Cold season

The pilot light on our heater is out. I just called the electric company and the soonest someone can come to turn it on is Friday, which is four cold days from now. But there's another thing that happens when it gets cold outside, besides getting cold inside. That's right, it's Christmastime!

I love Christmastime! I know commercialism is terrible and all that, but I really like making cookies and seeing snowmen and making cards and eating feasts. I'm not really a huge fan of presents. I hate surprises, and I like giving things to people when I want to, not because I feel obligated to do it. And I really don't want any more stuff. So I asked for boring stuff, like a kitchen knife and books for my upcoming classes, which will be nice to have, but not too exciting to play with on Christmas morn. Luckily there will be a tiny baby (not Jesus) to play with. And ice skating, if there is an ice skating place in Memphis.

We went to the Oakland Christmas Parade, which was really good. So good that we're still talking about it a week later. There were karate kids breaking boards, jump-ropers, tap-dancing Christmas trees, little kids dressed like presents, Taz riding in a convertible, and huge balloons of various cartoon characters which had to be dramatically lowered to clear the tree corridor that was just beyond our curb-seats. Gregg has lots of good pictures of the action, including one of the devastating effects of my Santa fever. Best parade ever!

We decorated the miniature city instead of decorating the whole apartment, because miniature decorations are so much easier! Plus a reindeer lives there, so it seemed like an obvious choice. Of course it's all exactly to scale. Maybe if we weren't going out of town for actual Christmas I'd want to decorate more. I don't know. I think I'd be more excited about it if anyone besides me and Channing were likely to see the decorations. We still haven't exactly "decorated" our apartment for daily use, so we're probably not ready for seasonal decorations anyway. Taking them down and storing them seems like a hassle, too. We might actually get around to painting our hideous living room over Channing's vacation, so that's another good reason not to decorate.

We did invest in some white LED icicle lights, but those are more for mood lighting than for seasonal decor. We rearranged our bedroom, so our bed is wedged into the closet that used to hold a murphy bed. It makes for a magical forest-tent-like sleeping experience and opens up a lot of space in the bedroom. Or it will once we find places for all of the stuff we took out of the closet. Finishing stuff is hard. Also, our closet has fake stained glass windows. There's something really nice about sleeping in a little cubby nook thing, especially when it has fake stained glass windows.


Channing made Christmas pizza today, with pomegranates and spinach and pears for toppings. It tasted a lot like regular pie. And we had hot cocoa with it because it's really cold in here.

I made elaborate Christmas cards, which we addressed last night. So I guess I won't post a picture of one just in case they get mailed at some point and one is coming to you in the mail. You'll just have to wait. Soon I'm going to make some Christmas cookies. I guess I should make a whole lot so we never run out.

A cat with the tail of a beaver! And more!

I made most of a giraffe for the Golden Retriever movie. He's very tall, but not so very fat. Giraffes aren't really fat, but this one should definitely be a bit fatter. I ran out of stuffing.

Here is his inside-out neck, when I was pinning the mane(?) in:

Here is his cute inside-out body:

I realize that you can't actually tell what anything is. I'll post a right-side-out picture when I finish stuffing him.

I still haven't finished the beaver puppet, because I don't have any suitable brown fabric for his body. Mr. Tusks' body is not very beaveresque, but here he is, delighted to model a fine beaver's tail. 

Clearly I need to make a trip to the fabric store very very soon. 

Thanksgiving was really good. I was nervous about being in charge of the meal, but it turned out fine. I think it was easier than I expected in part because we've been cooking meals from real ingredients so much more often lately. When I was growing up, cooking things that didn't come from packages pretty much only happened on holidays, which probably made it even more stressful for my mom when those days came around and she felt like she had to not only cook, but cook something extra-special.

We didn't have tiny pies, just a regular-sized one. Tiny pies are all the rage around here ever since I figured out you can make pies in a muffin pan. I meant to make them as portable lunchbox desserts, but both times I've made them we've eaten all the pies too fast for any of them to make it into a lunchbox. As you can see, I didn't even have the strength to take one photo before I ate two pies. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't have time to make them for Thanksgiving, because I thought Channing's mommy would have quite liked them. But the next day they went to Chinatown, where they saw tiny pies for sale in a bakery. 85 cents a pie! What a deal! 

I'm looking forward to Christmas. We're going to Memphis for a few days. My mom already spent an entire day putting lights on the Christmas tree. I get to see my niece again (she'll be 3 months old on Christmas) and this time she'll probably be dressed like an elf instead of a pumpkin. I'm dragging Channing to The Nutcracker (which I'm pretty sure he's going to like) and I'll probably make him watch at least five Christmas movies with me. And hopefully at some point I'll get to go ice skating in my holiday elf cape. And we get to make gingerbread cookies! And wear mittens! I'm going to make Mr. Tusks wear mittens! Wooden mittens, so he can't scratch me. And read the Christmas stories, which are banned during the rest of the year! And giftwrapping! I love wrapping presents. And Christmas cards! Sighhhhh. Christmas is so great.