Tag Archive for christmas

The Christmas Dolphin

December 18, 2007 planet3rry No comments

My Lovely and Talented Wife were commenting on how in our subdivision there has been many more houses that I have put out lights this year. The “Main Drag” seems to be a runway of Christmas lights and “That House” which always has the tackiest Christmas lights seems to have grown since last year.

One house which is always fun to see is the Christmas Dolphin house. These people have their hearts in the Tropics and their home in Knoxville. We took the kids on an abbreviated Christmas Lights tour over the weekend and I tried to capture video of the Christmas Dolphin to share with everyone.

If you can’t quite make out the sun, it’s on the left behind a tree, unfortunately, there is no good place to park to film. There are 2 palm trees and a pink flamingo in the lower right hand corner. The thing that moving across the screen is a dolphin with a Santa Claus hat on! There’s even a splash effect for the dolphin.

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I blinked and half of December is Gone

December 17, 2007 planet3rry 3 comments

It’s 8 days until Christmas, why didn’t anyone tell me? Holy St. Nick Batman! I haven’t even seen Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story yet! Actually, I am safe with A Christmas Story, TBS (or is it TNT) will play it for 24 hours straight right before Christmas (Damn, what a great country!).

Saturday we “tried” to make “cookies”. Remember when you were younger less mature, when you thought you’d mess with your Mom and take the labels off all the cans and let her “figure” them out? No? Oh. Well, the equivalent happened to us with our Gingerbread Mix. Seeing that we don’t have a good consistent All Purpose Gluten Free Flour Mixture yet, we have had to rely on boxed mixes for our baked goods. The Gingerbread mix that we had was for Spice Cake and if you changed up the recipe you could make it for gingerbread.

The “plan” was to make a batch of Gingerbread mix so the kids could make some gingerbread trains. Then we could make some frosting and the kids could make a huge mess of the kitchen while being hopped up on crack sugar. Apparently, when you open a box of mix, the Box Fairy, will come and remove the most important boxes to orphan the bag of mix, leaving you with a bag of mix. Unless you have a photographic memory, another box just like it or some creative juices, you are stuck with a nice paper weight. However, my secret weapon is My Lovely and Talented Wife and her uncanny ability to play free cell surf the internet for answers to questions that plague us.

She secured us a recipe from the same company of the mix that we were using. However, the amount of stuff “seemed” a little odd, but what do I know? I’m just a buffoon guy and she is the all-knowing hot chick woman, so if I didn’t want to sleep outside, I just better agree with her. It’s always better to have to fix things than try to argue in the beginning, because us guys are better at fixing things.

The batter seemed a little “runny” and at the time, it didn’t seem odd that we had the kids spooning the batter into the train stoneware mold. I was just thinking that the fine details of the train would show up because the more liquid mix would find those small cracks and crevices.

The result, although tasted good, did not turn out very well. Apparently, we made something that was airy like a cake but hardened like cookies. And the there was no way to get the cookies out of the mold. So there was no Christmas Train cookies. But it was fun to make the cookies with the kids. If we were staying in town, I would make some Monster Cookies, because I can make them GF (and really even Casein Free too) but it takes a couple of hours to bake them all, even with our double oven.

Here is My Lovely and Talented Wife’s Account of us “making” “cookies”

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I’m thinking about making Reese PB Clone using the White Chocolate Wonderful Peanut Butter. I just have to make sure that we have the ingredients, however, this can be time consuming because of the chocolate dip. However, our Au Pair has brought some delicious peanut butter treats from Brazil that are the equivalent to Naked Reese Peanut Butter Cylinders. So Maybe, I don’t need to worry about the chocolate coating. Maybe I’ll make Peanut Butter Christmas Trains…

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I had also wrote about the need for a Casein Free Heavy Cream. Well, I never found a Casein Free Heavy Cream, but I did find Soy Whipped Topping, which was the heaviest thing I couple find. Now, the cookbook that I have, did say that I could use Soy milk and Butter as a substitute for heavy cream. So that might be another disaster experiment to document.

