Thanksgiving Aftermath

Firstly, I hope you all had a really wonderful Thanksgiving - I did!

I am also having a very good day-after-Thanksgiving so far - DH made us egg and cheese sandwiches on REAL hard rolls he got from a bakery near where he works (somehow no place around here can make GOOD hard rolls, or if there is a place, I have yet to discover it).  Our daughter ate a piece of my sister-in-law "L's" famously good apple pie for her breakfast.  And I am already tentatively planning on eating the rest of a spicy-shrimp-cheeseball-thing my sister-in-law "K" made for my lunch. :-P   It's 10:47am and I have not tried to clean anything up yet. 

But although I still have quite a lot to clean up and put away, the reason I have all this aftermath is because we were blessed enough to have the time, money and ability to host this holiday, AND we were so blessed that a bunch of our family chose to spend the holiday with us!  So I'm actually grateful to have this aftermath - it is evidence of wonderful blessings.  (And believe me, I already had a lot of help cleaning up, especially from my one sister-in-law "L" - a million thanks L, for all your help!!  The mess would be WAY worse than this!)

It reminds me of this poem - in fact I just saw it written on pretty glass tiles at a craft show I was recently at - and it's a wonderful reminder:

Lord, thank you for this sink of dirty dishes, we have plenty of food to eat.

Thank you for this pile of dirty laundry, we have plenty of nice clothes to wear.

And I would like to thank you, Lord, for those unmade beds. They were so warm and so comfortable last night. I know that many have no bed.

My thanks to you, Lord, for this bathroom, complete with all the splattered mirrors, soggy towels and dirty lavatory. They are so convenient.

Thank you for this finger-smudged refrigerator that needs defrosting so badly, it has served us faithfully for many years. It is full of enough left-overs for a few meals.

Thank you, Lord, for this oven that absolutely must be cleaned today. It has baked so many things over the years.

Lord, the presence of all these chores awaiting me says you have richly blessed my family. I shall do them all cheerfully and I shall do them gratefully.

(Somehow I always have to work on the "cheerfully" part though.  LOL.)

The End.

The Museum Giveaway at Small Pines

My Adirondack friend Small Pines has a giveaway going on right now - he found some cool "old things" in, underneath and on their old house while they were tearing it down.  (Nowadays since the house is gone they're paying rv insurance and livin' in their Tin Lizzie.)  These mystery items that were discovered are now in a place of honor on the side of the chicken pen.  If you can identify the items pictured, you can win a couple of really lovely, hand knit scarves. 

I gave a completely silly answer, but maybe some of you can figure out what those items really are and win those scarves!

(Even if you don't know what those things are either, it's a really fun blog to read anyway.)

The end.

P.S.  Oh, and don't worry I'm sure he will send out the prize to the winner in a timely fashion ---> so yes, you guessed it - no, I still have not received either of the giveaway prizes I mentioned a few posts back.  I think maybe I'll wait until it's been over a month and then I'll ask if they ever sent the items or not.

The Thanksgiving Menu

There will be 17 people here on Thursday.  Here's what we're having:  (keep in mind, family members are contributing some of these items - I'm not making all of this myself)

Appetizers:

Deviled eggs

Veggies & dip

Cheese and crackers

Mozzarella sticks and sauce

Potato chips & dip

Peanuts

Shrimp cocktail

Pepperoni

Cocktail franks

Taco dip

Main Meal:

Turkey and gravy

Stovetop stuffing

Homemade stuffing

Sweet potato casserole (w/marshmallows on top)

Mashed potatoes

Carrots

Rolls

Turnip

Cranberry sauce

Corn

Cranberry jello salad

Dessert:

Krumkakes with whipped cream

Pecan caramel candies

Pumpkin pie

Apple pie

Birthday cake (for one of my nieces)

Mini Reeses Peanut butter cups

Macadamia chip cookies

I bet whoever in the world monitors what people are searching for (probably Google) will see a spike on Friday for the search terms "colon cleanse", "diet pills"and "weight loss surgery Mexico".  Of course many people won't have time on Friday to be searching out how to undo what they did on Thanksgiving because they have to be on line at 3am for a Black Friday sale.  I will not be on any of those lines.  I haven't attempted Black Friday in years.  The best thing I ever remember getting for my efforts was a free Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer book and video from Montgomery Ward.  Not too impressive, huh?  Do any of you do the Black Friday thing?  If so, what are you hoping to snag? Did you ever manage to get one of the fantastic deals where they only have like three of the item in the whole store?

The end.

Do You Know What Those Round Bottom Shoes Are Called?

I first saw them in an Avon catalog - they had a pair by "Curves" (which is a company that makes exercise gear for women).  I thought they were kind of weird looking, but I seem to be seeing them more and more.  Have you seen these things?  Here's an example:

Someone told me they are called "MBT shoes", and I asked what MBT stood for but they didn't know.  So I googled it.  It stands for Masai Barefoot Technology.   Yeah, Masai as in like, the famous warrior tribe in Kenya!  I'm really not particularly interested in getting these round bottom shoes, but now I HAD to find out what on earth these exercise shoes have to do with the Masai.  Well, here's what I found:

"When the designers were first coming up with the idea of MBT shoes, they looked to East African runners. Noticing that they trained barefoot for races, even marathons, the researchers began to wonder if their lack of injuries and pain was due to this lack of footwear. By watching how the foot hit the ground, they began to see that the rolling motion of the foot engaged the rest of the muscles of the body, stabilizing it and protecting it from harm. But since the researchers realized the people weren't about to run barefoot on the pavements of their cities, designing a shoe became the top priority."

So that's the whole deal with the round-bottom-shoes, in case you were wondering, like me, "what up with that"?  (Did you see the skit on Saturday Night Live this past week?  It was actually pretty funny! SNL What Up With That?)

The end.