabbages at each other instead of snowballs, they're hard as rocks. 

Of the four very small pumpkins that actually ripened, only this one turned out to be orange, the other three were white. It's not what I expected but it's better than nothing. His Madness bought a butternut squash to make the "pumpkin" pie for Thanksgiving dinner so it might end up as bread.

On the other hand, the Ghost peppers flourished! There's nothing like a bumper crop of unbearably hot capsicums in various stages of ripeness! This is the final harvest from the lone seedling I planted late last spring. It produced tons of these rough, twisted firecrackers that changed colors several times as they grew. I don't remember ever getting so many peppers from just one plant before. How about some spicy pumpkin cabbage soup? Or maybe not.

Burt found his hat in the Turkey Day "decorations" box, there's definitely not a lot to work with otherwise. I think of Thanksgiving as one of those "Triple C'" type holidays, where it's basically all about cooking, cleaning, and calculating! That last "C" is the trickiest - estimating the number of guests you have invited versus the number that you think will actually show up (with or without an extra guest . . . or more!), compared to the number of chairs, dessert forks and bottles of wine you have. Then there are those other kinds of surprises, like the old friend who has just become vegan or your nephew who recently developed an allergy to some ingredient that happens to be in every dish you made. There's no way to prepare for that, but there's always something they can eat along with pickles, radishes and raw carrots. Surprisingly, they usually have no problem consuming alcohol, unless they've recently join AA. Then you're really screwed.

We have none of those concerns this year and that's just fine with me. Maybe next year covid will be under control and we can get together with friends and family again.

Fortunately, there will always be skeletons to dress up in funny hats! 

Now it's time to be jolly and maybe pare the decor down to just one holiday.

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!

Fruitcake Follies

Making a fruitcake is a long, tedious undertaking but, when someone you love also loves fruitcake, you just get on with it and do the best you can. It does help to spread the more annoying tasks over a couple days and get some friends (real and imaginary) to help. Personally, I'm not a fan and that's maybe because my mom made one that relied heavily on molasses which was easily mistaken for chocolate. It was awful. 

The saga of my relationship with this particular recipe started decades ago when I stupidly asked my Mother-in-law if there was something she would like for Christmas. Apart from getting the whole family together for a meal, she was way too practical to bother with the holidays and the only gifts she gave were in cash. So it was a big surprise when she rather apologetically confessed that she would like a fruitcake. 

It just so happened that one of the guys I worked with was selling fruitcakes to help support a local charity. So buying one from him also helped out a worthwhile cause. Luckily, HM's mom was happy with it and looked forward to receiving one every year.

Unfortunately, few things go on forever and one year the organization decided to switch to selling chocolates. That's when I found out they hadn't been selling some ordinary, grocery store fruitcake at an inflated price to raise as much money as possible, but an actual luxury brand that was very popular. By the time I started to hunt one down, it was too late and they were sold out everywhere! 

 One day my car was recalled for some potentially deadly problem and while I was waiting for it to be fixed, I came across a fruitcake recipe in an old magazine. It was very complicated and several pages long but it seemed pretty good. Plus it was the only recipe I'd found that didn't include candied citron (that rubbery, green stuff that makes you wonder if some part came off the mixer and fell into the cake by accident). So I stole the magazine from the Ford dealership and got to work. I should have just asked them if I could have it but I was running out of time. Although, if they'd built my car correctly in the first place I never would have found the recipe.

It took me three days to make the first fruitcake, peeling the oranges gave me horrible blisters but it was a huge hit. HM's parents loved it and said not to bother with the commercial one anymore, they'd rather have this one . . .  yippie? 

I supposed Ford should get some of the credit but as you might have guessed, His Madness developed a fondness for the fruitcake, too. Actually, lots of people loved it, even my Dad! So the recipe is still in use today. For the sake of preserving my sanity, the whole process is still spread out over a couple of days. No doubt a skilled baker could probably do it in much less time and I've managed to avoid the blisters thanks to OXO.

This year's cake has been thoroughly doused in cognac and will be marinating in the fridge until sometime in mid-December. Since it weighs nearly eight pounds, it may take a year to eat it up. Maybe I'll take the car in for an oil change and see if I happen upon a recipe for things to do with leftover fruitcake.

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!

It's Time for a Change

It's always hard to take down the Halloween decorations even though we love putting up the Christmas ones! It would probably be easier of it didn't take us most of October to get all the spooky stuff up! Kibitz and the Toad Witch stay out all year round, so why are they looking so worried? 

We have procrastinated so long that Thanksgiving is only three weeks away. So the Crew has opted for a transitional scheme while they shop for any turkey related decorations they can find. 

Burt suggested that if they removed the skulls, bats and Jack-'O-Lanterns, maybe the rest of the Halloween decor could be passed off as autumnal.

Both Burt and Mr. Pumpkin Head seem pleased with his plan.

Ivy's a little skeptical about his scheme but she's willing to give it a try. Burt's ideas don't always go smoothly but they usually work out in the end. For instance, not all of the candy from the raven bowl will fit in the acorn one so Burt has kindly offered to help out by eating all of the extras.

There probably were a lot of fall decorations in the stores before they put out the Christmas ones but unfortunately we didn't buy any, ha! So we'll have to make the best of what we have.

Ivy did find the velvet pumpkins and got Burt to help her pile them next to the fireplace. It's a start.

Then she braved the depths of one of the closets (known to harbor decorations) but all she found was Spenser.

It's okay, Ivy knows that somewhere in the basement is the perfect garland to go with these gold pumpkins - but not which bin it's in or how long it will take to find it! Maybe she should just set the only analog clock in the house back an hour and look for the garland tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!

  

Happy Halloween!

 

The big day has arrived and I'm a little sad that the spookiness will be coming to an end.

Although it really doesn't have to, does it?

Since it's also a Sunday, I was in charge of brunch. After not being able to find a suitably Halloweeny dish to try, I gave up and decided to make pancakes in the shape of ghosts and pumpkins.

It could have gone better, at least they were fairly tasty.

There's nothing like a few blueberries and some maple syrup to cover up a pancake mistake! Why didn't I think of making whipped cream, too?

Our town's Trick or Treat time started at four in the afternoon. Kibitz kept everyone on schedule.

As always, there were some rather interesting costumes.

Burt and Ivy took the first hour. It works out better if the children see them in the daylight.

His Madness was on candy duty after the sun went down.

A lot of the children in our neighborhood are preschoolers so we try to keep our jack-'o'lanterns looking happy and cheerful.

Somehow, there's alway one that ends up with a scary face, but then who doesn't want to get just a little frightened on Halloween?

We're celebrating tonight with some snacks and a shot or two of RumChata. Since I just found these Hocus Pocus glasses at Home Goods, we felt obliged use them and watch the movie again, ha!

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween!

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon.