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The more we get together… together…..together,

The more we get together the happier we’ll be!

My good friend and author Sudè Khanian is hosting a giveaway to celebrate the holiday. She asked me to join the celebration and I had to say yes!

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season so far!  I haven’t been a very good blogger lately and posting has been sporadic the last month or two, even for me.  In a nutshell life has been unusually hectic except for this week which has been gloriously slow-paced; I no longer feel like I’m constantly on the verge of having an anxiety attack.  I’ve also been considering re-thinking my blog, its purpose, etc., and haven’t had a lot to say or was feeling too lazy to write, snap photos and the like.   (I’m still in this mode actually.  These photos were taken with my phone and I didn’t even bother to open Photoshop to edit them, ha.)

Anyway, I hosted Thanksgiving for my parents which was nice especially now that we’ve got a real grown-up table, perfectly rustic and charming.  Out came Grandma and Granpa’s wedding china, their Wedgewood candlesticks (that you can see are still there because they look so festive), and a big leafy bowl to show off persimmons from Mom’s garden (she said she left the stems on because she knows I like that sort of thing).

Now it’s onto Christmas.  I HAD to share this darling old-time kitty that came in a set I bought on Etsy.  Isn’t it sweet?  I favorited another item from this shop months ago but at the time I thought it was actually vintage, I had no idea there was such a wonderful variety of these newly crafted ornaments until I spotted them on the Design is Mine blog.

Do you have any plans for this weekend?  For one thing I am NOT working!  I have to say I’m looking forward to catching up on some sewing.

Fox with toothpick.

Shady character, up to no good or innocent (t-shirt-wearing) woodland creature, practising good dental hygiene after Thanksgiving feast?

You decide.

SkADaMo and PiBoIdMo slightly slowed down but schlogging ahead!

We’ve come into the season of holidays; Thanksgiving gives way to Christmas and moves inexorably to New Years. For centuries this season has stood for blessings, fellowship, and unity; if not in actuality, at least on the surface.

This time around something has gone off the tracks. Everyone is edgier, ruder, more desperate. One could attribute this holiday syndrome as an ever-increasing out-pouring of the stress felt by countless millions of people who don’t know what the next year will bring economically, politically, or within the family.

The question is: Why has our population become seemingly unequipped to keep themselves under control?

Our forefathers for centuries lived with the knowledge that nothing in this world is certain. Life and their own common sense taught them to plan for those lean times, rely only on necessities, especially when luxuries cost so much more than most could pay. They lived with few clothes for each member of the family.

A father with more than two pairs of pants, one work shirt and one for Sunday, and who could give the same for each of his family, was a wealthy man by the standards of the time.

A mother who didn’t lose at least two children to stillbirth, illness or injury before they were five years old was truly blessed. Children who still had both birth parents to attend their weddings, complete with cake and a bride’s veil, could remember that for the rest of their lives.

If one owned a small cabin or house, with enough land to provide a kitchen garden that would produce enough food to put away for winter stores, wealth was clear. Size of the home didn’t matter. Everyone would have a place to sleep, warm and secure when cold and snow took over the outer territory. The living room/family room/kitchen, etc. occupied one space, all of which might have measured 15×20 feet. A loft was always necessary for sleeping nooks for the children.

When the world industrialized and cities became the working world for many, credit became common for those who always paid their bills on time. The 1929 Depression and subsequent lean years didn’t teach everyone the price of greed. People afterwards merely moved to different avenues for making money.

By the early 21^st Century we’ve become barbarians in subtle ways. Take the incidents these past couple of days across the country. People, so absorbed in their passion to buy the latest and greatest for the cheapest price available, have been willing to kill or maim others to get to a desired item first.

Headlines in the news: Woman pepper sprays others, injuring 20 people, to get to a xbox on sale. Shoppers, anxious to get into a store for first pickings, dismantle a door and trample to death a young woman standing ready to open the door at the appointed time. A man is shot in a store’s parking lot during a sale.

Question: Have we become barbarous murderers in the name of possessions? Or, has greed so possessed our people through constant consumerism propaganda that we’re desensitized to our own actions?

Incidents like the above are on the increase, and not just at this season. When will be grow out of this selfish adolescence and back into the adulthoo

Do you have a favorite story about Thanksgiving?  Something that happened at the table?  Something that happened on that day?  Or, do you have a folktale that reminds you of the joy of a grateful heart? One story that I love to tell during this season is the Japanese story, "Roly-Poly Rice Ball".  I found this story in Margaret Read McDonald's Twenty Tellable Tales.

The story has a common theme. One woodcutter is rewarded simply because he shared his lunch willingly with someone and was grateful for the gift he received.  His neighbor is punished for demanding a similar reward and showing bad grace when he received it.

The greedy are often ungrateful and the ungrateful are likely to be greedy.  The grateful, on the other hand, understand how to accept a gift and how to share it. 

My apple pie looked every bit as good as this!

As always, Thanksgiving, was a time for being grateful for all the wonderful blessings that’ve been presented to us this year and all the years before…to get together with family and friends…followed by a slight feeling of regret that I may have ate a little too much. But nonetheless it was a great weekend. Our turkey?

A success!

Rave reviews about our very first turkey! So awesome. Thank goodness for the internet and showing us the perfect way to brine this massive bird. It was deeeelicious, we’ll definitely be sticking with this recipe for the future. Even my niece Chloe grabbed a second helping and her mom said she didn’t like turkey. As of yesterday, we are officially out of leftovers.  YAY!

Hope everyone had a great start to the holidays as well! 