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And one final baking note, I did start (but did not finish) a photo-documentary on making my own potato starch. Apparently there IS a difference between Potato Starch and Potato Flour and I have no potato flour. Potato Starch can be made fairly simply with squeeze the crap out of potatoes… definitely a stress relieving activity. I was able to get the starch out the two potatoes that I had but the turned a red color. Not sure why… I didn’t cut myself, no bloody nose or anything.

So, I will probably Buy a bag of potato starch and then try to make my own. I think that I can make my own White Rice Flour with our Vitamix… I think all I need to do is put it in the Vitamix and then grind the Hell out of it.

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Christmas Meme

December 17, 2007 planet3rry 3 comments

I was tagged by Maddy over at Whitterer on Autism for a Christmas Meme, so here are my answers. Feel free to play if you would like

“When people say ‘Christmas’ you immediately think…”

Time to make a Christmas Music Playlist

“Favourite Christmas memory…”

When I was younger, baking a ton of stuff with my mom

“Favourite Christmas song/carol…”

This one is hard for me because I love Christmas music. I guess that I will go with “Thanks for Christmas” by XTC. Not only is it from my favorite group, it’s a great optimistic look at the world at Christmas time.

“Favourite Christmas movie…”

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

“Favourite Christmas character…”

The Three Wisemen. Yeah, I know, those are 3 people, but they always come in a package. They are part of Jesus’ first visitors and they brought some fine swag with them.

“Favourite Christmas ornament/object…”

In 1992, Hallmark came out with the Star Trek Enterprise ornament for Christmas. It was a HOT ornament. Retail value was around $20, but by the next year, I saw it at a Sci-Fi shop for $200. And a couple years after that it was going for $400 on eBay. Not sure what it is going right now…

“Plans for this Christmas…”

Travel to South Carolina for Christmas

“Is Christmas your favourite holiday?”

Yes, but not for candy… that’s Easter!

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Weekend Update

December 10, 2007 planet3rry 3 comments

Our Sunday School Soiree wasn’t too bad. Although I should have had something to drink, just to take the edge off… it was okay. I think there were only a few times that I had to wander around trying to get into the conversations. I found out that one guy is home brewer and was going to travel 2 hours (one way) just to get specialty beer. (I need to hang out with him more) and another guy has the saem cholestoral problem as I do. Borderline high (around 210ish) and no matter what we do, is doesn’t go down… curse you genetics!!! I was telling him about the Smoothie (or ‘schmovie’ as The Younger calls it) that I have almost every morning that has premium flax seed oil and that has helped a bunch.

The gift exchange was a riot. Everyone who brought a gift pulled a number out of the hat. And in order, you picked a gift OR you could take a gift that was already chosen. For Example, the person who was picking 8th could take the gift that the 3rd person opened. The 3rd person would then either chose someone else’s gift or pick a new one. An open gift could only be taken 3x, meaning the person taking it the 3rd had it forever. Our Elvis clock was the first to be “taken” by another couple. Two gifts stood out, a wig and a Mrs. Claus nightie. The wig (as we found out) was a wig that was used as a spare and for “replacement plugs”, but it looked between a cross between Mrs. Brady and 80s Mullet. It actually got “Taken” by another person who was going to wear it to work (he is a little on the receeding hair side). The Mrs. Claus nightie was a red, wrap around (not much in the “around” part), lingerie that had a santa hat. You can imagine that there was quite a bit of comments going around.

Elvis
Ours was the Blue Suede Shoes Elvis Clock

 

Our Booty
The glasses are surprisingly REAL glass!

Our gift was something that we could actually “use”, sort of. We got a pair of butt ugly wine glasses and two decorative wine toppers. The tree wine stopper actually looks nice. The Santa one, is just plain gross hilarious. If you look at the Santa topper, it makes it look like Santa is taking a huge dump right into the wine. Granted, some wine doesn’t taste too far off from a nice porclein libation (ask your Dog which flavor is best), but do I need Santa “looking” like I was on the “naughty” list AND he ran out of coal?

Santa wine topper

What I had forgotten was that The Elder was having his Christmas Party on Saturday. My Lovely and Talented Wife had an appointment so this meant that I would need to being the kids and she would meet me there. Easy enough. In fact, we made it the place 20 minutes early and we drove around the country backroads so that The Younger could sleep some more.

