November and December

In November and December, we saw a lot of performances at the Kennedy Center, hosted some holiday dinners and had out of town company.

November 10th - We saw a concert with Lang Lang that was essentially a masters class for 100 local piano students between the ages of 8 and 18.  It was fascinating to watch him work with these students.  We had also had a first tier seat on the side so we could watch him play.

November 22nd - We hosted Thanksgiving dinner and all ate too much.

November 23rd - We saw Jekyll & Hyde, starring Constantine from American Idol in the lead.  This was a very enjoyable show.

November 27th - The Kennedy Center dedicated the new Rubenstein Organ with a free concert.  They showed a time lapse video of the installation of the pipe organ that was just amazing and the instrument is beautiful.

December 13th - Merry Tuba Christmas at the Kennedy Center.  This was the 39th anniversary of this holiday tradition founded by Harvey Phillips in which tuba, sousaphone, and euphonium players from around D.C. play traditional Christmas music.  It is always a packed event; the audience fills pretty much the entire Grand Foyer.

December 15th - The National Symphony Orchestra Holiday Pops concert, with New York Voices.  They made it snow inside the Concert Hall. 

December 22nd - Irving Berlin's White Christmas.  They changed some of the songs from the movie (my favorite holiday movie) and rearranged the story a little bit, but did get all the big numbers in there.  This time they made it snow in the Opera House.

December 23rd - The Annual Messiah Sing-a-Long.  My sister got here just in time for us to go to the Kennedy Center for the sing-a-long.  I've been trying to do this since I moved here and have never made it.  We had a blast!  They have soloists for the arias and restatives, and the audience sings the choruses.  The Kennedy Center has been doing the sing-a-long since 1971.

December 24th - We (Jim, Sara and I) went to the Newseum.  If you haven't been, this is one of the coolest paid entry museums in D.C. and totally worth the price.  Especially since the ticket lets you in on two consecutive days.  That evening, we hosted Jim's mom and sister for our traditional spaghetti dinner.

DIY Project

I don't know what it is about a holiday weekend that inspires me to do projects around the home, but it always does.  I thought about doing the kitchen back splash this weekend, but then my car's radiator sprang a leak and had to go to the shop.  I knew the back splash would probably be a multi-Home Depot-trip project, so I put it off in favor of this quick and easy one.

Before and After

All you need is a lamp or two that don't quite match your style, some painters tape, a drop cloth and one can of spray paint (Rustoleum Textured Metallic silver).  I covered the electrical part on top with aluminum foil and stuffed the cord in a ziploc bag, then taped the little bit that was sticking out.  Once I got the lamps all prepped and dusted, it only took about 10 minutes to do this, which is good, since it was hot as all get out today.

I am going to change the harps from gold to silver and I need to get new shades for them, otherwise I'd show you a picture of them back in the bedroom.  The old shades are not the bright white I want, but I think the bases came out great. 

Wait, the Bellagio, the Mirage...These are Terry Benedict's places.

Ok, I promised you Las Vegas day two.

On Tuesday morning, we decided to walk around and see some of the casinos and Sara had a bunch of gaming vouchers that she needed to cash. We headed off to the Bellagio, but the thing you have to know about Vegas is that although the casinos looks like they are all right next to each other, they are all a block or two big and you can't walk there without walking though other casinos or shopping malls or both. The point being that it took a long time to walk there, but we really wanted to go for two reasons. One, the ceiling in the lobby of the Bellagio there is a glass flower garden by the artist Dale Chihuly. The second reason is that we saw on HGTV that the largest Christmas tree on the Strip was in the conservatory.

Once we made it back to the hotel, we had lunch and then got ready for massages. This was almost the best part of the whole trip. I found a groupon deal for the spa in our hotel, Oleksandra, so I snatched it up. The spa was absolutely beautiful and very relaxing. Jim and I had a couples massage and it was his first massage. I was kind of surprised that he wanted to go, but he really enjoyed it.

Then it was on to see Cirque du Soleil at the MGM Grand. We saw the show KA, and it was by far the coolest thing I've ever seen. I can't even begin to describe it, but it was great and if you ever get the chance to see a Cirque show, please do.

After the show, we took the monorail back to Harrahs and got off there to walk the rest of the way back. We stopped at the Mirage to see the volcano show. Then we were back to TI for some more video poker. We were hoping to see the pirate show, but they don't do the last show in the winter and we didn't know it, so we missed out. Next time.

Since no trip to Vegas is complete without some Elvises, I'll end with this.

Viva, Las Vegas

This year was our first Christmas without my Mom. My sister and I were kind of at a loss as to what to do, since we usually spent the holiday at home. We were tossing around ideas and decided to do something completely different, so we went to Las Vegas.

We flew out on Christmas Day and had three hour layover in Milwaukee. We were really lucky that the weather was mild (we were worried that we would get stuck there with snow) and even more lucky that a friend of mine was able to come out the airport to meet us and let me monopolize her baby.

We got in very late on Sunday night and had Christmas with my sister and room service. We stayed at Treasure Island. She had been in Vegas for about 8 hours already and had done all kinds of reconnaissance for us. Then we crashed.

Monday morning, Jim and I went on a tour of Hoover Dam. This was really an amazing sight. The construction process and how they had to divert the Colorado River is just a marvel. We took the tour of the power plant and got to go 540 feet down into the dam. On the way back, we stopped at Ethel M Chocolates (the M is the Mars candy people). Unfortunately they weren't making candy because of the holiday, but we still got a sample and bought some chocolates.

