My blog is named for Mehitable Day, a woman buried in the 1800s behind the Maine farmhouse where I lived as a teenager. Whenever I'd have a day that was especially challenging, eventful, or just plain odd, I'd tell my friends, "I've just had the most Mehitable Day!" And so this blog is where I share the events, discoveries and random musings
of my Mehitable Days. :-)
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant
It's time to say goodbye to 2010, but hello to a new year, a new decade, and a new giveaway winner!
I decided for the sake of Auld Lang Syne to go low-tech for this drawing and, since I'm giving away a cookbook, to solicit the help of a kitchen gadget.
I wrote the names of the three giveaway entrants (participation in my giveaways may be low, but the odds of winning are high!) on festive pieces of paper....
...then looked around for a kitchen gadget that would help with a random name draw.
The hot air popcorn popper looks good! I'll just dump the three pieces of paper in the hopper and turn it on, and the winner will be the one whose name flies out of it first!
Oops.
Well okey dokey then, we'll go with the salad spinner. No fire hazards there! Just dump the names in and give them a spin before drawing one.
And now that the flames have been extinguished* and the cookbook winner selected and announced, let's ring in the New Year with some music! (Gosh, you'll never guess what song I've chosen. LOL)
I love this singer's voice and his wonderful, moving performance of Auld Lang Syne (complete with the original Scottish lyrics sung in a lovely Scottish burr!) My thanks to Barbara for sharing her brilliant find!
And if that left you hankering for more, here are several versions of Auld Lang Syne sure to satisfy every musical taste. There's even one as a consolation prize for you, Carissa, in honor of your own (not-so-auld) lang syne in spot #9! :-)
Happy New Year and new decade, everybody! Blog on!
*Photos are simulations only. Do not attempt.
No, I didn't really put pieces of paper in a hot air corn popper! Not even I am stupid enough (or drunk enough) to do that! ;-)
I hope everyone enjoyed a festive, happy holiday weekend! Ours was restful and ridiculously balmy (shorts-and-tank-top-on-the-deck-balmy!) We enjoyed some good hikes with the dogs, cooked, baked, and ate lots of goodies, and on Christmas night we took the girls (decked out in their snowman bandanas, of course) and drove around looking at people's lights and decorations. I did my best to get good photos, but in such low light without a tripod I fear I mostly got unintended special effects. :-) Still, I think they're pretty, so here are three of my favorites from three different neighborhoods...
While Christmas is over for another 363 days, the pretty lights are still aglow and so is the spirit of giving. One of my Christmas gifts from my friend Jo was Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews by Nava Atlas (and boy am I eager to dig into it!), we boughtViva Veganlast month, and I plan to buy Color Me Vegan with Christmas money from my mom. So to make some room and keep our cookbook collection under some semblance of control, at least one of my previous cookbooks must go!
Vegan Delightsby Jeanne Marie Martin is one of the many vegan cookbooks I got early on, but it's one I just never found myself using. So it's in pristine condition and I'm offering it as a Happy New Year giveaway, just in time for all those resolutions, fresh starts and new experiences. Perfect time to explore vegan cooking and baking if it's new to you (and a great time to sign up for PCRM's third 21-Day Vegan Kickstart, which begins on Jan 3)... or a great time to add to your recipe repertoire if you're already vegan. Actually, any time of year is a great time to do these things, but the beginning of a new year is especially auspicious.
A caveat: since this cookbook was published in 1993, some of its nutritional advice is outdated or questionable, and her lists of vegan web sites and cookbooks are quaintly brief since there has been an explosion of both since 1993. But plenty of the information in it is enduring and always useful, especially for beginning vegans. Since I've never made any of the recipes, I can't speak to how easy or tasty they are. For anyone with food allergies, intolerances or other concerns about certain ingredients, several of her recipes contain soy, a few contain wheat (or other gluten-containing grains), and many contain oil (sometimes in large quantities), which in most cases can simply be omitted or easily substituted. And plenty of recipes contain none of those ingredients.
If you'd like to enter the giveaway (open to US and Canadian residents), please leave a comment about your favorite vegan delight: recipe, cookbook, food blog, web site, restaurant, city, animal sanctuary, quote, person, vegan-friendly kitchen gadget, vegetable, fruit, bean, nut, seed, legume ... well, you get the idea. :-) And if I don't already know it, please leave a way to contact you.
I'll randomly draw a name at 9pm MST on Dec 31 (I'm getting too old to commit to staying up till midnight, lol) and will announce the winner shortly thereafter.
So let's get cookin'! :-)
Unrelated P.S. - I hope everyone in the path of the huge nor'easter blizzard is staying safe and warm!
No, not a new look for me, I still have the same raggedy-ass look I usually do!
