Day Three Hundred: Lucky Grapes

Can you believe three hundred days have passed?  It's been a blur, and I can hardly believe I'm nearly finished with this crazy long little project.

At any rate, Happy New Year!  I'm rather belated with my felicitations, but do forgive me.  I've been just a tad busy gaining ten pounds.

Or so it feels.

I did, however, have time to read up on all the Lucky Foods one is supposed to eat either at Midnight or on New Year's Day.  If you eat all these foods, you'll definitely gain ten pounds, if you haven't already.

:Puts Weight Watchers on Speed Dial:

One easy and low-calorie idea is Martha's Lucky Grapes.  In Spain, revelers mark the New Year by quickly eating a dozen grapes at midnight.  The fruits are a predictor of the year ahead:  each sweet grape represents a good month, each sour grape a not-so-lucky one.

Martha suggest skewering your grapes and serving them in a glass of champagne.  Hers looked like this:

Mine looked like this:

Now seriously, this is a pretty tall Champagne glass.  I'm not sure if Martha used miniature grapes or if her Champagne glass is like a Big Gulp, but my drink looked ridiculous.    

But all my grapes were sweet.

Day Two Hundred Ninety-Four: Eggnog Cheesecake Bars

Merry (belated) Christmas!

I didn't host Christmas dinner at my home this year, so I was responsible for only a small part of Christmas dinner.  I was assigned a couple side dishes, namely this recipe for Savory Spinach and Artichoke Stuffing.  (It's an Emeril Lagasse recipe, but thought I would share it anyway.  It's amazing.)  But, since you can never have too many desserts, I also brought Martha's Eggnog Cheesecake Bars.  This is an eggnog-flavored cheesecake with a graham cracker crust cut into little bars.

I really like cheesecake but the eggnog takes it to another level.  To be honest, I didn't cook this quite long enough and the middle section of bars oozed cheesecake.

But the outside bars were perfectly delicious.

Just the thing to complete your holiday season...assuming you haven't already overdosed on eggnog.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Nine: Evergreen Centerpiece

It's a truth universally acknowledged that a lady in possession of a table must be in want of a centerpiece.

(Or something like that.  Jane Austen said.)

I was in need of a centerpiece for my party on Saturday so Friday I went to the nursery to choose some evergreen boughs to make Martha's Evergreen Centerpiece.  After I paid $4 for a bundle, I realized that these were just the boughs cut from the Christmas trees.  :sucker:

Martha says the trick is to keep the branches hidden and accentuate the needles. I had a few holes so I tucked in a couple ornaments to keep it full:

I know.  It looks terrible.

I was pretty proud of it until I saw this photo.  It really looks better in person.  :cross my heart:

Day Two Hundred Sixty-Seven: Rosy Bows

I put up outside decorations every year, but this year I had to update the 1990s ribbon and bows I had used in past years.  :so last decade:

I found some pretty ribbon and Wednesday I spent part of the morning making nineteen 15-inch bows for the outside of my house.  I used Martha's Rosette Bow, which is easy but each bow takes about five yards of ribbon.

I only had to return to the store for more ribbon once, which I consider a small victory.

Day Two Hundred Sixty-Six: String Me Along

If you are like most people, you string lights on your Christmas tree by wrapping the lights toilet-paper style. You might be extra crafty and attempt to hide the green wire among the branches.  Martha suggests Stringing Lights by running the lights along the underside of each branch.  When you get near the end, loop the lights around the top of the branch and work back to the trunk.  This technique plays up the depth of the tree and also conceals the wires.

It also takes ages.

I've used this technique for years, but every year I'm surprised at how long it takes.  Don't try it if you are in a rush.  Start on a small tree.  In my actual job as a designer, I decorate at least twenty Christmas trees every December.  Last year, I strung lights using this technique on a fifteen-foot tree.

It took eight hours.

Tuesday I had my six-year old son help with one of our trees.  With my assistance, he strung the lights on the lower branches.  He was pretty persistent, but after a while he sighed and said he was "retiring" from stringing lights.

Where do they hear these things?

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Five: Prune Before You Trim

On Monday my husband and I took our kids to the nursery to choose Christmas trees.  We purchased five.  (Three of them are very small, so they almost don't count.)  After reading Martha's Tree Trimming Secrets, I was a little nervous to attempt one step:  pruning.  Martha suggests you prune out the excess branches on some trees to allow more room for ornaments.  The lighter branches are the ones she suggests removing.

I started at the top of our largest tree.

Allow me to make a few observations:

1)  It took about an hour to judiciously trim my tree to allow more room for ornaments.

2)  Since I so nervous about cutting anything, I trimmed maybe four (tiny) branches from the entire tree.

3)  In retrospect, I should have started at the bottom where any errors could have been easily hidden.

4) A large bow works wonders.

Day Two Hundred Sixty-Four: Hang Me Now

This week has been filled with Christmas decorating for me.  I've decked the halls and trimmed the tree all week.  Actually, make that trees, plural.  I have six.  Why I started putting Christmas trees in our bedrooms I will never know.  We started it when our son was born six years ago.  Now it's tradition and I can't get around it.  :such a sucker:

You may be wondering why I'm rushing to decorate.  Christmas isn't for weeks and it's not even December yet.  The push is because Saturday I'm hosting a Sip & See for a friend and her new baby girl and I'm pretty sure the guests don't want to sit on boxes of Christmas decorations I've just hauled down from the attic.