After all the lovely, salty, Thanksgiving feasting and the ensuing, weeklong grazing of leftovers, I now look in the mirror and I see a blowfish.

A blowfish!

It’s time to deflate with some nice, healthy salad, methinks.

The fact that this week’s Illustration Friday theme is “round” is no coincidence, is it?

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 23, 2011

An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving

By Louisa May Alcott (Author), Jody Wheeler (Illustrator)

Reading level: Ages 4 and up

Hardcover: 40 pages

Publisher: Ideals Children’s Books (2010)

Source: Library

What to expect: Thanksgiving, Fall, Family, Tradition

Although Transcendentalist author Louisa May Alcott is primarily known as the creator of Jo March, the determined heroine in her classic novel Little Women, she penned over thirty books in her lifetime. Her short story An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving is a heartwarming selection for the holiday season. When the good-natured Barrett family are beginning to make preparations for their Thanksgiving celebration, Mrs. Barrett is called away suddenly to attend to her ailing mother. She puts her eldest daughter Tilly in charge of cooking the feast in her absence. Tilly undertakes this colossal challenge with confidence and the help of her siblings, but fails to pay attention when stuffing the turkey with catnip and neglects to add sugar and salt to the plum pudding. As her little sister Prue is prettily setting the table, her brothers discover a bear coming toward the house. Wielding axes and rifles out the door, the boys are shocked to find Tilly’s sweetheart in disguise. Disaster averted, Mrs. Barrett returns with cousins and aunts and uncles in tow and the happy news that their Grandma is well. The entire family savors the delicious dinner, despite its few shortcomings, and praise Tilly and her siblings for pulling off a Thanksgiving they will always remember. The Barrett family has much to be thankful for- their family and friends, good health, and love and laughter. Old-fashioned or not, you’ll enjoy reading this delightful tale with your family.

Add this book to your collection: An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving

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Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, 

Some would argue my life has been moving in fast-forward lately, so this whole rush-rush to the Christmas season is just normal. Right? Wrong.

Okay, yeah, the past month has been lived in chaos. First, there was Halloween, and what a glorious spook-fest it was. Then, a whole week passed that I don’t remember because I was too busy thinking about my wedding. Then, the week of November 7th, my whole family descended on Phoenix. I got married November 12th. Jake and I had a mini-honeymoon in Flagstaff for four days, post-wedding. We got back last Friday, and people were talking about Thanksgiving, which made me wonder, “Why are people talking about Thanksgiving already?” Oh, right, because Thanksgiving is tomorrow.

The sudden arrival of Turkey Day is not what distresses me most. I am most distressed by the pre-Thanksgiving arrival of CHRISTMAS! In the middle of November, Christmas music was already playing on the radio. I won’t name the store (it rhymes with Blood-Bath and Beyond), but they had their Christmas decorations up when I went to buy an Autumn Leaves Yankee Candle—in autumn. There are horrendous marketing campaigns already on TV, filled with glowing trees, snow, and people in scarves. I have to mute them, because I don’t understand why we’re skipping Thanksgiving.

You can blame it on the bad economy. Marketers think the sooner they get their ads up, the sooner their sales will soar. They don’t realize there are people like me out there who refuse to buy certain products simply because the commercials bug me—which is why I can’t buy Charmin toilet paper. I hate those commercials with the baby bear covered in left-over poopy-paper on his butt. No. So dear marketers, here’s a note: you’re making me feel very un-Christmassy with all your stupid ads in November!

Thanksgiving is an amazing day. It is a day we are expected to fill with eating, beer, and football. That’s all! What a great day! We’re supposed to think about all we’re thankful for—and as Americans, we have a crap-ton to be thankful for. It’s a day to relax with family before the Christmas hubbub threatens our calm. And yet, the world is trying to run it over.

Now, maybe this happens every year. Maybe the Christmas madness always begins in late October … Wait, NO! NO! It can’t possibly always begin this early! If it has, how did I never notice it before?

Not only does this concern me because of my love for Thanksgiving. It concerns me because Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year, and Christmas peace and joy will NOT subdue my horror movies and haunted houses! If we’re not careful, we’ll be celebrating Christmas all year, and we’ll all go broke, and our faces will hurt from being cheerful all the time, and Santa will lose a ton of weight because of all the stress, until he finally retires from extreme exhaustion and then, there will be no Christmas at all! Because of YOU, marketers, retail stores, and radio stations!

This is a call to action. I demand you live in the moment tomorrow. I demand you acknowledge the insane awesomeness that is Thanksgiving, because it is not a holiday to be missed—even if Christmas is trying to elbow its way in. It is a day to be thankful, so enjoy it. Give lots of hugs. Overeat and drink. And be sure to root for the De

Check out all the stops on the first half of my tour. I have learned so much about myself and my characters just by answering the thoughtful questions. Thanks to everyone who has commented and to the tour guides who have been very insightful in their reviews and posts! 

• Nov 11 - melissa walker Cover Story
• Nov 13 - Readinista (Exciting YA books of Nov 2011)
• Nov 14th - Lori Lee on (What makes a good book signing) and Kriston Johnson (Getting to know the author/ Review)
• Nov 15th - Kelly Polark (The Beats of Writing - using music)
• Nov 16th - Karly Kirkpatrick (Guest post on Author Journey)
• Nov 17th - *Once Upon a Twilight (Book Review)
• Nov 18th - DL Hammons (Talking about marketing over Cyber-Coffee), Unicorn Bell (Book Review),  4 Comments on What I'm Thankful for..., last added: 11/27/2011