It’s My Party And I’ll Sing If I Want To, Sing If I Want To

Welcome to my blog party!

Let me show you around. For ambiance we need some music and no party is complete without some food so, just click on my recipe page.

Now, we’re ready for some great conversation. Here my friendly readers and I talk about God, organizing our homes, we share household tips, we have fun with holidays all through the year (even Chinese New Year and Leap Year), we share recipes. Just yesterday, one of my readers gave me her first place award winning recipe for Peanut Butter Brownie Torte.

I love photography, books and adventures so you’ll find those too.

I participate in Works For Me Wednesday, Thursday Thirteen and Word-Filled Wednesday and the links will take you to just a sample of my entries for these carnivals.

I won some awards, have repeatedly earned Fastest Growing WordPress Blog and Top Post too, if you don’t mind me bragging just a bit.

My grand-mother used to say “show me your friends and I will tell you who you are,” so to help you mingle in this party, let me introduce you to just a few of the people who visit me and those I visit. When you come back, you’ll meet a lot more, but for today, here’s just a few:

• 4urpets is a friend in real life and her humorous blog is about her 3 Chihuahuas;
• Tad Cronn is a newspaper editor who writes about conservative news not often published in the liberal media;
• Texas Tanya is a mom who adopted two wonderful boys, has great ideas and likes photography;
• Amy Deanne is the new bloggy friend who hosts Word-Filled Wednesday;
• Gina has a fun public diary, participates at Works For Me Wednesday and you’ll see her at 4urpets too;
• Erin Craig is a newlywed with a Weimaraner (dog) and she also loves photography;
• Look over at my right sidebar and you’ll see more people who link to me and people I visit.

Make yourselves at home, enjoy the party, and be sure to sign the guest book so I can visit you in return. I hope we will become friends and visit each other often.

I Was Tagged By 4URPets For A Lucky 7 Tag

My neighbor friend at 4URPets just got tagged by Gina and now I’ve been tagged too!
4URPets is a new blogger with a great sense of humor, so although I don’t care for tags, I couldn’t possibly say no to this tag, and in honor of her three Chihuahuas and pet blog, I’m going to give you 7 random facts about my pets.

First I have to post the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you;
2. Leave a comment on their blog so that their readers can visit yours;
3. Post the rules on your blog;
4. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog;
5. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post;
6. Include links to their blogs;
7. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

OK. Here are my 7 random pet facts:

1. My very first pet was a Siamese cat who rescued me from my fear of cats and converted me to a cat lover thanks to his sweet, kind, gentle and caring ways;
2. My cat would faithfully stay in bed with me whenever I was sick;
3. My cat liked to swing in the bed sheets hammock-style whenever we changed the sheets and would then take the sheets in between his two front paws to “help” make the bed (boy, I wish I had thought of taking videos);
4. I had a blue and a green parakeet. When the green parakeet was ready to die he made himself a little helmet out of seeds!!
5. I inherited my golden retriever from my mother-in-law, but we loved each other since puppyhood.
6. My golden retriever was an AKA-certified pure-breed stud and a trained service dog who saved people’s lives;
7. My golden retriever was poisoned during the Chinese pet food recalls of January 2007. I call it mass pet murder, and I am very angry at the pet food companies and China. I have sworn to never feed pet food to any of my future dogs or cats because “pets are people too” and their lives are too valuable.

Now, for the 7 random bloggers, I will continue with the pet theme and tag 7 people who recently came by my blog and who have posted about their pets. This is by no means an obligation, as these tags can sometimes be downright bothersome, but if you want to participate, then you can:

1. Robin at Around The Island, whose children are pictured riding a camel;
2. Playful Professional at Talent To Play will run a half-marathon for a kitten;
3. Nicholas at A Gentleman’s Domain, who tells his cats he loves them;
4. Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer whose beloved rat recently passed;
5. SJ at Pink Flamingo, who has a blessed 6-inch kitten;
6. Sarah at Puss Reboots photographs cats;
7. YOU at Your Blog — if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged! 😉

Growing Blog, Top Post And Blog Forecast For 2008

I’m amazed and also quite pleased to see that I continue to make the Growing Blog list on WordPress despite the exponential factor which should make it progressively more difficult to be on this list.

To remain a growing blog, you not only have to grow, but you have to outdo your own growing rate and the rate of others each time, and I’ve started the new year with a bang not only being one of the WordPress Growing Blogs, but also having one of the Top Posts on WordPress.

At last count my post Organizing Household Resources In An Address Book was the 99th Top Post on WordPress out of more than 2 million blogs and an unknown bazillion posts.

