As luck would have it, I found beeswax (in two different forms, blocks and little pellets, which are more desirable) at JoAnn's today for about half of what I paid yesterday at Whole Food's. Of course I had to buy some, and no, I haven't attempted the lotion bars yet. Probably won't get to that until the weekend.

I don't know if I'll ever get used to not calling it JoAnn Fabrics. I've gone to these stores since I was a little tot accompanying my mom, so it's hard to get used to the change. The website, which I haven't visited previously, is actually pretty useful, especially if you don't receive the sale flyers in the mail.

I've spent far too much time reading other people's weblogs today. I'll try to post links to some of my favorites soon. I've enjoyed reading weblogs in the past, but never really got into it until the past few weeks when I was moved to give it a try myself. I'm not really sure which direction this one will take, so your guess is as good as mine. I want to put a comment posting feature on here, but I'm not sure how to do it yet.

Happened upon a good instructional beading site today: Ruby's Jewelry Design and Beadwork. I like the Cecile's Wheel pattern and would like to try it in blue and white/crystal as the design reminds me of snowflakes. I was also pleased to find instructions for the sliding knot. I have a variation of this closure on a purchased bracelet and I've always been curious of how to create it.

Made it to Whole Food's today to get some bee's wax. It was kind of expensive - $22/lb! I'm sure I can find it online for cheaper, but of course, I had to have it now so I can try making one of the three lotion bars that were posted on the Get Crafty message board last week. I hope they turn out well. My plan is to give them as Christmas gifts and I'll probably try Lotion Bar recipe #2 first because I have all of the ingredients.

As promised, here's a link to a photo and some verbage about the first tabletop fountain I made.

The four day weekend flew by and now it's back to work and the standard routine, with the added distraction of holiday preparedness. Speaking of which, we put up our outdoor Christmas lights over the weekend. If I do say so myself, they look great.

After Christmas last year, we stocked up on discount priced lights at Target. I made that proclaimation that white lights were on the way out and we would see a resurgence of colored lights - at least at our house. It seemed like everyone had white lights last year, and while I think they are very pretty, it's nice to have to see a little color/variation from yard to yard. I bought the bigger (C-7 size, so not the biggest) "old fashioned" lights in translucent multi color bulbs to put in the trees in our front yard. We stuck with the white swags for the eaves of the house - these are the biggest pain to untangle right out of the box! I also added blue and frosted white globe lights to the front hedge. It might sound a little hodge-podge-ish, but it really looks nice.

When I zipped home for lunch today, I found the wreath I ordered from Central Maine Wreath. It smells wonderful. I ordered from these guys last year too and highly recommend them. Their prices are good and shipping is quick. I've gotten the "Economy Wreath" and been very please with it. Don't be fooled by the name, this is a nice sized, very lush pine wreath. Funny that it was cheaper than the fake ones I saw at Target this weekend. I know you can re-use the fake ones year after year, but they don't smell nearly as good.

Last weekend I made a couple of tabletop sized Christmas trees, complete with lights and decorations out of wire hangers - don't tell Mommy Dearest! - and garland. They came out very nice. I did one in traditional green w/white lights and a second one in white with blue lights. These would make a really nice decoration for a dorm room, someone in a nursing home or for an office. You can find pictures and well written instructions at My Christmas Projects.

At Target over the weekend, I picked up some clearance items to make another tabletop fountain - now all I need is the pump which I should be able to get at Michael's. Items from Target - bright blue, cermaic, rectangular "tray" with a dragonfly embossed on the corner. It's really a shallow dish and was in the garden section, where they have all of their "summer" pots on clearance along with containers of smooth stones. The stones I got are white with a little brownish-amber in them. Of course, I have no idea what I would do with another fountain except give it as a gift. Hmmm... who on my list would want one? I'll try to get a photo of my last fountain up on the picture page and stick a link in here without further ado.

Phew, I'm still stuffed and it's almost 11:00 p.m.! We both agreed that this was the best Thanksgiving meal, possibly best meal of any kind, that we've ever prepared. Everything was great! We started cooking around 9:30 a.m. and just kept at it until it was all done.

