Chilly Willy

Today's the first day of December!  

I have to get busy with our Christmas cards and draft up our annual Christmas Letter.  

Luckily our Christmas shopping is done just have to wrap the gifts this week. 

"Chilly Willy", the November "Party with Patrick" project, is finished.  

Chilly is an adorable snowman wall hanging. 

I had this textured "3D"ish creamy white colored plush fabric on hand called "Minky".  

It looks like snow. 

It's perfect for the snowman. 

I haven't been feeling 100% the last few days so the house is a little messier than I like.  

My biggest headache is paper.  

What to do with it.  

And where to file it.  

My dream is in our new home - because we will have a separate office there - is that all incoming mail will go into the office for processing and NOT into my kitchen as it currently does!  

Anyway that's my dream. 

Kitchen is for food and office is for paper!

My messy little office spot in the dinette.

And I plan to keep my yarn stash in the new home's lower level hobby room so that will eliminate storing yarn in a bedroom.  

Sewing and yarn stash will be in my area of the new hobby room!

Our goal is to have a more clutter free home in Ohio.  

Of course our current home is in a state of disorder with sorting and packing going on in different rooms in various stages.

I have resigned myself to accepting the state of affairs when one is getting ready to move.

We are still a few months away from moving but I will be glad when all of this is behind us.

Now to get busy on that Christmas Letter!

Have a lovely week! 

Our Thanksgiving Feast

It's the last day of November 2014.

Our Thanksgiving is over!

We had a nice celebration and hope you did too.

  I cooked a turkey for the first time in years.  

Actually I've only cooked two oven turkeys in 40 years of marriage.  

We always traveled to be with family every Thanksgiving (and most holidays) so there weren't many times when we were home.  

After my father-in-law passed away over ten years ago we decided to finally stay at home for Thanksgiving.  

Since then I have fixed nice meals for my Hubby... just not a turkey.

  

But I missed having the turkey dinners with all the fixings.  

I love turkey!

Then I saw on Pinterest a pin about cooking a turkey breast in a crock pot.  

I thought I could do that and that would be perfect for us. 

 I bought a frozen three pound Butterball turkey breast.

I never even knew they came that small.

I cut up some carrots, celery and onion and rubbed the turkey with olive oil, seasoned it and dumped the gravy pack that came with the turkey over the meat along with 1/2 cup of water and turned my crock pot on "high" for an hour then turned it down to "low".

I have this neat thermometer that I used to track the interior temperature of the turkey.

It had to reach 140 degrees within four hours (it did) and once it reached at least 165 degrees it was considered cooked properly.

Around 5 pm it reached over 165 degrees and the instructions said it wouldn't hurt to cook it longer so I did.

In the meantime I fixed mashed potatoes, Stove Top Stuffing, frozen white corn (which I forgot to fix even with my list), gravy and cranberry sauce.  

I cooked three Yukon baking potatoes and mashed them.  

I learned for just the two of us, three potatoes was two too many.

Oh, and the turkey was so moist and delicious! 

We can't eat as much now so we had enough left-overs for three more meals.

If you don't want to heat up your house with a turkey in the oven all day, and you only need a small turkey, this is a wonderful way to prepare your turkey.

I swear it tasted better than any of the ones I roasted in the oven. 

  

Later in the evening we had homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream.   

Our Thanksgiving meal was a great success!

 Hubby was so pleased - although to give him credit he said I didn't have to do a turkey.   

I was tired but very happy!

And now the Christmas Season begins tomorrow!

It's going to be tough on me because most of our Christmas decorations are in storage so I won't be decorating our home as usual.

You know how much I love Christmas!

But we have so much going on with our home being built in Ohio and preparing our home here in PA for sale.

I decided to skip making my Christmas Sugar Cookies this year too.

And now my neighbors have started putting their Christmas lights and decorations out.

It looks so pretty and I want to decorate too.

I'm tempted to have Hubby buy two strands of colored lights to put on each side of the front slab.

This will be the first time in our married life we won't have a Christmas tree up (sob!).

But I've realized I have to pace myself as I get older.

I do have a few Christmas things I can put out from my Christmas cabinet.

Next year I can go crazy decorating in our new Ohio home!

Missy...my Girl "Elf on a Shelf"

Here I go again.  

I had to try crocheting a little girl "Elf on a Shelf"!

Stitching her head and elf ears.

Practice helps.  

I did much better this time on the narrow legs and arms.  

Using the stitch marker and counting carefully made the difference. 

All the pieces ready to be stitched together.

As usual the face features are the hardest for me.  

It's not easy hand-embroidering her eyes and mouth.

Still have to add her long brown locks!

I added some long hair by crocheting chain loops around the head. 

The happy couple!

And I crocheted up a cute little apron for Missy. 

So what do you think?

Don't they make a cute couple?

For additional information and free pattern click (here).