Photo Finish Friday: Bokeh

Please click to enlarge

This is from last year, because frankly, I haven't had the time this year to go out and take any Christmas photos.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

PFF is the creation of Leah over at The Goat's Lunch Pail.

Photo Finish Friday: Happy

I stopped to take a rest while in the mall the other day and was admiring the decorations. I decided I had to share even if I only had my cell phone with me!

You may have to click to enlarge :)


Have a good weekend all!

PFF is the brainchild of my cousin Leah over at The Goat's Lunch Pail.

Photo Finish Friday - Year's End!

The tree the city put up, in green and gold for our football team colours. We hosted the Grey cup this year, sadly we were not playing in it though.

 

A not very great shot of the Legislature grounds and the Province's tree.

Another shot, different angle, better focus ;)

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year!

Holiday Lights

As politically incorrect as it is these days to flaunt your Christmas Spirit, there are several places around the city that do just that. There is one street in the city that has been doing it for almost 40 years, we call it Candy Cane Lane and on their web page is a link to Flickr photos of the street.

The video below is Maisie's Christmas House on the north end of the city that we went and visited a few nights ago. (and there is a much better video of the decorations)

If you follow this link, there are a few other wildly decorated homes through out the city and the bedroom communities that we are going to try to get to eventually. We may not get there 'til next year though as some are pretty far away.

The great thing about all these places is that they all have bins to collect food for the food banks of the area.

I hope every one has a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

My Town Monday - Christmas Windows on Whyte

Back to Old Strathcona we go. Not to see the architecture or the murals this time, but, to see the Christmas displays that they have put up in a few of the windows. They call it The Return of the Magic and I was quite impressed, never having seen this as a child.

The last large scale animatronic display in Edmonton was sometime in the '60's, according to the history on the site. Even if my parents had manage to take us kids down town to have a look, I would have been but a babe in arms. Sorry for the poor quality photos, but please click to enlarge.

The Nativity Scene

Santa's Workshop

Winter Wonderland Romance

The Honeytones Bear Band

 

The Candy Land Kids

 

Gnome Family Christmas

Snowman Stan & The Magnificent Monkey Band

The Christmas Eve Adventure

 The Nutcracker

This last one was my favourite. I have linked each title to it's own page on the website, each page has a link to a story on the making of the display and a soundtrack to go with the scenes. Quite a lot of effort went into making these displays and I am proud to have them in my city. 

The only thing I think would have made them better would have been music outside each store. There were a number of people that just walked by without even a glance, in spite of the three of us oohing and snapping photos. Yes, they provided more than one method to get the MP3 files, but I know myself, I didn't have enough room to download all of them for one night and several people I know do not even own them. That is minor though and we quite enjoyed ourselves.

To enjoy more MTM posts from around the globe, drop by the MTM blog.

Have a good day all.

Warning: Not to be read to young uns!

Author Unknown
To be read with Scandinavian Accent

Little Fur Cap

De next night vas Xmas, te night it vas still

De stockings ver hung by de chimney to fill

Noting vas stirring at all in de house

for fear dat St. Nicholas vas next com ar haus 

De childern ver dried & gone to de bed

Vit Mudder in nightgown & I on ahead

Vas searching around in de trunk for de toys

Ve crept around quiet to make not a noise

Now Mudder vas carrying de toys in her gown

Showing her person from up de vaist down

Ven as we come near the crib of our boy

Our youngest and sweetest, our pride and our joy

His eyes open wide as he peeks from his cot

and sees almost everyting Mudder has got

He didn't take notice, de toys in her lap

He just asked 'For whom is the little fur cap'

Mama said 'Hush' & laughed with delight

'I think I give that to Papa to-night' 

Merry Christmas to all.

Scattered

One of the things my Dr did for me yesterday, was to change one of my prescriptions. I was on a very mild anti-depressant, it is fairly common to prescribe these to Breast cancer survivors. I didn't think I needed it, but, I would give it a try. Well, I certainly never felt like I was depressed, but I did notice a change. I am not as much of a cranky bitch and don't even get the occasional "woe is me" bouts. In fact, I am damned near perky! This is what they are changing...the new one has been found to help with the hot flashes - Odin knows I need help with those! My pharmacist, told me that these new ones work a bit differently, on the whatchamacallit, and to take them in the morning as they might cause sleeplessness. Great, I have such luck in that area already.

