Hello, hello, I'm back! Thank you all for all your sweet supportive comments in my last post
"I Just Can't Do It All." I have been blogging since 2008 and other than holiday and vacation breaks, I have never taken a blogging break before. I've always enjoyed blogging and I never felt overwhelmed by it; but after Thanksgiving life just hit me hard and I felt so stressed out. So I decided to take a brief break just to catch my breath, and I'm glad I did because I feel so much better now. My house is finally decorated and looking beautiful. I can't wait till Alethea sees it! I'm dying to see her reaction! I will do a video tour for all of you too! I also have all my shopping done and most of my presents wrapped. The Christmas photo cards have been ordered, I'm just waiting for them to arrive so I can send them out. All that's left is making Christmas cookies and enjoying the season!
Because of the holidays, I don't think I will return to a regular blogging schedule until after the New Year. But, I do want to pop in here and there with some Christmas posts. I have today's "Grandma & Me Holiday Fashion", but I also have a post in the works showing the highlights from my small town's Christmas Walk and some pretty Christmas Table Settings that were at a Ladies Christmas Dinner, in addition to my own Holiday Decorations and craft posts.
Let's begin with this month's "Grandma & Me Holiday Fashion" post then I will conclude with my Thanksgiving weekend news.
When Alethea was here for Thanksgiving we took some time to take holiday photos. This was after my burn, so it was quite the struggle for me to get down on the floor to decorate a tree. I just put white lights on it for the photo shoot. It has since been decorated and looking so much nicer. I also made the mistake of pulling out the sleigh too soon so I couldn't get any photos of Alethea outside the sleigh. She loved sitting in it so much, she wouldn't step out of it. I suppose that's a good thing!
I'm glad she likes it so much. My son gifted me this sleigh two years ago. Initially I was mad at him for buying it because it cost him a small fortune, but I think it will ultimately become a family heirloom. Alethea just loves it! I can see taking all the grand children's pictures in it for many years to come.
For our holiday photo shoot Alethea and I both wore navy blue. You would not think of navy blue as a typical holiday color, but with all the sequins in my sweater, and the lovely taffeta fabric of Alethea's dress, it really did work and was a nice alternative to red or green.
My sequin sweater is two years old. I bought it at JCPenney and I have shown it to you before
HERE and
HERE. I am not one who likes to buy something new to wear every Christmas. Holiday clothes are usually worn once and never again. I try to just change up what I already have so I get a lot of wear out of it.
I styled my sequin sweater with black dress pants, silver jewelry, and elegant silver jeweled sandals. Alethea wore her pretty navy dress with white tights and silver glitter shoes.
My darling Alethea is now 18 months old. Such a treasure she is! And I have some news to share: Alethea is going to be a big sister soon! Mom and Dad are expecting baby #2 in July! I'm so excited to be a grandma again!
Here are Alethea's pretty shoes. Aren't they adorable?
And this is what I wore: a small kitten heel and loads of sequins on the silver straps.
Now I just want to re-cap our Thanksgiving weekend, even though Thanksgiving seems like an eternity ago. Despite my severe burn, I had one of the best Thanksgivings ever. I think one of the advantages in aging, is you're just so happy with the simple things in life; like being together as a family. I just loved having all my children under one roof again! I treasured every minute!
I'm sure a lot of you are curious about my burn so I'll explain what happened. But if you are squeamish at all, you might not want to look at the next picture. I'll leave the picture small so as not to gross you out. ha ha!
I got this bad burn on my right leg, just below the knee. I bought a large turkey this year, 23 pounds, and it did not fit inside my usual heavy duty roaster. So I asked my husband to pick up one of those cheap aluminum roasters. It was very flimsy. I had never used one like that before. When the turkey was done and I picked up to pull it out of the oven, the aluminum caved in spilling the hot grease everywhere. I could feel it burn my leg. I managed to hang onto the turkey to set it on top of the oven, then I immediately ripped off my jeans in the middle of the kitchen. I knew to do that because a friend of ours child got burned with hot tea and the biggest mistake they made was not to remove the child's wet clothes immediately causing further damage. I then screamed to my husband and son who were only a few feet away in the other room. I asked my son to google "How to treat a grease burn" while my husband made sure Alethea stayed out of the kitchen and he also cleaned up all the grease. We then just treated the burn as the Internet instructed. I never went to the ER.
