Oh, and to top it all off, my beloved Alphasmart had a bit of a heart attack yesterday. Lost everything I’d written in the morning and nearly put me in the ER. Envision me, standing over it, User Book in hand, trying to give it life support to find those freaking pages, sobbing and calling out, “Stay with me, Alphie. Don’t go near the light. Not just yet.” I got everything back but a few paragraphs–yes there is an emergency salvage code for it–but my heart was still pounding when I went to bed hours later.

I know we all have piles to do this time of year, everyone bites off more than they can chew, and so I send my love and sympathies to my fellow frantic friends. Here is what I did last night: I began delegating. Laundry to the husband, as well as all the wrapping and shipping duties for his family. Promo work went to the eldest. 10 year olds are wiz’s at stuffing envelopes. I mean this is why we had them, right?  Also, it keeps them both out of my hair. Just a suggestion if you have spare hands around.

If I am a bit scarce in the next few weeks, my apologies, but mostly Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I know I can’t wait for 2010.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Our Christmas was definitely memorable–the snow and more snow, and even more snow made it so. My dad drove up from Roseburg, Oregon in just horrible weather. I have to give him huge kudos for making the trip. I adore having my entire family in the house on Christmas and look forward to it all December. I plan out the big dinner, shop, cook and plan obsessively, and then it all comes together like a beautiful dream. I’m not bragging, it is just one thing that I am good at–putting on a big family meal and having it all come together. I watched my mom and my grandmothers do it year after year, and I itched for the time when it would finally fall on my shoulders. Well it did about 10 years ago, and I live for the holidays. I feel so close to my grandmothers when I have the entire kitchen running–oven packed, all the burners going, family dodging around me, kids eating too many cookies and crackers, someone’s spilled punch. I mean really, does life get any better?

Now my family would probably describe it a little differently.  I also don’t share the responsibility any more than I have to, and I cringe when someone offers to bring something. Please don’t, it makes the control freak in me sort of crazy. Okay, a lot crazy. Unless it is my mom offering to bring rolls. She bakes killer rolls.

Well, as the days progressed toward my perfect Christmas, Mother Nature decided to give me a lesson.  Instead of thawing as I thought it should, the weather just continued getting worse. I spent my time living in front of the local weather reports. When you are stuck at home with the kids and no way to get out, the weatherman is your lifeline. I sat in front of King 5 begging for help. “Come on, Jeff Renner, give me some temps over freezing.”

But alas, the weather kept my mom and brother and his family stuck–which just made me so sad. I’ve only spent two Christmases away from my mom in my entire life, and I was starting to feel a little heartbroken. But my dad, God Bless him, went out of his way to make the day fun. He played video games with the kids and had them laughing until the house rang with it. And that is what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?  Great joy.

I ended up cutting the roast I had bought in half because we didn’t have enough people to eat 15 pounds of roast beef. (Did I also mention that I cook enough for a entire village?) As it happened, Matthew’s aid, Kelsey and her boyfriend had mentioned that they weren’t doing anything for Christmas, so I invited them over, because they are a wonderful part of our family and I knew they could get to our house. And to make my day complete, I discovered that her boyfriend eats. And eats and eats.  He polished off every bit of leftovers and practically licked the plates clean. My grandmothers were certainly smiling down.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

And yes, that is my deck with about 2 feet of snow on it. In Seattle. And it just keeps coming down. We had to dig it all off the deck yesterday because we were worried it was going to get too heavy. Well, he-who-is-driving-my-car did the shoveling, since we have only one shovel. And while you might think having only one shovel isn’t thinking ahead, I disagree. It leaves you inside to make the coffee.

So back to my need for a quickie this morning. Something crafty and easy on the pocketbook to soothe my soul after watching my car come sliding down the driveway. Something I can do at home since getting out to finish the Christmas shopping isn’t going to happen. Therefore, I got out my new favorite quickie gift–one anyone can make–the freebie, downloadable bookmarks I put together with Julia Quinn, Kathryn Caskie, and Samantha James.

You just need a good pair of scissors, or if you are really crafty, a paper cutter. Some self-laminating paper or some cardstock or good paper to mount the bookmark onto. Maybe a bit of stray ribbon and you are good. So here it is in 4 easy steps.

1) Download the bookmark.