So I took one this morning, with 1/2 of the old one...yes, I have to taper off the old, while tapering onto the new. I really hope it was just an off day for me, one of those scattered days that you really don't get a lot accomplished, but it feels as if you have been running at 10,000 rpm, while in neutral. So, I had started thinking about a post for today, then I got distracted. Then I started to think about another post for today...this is what you are getting - me rambling on, but, at least I gave you sentences. Shit I hope this settles down otherwise I don't think I will be wanting to take these - I'll be a perky whirling dervish!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A friend made me go out walking with her in the cold Monday night and these are a couple of the photos I took along the way. As it was cold and I didn't have the tripod, they are a bit blurry, but they are the best of the shots.


House across from the complex, that did such a good job a Halloween.


Next block over, they filled the yard and fence and trees, too bad it is so blurry, those are nutcrackers with lights in them on the fence posts.


Love the colour of the blue tree, but the inadvertent streak off in the top right corner - looks like a UFO.


Have a good day all!

Things change.

It has been a good number of years since I have had Christmas with a blood relative. Probably the last one was with the younger of my older brothers in 2001. He is now in Mexico, a little far to travel for a week. The oldest brother is in Ottawa, again, a fair distance to travel. My sister is about a five hour drive (in winter) north of me and she has all of her husbands family in the area they live in. I have my urban family that I spend Christmas with. It fluctuates a bit each year, but the core of it stays pretty much the same.

Except this year. None of us likes hot turkey, so we cooked up a breast in order to have cold sandwiches for boxing day - it came out a bit dry. My friends decided that I should do the cooking this year - you would think they would know better by now! We had elk roast, the recipe sounded interesting, but it came out tough and had no flavour. The scalloped potatoes (that I have successfully made before) were just short of a disaster, but at least the roast and the potatoes were ready at the same time. Something I rarely manage. I even screwed up the salad - yes, I did! I can blame some of the disaster on it not being my kitchen, but alas, not all of it.

One of the traditions that slipped this year was the tree...we have a decorating party the last Sunday before Christmas and get the house all set up and the tree decorated. Not this year, we brought the tree in from the cold and the branches were still upright, so we didn't get it decorated until Tuesday. Whatever, we had decided not to stress about anything this year. This, in turn led us to discussing how things change no matter how much you want them to stay the same.

Click to enlarge

This is how the tree wound up looking, I like the way the lights reflect on the ceiling and floor.

Close up of the Angel.

More reflected lights.

One of the biggest traditions smashed for me, was opening gifts on Christmas morning. My urban family opens them Christmas Eve - after midnight, but still! The kid in me protests!


I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and no-one had illusions shattered or traditions broken beyond repair.

I also wish you all the best in the new year.

Edit: It seems (and to me too when I read it again) that I am whining. That is not how it was meant to sound. I had a wonderful Christmas in spite of the little things that went wrong and we all had a good laugh about dinner. I am very grateful to have my urban family.

Damn...missed it by that much!

I pay so much attention to my blogging duties, that my one year blogiversay slipped by unnoticed back in which ever fall month that was. Oh, well! I thought, I will make a big deal of hitting two hundred posts.

So, this is post 201! Well, at least I am close ;)

This is the first year in ... who knows how long, that I have actually sent out Christmas cards - let alone before Christmas. That is quite the accomplishment for me. Of course the Bag Lady's gift is still in production phase (things got screwed up - such is my year) and it has to be mailed up north. If all goes well, she might get it this year.

I was over at a friends tonight making Lefse. OMG is it good! This is the third of fourth year that we have made it and we are getting better at it. For those that are not of Scandinavian descent....Lefse is a flatbread (but we don't make the potato lefse which you can find a million recipes for), we make the sweet dessert type. It has 800,000,000,000,000 calories per piece, because it it made with buttermilk, whipping cream, flour, butter, syrup and egg. Then is is slathered with butter mixed with sugar and cinnamon. She sent me home with some home-made nuts & bolts when we were done....very tasty too and made with more butter! Between just those two recipes, that is 2.5 lbs of butter! I will be making shortbread....another lb of butter and she will be making some other things which will take at least one more lb, and another batch of nuts & bolts.

