I am a Horrible Person -- The Holiday Edition

Tomorrow is ugly sweater day at work.  We will have a contest and a Secret Santa swap.  Having never owned a truly ugly Christmas sweater, I was loath to go out and purposely buy one.  It is not easy to find them second-hand this time of year and I refuse to spend $$ on something that is intentionally ugly and only wearable for one cliched event a year.  My version is inspired by Calvin and Hobbes as well as South Park.  My boss will probably not let me join in any reindeer games once she sees it.  But I am happy with it.

Convincing me to Buy - Wine

 

Who goes wine tasting in the winter?  We do!  When you live in the Buffalo/Niagara region, winter is wine time.  While I'm not a big fan of Ice Wine, the Niagara escarpment is known to be one of the best regions for growing vidal grapes - a hybrid white variety that is very sweet.  The sweetness is condensed when they freeze.  It is a big deal when the first freeze occurs -- hordes of wine enthusiasts swarm to the vineyards and help harvest the grapes.  They must be picked at the first frost and the window of opportunity is short.  The wine produced from the fruit is very sweet -- and fairly expensive!

It's a Wrap!

 For me, wrapping presents is like cleaning house.  You have to get really messy first!  This is how our dining room table looked on Sunday.  I had the gift bags for work assembled and then I had to wrap presents.  This past year I cleaned up my home office and put away all my wrapping supplies. That meant I had to pull it all out and bring it downstairs.  Most years, I buy supplies at the end of the season, but I didn't do that much last year because I already had a lot.  This year I'm going to have to do it again as I had feared I would run out of paper and ribbons -- yes, I am fearful even though I have all this stuff!

Christmas at Work

 

Every year I make some sort of holiday offering for my co-workers.  This year, there are six people on my team, along with others who are temporarily squished into our row too.  There are also a couple of my other cronies I wanted to gift.  Last year I gave out big bars of cranberry soap.  This year I made small gift bags.  I used an assortment of items that I could buy in batches of a dozen.

Made it Ahead -- Last Week!

I made a big hunk of beef last Sunday.  It was an inexpensive bottom round cut.  It was pan seared and then baked on a cookie sheet with carrots and radishes, along with assorted small potatoes.  We had a nice dinner and it was a swell way to wind-up the weekend.  The meal was made with the intention that it would turn into stew -- bottom round isn't the most tender cut of meat.

Lavender Scent-Crafts

 This is my home-made version of a reed scent diffuser.  With a huge cache of lavender harvested before the first freeze, I had to do something with the stems I had left after pulling all the leaves off.  The oil in the bottom is a mixture of canola and drops of scent oil (the type you put into a wall-plug diffuser).  I had a small mayonnaise jar with a plastic lid. I was able to drill a messy hole into it and stuff in a few wooden skewers and stems.  We will see if it scents my bedroom.

We have had only one electrical outlet outside and had to run really long extension cords to use the weed-wacker or edger in the front.  Any time I wanted to vacuum a car, I had to run an extension cord out the front door.  It was a pain.  Once I bought the old car with the diesel engine, it became necessary to have a place to plug it in so we could keep the engine block warm on freezing nights. It's only going to be necessary to plug in on cold nights when I know I'll be driving the wagon the next day.  Because it's never seen road salt and we want it to last, I'm not going to drive it in cruddy weather so we've decided to hold on to the old Chevy (it's a 2003 with 75K miles on it).