Happy New Year!

We hope everyone is having a happy healthy start to the New Year.... Unfortunately we both were gifted and shared some Holiday sickness. More reasons for us to make up with small doses of celebration. Our usual cheese and meat platter dinner (when we don't have other dinner ideas) even feels festive enough.... Especially after Christmas brought us this sharp looking Vitamix, it's more fun to blend dips and such. Of course, we already made a batch of pina colada as soon as we felt healthy enough!

Christmas Eve

Sometime during my six-day stretch of work, I managed to bake a small batch of cookies. It just doesn't feel right with Christmas without making spritz cookies using my antique cookie press. I found out though I'm not much of a cookie decorator.
At last, I got everything I needed to complete at work done on this Christmas Eve, racing with time after a UPS drop off. So that's how an elf feels on every Christmas Eve! But within an hour of me getting off work, Joe had our special shrimp and steak dinner ready with a special bottle of wine. 

 It was also worth having whipped up homemade tiramisu yesterday morning as special dessert. Everything tasted so good that we didn't mind doing the dishes. Now it's time to sit and relax and watch "A Christmas Story." Merry Christmas to all!

It's Cold Outside!

It has snowed on and off since last post, but nothing major. Under 6" at a time, mostly an inch or two. Still, the temperatures have stayed cold enough that our massive snow banks are staying impressive. When it's REALLY cold, like today's high temp was 7 degrees, a hearty venison stew dinner with homemade dumplings feels just right.
This month of December is disappearing fast. I managed to rush to print our holiday cards the other day... but ink is still drying! 

Asides from finishing up the greeting cards to be mailed out, I am all done with my holiday gift giving preparation. I am hoping to make some cookies, but today was my last day off before Christmas. I hope to survive the next 6 days of work. Oh Boy. Wish me luck.

Yet Another Snow Storm

I survived another Black Friday weekend at work. When you work in retail, you have no desire to participate in such events. The only purchase we made over this weekend was a brand new snow blower. After 10 plus years of heavy use, it was time to replace ours before it died completely, and definitely before this winter storm started last night.

As they predicted we received another foot and half of snow over night. Simply impressive. (Disclaimer: the picture below was taken this morning, not recycled from the other day)

Thank goodness, I had this Sunday off from work. We had a lazy morning, letting it snow (the storm continued). Except I had picked out a new faucet for our kitchen for my birthday and patiently been waiting for Joe the plumber. Cooped up inside the house on this snowy morning, I couldn't wait anymore. Joe had to install it for me, and I tried my best assisting him. I love my new kitchen faucet to fit our retro (more accurately "just plain old") sink!

And guess what? It's still SNOWING!!

Thanksgiving!?

Happy belated Thanksgiving to you all!
We received LOTS of wet heavy snow on the day before... about 1 1/2 feet in 24 hours, during which we removed snow at least 3 times. All of the snow in the pictures came from one storm. And we are expecting another foot of snow later tomorrow, if you can believe it.

We ended up hosting a Thanksgiving gathering at our house. Since there were only four of us, Mom and brother Mark and us, it was easier to do an unorthodox no-turkey dinner at our place, including popcorn and toast (with homemade grape jelly) after Charlie Brown.

For the main feast, we had venison and salmon tacos with our usual Mexican fixings plus cranberry salsa and wild rice with morel mushrooms. We thought the original pilgrims would be proud of our table filled with our own catches (venison and salmon) and gatherings (grapes and mushrooms). But to be honest, we were most thankful that we never lost power at our house and that Joe's snow blower worked hard to clear our driveway.

Date with a Dead Deer

Joe's deer season lasted 3 days this year... but it was a good thing because he couldn't take time off from work this week. Still, he managed to have a morning off today to go on a little date. Our main destination was a new pastry shop 30 minutes south, but we first went to drop off Joe's deer to get butchered and processed. The temperatures have gone up, warm enough to rain today though it soon changed to light snow.

On such a wet grey morning it was delightful to have coffee and croissants and to visit with our good friend. A nice little recharge before the weekend is here.

Deer Season

It's hard to remember Joe sighted his deer rifle in his Hawaiian shirt the last weekend of October. This November has been pretty cold, temps dipping down to zero as in our normal January or February. A week prior to the opening day of deer season Joe got 20 inches of snow where he hunts, while we received only dusting up on the hill at our house (a rare occasion). 

Joe did have a very good reason to be excited about deer season though. A beautiful 8-pointer showed up regularly on his trail cam, chasing after does. The only problem was that he and all other deer moved around exclusively during the night. 

 The first two days of deer season were uneventful... as expected.

Day 3: this morning Joe shot this respectable 5-point. I wish I had gone along to take a nap again like yesterday... but I had a feeling that Joe might get a buck if I stayed home. Now we are going off to have celebratory drinks.