Merry Little Christmas
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The day indeed was merry, festive and bright, celebrated with great food, drinks and family. Here are just a few photos.
Queen of Peace
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Trinity Heights in Sioux City, Iowa offers more than two dozen shrines, memorial garden spots and quiet corners for prayer and reflection on the grounds of former Trinity College and high school.
Two impressive statues anchor Trinity Heights on each end — the Immaculate Heart of Mary Queen of Peace and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Family Project
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A repin on Pinterest set the ball rolling for a Christmas weekend family project. After multiple trips to Lowe’s and Menards, my brother, dad, mom and I measured and sawed the pine pieces, assembled the form (with quite a few modifications), sanded the edges and tested different colored stains. After another couple days of applying wood stain and several coats of varnish, we assembled the finished desk in the office. Made in the U.S.A.
Constructed desk on 12/26/2012:
Finished desk on 12/31/2012:
Cardinal
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With this cardinal, the tables are turned on bird watching. This bird loves people watching. For the past five weeks, he’s tapped on my parent’s kitchen window from sunrise to sundown every 10 minutes or so when the bird sees someone sitting in the kitchen. The cardinal repeatedly taps on the window 3-4 times on each attempt to enter the house. He’s well fed so it’s not like he’s begging for food, yet he’s undeterred. Bird brain.
Pampered Chef
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My friend Mai gave me a housewarming gift: a Pampered Chef apple peeler/corer/slicer. It’s the best, and now I can easily make more of these. Pampered Chef makes pretty cool kitchen tools…so much so that I have a dedicated kitchen drawer for those things. I should probably host a kitchen show, huh?
Front Window View
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A view of Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis and Vincent’s and also Brit’s Pub from the window of Target Plaza Commons.
Minnesota Christmas cookies
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My alter ego chef should be called The Midnight Baker. Some nights I have an extra surge of energy around 9:30 or 10pm, which was when I started making these sugar cookies for my coworkers. I may have purposely broken a few, for tasting purposes in the name of quality control, of course. Even the “rejects” passed, if I do say so myself.
Lowe’s
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When I bought my first home this past August, I had no idea how many trips I’d take to hardware stores–Menards, Home Depot and most notably Lowe’s. I’m there regularly enough to be an employee. It’s amazing (and impressive actually) how much work we’ve done on the house in the first four months, thanks to help from my mom, dad, uncle and aunt. Pretty soon, I can complete my “To Do” list…at least for 2012.
Friendship Bread
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Amish Friendship Bread (which isn’t really Amish) is like chain mail for your oven. A starter mix of yeast ferments and grows on your counter over 10 days. At the end, you bake a loaf and divide the extra uncooked mix into three bags to give away to friends. Or you break the chain and bake multiple loaves. Done.
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