I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again that I thank my readers.  I’m so glad that you find my blog to be interesting and useful.  I’m so glad when I look at my statistics and see that you came to my site from a link which was e-mailed to you or when I read my own e-mail and there’s a note from you telling me that you are putting me on your reader so you won’t miss a post.

As you saw with yesterday’s post, I don’t like to make New Year Resolutions because so few people can keep them and if I’m going to have a resolution or a goal, why wait for January 1, but here are just a few of the directions I see my blog going in the coming months.  I have other plans too that I’ll let you know about as the year unfolds.

If you’ve made the resolution to be organized, this blog is quickly becoming the place to find easy tips and solutions.  I’ve even created pages at the top of this blog for Household Tips and for Organizing so that you can easily find my posts at any time.  To help you with that there are also a search feature and a calendar in the sidebar.

I’ve noticed that you are also especially interested in my posts on healthy eating and cookies (not so healthy but yummy) as well as other recipes.  So I’ll give you a bit more in these areas too in the coming months.

I’ll continue to post about religion, God and my opinions on the topic.  The Lenten season is approaching quickly.  For the past two years I have used the book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren to prepare for Easter by reading his book and reflecting on his 40-day spiritual journey.  I found different insights each year as I have grown and changed, and for 2008 I hope you’ll join me on-line.  I highly recommend this book which according to Publishers Weekly has become “the bestselling nonfiction hardback book in history.”  So come find out why with me and my other readers.  If you don’t already own it, you can check it out from your local library when the time comes, or you can purchase it.

Today and anytime, feel free to leave me comments.  Comments help us get to know each other and to build a community.

In the meantime, thanks a million to all of you for reading my blog, and I wish you and your loved ones a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2008!!!

Dreaming Of a White Christmas? Let It Snow On Your Blog

Do you see what I see? It’s snowing on my blog!

Just in time for Christmas, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress has given us the option of adding extra snow to our blogs with just a couple of clicks. Have no fear if you are not a WordPress user, he directs you to an easy as pumpkin pie code from Schillmania too.

And if you are still looking for some Christmas ideas and resources, be sure to click below. These suggestions might be of particular interest this Christmas Eve: Magic Reindeer Food, Tracking Santa on Christmas Eve and Ideas to Reuse Christmas Cards.

• No Nativity For Archbishop
• Classic Christmas Books
• Ideas To Reuse Christmas Cards
• True Meaning of The 12 Days of Christmas Carol
• Where’s Santa?
• Magic Reindeer Food
• Advent Calendar Chain — Easy Children’s Craft
• Every Cookie Recipe Imaginable
• Favorite Christmas Movies
• Using an Advent Wreath as a Devotional Tool
  
• Write a Santa Letter to Your Children
• Holiday Shopping List
• Holiday Decorating Tips and Ideas
• Getting To Know Your Friends — Christmas Edition Part 1
• Getting To Know Your Friends — Christmas Edition Part 2
• Getting To Know Your Friends — Christmas Edition Part 3

Getting To Know Your Friends — Christmas Edition Part 3

This is just for fun, although I’ve added some household tips and Christmas ideas, so you might find it worth your while to read on. I’ve been tagged by a friend and I’m sharing the fun along with my readers. You too can participate either in your blog or through e-mail if you don’t have a blog. If you missed Part 1, it’s right here and Part 2 is here.

Welcome to the Christmas edition of Getting To Know Your Friends.

Here’s what you’re supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!!

Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then either publish it in your blog or send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person who sent it to you … ‘Tis the Season to be NICE!

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Our traditional Christmas morning breakfast of hot chocolate, croissants and panettone. I also love the French tradition of the 13 desserts, although I’ve never done it for my immediate family since there are only three of us. This year though, I’ve come up with a great idea. I’ll have the requisite Yule log or buche de Noel, and I’ll buy 12 individual-sized pastries from the bakery. We’ll have one bite from each! I think it will do the trick of keeping a tradition while not having enough dessert to feed two armies. Year-round I do not have a particularly sweet tooth, but I associate Christmas with lots of wonderful food and lots of sweets of all kinds. I have a huge extended family. We’re talking hundreds of people when all the generations get together. On my mom’s side of the family, we would do a potluck-style Christmas dinner. Each adult would bring one item for the dinner. It was that nuclear family’s contribution to the dinner and Christmas gift to the entire extended family. One person would bring caviar, another would bring smoked salmon, another oysters, another champagne, another boudins blanc (white sausages), etc., etc., etc. When you have so many people gathering, you also use the entire home, including the family room, formal entry and the bedrooms. My paternal grandfather would have buffet tables in every room. We would go from room to room and visit with family while munching on hors d’oeuvres scattered around the entire house. I remember one gathering where some of my cousins and I discovered the room with the red and black caviar canapes. We were very hungry and we discovered very good caviar. Not too salty and no fishy taste. When we left the room, there were almost none left for the adults. You snooze, you loose!

