Shine On!

It’s the middle of the afternoon. I’m sitting in my storage room office over the garage and watching as fat flakes of snow jostle each other on their way to settling on what is already a winter wonderland.

It’s frosty, man! As in two days ago, Toronto was colder than the North Pole. I sleep in socks and flannel and pull the G-Man right over me every single night. He is a living furnace. And he’s all mine.

Ye old hearth and home got cleaned within an inch of its life in the last half of November. You’re thinking that was a pre-holiday thang. Who cares about that? This was a 15-people-I-have-never-met-are-spending-the-evening-in-my-casa thang at the end of November. It was like lighting a firecracker under me. The good thing was the house was ready to welcome the holidays. Score!

After that, December fell into its usual pattern. Food planning and prep. Decking the halls. What little shopping I did this year was done online, with the exception of the German Christmas ornaments I add to my collection each year.

That happens at the Toronto Christmas Market at the Distillery District where there wasn’t any snow on the night we went, but was so cold I drank the hot cider, the mulled wine, and an organic hot chocolate from Balzac’s. Yes, I paid the whipped cream fee. Anything that would put an extra layer of fat between me and raw wind.

This year, I made my first attempt at growing indoors an amaryllis and some paperwhites. The paperwhites are blooming. Every time a fam member walks through the living room I hear, “I smell turpentine.” Ho-ho-ho! The amaryllis is still sitting in my office. It is now 16 3/4. Not to be confused with 9 3/4. I’m hoping it will bloom before my neighbors ask me to please remove the plant porn from my window.

City Kitty and her mama came for the week. We watched every cheesy Christmas movie, ate all the cookies in the land, read every holiday romance novel we could get our hands on. Cooked together. I might have seen The Holiday five times this month. I love the music and would throw it on in the background while I was head-deep in a pot in the kitchen. Chop and stir!

We tried new recipes. A chicken pot pie from @theartofdoingstuff. Yes. Karen’s is turkey, but I was making chicken stock and had all this lovely organic chicken shred. What was a gal to do? I made one giant, deep dish pie. Crust by @bakerbettie. We also baked Baker Bettie’s Easy Snickerdoodle Recipe. Note to self: Don’t look at Instagram during the month of December. Just don’t. And just because we could, we made this Beef Enchilada recipe from How Sweet Eats only… with chicken, because all that chicken shred. The end. I would make every one of those recipes again.

Now, we’re girding our loins for another deep freeze for New Year’s Eve. I knew I should have asked Father Christmas for a onsie with feet and attached sleeping hood. Knew. It. Hindsight.

To recap — we were laid-back. Max chillax. Best six weeks ever! Well, except for that whole firecracker cleaning happening.

See you in 2018. Can’t wait.

Watcha been doin’?

Huh? Huh?

See. Long post.

Elen