Christmas shopping

here's some decorations

she makesthese for ech diner guest. it hsastheir names on them

sorry, that ws a picture from two years ago but you see what i mean. christmas is our favorite holdiay and we do it up good. we are already playing christmas music all day and night. and what would christmas be without good food

last one

Herbie, I love your dining room! And there is no snow outside the window!
Sounds like your wife really enjoys the holiday, and the name place settings are great.

I must say with this thread, I am now getting excited. I usually wait until after Thanksgiving to start, but I might put my crystal tree up earlier this year. It's 4 ft, artificial, that I put on the counter in the kitchen with white lights and clear glass ornaments.

And your food pics are not fair as I'm sitting with my coffee and getting hungry - nothing like that here for breakfast!

the first pic is her meat pie and beliee i can eat that for any meal. the other pic is her home made crab sauce which we put on our pasta.

the dining room used to be our living room. when my boys moved out we took one bedroom and turned it into our living room. to be honest, the sectional couch looks better in there than it did in the "old" living room. my wife always wanteda forma living room and now she has it. the table is four x eight and we can fit almost 14 people at one time.

Onewish1, The Tree Incident was a slow motion horror show. I was standing on the other side of the room admiring the near finished tree and DH was off to the side as it fell. Nothing we could do. Our mouths opened, explicatives emerged , then slowly giggles came from both of us. When we started to right it, the most painful thing happened. Many more ornaments slowly fell through the branches and scattered when they hit the wooden floors. We did lose some old favorites, but mostly we relished the many special ones not lost. Here it was all rehung on Christmas morning.

Not doing the tree this year is a good thing. We won't lose a single ornament! I will miss my tree though. I hope I can buy a nice live something to decorate while in New Orleans and give it to someone when we leave.

debilu, you will love New Orleans in the spring. We went last April. Going again next April. When are you going? Seeing Herbie43 pictures makes me want to go today. But then his cooking always makes me drool. I must say he grows some mean looking tomatoes too.

Herbie, please post that crab sauce recipe. Patti

Patti we are going the first week of March when DH is out of school. We went once before the same week. It is a lot of fun and good food, and now, I want to go sooner too.

Beautiful, Herbie! Thanks for posting.

Debilu, perfect time to go south. I like March least of all in Nantucket and in Vt too. March is know as Hate Month here, as it is the month that every one who can leave does, and those that can't, hate being left behind. Also it seems it is a biggest month for breakups. In Vermont it is Mud Season. Need I say more?

But DS birthday is in April, plus Jazz Fest, so I will abandoned my beloved bulb show here for a week for great food and music and seeing our more beloved kid. I will love to hear about your trip. I read the New Orleans Chowhound site for the restaurant gossip and information.There is a new Po boy shop that most everyone is high on, Mahony's Po-Boy Shop. I don't post as my son is in the business and that violates the rules. I could post about other restaurants, but that might have people thinking I am biased if I don't love one of the other fine dining place. Of course I am even though I haven't dined at Curvee yet.

I also read Tom Fitzmorris website daily . http://www.nomenu.com/ Plus Brett Anderson. http://blog.nola.com/brettanderson/2008/10/fall_2008_dining_guide.html#more and a few others. Way to much food information.

Back to Christmas.

Here is the final picture of the ill fated tree after we took it down, so you can see why it fell. We had no idea when we bought it that is had such a crooked trunk. We thought we had it in the stand straight. You can see that we went out and brought in a big stone that we anchored it to the floor with and that we shimmed up the stand to try to level it. A Christmas to remember. Patti

Patti:

I loved your holiday tree story last year, and it still brings me to chuckles this year. Looking at your last photo, no wonder!!!

In that shot it reminds me of the pathetic looking cell phone towers that they attempt to make resemble trees!

Herbie...LOVE your dining room and yes please post that crab sauce recipe.

Patti, I could just picture the tree going down with you and our hubby standing there with you mouths hanging open. I feel for you losing those ornaments though.

When we have a live tree we put it in a big spackle bucket filled with sand and then wrap it in wrapping paper, holds the tree up much better( don't have to water as much either).

