Christmas Party - Part One

Tonight was my annual Christmas open house. When I set the date months ago, I had no idea we would have an ice storm tonight.



Of course, ice doesn't deter some folks, so we had a party despite the ice.









Mark came down from Kansas City and brought his mom along. Kris and John came from Wichita with their friend, Tom. And Ray drove in from Pretty Prairie, which is about 25 minutes away. It was a fun night.

Fortunately, when this was forecast yesterday, I slowed down my cooking, so I didn't make nearly the amount of stuff I usually do. I had plenty - even have some left - but there wasn't the normal variety. But, I think everyone had enough.

Kris and I, of course, had to take our usual "cute girl pic." Greg obliged and then suggested we expand our group, which we gladly did. That's Trish, me, Kris and Andrea.



Mark's mom has never been to the party before. I hope she had fun. She and Julie were enjoying chatting.





Trish and Jim have their house on a homes tour for their church tomorrow. I'm not sure if the weather will cooperate for them or not.



I love this photo of Ray and me and how Green Santa is looking down on us, as if he needs to approve our discussion. Greg graciously took photos for me, but we missed a few people. And, as usual, I don't have any of Greg. I've got to remember to address that in the future.

And, I'll get another chance. We've decided to have the Christmas Party - Part Two next Saturday night. So, if you didn't get to come tonight, come next Saturday. Mia decided to head back to Joplin after a concert last night in Wichita, because there was such a huge ice storm predicted for the area between there and Joplin. I think she made the right decision because it looks bad. So, I just decided I'd have another gathering next weekend, when the weather is supposed to be nicer, and then she'll be able to come too. So, if you still have the invite hanging around, just cross out Dec. 8 and put in Dec. 15.

As requested by some party goers, here's the recipe for

White Texas Sheet Cake

1 cup butter

1 cup water

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

Frosting:

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup milk

4 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup chopped walnuts

In a large saucepan, bring butter and water to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in remaining cake ingredients. Pour into 15 by 10 baking pan - batter will be thin. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, until done. Cool for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, make frosting by combining butter and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil then remove from heat, add other ingredients and spread over warm cake.

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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

Party Weather - Not

I took the day off to prepare for my open house tomorrow. I made a trip out for groceries and settled in to cook. Of course, a little bit ago I discovered I was out of powdered sugar so had to go back out. How could I be out of something as basic as powdered sugar? Who knows, but I was.

I'm not making as much as I usually do because I'm guessing I may have a small turn out. We are under a winter weather advisory from midnight tonight until 6 p.m. Sunday. Of course, the weather people have proven many times they can't really predict the weather, so we'll see if it happens. I'm just going to prepare for things being normal and hope they are.

I'm concerned about Mia. She came out for the party. She and Greg had tickets to a concert in Wichita tonight and I'm wondering if she's going to be able to come to the party. Hopefully, we'll know more about the weather tomorrow, but I wouldn't want her to get stuck in a storm. It's miserable driving in ice.

Susan already emailed saying she's not coming, which of course I understand. It's a three hour drive from the farm here and it looks like there's some nasty weather between us. I haven't heard from Mark, but I doubt he'll come from Kansas City. It's a pity, but of course, I have no way of foreseeing such things when I'm picking a party date. Maybe I'll just do it again next weekend for whoever can come if this weekend is too nasty. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Well, I'd best go clean up the kitchen so I can wake up and start cooking again. It's so much nicer to wake up to a clean kitchen than one that looks like someone has been cooking in it for a few hours. I'm not a tidy cook. Not at all. Those food photos I show here on occasion - if you notice they're carefully cropped.

I think I'll mix up a batch of fudge before I go to bed. Then the only "must do" tomorrow will be an angel food cake.

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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

Quote of the Day - the Grinch, aka sage wisdom

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?  It came without ribbons.  It came without tags.  It came without packages, boxes or bags.  And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.  Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.  What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.  What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.  ~Dr. Seuss

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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

New Banners

Did you see the new banner at www.patsyterrell.com/blog.htm?



I made three new ones tonight - as if I have nothing else to be doing. Just because you're such a nice person, I'm going to preview them for you. I hope it doesn't ruin the surprise when they eventually show up as headers.

And, again, I can't suggest to you strongly enough that you keep a professional photographer handy at all times during the holiday season. It facilitates such things to have images stockpiled. When Greg isn't busy photographing Ace Jackalope, he is available for photos of other cool things - like Christmas goodies.






There's a few thousand dollars worth of graphic design training for you - pressed into service for something truly important - Christmas banners for my blog. Money well spent.

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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

Online Life and Real Life

When I first started blogging, someone who had been doing it for awhile gave me some advice, which I ignored. The advice was that you should not let anyone in your real life world know that you had a blog. She had abandoned three previous blogs because people she knew had gotten annoyed by something she wrote. For the past few years she has been blogging her life without anyone in her real life world knowing that they are being discussed online. And she discusses them in very raw terms.

I am just not a person who can have that sort of secrecy in life. I'm not exactly an open book, but I'm not good with secrets either. I guess I'm just middle of the road when it comes to my own life. However, I try to be respectful of other people's privacy and try not to ever say anything that would be hurtful or harmful to anyone. This means, on occasion, that I have to edit myself from saying everything I'd like to say, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff. It's much the same as you would do if you were talking with someone in person - I don't publish anything online that I wouldn't say to someone in person. And it's not always negative - sometimes I can't say something really positive about someone specific because it would put them in an awkward position with someone else.