16. Favorite Christmas song? I have far too many to pick one. It was already very difficult to pick a top 13 for a previous post, but you can click here to see which ones are some of my favorites, and you can click here to see why I appreciate the 12 Days of Christmas even more now than I used to.

17. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Both. I have the misfortune of living far away from home, so most years I am the one who has the chore of traveling hundreds of miles during the busy holiday season. From time to time, the mountain thankfully comes to Mohammed, though.

18. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeers? If you give me enough time I will, but off the tip of my tongue, Rudolph is the only one who ever comes to mind. Did you know Rudolph was invented by a Montgomery Wards employee? If you are too young to remember Montgomery Wards, it was a department store similar to Sears. It was the first department store to trust me with a student store-credit card back when I was still a teenager. I thoroughly miss that store and Woolworth, too. How could they possibly close American institutions like that? What a pity.

19. Angel on the tree top or a star? I have several of both, and Mary with baby Jesus, and a needle, and a chandelier-like tree top. Remember I have trees in every single room.

20. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? As a child we always opened gifts on Christmas Day. Notice, I did not say Christmas Morning. My mom would torture us by not allowing any gifts, not even one, to be opened until afternoon. In the name of Christmas not being about gifts, but about God, my mom decided that the gift opening would almost be an afterthought. There would also be only one from Santa and one from my parents. Thank goodness for relatives, though with so many relatives, most did not give gifts to all of us children, but I usually received two or three more gifts that way, so at least I was not deprived. When I got married, my husband’s family was used to opening all presents on Christmas Eve so it worked out very well for us. Christmas Eve was at his parents’ house, Christmas Day was at mine, and nobody argued or got feelings hurt. Our son opens gifts on Christmas Morning as soon as we are done with our special Christmas breakfast.

21. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Atheists trying to jam their own beliefs down our throats because they can’t at least live and let live. Too many of them don’t just not believe in God, but are actually anti-God and make their own beliefs into a religion.

22. Favorite ornament theme or color? I prefer the old-fashioned kind of Christmas ornaments on a real, green Christmas tree. I also like my very artificial silver foil tabletop tree with tiny gold ball ornaments and “S” shaped swirl hooks. The white lights and even daylight reflect on the foil and the ornaments, so it does look quite stuning. Being silver, it looks very much at home even past New Year, and can be decorated with a timepiece theme or numbers/years. That tree reminds me of the tree my parents had bought in the late ’60s. I see no use for ornaments representing licensed products like Spider-Man, Star Wars and the like, not that I have anything against these types of things, but because they have nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas.

23. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Prime rib. My mother-in-law used to make an entire side of cow and it was the very best prime rib ever. No other home cook and no restaurant chef, even ones supposedly specializing in prime rib, can ever compare to hers.

24. What do you want for Christmas this year? The best gift ever would be one that only Santa or God (or just maybe my Realtor) could give me. I would like my house to finally sell in this horrible market where my Realtor tells us there is a 12 months inventory in our area and mortgage companies are not even granting loans to anyone but those with extremely fantastic, wonderful, spectacular, stupendous credit.

And here’s a bonus question from me, because this last one is kind of a downer and Christmas should be happy!

25. What are some of your favorite Christmas memories? Besides the ones I’ve already mentioned, growing up in Paris, France, my parents would take me to see the large department store windows (it’s similar to the New York City tradition). I would especially like the automatons and anything moving like the toy trains. We would drive on the Champs Elysees with the Arch of Triumph in front of us, getting ever closer, and around Christmas time, the City of Lights would explode with even more lights than the rest of the year. Each year I just could not believe my eyes at the sight of so many lights and so many beautiful things to look at. Between Christmas and Epiphany, my parents would take me to many of the churches in Paris so we could visit Baby Jesus. Each church would have its own gorgeous Nativity set. Some would even have several, and all were antiques, because Paris was not made yesterday.

Getting To Know Your Friends — Christmas Edition Part 2

This is just for fun, although I’ve added some household tips and Christmas ideas, so you might find it worth your while to read on. I’ve been tagged by a friend and I’m sharing the fun along with my readers. You too can participate either in your blog or through e-mail if you don’t have a blog. If you missed Part 1, it’s right here.

Welcome to the Christmas edition of Getting To Know Your Friends.

Here’s what you’re supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!!

Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then either publish it in your blog or send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person who sent it to you … ‘Tis the Season to be NICE!

