Thanksgiving and Books

We had a pretty nice Thanksgiving all things considered. We slept in a bit, spent most of the day alternating between cleaning up, cooking, and just hanging around the house. A handful of friends joined us for dinner, along with my husband's brother and his wife who ended up having to cancel travel plans due to a combo of car problems and bad weather.

We tried some new recipes and everything turned out great. Around 4pm we started Firefly on Netflix and just let it run all evening in the background for party entertainment. The cats stayed out and cuddled until we took the turkey out of the oven. After that they were in the office until after dinner. For the most part they did great with a crowd in the house. We haven't really had big groups of guests since we adopted Curry, but snuggles were enjoyed by all.

I survived all four days of Black Friday sales at work with minimum damage. My feet are still sore and I mostly just want to stay in bed with a book for like a week . . .  Speaking of which, its time for book reviews and I will admit that I haven't been able to finish much this month. But reading is one of the ways I relax so it's been important for me to make at least some time for it.

No-Churn Ice Cream: Over 100 Simply Delicious No-Machine Frozen Treats by Leslie Bilderback

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This seems like an unusual choice for November but for some reason my husband always craves ice cream when it's cold outside. This book has a large variety of recipes using a small set of no churn methods. All of the instructions seem easy to follow and flavors range from traditional to kind of bizarre. Traditional flavors include basic vanilla and chocolate as well as a variety of fruit flavors. On the more unusual end there is berry with blue cheese and lobster vanilla. We haven't tried any of these yet but the weather actually just turned cold this week so I'm sure Bear will want to make some any day now.

Crochet One-Skein Wonders by Judith Durant

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Crochet is one of my crafting skills that I'd like to improve but the idea of taking on a big project like an afghan is just a bit overwhelming. I checked this out from the library thinking it might have some good practice projects. There are really a lot of good projects here but I rated it slightly lower because so many of them fall into the same categories such as scarves or gloves and I don't know that I want to make multiple scarves for myself. I know that I could give items as gifts as well so that would make it better but it still feels somewhat limiting. We also don't have kids or many friends with kids so those projects aren't of much use to me personal either. Overall though I like the projects and the instructions are good so I still would consider this book a valuable resource.

All of the rain and ice this weekend prevented us from getting out to pick up a Christmas tree. I would like to get one before next weekend but with our work schedules that may or may not work out. We haven't decided what kind of color combo we want to go with this year so I've set up a poll where you can weigh in over on the Facebook page. I hope to finish up both my dress and husband's shirt for when we see the Force Awakens by the end of the week. I can get them done soon I'll make a tulle petticoat for under the dress as well.