Tried some new stuff with the bird this year, maybe we did some of this last year too, but I can't remember. According to Alton Brown's method (see the brining link in the previous post) the turkey was started in a five hundred degree oven for thirty minutes, then the temp was dropped to three fifty and the breast was covered with foil to prevent overbrowning. We also added a broth/water mixture to the bottom of the roasting pan - Tom turkey was up on a rack. The idea behind this is to allow the bird to soak in some of the steamy moisture that rises during roasting. The ultimate benefit was that there were tons more pan drippings and therefore tons more gravy. Because, as you may know, there is rarely enough gravy for the other copious leftovers. This gravy was the best that I've ever made.

My pumpkin pie also turned out great. I use the recipe found in the latest "Joy of Cooking." I'll post this over on my recipe page someday, now I'm too tired. I ran into a glitch because I didn't have any ground ginger for the pie. I did, however, have some crystallized ginger, so I figured I could just zizz it up with the mini-processor attachment for my stick blender. Well, at the beginning this worked OK, but if you process, it becomes warm and the sugar starts to melt and you end up with ginger taffy. To combat that I added a little of the pumpkin into which I had already mixed the cream and eggs to the mini-processor. It had the desired effect of giving the ginger mass something to dissolve into. This was such a great success that I added all of the spices to the mini-processor. It was much easier to get the spices fully incorporated into the pumpkin mixture this way and I didn't end up with lumps of spices in the pie filling. Another innovation was using the stick blender to puree the cooked pumpkin, as I recently sold my food processor at a yard sale. I figured I never used it, forgetting that I use it every year for pumpkin pie (I also could have used it for the turkey liver pate, oh well I made due) and I think the stick blender product is superior. The cooked pie filling is so much smoother, really silky and not at all grainy as pumpkin pies sometimes are.

OK, now am truly am too tired to go on. All of that home cooking has finally caught up with me.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good night.

Inspired by Megan's Not Martha and Project Annie's websites, I am re-re-re designing this site which has been under constant re-design for longer than I would like to admit, so let's get on with it. I'm just going to write about whatever Krafty Krap that I'm up to at the moment and go from there.

In anticipation of tomorrow's Thanksgiving Day celebration, I went to Central Market, our local gourmet-ish grocery store yesterday and picked up Tom Turkey and the Liverettes for their command performance tomorrow. I got a 12 lb fresh turkey and some extra turkey livers to make turkey liver pate with. I know, I know, a lot of people aren't crazy about pate or liver, but this stuff is good. Granted, pate is an acquired taste. My stepmother and her mother before her used to make turkey liver pate every Thanksgiving, so it's just something that makes it more Thanksgiving-ey. Here's my method.

What else is on the turkey day menu you ask? I'm a traditionalist when it comes to holiday meals, so all of the standard food from my childhood will be included. We'll have cranberry sauce (from scratch, it's better and super easy - just cranberries, sugar and water, directions are usually on the bag of berries and it's so fun - OK, shows how lame I am - when the berries pop as the mixture boils) mashed taters, gravy of course, I like to use Alton Brown's method of gravy making - it's a little more work because you make a roux to thicken instead of using traditional (at least in my family) cornstarch or flour, but it tastes better. We also brine the turkey a la Alton Brown. There will also be the traditional pumpkin pie and real whipped cream. I do the pie from scratch too, the pie "guts" anyway, I use a real pumpkin which I bake in the oven to get the pumpkin goop. To prove I'm not crazy or a Martha Stewart wannabe, I use plenty of convenience products too - refrigerated pie crusts, brown and serve rolls (it's what grandma always had), Pepperidge farm stuffing stuff - I add sauteed onion, celery and mushrooms, and we're also having a French silk chocolate pie from Marie Callender's. If you've never had one of these pies, I highly recommend that you try it. It's a chocolate cookie crust, with yummy, rich fluffy chocolatey goodness inside. Oh and there's also the standard green bean casserole, I'm not so crazy about it, but my guy likes it a lot, speaking of him, he will make delicious caramelized onions. He uses those little onions that come in a jar - Aunt Nellie's brand is what we get here - and sautes them in a pan w/butter and a little sugar, after a while they start to carmelize and get this delicious brown coating - they are heavenly! OK, I'm drooling on myself now, better get away from the keyboard and find some lunch!!