...12.30...Over the Weekend...

...we started this chilly rainy weekend off with some hot cereal...I vaguely remember Malt-O-Meal from my childhood...it's a lot like cream of wheat...and Mom must have occasionally gotten it when we were little...I added sugar and cinnamon and ate it with toast...

...we did the weekly shopping in the pouring rain...it definitely made the stores less crowded...

...I don't think there's a single noteworthy thing...just a basic regular shop this week...

...the Man said he wanted some Oatmeal Cookies...so I got out my recipe box...I've had this disk with the Quaker recipe probably since we were first married...it's easy to find it in the box because of it's shape...

...very easy to veganize...just vegan butter and vegan eggs...flax seed goo works well in this one...

...I used mostly miyoko's butter...but a good sized chunk of Violife as well as I wanted to use it up...

...so many cookies...

...about 3 dozen good sized cookies...they wouldn't all fit into my largest Tupperware...

...I think I'll only make half next time...haha...

...and then while the oven was on for the cookies...I made a batch of my favorite vegan tofu feta...

...then we did a little bit of housecleaning...remember when we pulled the stove out for the remodel and I said that if I'd give it a wash every week it wouldn't get all gunky-grimy...so I'm trying to remember to do that every weekend...

...things are sort of getting back to their after-Christmas normal now...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week...

...12.28...Dinner and a Movie...

...starting with some Blogger comments...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...I loved the photo of Rob and Taylor...sweet photos of Mom and Granny...so glad you had nice visits...Love, T...

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...I love these after Christmas days...before we take the decorations down on Epiphany...and we've been having a lot of chilly rain so it makes things extra cozy...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...your lentil ragout looks delicious...such a nice combination of flavors...and those dogs...they will make their bed anywhere won't they...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...I loved seeing your city Christmas lights...it's so much driving or walking around with all the festive lights...

...I'm still reading The Great Alone...it's a really sad book...but I've already recommended to Our Airman and his wife...they go to Homer pretty often...I think after this one...I may go back to Maupassant for a bit...

...for dinner we made refried beans and burritos...

...made a delicious chunky guac...

...still eating on the Christmas plates for a little while longer...

...then for dessert we made some little cinnamon sugar crisps with the leftover tortillas...

...they were crispy and good...

...and for the movie...we finished Meet me in St. Louis...and then we watched Klaus in it's entirety...Our Airman had recommended it during one of our FaceTime chats as it was playing the background...and he said that it was one of his favorite Christmas movies...and we'd not ever seen it...it was a neat take on the Santa Claus story...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovey weekend!

...12.27...Friday Update...

...a few more Christmas-y things...

...we call things like this Ma Jong set gifts for the house...as they're not really 'for' either one of us...

...y'all have probably already seen me using this little cutting board...I originally got it as one of the gifts for the family Christmas party...but it didn't quite meet the cost parameters...and it was a handy size so I thought we'd just keep it...it came with the lumberjack patterned towel...

...but the board had a weird sort of finish...I'm sure it was food safe...but I thought it'd look and perform better if I sanded it off and then oiled it the way I do our other cutting boards...

...and I like the way it looks leaned up against the larger one on the counter...

...and another 'house' present...a heated blanket...

...it's so fuzzy and soft and warm...

...and...I don't think I ever showed you the lamps we got to replace the ones we moved down to the big room...

...everything back in place...it's the same old headboard that I made when we lived in West Virginia...

...the little blanket control does add a bit of clutter to the nightstand...

...one of my little gifties was a new set of silpats...and one of them is specifically for lifting a loaf of bread out of the dutch oven...

...so of course on Christmas afternoon I wanted to give that a try...and I got out the bread machine my sweet sissie had given me after a visit where she heard my old one screeching...

...and then I 'tested' my yeast...and found that it is in fact NOT alive...so I put that little project on hold until the stores opened up and I could get some yeast...

...and moved on to another project...my sweet little yarn themed puzzle...

...pretty easy separating out the different colours on this one and getting started...

...just moving from one colour to another across the puzzle left to right...

...I just worked on it off and on over the course of the day...and into the next day when I finished it...

...it probably took a couple of hours...I love puzzles and this one was super fun...

...and I started setting up the bonsai trees Our Airman gave us...

...I soaked the little soil pucks...

...and put all the different seeds under damp paper towels under grow lights...only one of them requires the heating pad to germinate...

...and then Thursday morning the grocery store was open again...so I bought some new yeast...

...and mixed everything up in the bread maker...only 1/2 teaspoon of yeast to make 'artisan' bread...

...I let it run through the dough cycle 3 times...for a total of about 5 hours...

...the little silpat with handles did work perfectly for lifiting the loaf out of the dutch oven...

...and forced myself to wait a 1/2 hour before cutting into the this super squishy and crusty bread...

...it turned out perfectly...what is better than fresh baked bread...and now I'm thinking of all kinds of other artisan breads to make this way...walnut cranberry...raisin...olive...

...and then I spent some time setting up the new camera...this is the very first photo ever using the new camera...

...I hope you're having a wonderful holiday with your family...

~Have a lovely day!

...12.26...Delicious Vegan Food...with Julia...

...we made the delicious Vegan Tournedos Henri IV for our Christmas Dinner...and all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

...12.25...Christmas Day...

...Merry Christmas...a very late in the day post...

...a few photos from our Christmas Eve-drive-around-and-look-at-lights-trip...we headed out right at dark...

...and first we drove through our old neighborhood...where we used to live in the early 2000s...before North Dakota...

...pretty much the same as years ago...

...pretty lights in this older neighborhood...

...then we drove to the city park...

...where they have a drive through light show...we used to bring a very young Airman here...

...the train...

...and the Cinderella carriage were his favorites...

...lots of neat vignettes...it really hasn't changed at all in 25 years or so...

...and then we followed a 'map' to see some other lights around town...

...it was a fun evening...just listening to music in the car in the dark...

...opening a few presents this morning (new shoes)...in my Christmas jammmies...

...I searched the blog because I thought I had posted about them...but I can't find them...they are thrifted and they were size 2X...so I had to basically just use the material...and cut out entirely new pieces...keeping the bright green collar and cuffs though...I really like how they turned out...and they are so soft...

...and some new silpats...

...not sure what happened to my old ones...and they may still turn up...but I've not seen them since we moved...

...the Man opened a few gifties as well...that's not a joke present...he loves hot wasabi peas...

...and a new air fryer...we were resistant to getting one...but Our Airman convinced us that it's definitely worth having...

...these are my pretty new shoes...from Vivaia...

...all vegan...and so comfy...

...and new tennies too...

...do you think I needed them...haha...these will become my new lawn mowing shoes...

...while we were waiting for the kiddos to call for their Christmas morning festivities...we fixed our Christmas breakfast...waffles for me...

...and buckwheat pancakes for the Man...

...and then the kiddos called and we opened a few presents with them on FaceTime...

...this new camera is my 'big' gift for this year...so I'll be transitioning to it after about 14 years using my trusty old Sony with the replaced screen...and of course I posted about it when it was new (before the Grand Canyon trip) in 2011...so it has served me well over all those years...

...and the kiddos had sent us a Bonsai kit...so that will be a lot of fun...

...it was great seeing them in their cute sweaters and playing with their new toys and games...they are such a sweet family...

~Wishing you a lovely evening...