I used photo paper in my printer and used the best printing I could and they came out great. I’ve also done them on plain paper had to look just great as well. Really with only a bit of time on your hands, use what is on hand.

2) Cut them out carefully. I printed out two pages so I had the choice of having the same book on both sides, or mixing it up.

3) Cut out the laminating paper just a little bit bigger than the bookmarks. Or if you are totally crafting and can always say, “Oh, I’ve got one of those,” you can use your home laminator. But if you are like me and don’t have one, you can do just as well with this Avery Self-Adhesive sheets.

4) Put the bookmarks back to back and stick them to the laminating paper.Put another piece on top, trim it up a bit, and voila! You have the quickest gift on earth.

I even did one with a ribbon down the middle just to be fancy.

And here it is in a brand new book my editor sent me last week:

So there it is. A great little bit of homemade goodness to tuck inside a book for a stocking stuffer or to share with your favorite bookhounds. So bookmark away, and have some fun this week.  It may be busy and hectic and stressful, (especially when your husband is driving your car) but take a few moments out and do something crafty and homey and fun. Then give it away. “Tis the season after all. Besides, you know how to make more.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Goodness, I hope my editor isn’t reading this. But honestly? I never plan on writing much in December. January is my workhorse month. Well, not the first week of January, because that’s my birthday week, but we’ll worry about that after Christmas. So last week was devoted to baking goodies for the prize winners, families, friends and anyone who passes by and has their mouth open. Watch out, or you’ll find it filled with something about as low-cal as a Big Mac.

I also spent a good amount of time trying to track down my grandmother’s recipe for Russian Tea Cakes.  Those have to be one of my favorite Christmas cookies, and I thought I had dug it up out of her recipe box, which I inherited. (Believe me, this recipe box is a treasure trove of old fashioned goodness.) But grandma wasn’t so good with the filing, so you really have to dig to find the recipes you want. But there it was, with all the right ingredients, with a heading, “Alice Hungate’s Butter Pecan Cookies.” I’m not sure where Alice fits on the family tree, but believe me, she is the genius with the recipes, so whenever I see her name next to a recipe, I sit up and take notice.

Convinced that these, Alice Hungate’s Butter Pecan Cookies were the tea cakes I was searching for, I mixed them up, rolled them into balls and smugly shoved them into the oven, thinking I had finally found the right recipe.  And then they came out of the oven.

Yes, those babies are flat as boards. FLAT. Not round, not buttery bites that you roll in powdered sugar, not once, but twice. No, these are just flat, butter pecan cookies. Which by the way, are really delicious, but not what I was looking for. As luck would have it, my mom called in the middle of my flat cookie disaster, and laughed, as only a mother can. Then she laughed again and asked me why I hadn’t called her.  She had Grandma’s tea cake recipe.  Did I want her to dig it out and read it to me, so I could have my round cookies? So much for being the sacred keeper of  Grandma’s recipes.

Now I had better luck with the chocolate cookies you see in the background up in the first photo. That was a recipe I used to make every year for Christmas, but the year we moved six times, I lost the recipe in all the shuffling. This year I was again determined to  track it down and bake them, because they are my husband’s favorites. I had much better luck with Google than I did Grandma.

And in about two clicks of mouse, I had my recipe for Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies. That was until I went to make them. I had all the ingredients, at least they were all lined up on the counter and ready to go until I got to the sweetened condensed milk, which I have to confess had been on the shelf for a bit, but I mean it’s canned, how bad can it get? Oh, pretty bad, apparently. Because after I got the can open, it came out sort of a green color. Now if you’ve never cooked with sweetened condensed milk, let me pass along a little cooking tip: it shouldn’t come green. That, as it turns out, is a good indication that it was time to carry it directly out to the trash and then make an emergency run to the grocery store for new sweetened condensed milk. I am sure Alice Hungate would have been horrified. (I’m sure everyone who is waiting for their prize packages is wondering what is coming in their boxes–I promise, I used only new and fresh ingrediants for you. I promise.)

What are you doing to get ready for Christmas? Any disasters? Wonderful tales of holiday fun? ‘Tis the season for sharing, so please share!

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Look at all these! In just one day. There were over a dozen of them. But I have to acknowledge that this deluge is really my own fault.