I will get back to watching my cholesterol in January!

So, now that I have you all drooling on your keyboards...what are your favorite things to make for Christmas?

Have a good day all.

'Tis the Season

To be baking! Alright, I know those aren't the words, but it is true nonetheless.

Mom made the best pie crusts in the world! She often bemoaned that fact that they were too flakey and wouldn't hold together. A bit of history is required here. Mom was the seventh daughter, I am thinking, by the time she came along, there were already too many cooks in the kitchen, so she never learned to cook at her mothers knee. Before she married our Dad, she says she made sandwiches and that was about it. Our Dad, was the seventh son (is there a pattern going on here? Yes, but that is another post, or maybe one my Sister will tackle) and he did learn to cook, I am not sure it was at his mothers knee, but he taught our mom some basics and the rest she learned by trial and error.

She got a lot of her recipes directly from the back of boxes, Tenderflake pie crusts, Shortbread from the Cornstarch box, you get the idea. Over the years Mom's talent grew as did her recipe collection, not many people can follow a recipe and have it turn out so well. I know this because everyone raved about Mom's pie crusts and cookies and cakes and squares and so on. They would then take the recipe and follow it and then next time they saw Mom would ask for her secret.

The first time I lived away from home, I thought it would be nice if I could make Shortbread cookies to bring home for Christmas, so phoned and got the recipe & secrets from Mom. So, here I am merrily mixing ingredients in my barely ever used bowl, with my hardly ever used wooden spoon, when SNAP! The damned handle on my wooden spoon broke! I called Mom. What else do you do when your spoon breaks in the batter? She told me not to worry, just pick out the wood pieces and use another spoon! So, I get all the tiny splinters out and grab another spoon (I am sure that Mom started making a batch at home to serve guests, but if she did, she never told me) and proceed to mix in the second last cup of flour. SNAP! Oh shit! So, I pick out the splinters yet again and decide it it time to use my bare hands. This was in the '80's folks, artificial nails a mile long!

Well, I got the cookies made. Mom had told me that the recipe made about 4 dozen cookies. I managed to make 90 cookies - that is 7 and a half dozen. The funny thing is to me they looked the same size as the ones Mom made. The following year I snapped another spoon and made 120 cookies. The year after that for my birthday, I was given a set of nylon/plastic spoons - I don't really know what they are made from, but they don't break and I still have them. I still manage between 80 and 100 cookies from this recipe too, I can't seem to make them any bigger.

I will tell you in my next post why this year I won't be baking.

Good afternoon all.

Jigsaw Puzzles

We have a tradition in our family of doing Jigsaws over the Christmas Holidays. I don't know how or when this started being the youngest, but we have done it as long as I can remember.

We have over the years tried to top each other with who can find the hardest puzzle to do as well! This has resulted in sharpening of skills and some very wicked puzzles. Some of which, due to us children living in other cities, resulted in mom being the one left to finish the harder ones alone. Dad wasn't much for doing puzzles, but he kept us fed with turkey sandwiches and desserts and would come in occasionally, usually when we were stuck and just pick up a piece and put it where it belonged. Drove us nuts most of the time.

We have done puzzles that were insane: one was solid green and round; one was called Spilled Milk, came in a milk carton, had a wavy edge and eleven extra pieces - of course, was all white. We did a puzzle that was all holographic gold - no picture. We did Hay in a Needlestack, Zebras, polar bears in snow. So many, I will stop now, you get the idea.

One Christmas, a friend of Mom & Dad's (who is not a very good sport) thought he had found a puzzle that would keep us going for days. He was rather disappointed when a couple of hours later, we came out to the living room where they were visiting, with the puzzle finished to show it off. It was one of the Hallmark ones that hold together so well, so we were able to carry it out and show them - the one with the pretty marbles.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, I have posted a puzzle here (courtesy of Jig Zone) on the bottom of my blog. Average time was just over 12 minutes, I did it in under 9 - have fun! (I couldn't get it positioned elsewhere without covering my posts.)