All but one of The Elder’s classmates were there. So, the house was full of kids, parents and two babies. It was very nice and easy to chat with these parents. They are in the same situation as we are with The Elder. I don’t think I brought up running once! I did take out Stella and have to download pictures from her. Not sure that I got any good pictures, but I’ll check.

It was very nice to network with some other parents with kids the same age as our kids and some with even siblings who don’t have Aspergers, so it’s very similar.

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Festive Theme

December 7, 2007 planet3rry 6 comments

If you happen to use Firefox as your preferred internet browsers of choice, I offer you this Holiday theme:

theme
Tinsel Town

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Random Wednesday

December 5, 2007 planet3rry 6 comments

I think that my lack of wanting to run this week has been directly proportional to the wind we have had here. Seems that even though it was cold on Tuesday (36F), that because there was no wind, I had an easy 3 miler. However, both Monday and Today (Wednesday) have been moderately windy and thus when I have thought about running, I’ve opted for my desk. Today, I should have gone to the indoor pool, but I have to chalk that one up to sheer laziness.

I’ve been pondering about what running events that I want to participate in during 2008. I think that I may focus on my shorter races and triathlons with just one marathon. I think I can create a schedule that will will catapult me through the year building on the different events. I’m sure once that I map it out on a calendar it will make more sense that in my brain.

More reasons why I just need to relax during December besides the normal downtime/ cyclic depression is that I will be have a minor medical procedure next Thursday that will keep me down and out for 2 days. It’ll be a nice day to play hooky from work but I won’t be able to much of anything.

Also, I want to (and need to) give blood this month before the new year so that I can maintain my Super Donor status. Given the fact that for about 7 days after giving blood, my speed running sucks and I’m having this medical excursion, that I will give blood on the 27th or 28th. This way, I can be fully recovered for Calhoun’s 10 miler at the end of January

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I have not done any of my Christmas Baking yet. So, I need to get on the ball with that. Oh, I found out the there is Hazelnut Milk… I didn’t know they had udders either. My Truffle recipe calls for heavy cream, so I am not sure that I can get the same effect with just a “regular” milk consistency.

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I took a few shots when I was in Maryville for the Reindeer Run. Here is the slideshow and link to the picture album.

 

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Your Grinch Name

December 4, 2007 planet3rry 10 comments

 

The three words that best describe you,
are, and I quote: “Stink. Stank. Stunk.”

What’s Your Grinch Name?

My Grinch name is:

Miserlygrinch Sourfoot

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Holiday Munchables

November 28, 2007 planet3rry 4 comments

Part of the Christmas Season Tradition for me has been to bake stuff. Anything that I could, whenever I could. Typically, I try to fall into the holiday genre of baking, such as the Gingerbread Houses, Gingerbread Cookies, Making my own Reese Peanut Butter Tree clones, Truffles, can’t think of any others right now. I made a red velvet cake Christmas tree one year.

So this year, the rules have changed. I now am baking my Christmas Munchables without regular flour (sans Gluten) and without Cow’s Milk (sans Casein). Okay, I might use some chocolate that might “techincally” have casein in it but for all practical purposes, it will be Casein Free with an asterisk, since this is the year of the “asterisk” (at least in Sports).

Here’s what I have on my list:

Truffles (made with Almond Milk)… yeah, who knew that Almonds had udders.

Monster Cookies – these are those cookies that you make in a huge batch in a huge dish that makes close to 1000 cookies. The only change I would have to make is 86 (leave out) the M&Ms and replace the Chocolate Chips with Dark Chocolate Chips. I think everything else is okay. Unless you are in the camp that Oats, could be “contaminated” with Gluten. I took the Blue Pill and think that Oats are okay.