Probably not the most festive atmosphere.

So, when we returned home on Sunday from our Thanksgiving holiday, we pulled out the Christmas decorations and I started trimming the faux tree.  Since we have three ornament murderers kids living under our roof, I wanted to make sure all my lovely ornaments were secure.  Luckily for me, Martha has a tutorial on Tree-Trimming Secrets.  Namely, How to Hang Ornaments.

Now, I'm sure you've been hanging ornaments since your own mother let you hang up that awful thing you made in Kindergarten.  But you've probably been doing it All Wrong.

Martha suggests suspending ornaments from copper wire instead of the tiny hooks that we all use.  To make your own hangers, thread a five-inch piece of wire through the ornament loop, twist one end of the wire to secure the ornament, then wrap the other end around the branch until the ornament is secure.

This is Martha's lovely Visual For Idiots:

The drawing is so nice and neat, no?

Now I will be honest.  I tried this...for a while.  After the first dozen ornaments, I started getting a bit sloppy.  See photo below:  

After my fingertips started going numb, I gave up.

Calling all members of the O.C.D. Club:  this method is for you.

Day Two Hundred Fifty-Eight: Thanksgiving Turkey Napkins

We are headed out-of-town for Thanksgiving.  My husband's sweet sister is hosting so she'll be the one  slaving in the kitchen all day.  Frankly I feel a little useless.  And since I'm traveling across the country on Thanksgiving day, I can't even offer to bring anything.

Maybe I could fit a small bag of salad inside my carry-on.  

Just to get into the spirit of things though, I decided to try Martha's Turkey Napkin Fold.   It's a napkin! Shaped like a turkey!  How cute is that?  It's also pretty simple.  Don't get too excited though, and start planning your Thanksgiving table.

Each turkey takes three napkins to make.  So that's only 24 napkins for a table of eight people.

Not ridiculous at all.

Let me add that Martha's napkin fold looks like an anatomically correct bird.  Mine is more of an artistic representation:  

Thank goodness I'm not hosting Thanksgiving.

Day Two Hundred Twenty-Five: Terrible Shrunken Apple Heads

Did you carve apples to make Shrunken Apple Heads as a kid?  I didn't and apparently I'm the only child in America who didn't have this experience.  On Saturday I made Martha's Shrunken Apple Heads with my kiddos.  They "helped" by dictating what the heads would look like.  I carved.

By the way:  I'm terrible at carving apples....even using my kids as an excuse, my apples look like a chipmunk stole an apple and got bored half way through the meal.

I wanted to blog about it on Saturday but since I'm a shrunken-apple-head newbie, I didn't realize the apples take days to shrink.  One of our apples on carving day:

Another face on carving day.  No, the photo is not out of focus.  That's my wicked carving skills at work:

So now it's five days later and my apples have not really shrunk.  At least they have evenly browned:

Seriously.  These are pathetic.  I want a do-over.

Day Thirty Five: Attack of the Easter Eggs: Egg Salad Sandwich

Last night I made Deviled Eggs from my leftover Easter eggs. I thought I had used all the eggs, but apparently I missed one.  When I opened the refrigerator this morning, the little basket where I keep eggs was full of colored, boiled eggs.

Easter eggs.

I *knew* those buggers multiply overnight.

To save myself from further reproduction and eventual poultry onslaught, I grabbed the eggs and made Martha's Egg Salad Sandwich.  It was delicious, and did not contain any butter.  :I'm looking at you Deviled Eggs:


Easter eggs stripped of their colorful shells:

The butter-free mix:

Yummy sandwiches:

Since uncovering the lair of eggs this morning, I've checked the refrigerator several times and I'm confident I've found all the Easter eggs.  I even checked behind the leftovers where they like to hide.

If there are more eggs tomorrow, I'm going to have the place fumigated.

Day Thirty Four: Devil Your Eggs

If you are like me, every Monday after Easter you have approximately four hundred boiled eggs in your refrigerator.  They are dyed every color of the rainbow.  These eggs will mate every night until you open the refrigerator door and they tumble out in a poultry tidal wave.

Before your boiled eggs have a chance to multiply out of control, make Martha's Deviled Eggs.  My brother-in-law Rod thought these were the best deviled eggs he'd ever had...until I revealed that the recipe included butter. He still really liked the recipe, but I had to listen to lots of jokes about clogged arteries and heart attacks.

Egg yolks ready for mixing:

Notice the two tablespoons of butter there on the left...

Mixed filling with (hidden) butter...

Completed eggs deviled up with the undercover butter:

Thankfully, the eggs were all eaten and my in-laws are still talking to me (despite the undercover butter).

Day Thirty: Child Labor: Not Just for the Third World OR Egg Dying with Kids

My three sweet nieces are visiting for a few days.  They range in age from seven to twelve.  Being a little older than my kids, they are perfectly suited to help in the kitchen.  If you have youngsters, put those little hands to work! The two youngest jumped at the chance to dye eggs, while the eldest thought egg dying was as cool as her parents' taste in music.

A few years ago I followed Martha's suggestion and used beets and cabbage to create natural dye, but this year I went the easy route and just purchased the stuff from the store. I did try Martha's marbleizing technique but even this simple technique was beyond our abilities today.

Little hands slaving away:

As you can see, our marbleized eggs look more like cheap formica.

 Thankfully, the kids don't seem to be bothered by our fruitless attempts at creativity. And no one complained about my use of child labor.  Next year I might put the neighbors' kids to work too.