Monday night, we had a fantastic dinner at StripSteak in the Mandalay Bay casino. Big thanks to whichever friend it was that mentioned the Black Friday deal on Restaurant.com, because we never would have eaten there otherwise. They brought us an amuse of duck fat fried potatoes with matching dipping sauces and Sara ordered the bacon lobster fritters appetizer. Jim had the biggest slab of steak I've seen in a long time. I had the loup du mer (sea bass) and my sister had an absolutely divine waygu rib cap steak that melted in your mouth. We all shared a side of bacon creamed spinach and scalloped potatoes.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about Tuesday.

Day #18

This is really the card for Sunday, but this weekend has been so messed up that we ended up doing it tonight. We love driving around and looking at holiday lights. My sister (wave hi, Sara) and family used to do this at home and she invented the term Christmas Craptactular to describe this particular type of holiday excess.

In the last week or so, we saw both of these houses on television and made it a mission to find them. The first one we saw on HGTV's Extreme Christmas: Bigger and Brighter. After the show, Jim somehow figured out who and where exactly this house was. We drove down there and there was a huge line of traffic, but so worth it. The lights were synced to music and if you tuned your car radio to the right channel, you could listen along to the show.

From there we went to the second house. This one we saw on the nightly news. Unfortunately, it was there because some teens were caught on home security vandalizing the display. The homeowner was out, handing out candy canes and talking to visitors. He said that whatever those kids were up to backfired, because he never had more support and help from the neighborhood in restoring the display. However, this will be the last year that they do the decorating, as it is just too much work. I'm really glad that we made it by.

Christmas Countdown

Do you remember those paper chains you made when you were a kid to count down the days til Christmas? This is a grown-up version of that. I saw this idea on Pinterest and I knew immediately that I wanted to do it for Jim. December ends up being so busy that sometimes we don't spend enough time appreciating each other in all the hustle and bustle. This countdown is just a daily reminder of how much I love my husband.

I took scrapbooking paper and made a card for December 1 through December 25. Then I took the calendar and and started planning my notes for the backs. Two-thirds of the cards have compliments on them. The remaining one third are either fun holiday activities or small things I can do for him. I made sure that I knew which days were weekend days, so that I could put activities on days when we could stay up later or when we had more time.

I can't show you any of the card backs, because he hasn't seen them yet, but I will give you some ideas that I didn't use. For compliments, you could say something like I love the way you look in that blue sweater. It really brings out the color of your eyes or I love that you always make time to have a tea party with our daughter/niece/godchild. Some examples of activities are a date to go ice skating or have an epic snowball fight. Making the dinner/dessert of his choice or doing a chore that he normally does would be great ideas, too.

The idea originally came from the blog The Dating Divas. The cards are hanging on the dining room wall and I think they add a cheerful decoration to an otherwise blank space. I hope Jim enjoys his Christmas countdown.

Turkey Rice Soup

My Mom always made turkey rice soup with the leftover turkey bones from Thanksgiving. I used to complain about this soup when I was growing up, but this year I decided I wanted it. I called my sister and asked her to look through Mom's recipe boxes and see if she could find it. No luck. Add this to the long list of little things that I wish I had asked Mom for or about.

I could remember that it started with the carcass and had tomatoes, rice, carrots and probably onion, because everything did, so I started with that and asked Google for some recipes. I found one that looked close, so I started there. I think I got pretty close.

Turkey Rice Soup

9-10 lbs turkey (bones and trimmings)
2 1/2 qts chicken stock
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground pepper (fresh)
1 cup converted rice (regular) - I used a bag of boil in the bag rice
3 carrots (thinly sliced)
1/2 medium onion (diced)
1 bay leaf
14 oz can diced tomatoes (undrained)


Break up turkey to fit in a 5 quart Dutch oven; add the water, salt and pepper and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

Remove bones and meat from broth and cool until you can handle it, then remove the meat from the bones and cut it into bite-sized pieces.

Skim the fat from the broth, then add the meat, tomatoes, rice, carrots, onions and bay leaf to the broth and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes or until the rice, carrots, and onions are tender.

Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Operation Christmas Child

This project has been my official kick-off to the holiday season for the last ten years or so and I really love it. Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse International Relief, an organization run by Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son.

Here is how you pack a shoe box. First, decide if your box is for a boy or a girl and what age - 2-4, 5-9, or 10-14. Next, get an empty shoe box. You can use a regular cardboard box, but I like to use a plastic one, because it can be used for something else later.

Then you fill the box with school supplies (I like to get these during back-to-school sales),

hygiene items, and

then the fun stuff (toys, small flashlights, batteries, hard candies)

I need pencil sharpeners, combs, maybe playing cards and some more candy, and then these boxes are ready to go. There are a few rules for what goes in a box. They don't want you to seen war toys because these kids see enough of that, so no army men, cowboy pistols or any of that stuff. They don't want you to send chocolate, liquids or breakable items (for obvious reasons).

Once your box is packed, label it and take it to a drop off location, along with a check for $7 to offset the cost of shipping them. This year OCC is doing something new. If you donate your fee on line, they send you a special label with a bar code that will let you track where you box goes. I'm very excited to try this out.

If you want to pack a box, you still have time. Drop off continues until Monday, November 21.

Happy Easter

I just wanted to take a minute to wish you all a Happy Easter.

Thanksgiving Before and After

We had my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and brother-in-law's brother over for Thanksgiving today. It is so nice to have a house that is big enough to have people over for the holidays.

This is a picture of the table set before it was was heavily laden with food. We used my Mom's china on my Great-Grandmother's table.


And this is what the kitchen looks like after turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, sweet potato souffle, stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie and carrot cake.


We have a lot to be thankful. I hope everyone had a great day with friends and family.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Valentimes Day!