Gingerbread House/Train – Now, I was reminded that we are going to borrow a train mold to create a gingerbread train for The Elder since one of his special interests is trains. The Younger, well, he gets one too because he’ll just repeat like a broken record “me me too, me me too” if he doesn’t get one. I was thinking that perhaps along with the train, that I would build something 3 dimensional. I would say 4 dimensions but I don’t want to scare anyone. I saw how my readership dropped off after I gave you that mathematical scare. Just remember that mathematics, when used for recreational purposes, can be enlightening. I was planning on making a 3 dimensional train, but I think the mold is just a boring 2-D thing… which is fine for the 4yo.

I was thinking about making a house of some sort, but wasn’t sure of what and how intricate I would want to make it.

Thoughts, Opinions, Rants or Raves?

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Christmas Music is playing in my head

November 26, 2007 planet3rry 5 comments

It’s Standard Operating Procedure in our household to break out the Christmas Decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving. We had wanted to include our Au Pair in this endeavor but she had gone to Washington DC for a road trip and honestly, that would be much more exciting, since they have Christmas in Brazil, but they don’t have Washington DC there.

Another thing that happens is that two of the local radio stations play Christmas Music all day everyday from Thanksgiving to Christmas and so we cranked up the radio in the kitchen to get the mundane but festive Christmas songs playing through the house. I did hear the Jeff Foxworthy 12 Days of Christmas but that was at 11pm.

We are going to be going to South Carolina for Christmas so we decided to forego putting up our 9 foot mammoth tree and all the decorations (hard) and put up the kid’s tree with wooden decorations (easy) instead. The kids loved it and we had a sensory activity for the kids with stringing macaroni on fishing line for do-it-yourself garland. We (read: really just My Lovely and Talented Wife) painted the macaroni and placed it on the tree. We have this HUGE bag of macaroni because before we were Casein Free, we’d take the Cheese Mix from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Cheese and Macaroni and mix it with Gluten Free Pasta… and it was good. So now we have this gallon size bag of macaroni for such crafts as Christmas Garland, maracas, snowflake macaroni decorations (read: throw handfuls macaroni onto tree), Macaroni Cushion decorations (read: throw handfuls macaroni onto couch) and the ever popular Macaroni Floor decorations (read: throw handfuls macaroni onto carpet).

The problem with all , most… eh, make that all mainstream radio stations is that the pool of songs to chose from is very very shallow. So, there might be a few Christmas songs in my 367 song library that I might be already tired of hearing. Thankfully the radio station (an Adult Easy Listening Station) has not played such songs as Christmas in Hollis by Run DMC, from the A Very Special Christmas album, the album that really started my love for Christmas songs and other “off mainstream” songs. I have some store credit at our local Book/Audio Book/CD/VHS/Video Game swap place and will probably score some more less mainstream Christmas music there. Don’t get me wrong, I have some mainstream and classic Christmas songs in my fave rotation.

Saturday, the kidlets and I (read: me) put up the outside light. We have some long netting white lights that we put out on our landscaping for a neat effect and some colored lights in the bushes. The driveway retaining wall is decorated with the lighted icicle lights but for some reason, only every other strand works. And seeing that we are going to South Carolina for Christmas, I’m not all that motived to check the lights.

Even here at work, I pulled up the grungy slightly used Christmas tree from the bellows of the house basement. I think I’m going to bring in some colored lights from home to make my desk area a little more festive. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry that some colored lights will be taken down because it’s not offending someone. Actually, I wish that someone here were I worked celebrated Chanukah, because I am totally ignorant about the whole Festival of Lights other than what I learned from Southpark and Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song parts 1 & 2. I need to learn more about Kwanzaa other than it would be an awesome Triple Word score in Scrabble. I hear there is even some who really celebrate Festivus and We have Freedom of Religion here in America and the corollary to that Freedom of Holidays, although I might get stoned (with rocks, not pot) if I wish the wrong person a Merry Christmas here on my home turf. Hmmm, I think some of the more uptight people could use a little pot to mello out over the next few weeks…

And so my Christmas Holiday season has started. I’ll be highlighting some of the traditions that I have personally (certain music, my Christmas baking etc) and I am sure that I will have some humorous stories about how Santa scares the pants off The Elder and The Younger… which sorta happened on Wednesday at the Fantasy of Trees.

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Now playing: Smoky Mountain Jazz Cafe – Various Artists – Noel
via FoxyTunes

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