It's been over two weeks since the burn and I'm happy to report it's healing well. For awhile, I was worried and thought maybe I made a mistake not going to the ER, as it was pretty deep in one spot removing several layers of skin. I learned a couple of valuable lessons from this experience: #1 Never try to remove a 23 pound turkey out of the oven by myself, #2 Don't use one of those cheap aluminum pans ever again or use it, but lift it out of the oven with a heavy duty large cookie sheet underneath, and #3 Wear appropriate, safe clothing while cooking. I ALMOST wore a dress this day and would have been bare legged. I can't even imagine how much worse the burn would have been had I worn the dress instead of jeans. The irony of all of this is that I just wrote a blog post
"What To Wear On Thanksgiving If You're The Cook". In that post I had a humorous look at the impracticality of most Thanksgiving Outfits I saw in Blog Land. Now I look back at the post and laugh, because I was right! I can pretty much tell you right now the title of next year's Thanksgiving Outfit post: "What To Wear On Thanksgiving To Stay Safe In The Kitchen!" ha ha!
Well, in spite of the burn, I still had a great Thanksgiving! Here are some highlights!
This is me and Alethea shortly after she just walked into the door of "Grandma's House". Nothing but giggles and smiles!
Here is me all smiles right after the burn. I couldn't wear pants, so I had shorts on under my apron. I was smiling, cause hey, what else could I do? I never got pretty Thanksgiving photos of my family or the table setting and food because I was in a lot of pain at the time. It's a miracle we even finished the meal and got the food on the table. Hubby and my daughter helped with the rest of the dishes and cleaning up.
And here is "The Beast", the source of all my pain! Despite all the circumstances surrounding it, this turkey was one of the best I ever made! So tender! Probably because it sat for an hour before I cut it because we were cleaning up the spilled grease and carrying for my wound.
Alethea's favorite dish was my Sweet Potato Casserole. Once she tasted this, she wanted nothing else. Until the pumpkin pie was brought out that is!
I made this same dish last year and shared the recipe source with you in
THIS POST. Last year was the first time I made it and now it is a family favorite.
This is Alethea begging Grandpa for a bite of his pie. She had her own piece and finished it off, then she wanted some of Grandpa's too. This girl loves food and loves to eat! My kind of gal!
When we weren't watching holiday movies, we were playing board games. Alethea enjoyed playing "Aggravation" with us until she tried to put the die in her mouth. Then we wouldn't let her have it anymore so she screamed and cried for the duration of the game. :)
Oh, and if you're looking for a good holiday movie to watch, our favorite new Netflix movie so far was "The Holiday Calendar". We really enjoyed that one, but we haven't seen the rest of the new ones yet. I'm anxious to see Kurt Russel in "The Christmas Chronicles" . Are there any new Christmas movies on Netflix or Hulu that you enjoyed? I'd love to hear about them in the comment section below.
On Saturday we drove to LaCrosse Wisconsin to see the Rotary Lights. Alethea loved them at first, but then became distracted by the fact that the rest of us were enjoying hot cocoa and she was not (I told you, this girl loves food!). She cried and cried because she wanted some too. Once she saw that hot cocoa, nothing else would amuse her. We couldn't give her any for awhile because it was just too hot! It even burned our tongues.
When the beverage finally cooled enough that we were able to give her some, Alethea grabbed hold of that cup and wouldn't let go. She loved that Hot Chocolate! She never had any before. Her parents are very strict about her diet so she doesn't get any sugary sweets in her regular diet, only on holidays and other special occasions. So this was quite a treat for her. Now she was happy!
After Thanksgiving weekend was over, I started decorating the house for Christmas. But it was briefly interrupted by a quick trip to Milwaukee to attend the funeral of our life-long friend's father. It was such a beautiful funeral. My husband's cousin did one of the eulogy's and it was just so heartfelt and beautiful. I told him after wards it was the best eulogy I ever heard. And it really was! Even though it was a solemn occasion to get together, it was so nice to see friends and family again. And it was wonderful celebrating the life of a wonderful man, even though saying goodbye was so hard. But we as Christians know this life is not the end, but only the beginning, and we will soon see him again.
Well this was a long post and if you hung in there till the very end, I applaud you! I'm still as busy as a bee this holiday season, so I don't want to commit to a regular blogging schedule, but I will be back soon with more Christmas topic posts.
Have A Great Day! Amy
Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs
HERE!
