Holiday Season

Tree is up and decorated. Missing the top
ornament though. 

It's never been clear to me whom or what decided that the Holiday Season runs from Thanksgiving to New Years, but I don't have a problem with it. I suspect that it was driven by commercial interests, i.e. retail and shopping, but it has been around for a long time. Certainly it has been so for my entire 50+ year life. I remember early on seeing advertisements on television saying "Seasons Greetings" beginning with Thanksgiving programming. I know many, if not most people, get upset when they see the wrapping paper and Christmas trees showing up in stores in October, but it doesn't bother me and having worked in retail in high school and college, I understand the reasons behind it. Certainly, the retail giants would not put the holiday items out if it didn't make sense and money for them.

For Cindy and I, decorating for Christmas begins just before Thanksgiving. It is early but logistically it works, with both of us at our jobs full time, and it allows us to enjoy a month of time with the house beautifully decorated. We both love the holiday season, and it fits into our more leisurely winter lifestyle. Evening consists of dinner in the living room, with a fire in the fireplace, Christmas tree lights on, village pieces lit up on the mantle. Cozy, peaceful. and bright. A defense shield erected to resist winter's cold and gloom.

In the middle of nowhere. 

We went out to get our tree, a Spruce of course, a week before Thanksgiving. We've been going to the same Christmas tree farm for years. The owner expects to see us before his official opening, but he doesn't seem to mind and is, I think, a bit amused by us. There is a problem though, in that he stopped planting spruce years ago, since fir trees have become more popular. Each year it has gotten tougher to find a tree that we want, and this year we finally struck out. It was sad to tell him on the way out, since we both knew we'd never be back again. After a couple of fails, we began to get nervous that we may not find a spruce. However, I took a recon trip one weekday morning and investigated a tree farm we had visited many years back. I was thrilled to see acres of spruce, nothing but spruce. Cindy and I returned a few days later and found our tree quickly. The farm is a throwback to the old days, with no attendant, at your own risk mud roads, and an honor system for paying, that consisted of a hole in the side of a small barn. You pay what you think the tree is worth. Awesome.

Over a brief Thanksgiving break from work, after decorating the tree, I also put up the outside lights. I'm old school there as well, going with 4 strings of C-9 lights. Not energy efficient at all, but they give off a warm glow that you cannot get with LED lights. I like that you can change out some of the bulbs with twinkle bulbs that give a very random and slow flashing or twinkle to the lights.  I did buy a couple of LED spot lights that I am using to eliminate the side of our house, which is now easily visible from Grand Boulevard since the leaves are off the trees.

Delicious bread. Some light, some dark. 

Also, Cindy and I spent a full day baking Christmas bread, which we will distribute to family. We are still getting used to our new oven and adjusting the temperature, so some of the bread turned out a bit dark, others a bit light. That was somewhat by design, as some like the bread darker, others lighter.

So, while we may be a bit early with things, we are pretty much ready for the holidays. It's nice to just relax and enjoy, and not be a part of the frenzy. We still have some shopping to do, but Cindy and I have really cut down on the gift giving at this point. We really don't need or want all that much, and it really helps keep the spirit of the season while lowering the stress.

Baking and raking season

A good start

The Fall season has been mild so far. We have had a frost in most places, but with the clear skies has come generally warm afternoons under October sun. This has kept the leaves on the trees a bit longer than usual and I think has limited the Fall color a bit. We had enough leaves to rake so we did our first batch earlier this week. Limiting the amount of leaves this year was the leaf mold that attacked the Norway maples. Wet weather in the first half of the summer allowed the mold to spread through the area including the trees along the park fence at the north end of the property. These maples make up a good percentage of our trees and they dropped their leaves early which ended just getting mulched up by the mower. The rest of our trees, a silver maple, some sugar maples, linden and a hickory were unaffected by the mold and seem to be holding on to their leaves longer than usual.

First fire of the season

One night did get cold enough for our first fire of the season. The fire drafted well and it was a nice hot fire, almost too hot and we ended up sleeping with the fan on that night. I did get the chimney inspected and the report was mixed. The chimney is fine, and safe to be used, but an odd 90 angle in the flue makes it impossible to clean properly. Any debris that falls down from the top is inaccessible from the bottom due to the right angle run of the flue. The chimney guy suggests that next year we install a clean out on the outside of the chimney so they can access the entire flue. Also, he did say there was some loose brick and mortar which may need to be repaired at the same time. Stay tuned.

One batch of cinnamon buns. We made two batches. 

As mentioned in the subject, it is indeed baking season and we did two large batches of cinnamon buns. It's actually pretty easy to do. We use a recipe that came with our first KitchenAid mixer many years ago. All the mixing and kneading is done by the mixer, so we just have to roll out the dough, put down the filling, and roll it back up. We do doctor up the drizzle coating and filling a bit to give it our own stamp on them. They came out real nice.

Next on the baking list is our Christmas bread. We follow and old white bread recipe from the church cook book to make large round loaves. This is more work for me since the amount of dough overwhelms the mixer so that I have to hand knead the bread. It's kind of messy and back braking since the kitchen table is just too low for me. Another problem is our overstuffed freezer. We just don't have enough room to store the bread after we bake it so we're going to have to work on that.

Fall decorations are up. Note the empty flower containers in
front of the porch. They're filled with rocks and dirt and I'm
too damn lazy to move them.  

Cindy had the idea that corn stalks would be nice to have at the front of the house so we went out to look for them. I was shocked at how much money they wanted for those things. There are vast fields filled with them awaiting to be ground up for silage so they really should not be all that expensive. Anyway, we ended up getting three nice bundles at a local farm market for $15 bucks. I tied them to the columns at the sides of the porch and in the center. I really like the looks of them and they are appropriate right through Thanksgiving. I intend to get my money's worth out of them!