Grateful

I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week and Christmas is just around the corner. Time does fly by.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Any day where I get to eat and spend time with my family is fabulous, but it I especially love that day. We shouldn't need a holiday to remind us to be thankful, but I'm glad we have it.  I really love the song in White Christmas that says something about "when you can't sleep, don't count sheep, try counting your blessings..."

Of course I'm so very grateful for my family, my home, and that I have a good job. But there are so many other things. I'm just making this list on the fly so there are many more things I'm grateful for but here it is:

good neighbors, a car that works, my piano, 7 fabulous nieces and nephews, indoor plumbing, heat, electricity, my iPad, all of my wonderful friends and co-workers, my faith, my health, my trials, my bed, my down comforter in the winter, living close enough to family to see them often, books to read, good music to listen to, the beautiful fall weather...

Anyway, I could go on but I'll just say that I have been very blessed by my Heavenly Father and I'm very grateful for those blessings.

Another day gone

I wasted away the day by sleeping in and then spending some hours playing with my beautiful 5 month old niece, Katya. We went for a walk in the gorgeous fall weather and saw some llamas. Now I'm roasting pumpkin seeds and going to spend the evening at home, curled up with a book. In retrospect, the day really wasn't wasted after all.

Grandma's rolls

For as long as I can remember, my mom has made my Grandma Walter's crescent rolls for special dinners like Thanksgiving, Christmas, big family dinners, my birthday, etc. They are my very favorite rolls. Mom always got up early (sometime between 5 and 6 am) to roll them out so they could rise and then be cooked before it was time to use the oven for other things. To this day, seeing them sitting on the table under the white dish towels as they rise makes me happy.

I always used to think they were hard to make or took a lot of time. I remember there have been times when my mom made the rolls for my aunt's Thanksgiving dinner. Then I decided one day to take the plunge and learn to make them myself.  Well, they are super easy to make, and require no kneading. I think they might seem a little labor intensive because the dough has to be refidgerated over night and then they have to be rolled out and have to have about 5 hours to rise. Of course, I plan it out so I don't have to get up early to roll them out, but even that takes only about 30 minutes.

Mom still makes them better than I do, but she has 30+ years of practice on me.  Even without all the practice, they are dang good!

Applesauce

I helped my mom and dad make applesauce the other weekend. Mom has 2 apple trees. Homegrown apples and then homemade applesauce are so good. It's kind of a messy job (or maybe it's just us) but it's worth it in the end.

I took my bottles home and immediately made a batch spiced applesauce bread with pecans and chocolate chips.

Books I love, part 2

Another series of books that I really love is the Death In…  series by M.M. Kaye.  M.M. Kaye was born in India and was a British army wife who spent a good part of her life in exotic foreign places where her husband was stationed. She wrote mysteries or “whodunits” in some of the places she had lived.  The book are Death in Cyprus, Death in Zanzibar, Death in Kashmir, Death in the Andamans, Death in Berlin and Death in Kenya.  Goodreads gives them an order but they don’t need to be read in any particular order since they don’t have any characters or places in common.  I tracked down hardcover copies of every one of them some years ago through online used book stores and re-read them every couple of years or whenever I need a pick-me-up.

These books are a prime example of why I read. I will never be a British army wife and definitely not get to visit war torn Berlin, or Kashmir, or Kenya’s Rift Valley of those days, but for a few hours when I’m reading these books, I can be transported to a life vastly different from mine.  While they are works of fiction, I can get a glimpse of what life might have been like for women traveling in the 1940’s and 50’s or following a husband’s army regiment. Some of the language is a little old, as are the slang phrases, and can take some getting used to. I can see why not everybody would love them, but I do and would highly recommend them to anybody who likes historical fiction or cozy mysteries.

Autumn is my favorite time of year

A few of my fall favorites: pumpkins, pomegranates, leaves changing colors, cool nights, warm afternoons, hot cocoa, backyard campfires, apples and making applesauce, baking, spiced cider, warm blankets, and candy making at Thanksgiving.

But maybe my very favorite thing is to watch how summer fades away and is replaced by glorious fall days as nature slowly prepares to go to sleep for the winter.

This is definitely my favorite time of year!

Books I love

I just finished a book in a series that is fast becoming one of my all-time favorites and it got me thinking about other series of books that I really love.  One of the very earliest series that I read was The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. I believe I was in 4^th grade when my teacher, Mr. Jeppsen, read The Book of Three aloud to us. That book seriously changed my life.  I’ve always loved to read, but up to that time had read books like Ramona by Beverly Cleary, or the Childhood of Famous Americans series (I loved those books and read every single one my library had).  But.  The Book of Three opened up a new genre to me and introduced me to a world I had no idea existed. I was captivated. I loved Taran and how he wanted to be more than he thought he was. And then there were his friends, mentors, and trusty sidekicks: Elionwy, Gurgi, Fflewddur Fflam, Coll, Dallben, Doli, and Gwydion.  (ha ha… as a weird side note, I always thought that Gwydion should have married Aurora from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. J To my young mind, the 2 of them were made for each other, forget Prince Philip J. )

Anyway, I devoured the rest of the series and went on to love the fantasy genre and it wasn’t long before I was reading books by Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, just to name a few authors I read as  child/teenager.  I still have a soft spot for The Chronicles of Prydain. Its funny how, after all these years, Prydain is very much alive and as real to me as some of my own memories. Books are funny that way.