Quite frankly, I hate shopping. Not a huge fan of malls, not even fond of department stores. If I must venture over there, I shop with a dedicated list in hand, coupons at the ready, and get it over with the same set of my shoulders that carries me through a dentist appointment. And I do it on a Tuesday morning when no one else is there. No aimless wandering and searching for just the “right” gift. Go in and get out. Rather like a Navy Seal or a member of a Special Forces team.

But catalogs and online shopping just make my day. They offer all the convenience of say, working at home. No crowds, no traffic. Great parking. My choice of piped in holiday songs. I browse through the stack of catalogs, make my list and order at my leisure–or when the free shipping coupon comes through on the email. And I never hit “order” unless I’ve done a Google search for that vendor with the words “coupon code”. I even got lucky enough with one company, Mindware.com, and discovered a free shipping code in my email this morning just before I went online to shop.

However because of my preference to shop via the easy chair, I get buried in catalogs. Like having the mall marching through your mailbox every day, and I get some really odd ones. I had thought that I had seen every catalog out there until I got this one in the mail.

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Totally Tomatoes. Not even I could make this up.

And now it appears, I am now officially on their mailing list. How I got there, I’ve got on clue. (Well, I am on the Territorial Seed Company mailing list so maybe . . . )

But really, holiday shopping from Totally Tomatoes? Who does one send tomatoes to? The reviewer who gave away the surprising and totally brilliant ending of your book? The reader on Amazon who gave you one star and says they hate all your books? (which begs the question, Why do you still keep reading them?)  How about a packet of heirloom seeds for the hurricane that shut down much of the South the week your book came out?

Let’s take this a step further, can you imagine the poor kid who gets a gift card from Totally Tomatoes in his stocking? Or worse,  your husband becomes convinced that what you really need under the tree is the “Best Paste Tomatoes” Collection? Or even worse, he thinks the “Try 5 of Our Hottest” Collection of peppers will be just the thing to put some holiday zing back into the marriage.

To avoid any confusion, and to prevent what is commonly known as the “Disaster of ’96″ in our household, I carried this directly to the recycling bin and then buried it under several inches of Pottery Barn and Land’s End offerings.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Speaking of stats, did you realize that people from all over the world have visited this blog–from far off places (at least far off to me!) such as Brazil, Iran, Serbia and Montenegro, Finland, Russia and even the Sudan. When I look at the world map and see that my quips and stories and thoughts have traveled so far, and that people return time and time again, I feel as if I have made so many new friends, and it makes me realize how wonderful the internet is at drawing us all closer. And if we can do that, isn’t that just one step away from discovering that we are all so very much alike and that we can get along and live in a world of peace. After all, isn’t that what the spirit of Christmas is about?

My wish this year? Peace and happiness to all of you. And may the light of Christmas burn in our hearts for the next twelve months as brightly as it does on Christmas morning.

All my love,

Elizabeth

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Instructions: Please share 12 of your favorite Christmas things (or Hanukah is applicable): they can be memories, traditions, songs, presents, beliefs, whatever it is about this season that you love.

1) The first and foremost thing I love about Christmas are the lights. It is so dark this time of year, I find it uplifting and joyous to see lights and decorations on houses. I start nagging hinting about getting ours up the week before Thanksgiving, because I know it will take at least a week of hints to get them up that first holiday weekend. My favorites, the big old fashioned globes with icicles strung along with them.

2) Opening the boxes with all the Christmas decorations in them. It is like a surprise every year. I have too much Christmas stuff, so every year I promise myself I will thin it down because I don’t use most of it and it seems wasteful to me not to have it out and being loved. My fav decorations? The creche my Grandma Patty gave me when I was about ten years old, and the stockings my mother-in-law needlepointed for the kids.

3) Wrapping gifts with my Grandma Patty. She hated wrapping presents. She loved giving gifts, she loved Christmas, but she really, truly did not like wrapping Christmas presents. For years my mother would go over and help her, and Grandma would have all the presents stacked on one end of her enormous dining room table and this magical assortment of foil papers and gorgeous ribbons and pretty decorations for the packages scattered all over the rest of the table like Christmas confetti. No plain old bag o’bows for Grandma! As I got older, I got to help, which I considered a great honor that I was both old enough and deemed competent enough to wrap a gift elegantly.

