Make my day, Monday!!

[blessedw2]

waving!!! home again - I need to get back on track with my morning

[Harmony]

Twins, I sure get the cooking fatigue. I've been cooking all the time for years and yes it gets tiring.

I've had a break. All that Thanksgiving food for just the 2 of us. I mostly ate the big turkey soup I made and DH had the other leftovers and loved them night after night. Even if they were in the freezer they were easy to get out and heat up. And once we had frozen pizza, and couple nights ago we went out for hamburgers. I was too tired to drive so DH drove us and we brought them home. Few days ago I brought a rotisserie chicken home so that's been feeding us for a few days. I think today I'll make a chicken soup from that. DH made deer hamburgers for himself 2 days in a row (the only sort of cooking he will do beside something on the grill) and he used the G Foreman thing easy peasy.

I've been so tied up with my project I surely appreciated the break from all the cooking. Course, I still did all the cleanup.

I've quit using the dishwasher. What I used to do was put all the smaller things in there so that way I only had to run it once every 5 days or so. But, that meant I was washing silverware or we'd run out, all the bigger bowls and fry pans, saucepans, all the hard stuff. All that was left was plastic storage containers and dishes for the washer which I was scraping and rinsing anyway, and those are the easiest stuff to do. So every day a couple times I do dishes and in the morning empty the drainer and the kitchen is cleaner and dishes are all done every day. Last time I used it this month was all the big containers when I divided up the Thanksgiving leftovers and bones for processing. So that's my new routine.

Laundry ready to hang up. I washed all the scrub rags and work gloves.(I had a pile of them) and all my face masks by hand (they were all used but one) so that's all hanging up. Tidied up bedroom and put away last LOL that's been sitting there in a basket for over a week. I needed the basket for today's laundry. Kitchen is great, and house isn't bad overall. My desk is piled up, that's next.

RRose, let us know how those cookies turn out! I am going to make DH one batch. He's good at only eating small amounts of sweets and I've finally got a handle on that - I think.

Blessed, loved the C tree story. Here they are encouraging people to get local trees from lots because it's been such a hard year for everybody. I notice a few lots we used to use years ago have not even been selling trees this year. Only place I've seen so far is HD and those trees are sometimes good, sometimes not!

[DeeClutter]

L owes also had fresh trees, Harmony, but no idea what kind of price tag.

[blessedw2]

hi d dee I hadn't thought of hd or l owes for a tree! thanks d dee - I will look in the future there as well.
I told dh - I think i should put a little christmas tree farm in our back yard lol. I like the danish trees - we used to get our trees off my moms land in Door county in Wisconsin. Oh I miss those times! so much fun!

"Tell your Mom she can feel better now, I did the dishes."

love it!

hi d harmony - I have found it hard to cook when it's just Dh and I - and dh is very very very picky and picks and chooses when eating dinner. he is a limited eater of things. Turkey soup sounds wonderful - mine was too greasy tasting. I am not sure what I did wrong. I think I am loosing my ability to cook lol.

hi d nancy - I love your magic: look at what you accomplish!
cookies sounds great!

hi d rose 62! sounds lovely - glad you were able to get up when it was right for you! feels good!
have fun with the horses today! waving to you

hello d twins - I am imagining that I and everyone is coming to your house for dinner - where we bring everything and do everything... to just enjoy your company!

yay d lady: re: last monday of work

[DeeClutter]

Just checking if I have my board time set correctly. Editing: Yay, it finally is.

[CathyS]

I have a shelf in my library where I keep Christmas books and recipe books for cookies, etc. Ended up purging some of that shelf and then the ones above that one, and above that other one... etc. Now I have more books to be donated. That means I have more space for fiction! Yay!

[blessedw2]

hello d dee - glad the board time is right!

yay on your donation group of books d cathy!

[blessedw2]

embarrassed and also grateful to say that my family room only took 20 minutes to do for home blessing work and extra cards.
embarrassed bc I thought it would take hours!!!
grateful that I was able to clean the couch - inside and out, clean under couch, sweep and vacuum, dust and wipe the glass hot spots in 20 minutes.

quick hi to mystery as well.

oh no- I sat to eat lunch and the computer called me - and dh chatted and chatted about his orders from his way long ago job. it makes him happy.

[MysteryWoman]

Hello!

We went out and got our tree this weekend, too, blessed. Like you, our usual spot was out this year; DH had gone by last week, and there was no sign of anything. Asked a friend, and they had gotten theirs at the little garden center less than a mile from our usual spot. (But down a side road, which is why we never think about it.) So the plan was to go there, but they closed at 4, and we lost track of time. So we went to another garden center about 5 miles away. Even so, we didn’t get what we wanted. They were all out of pines; our choices were spruce or fir. So we got a fir tree (and paid about $20 more than we usually do!).

DC has finally finished their art class. They were up late last night finishing and uploading pictures of drawings (drawing class does not lend itself to online learning; DD found that out in the spring), I am letting them sleep in. However, now that it’s afternoon, I should put a stop to that. Until we get the art supplies taken out of the living room and the card table folded up, there’s no room to rearrange the living room to fit the tree.

My kitchen, too, could use a hand. We’ve got dishes left over from dinner as well as from the cooked pudding I made when we got home with the tree, because mmm... warm pudding! Not sure which to do first — kitchen tidying or waking up DC.

[Harmony]

Blessed, I usually boil the bones and any drippings I've saved. Then I put all that broth in the refrigerator and after it's cooled and the fat solidifies to the top I skim all that off so I end up with mostly a fat-free broth. I never use any of the skin either. When I made the turkey soup with all the additions but I didn't get it skimmed so after the soup was all made and cooled, the fat at the top wasn't completely solid but I could still scoop it off. I usually make the soup, adding celery and onions and carrots and rice if I'm using that after the broth is made and skimmed. But either way of skimming it seems to work. I add noodles if I'm doing that instead of rice as I'm heating it to serve.

Right now I'm making chicken broth. It smells good! I need to go to store first for celery before I make it. Maybe tomorrow.

Laundry hanging up, thankfully under roof because it's raining hard now. Desk is halfway cleared.

I've been using an artificial tree for a few years. Just a small one on a tabletop. Few years back we went to a tree farm with DD and DGS day after Thanksgiving. DGS crawled under and cut it down for us. That was our last real tree. One year the HD tree went completely dead in a week. DH went out and cut down a scrubby bushy 'tree' out of some ditch somewhere and brought it home. Much hilarity when anyone saw it. Was so bushy I used a lawn ornament lighted angel towards the top and put lights into it with a long pole.