Of course, I rarely mention anyone here except in passing - we went here, we did that, we talked about this, etc. etc. etc. Photos that include other people are limited to happy things like tea and bridal showers and afternoon walks and such. Whenever I talk about anything negative I do so in generic terms unless it's a situation that's long past like an old boss from my college days who was more humorous than horrible - at least in retrospect - and even then I don't mention names. College days would certainly fall into the category of "long past" in my life, and in this case I'm sure he's long dead by now, anyway. But, I digress...

I was thinking about all of this in the last few days when FaceBook retreated from its position on Beacon, which published what purchases members made online. MoveOn mobilized to get them to stop, and FaceBook did immediately, for which I give them credit. In the meantime, some people's Christmas gift surprises were spoiled, which is a pity. But, it made me think about the whole issue of our online lives and how they intersect our real world lives.

I see more and more opportunities for those lives to intersect and think that's where this whole thing is moving. In many ways I like that. There are a few people I've met in real life who know me only from the blog. It's interesting. My blog also keeps friends and family involved in my life, even though we don't see each other regularly. I think using the online world to enhance real life is one of the great values of it. 

I'm not a personality type that could keep a blog private, anyway, but I'm not sure why you'd even want to bother. These are all things that are being negotiated on a daily basis by people around the world. We live in interesting times.

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www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

Presents

A few years ago I started doing "themes" with my wrapping paper. Now it has become something of an obsession.

Add to this my unnatural love of paper of all sorts, not to mention designs - specifically Christmas designs - and what you end up with is an assortment of wrapping paper that could cover enough presents for a small army. OK, maybe a medium sized army.

The day after Christmas I turn into Robo-shopper. Considering how uninterested I am in shopping in general, this is somewhat amazing. But, I get up at dark-thirty and drive the half hour to Paducah, and wait in the cold outside whatever store, to make sure I get a good deal on something. I need a deal.

One of my finds last year was this paper. It has stars on it - one of my favorite motifs. Of course, this wasn't the only wrapping paper I bought last year. It seems each year I buy two or three designs, despite I'll only use one each year. You don't have to be a math whiz to see that this leads to lots of rolls of wrapping paper in my house. I'm always certain that I'll find something to go with something I bought years earlier that will make it a perfect combination. As of yet that has not happened, even though I've added at least a dozen rolls that were good contenders for that. But I remain optimistic.

In 1991 I started adding ornaments to packages for my family - with names and dates on them. Some years I made them and some years I just added that info to something I bought. This year I found these stars, which are the perfect match for the paper. You knew the ornament had to coordinate with the paper, didn't you? Surely you did.  Last year I had red paper with silver snowflakes on it and the ornaments were silver snowflakes. That was one of my best combos ever.

Then there are the ribbons and name tags to coordinate. For many years I just wrote names on the back of the presents with a sharpie because I didn't want anything to detract from the look. This year I bought two rolls of ribbon that were 100 feet each. That was almost enough to do all these presents. I had some other ribbon that I've used on a couple of them. How much ribbon it took to do all these presents was a question I was asked multiple times at the homes tour yesterday.

And I bet two dozen people asked me if the presents were real. Who has time to wrap empty boxes? I guess some people do. When I was thinking about the questions people might ask these were not ones I expected.

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Check www.patsyterrell.com for the blog, art, and more.

Through Other Eyes

It's always interesting to see yourself through other people's eyes. This is reprinted, with permission, from www.thelope.com. Frankly, I couldn't think of anything to add, defend or embellish.

By the way, Ace Jackalope is quite the Lope about Town (and Country). It's always worth checking out his adventures.

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See Patsy's Tree

Welcome to December!

Wanna see pictures of something cool, that you can actually go see in person?



If the Christmas season has a singular icon to me, it's my friend Patsy's tree.

Not the tree in the foreground, mind you.



This Tree

Over 10,000 lights.

About 2,000 ornaments.

All of it crammed onto a 7 1/2' tree that generates enough heat that you can feel it a few feet away.

Patsy's tree is often the focus of "excess" jokes among her friends...well, mostly me - but we all look forward to basking in its incandescent glow.

And you can too, Sunday, December 2 on the Reno County (Kansas) Mental Health Association's Christmas at Home Tour. Patsy is Executive Director of the association and has put her house on the annual tour as a refreshment stop.



I enjoy orbiting the tree with a camera, like a space probe recording the surface of an alien planet.



Many of her ornaments are souvenirs of road trips. This snowman hails from Quebec.



Of course, I love the starburst.



The soldier is a souvenir from a trip to London.



There are several Jesus'...Jesuses...Jesae(?) from a shop near the Vatican.





Rankin-Bass, how we do love thee.



Patsy's mom bought her this Avon Ornament back in the 1980s. It is one of the first ornaments Patsy got as an adult.



Our friend Mark got her this cow. Well, actually, he got it at the Kansas State Fair for someone else and Patsy latched onto it, chanting "It speaks to me, it speaks to me." It had to be this cow, and no other, mind you. Finally, he relented chose a different one for its original intended recipient.



Ace will be hanging out at Patsy's place. If you like, she'll take your picture with him and I'll put you on this blog.



Santae abound.



Personally, I like these vintage reindeer.



Father Christmas himself will be in attendance at one of the homes.

For information on tickets and the five houses involved, see the Christmas at Home Tour website, email Patsy at patsy@mharenoco.org or call her at 663-7772.