4) Our old home movies of Christmases past. There are my parents so young and vital. All my grandparents, who are now gone. My dad with his crazy, mischievous grin. They just make me melt with Christmas joy to watch them. Here is my Dad and me–this has got to be my first Christmas. I still have that rocking chair and that doll.

5) Christmas baking. Oh, I love this tradition. Even as I write this, I have sugar cookie dough and gingerbread men dough chilling in the fridge. On the counter are the ingredients for fudge and peanut brittle. And I’ll make Grandma’s Pecan Tassies and some Christmas Crisps later this week.

6) A real evergreen tree. My husband and I are of the same mind on this. Christmas is not Christmas without a real, Evergreen tree. When I was pregnant with my first, we were living in California on an extended work assignment for his job. We were in extended stay housing, in a one bedroom apartment and we were determined to have a tree. Then I went into early labor and was stuck on bedrest. When things settled down, my husband went out to get a Christmas tree, but none were to be found. What we didn’t know, both having grown up in colder regions, is that in So California Christmas trees arrive at the lots and when they are gone, they are gone. If you don’t snag one up immediately, forget about finding a tree. My poor husband drove all over LA looking for a tree, but there were none to be had. We settled that year for a Christmas Poinsettia and decorated the poor thing with a pile of lights.

7) Midnight Mass. I think Midnight Mass is the most holy, beautiful celebration of my faith. I find it such a profound and beautiful event. But I can no longer stay awake for it. Last time I went, I fell asleep, and my husband nudged me awake for Communion. I think I should go to Christina’s church, especially if they celebrate MM earlier.

8 ) Satsuma oranges. I will eat those little golden gems until I turn orange. We always got them in our stocking at Christmas as a treat.

9) The Christmas letter from my sister-in-law and her family, which is considered the family masterpiece, because each of them lists their highlights and lowlights of the year–and believe me they share everything! The lowlights just make you laugh so hard, and help you realize that no matter how far apart you might be from family, you still share the same trials and tribulations. Oh, and by the way, if you need to throw up in the middle of the night, according to my SIL, don’t do it into a mesh garbage can.

10) Christmas carols, especially O, Holy Night, Silent Night, and Do You Hear What I Hear?. Those carols just fill my heart with wonder and joy.

11) The last minute hand knit Christmas gifts I think I need to give to everyone. My hands are killing me, but I am still knitting neckwarmers, fingerless gloves, and sock monkey hats like a crazy woman. That reminds me, I need to go do 4 rounds on another monkey . . .

12) My grandma Patty, who passed away about 10 years ago. We always spent Christmas Eve at her house. Always. Her house was lovingly decorated from one end to the other, including her infamous cookie tree that was always overflowing with wonderful Christmas treats. To this day, I can’t go through the month of December without remembering her at every turn. Grandma, I miss you.

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The “to-do” list becomes the “must-do” list. Must get the house decorated. Must bake enough cookies to give everyone a plateful. Must make the Kringle. Must get the shopping done. Must make a pile of gifts. Must wrap all those gifts. Must get the tree. Must decorate the tree. Last year the tree went up and then sat there for a week undecorated until one of the little heroes shamed us into decorating. Well, it had lights on it.

Every year I swear I am going to do this Christmas different, and every year another “must do” bites the dust and I feel immensely guilty that I am not like all the other mothers who seem to have it all together–the perfectly decorated house, the gifts all wrapped before midnight on Christmas Eve, the house party that comes off like something out of the pages of Martha Stewart. The last house party we had, the cat got into one of the meat trays and ate half the ham off it before I caught her. Then she ever so politely waited until the party was in full swing to come into the living room and “share” her ham by urping it up on the carpet. Oh, and there was the little kid who stood by the cookie tray and very carefully licked all the sugar and frosting off all the cookies. I said a silent, thoughtful prayer that he waited until he and his family were halfway home before he “shared.”

I’m really not a Grinch. I love Christmas. But right now, with all the “must dos” hanging over my head, I must admit to feeling a little “bah, humbug.”

What gets you out of the holiday crazies? What is on your “must do” list that is driving you to drink . . . eggnog? Any suggestions?

©2010 Elizabeth Boyle Blog. All Rights Reserved.