It is the Chrstmas Tree Shop that is about 25 mins from us. The only thing about them that I wasn't crazy about they had too much of one item..... for example.... I was looking for outdoor pumpkins(so we won't have to buy real ones every year) and they had 1 display of pumpkins near the door, not what I was looking for...2 aisles away you can see another display..go to check those out , oh they're the same ones they had in front ok, went to back of store down to another section, see another pumpkin display, oh same ones again , ok this is getting annoying, get to the other side of store(the place is HUGE) notice another display...do I even bother looking, yep sure enough same pumpkins. UGH!!!!!
Needless to say I never found my outdoor pumpkins.
Other than that I loved the store.

I could of kicked the pumpkins. Good thing I dont go there. Hour and a half drive!

Here is my turkey from the Christmas Tree Shop.

For my breakfast nook, I bought the large plates and placemats from Kohl's on Saturday.
Today, I bought the small plates and bowls from the CTS. They don't match exactly, but they were half the cost. I couldn't help myself.

Pretty close though. Do you like moose??^_^

not really

nice fall colors on the moose stuff though

Nice turkey.

debilu, I love Moose, just not on the Highway. I have come close to hitting one and they are really big. I use to see them up in Canada when I was canoe tripping as a kid, they are very majestic from afar, but awkward and menacing up close. I like the plates.

flowerjen, great idea about a live tree stand. I think I could do that for some other balled plants that I want inside for a short time. I want a live holly in the house some year and that would work great until I planted it outside.

Victor, that stubby tree is so easy to take outside without scratching the walls. Then DH drills holes in it and we hang it up filled with peanut butter for the birds. We saw that idea on a DG forum. Birds love it. I use the left over cut off branches in the garden around fall planted stuff. We don't have reliable snow cover, so I think it helps. Patti

Cool idea.

If we do a balled tree we use one of those big galvanized buckets(off season is used for ice for bbqs)

I like that idea with the pb.

Victor, forgot to say, I hadn't seen those cell towers made to look like trees until we took our ride out to Strasburg, PA

What about the birds with peanut allergies??

Jen, we have a few around here - unfortunately.

Victor, Or the nuts like you. Patti

Debilu ~ I love the moose breakfastware. Very charming.

Herbie, your pics from last year look great. Thanks for sharing. Makes me long for Christmas now, but I still can't listen to Christmas music or put up the tree till after Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll do that the weekend after. Don't know if I'll do Black Friday this year. Did it last year with a friend and went to the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, MA. I actually kinda enjoyed it. We had a nice lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. I love that place, though still haven't sampled any of their cheesecakes. I like the food there.

Victor, I saw one of those cell phone towers in Plymouth last week. First time I noticed it.

Jen, what are those big spackle buckets like? Are they the big 5 gallon ones?

One complaint I have about the Christmas Tree Shop. This year I bought 3 resin garden ornaments there. I put them in the garden, and all of the cracked, one very badly. I have not had this problem with other garden stuff I've gotten from them. I wonder if they would let me return them. It wasn't a matter of leaving them out over the winter, either, as I just got them this summer. Very cheaply made.

That is a very close match on the moose stuff that you got, Debilu. Very nice. My Alaskan sister would love those.

Karen

can't hurt to ask Karen... they might take them back

I think I will next time I go there. I just want a store credit, as there is always something there I want. They were very cheap, so it won't be much, but something is better than nothing.

Karen

Made in China, no doubt. Don't get me started!!!


Yes, 5 gallon bucket(usually from home depot)

Very good way to put up a tree, Jen. Much easier than the usual stand that is such a pain in the you-know-what.

Yes, those things were probably made in China.

Karen

A friend of mine told me about the bucket thing about 13 years ago and we've done it that way ever since. Gosh I'm getting old.

bbbrook - that is a georgeous tree you HAD there.

flowerjen - isthat the chrismass tree shop in paramus?? ws down thee a few weeks ago. it is much larger than the store in danbury ct.

as for the crab sauce -- i'm sure you all have your own recipe for the sauce so all you need to do is add crabs to the sauce as it cooks but before that you have to clean them and thats the hard part. after you boil them and let them cool you have to takethe top shell off, clean the insides and then add them to the sauce as it cooks. it's a lot easier if you use those king crab legs.