7. Do you have a Nativity scene? Of course! Several actually. Like with our Christmas trees, I like to have at least one in each room. I have one I splurged on as a teenager. It is a Fontanini, which I bought from the San Francisco Music Box Company. The manger has a real Reuge movement which plays “Silent Night,” bringing me warm childhood memories of my entire extended family singing that carol in German, French, Italian and English. Each year I add at least one new piece to my nativity. I have another nativity made of porcelain and also with a music box. My mom gave it to me because it is small and one solid piece so that I could take it with me wherever I traveled. This one plays “O, Little Town of Bethlehem.” We have a nativity we inherited from my mother-in-law. It is nothing special, but has great sentimental value to us. I have one Santon from France which is dressed in fabric clothes. I love that little old lady very much, and she reminds me of the Santons my aunt and uncle collect during their travels to the small villages in France. Each one is designed after a real person in the village.

8. Who is your hardest person to buy for? It was my mother-in-law. She was one of those people who has everything, needs nothing, buys anything she might remotely want or wish for, long before anyone else even had the chance to get it for her. When you encounter someone like that, I advise you do as the Wise Men did, and bring lots of gold. Diamonds work well, too.

9. Easiest person to buy for? Our son has loved everything we have ever given him. He is so enthusiastic with every gift, it is a real joy to see him react to even the most basic item.

10. Worst gift you ever received? A scale so I could GAIN weight. I was in high school and my very own parents thought 90 pounds was not an appropriate weight. My feelings were very hurt.

11. Do you mail or e-mail Christmas cards? Both. I send far fewer cards than I used to, but I still send to my relatives scattered around the world and a few dear people who have remained friends over the decades. I do not feel obligated to send a card to every person I have ever met. I send a few e-cards to people who write to me via e-mail throughout the year. I do not write annual Christmas letters, obviously not because I do not like to write, but because if there is someone out there who hasn’t kept in touch with me (and vice versa) since the previous Christmas, then I’m sure they would not be interested in my Christmas letter. I also do not send Christmas cards to atheists, even if they celebrate “christmas” with a tree and gifts. Christmas is about the birth of Christ. The tree and the gifts should be symbolic, not an atheist excuse for consumerism and greed. I also send a few Hanukkah cards.

12. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Hmmm. … One year I found myself having to shop on Christmas Eve, one year I did some year-round shopping, a couple of years I did most of my shopping during all the AFTER Christmas sales and clearances for the following Christmas, so I was a full year ahead. I highly recommend being a year ahead of the game. Not only will you enjoy the Advent season far more if you don’t have to battle those crazed people in the malls, but you’ll save money twice (once because everything is on sale and another time because you’ll have beat inflation since by the next year, all the prices will have gone up. I wouldn’t recommend buying technology-related items like computers or iPods of course.) I prefer making my own gifts for those I love. I just pour all of my love into it. It’s usually projects which require many hours, but the people I love are well worth it, and I think it is much better than a store-bought gift. I also love to create memories more than buying something for under the tree. As I get older (and hopefully wiser) I find myself buying fewer and fewer gifts as a reaction to the world getting more and more commercial. One huge pet peeve is that the store clerks are no longer allowed to wish us a Merry Christmas. What a bunch of double-standard, bah humbug Scrooges all these store owners and managers are!

13. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? If I am given a gift which I have no use for, I will give it to someone I know will be able to use it or enjoy it, otherwise I give it to charity. I see nothing wrong with making others happy.

14. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Clear lights. I think it looks much better. I still have some old strings of colored lights and they do get used around the house, but not on any of the trees.

Part 3 is here.

Thursday 13 #7 — Thankful for God’s Comforts

 

Happy Thanksgiving To All!!!

Thank you for coming back to Thursday Thirteen. On this day of giving thanks I let you know about 13 things I am thankful God gave us and which comfort my spirit and soul. You’ll notice a major theme with water.  All photos from Flickr’s public files.

1. Lakes
2. Beaches
3. The smell of a redwood forest
4. Rain taping on a window or on my face
5. Birds singing
6. Cuddling up in a comfy chair with a warm blanket and a great book next to a fire while the rain taps its music on the window pane
7. Hot tea
8. The sun creating rainbows through a church’s stained glass windows
9. Early morning fresh air
10. Being perfectly still and quiet, watching nature unnoticed
11. A brook or small cascade gurgling
12. The cool softness of moss
13. Morning dew

 

Don’t miss my posts about Black Friday and Holiday Shopping.
Thanks to the Internet we can have our cake and eat it too:
Let’s shop all the Black Friday sales WHILE we stay home in our pajamas!!
Now that’s a good reason to TGIF!!

• Don’t know what NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are? Read all about it here and here.

• Want to know why I’m participating in both? Click here.