But our living room got a bit of a makeover earlier this year, with new carpet, new paint, new baseboard and ceiling moldings, and some new decor (well, not really new, we just shuffled stuff around between rooms so it feels new!). I thought I'd thrill two birds with one scone by including photos of our holiday decorations as my "after" photos. :-)
Summer 2008
December 2010
AdventureJo made the beautiful quilted star pillow! :-)
It's not easy to see, but many years ago I'd stenciled a pretty vine with red berries around the top of the two living room walls. It was a lot of work and I really loved it, so it was painful at first to paint over it. But once I'd gotten started I loved the new green wall color so much I was able to paint over my stencil rather ruthlessly. :-) Hey, out with the old, in with the new, right? Besides, I still have the stencil kit, so I can recreate it some other time (and place!)
I know that colors don't usually look all that true and can vary widely on computer monitors. The actual colors are deeper, darker and more subdued (with more gray tones in them) than they look in the first two photos, but look truer in the next ones, at least on my computer. We used Sherwin Williams' Duration (low VOC) satin paint in "Coastal Plain" for the walls and "Basil" for the trim...
Some of you may have noticed the Santa's Workshop on the stereo cabinet. You'll get to see it in detail in a future post... probably on Christmas Eve when we can sneak in and look around while Santa is otherwise preoccupied with his deliveries.* ;-)
Look, Molly! A latchhook rug from my crafty past! ;-)
*BW, my UPS-man husband, made up a little ditty that he and his co-workers now all sing as they load and sort their package cars at this time of year. Sung to the tune "We Are Santa's Elves" from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, it goes:
We are Santa's elves, filling Santa's shelves...
we do the work but he gets the credit, we are Santa's elves!
Oh, go ahead and sing along, you know you want to! ;-)
I think BW needs to re-write the rest of the lyrics. :-)
Now that we've enjoyed that festive musical interlude, here are a few non-holiday living room decor details...
You may have noticed this little gallery hanging just to the right of the hallway in the above photo. I bought the butter prints cross-stitch pattern and the ceramic bas relief butter print goat plaque above it in either Maine or NH about 20 years ago. (I entered that cross-stitch in my local county fair the following summer and won a blue ribbon for it, yay!)
In addition to my fondness for goats, I've loved foxes since I was very little and have a few foxy goodies (<-- that should make for some interesting Google search hits, lol) scattered throughout the house. Here is an ensemble consisting of a tiny original Claudia Hopfscherenschnitte ("paper-cutting") fox picture my mom commissioned her to make as a gift for me a long time ago, and a cross-stitch illustration of the Aesop fable The Fox and the Grapes that Mom did in 1987, upon whose frame I've perched two wee fox figurines and a little wood carving that also depicts The Fox and the Grapes fable.
The antique lawyers bookcase to the left of the bay window originally belonged to my grandparents, but was decorating my bedroom by the time I was in high school. When BW and I brought it here from Mom's where it had been stored all those years, we put a new back on it and lights in the top section. The top shelf houses what's left of a pretty extensive miniature rocking horse collection that Mom and I started when I was in junior high. We'd noticed that between all her miniature displays and my miniature horse collection, we had quite a few rocking horses. So we thought, "Let's put them all together as a collection and add to them!" After a while, when it got truly ridiculous, we agreed, "Only unusual rocking horses from now on." As you can see, that caveat didn't really narrow the field much so our collection continued to grow like kudzu. What you see in the following photos is what remains of our fairly heavily-culled original collection.
The bookcase's second shelf holds my little Beatrix Potter and Tasha Tudor books from childhood, along with the last of my once vast herd of miniature (non-rocking) horses. As a tot and teen, I glommed onto anything horsey! In recent years I gave a lot of them away and sold some others, so now my collection is distilled down to my very favorites, some of which I've had since kindergarten. (The third shelf holds more books and little odds and ends, but I decided it's not closeup worthy). :-)
Here are some rocking horse closeups... I'll give you a little tour of my favorites. :-)
The large rocking horse in the back corner, standing on a toy drum with other toys at his feet, is a music box. The stained wooden horse on the right near the back (between the spotted and terra cotta horses) is one of my very favorites. He was made by a man in Virginia who made exquisite dollhouse miniatures. I wish you could see the craftsmanship in that rocking horse!
The gold one in the middle near the front is an old Avon sachet holder. His saddle is hinged, and when you open it there's a little stash of sachet - a perfumed wax you're supposed to dab on your pulse points. Given that it was fresh back in 1973, I wouldn't advise doing that. ;-)
Just to the left of the gold horse and behind the red one with the bright yellow mane and tail is a clunky little rustic wooden horse. His name is Ned (I'm not kidding, it's even written on his belly), who was carved by a man in Canada. I just love Ned!
Favorites in this group include the patina-green rocking horse on the left, which is made of some kind of metal that's heavy as hell; the red and white glass one behind him; a plain little wooden one near the front right that my mother made out of basswood; and the fuzzy little brown one just in front of him.
And here my faves are another music box in the back corner; a red horse with fancy embroidery and bells who's looking back over his shoulder (made in China long before the days when everything was made in China); and a cute little merry-go-round of rocking horses that spins. (But none of them, in my opinion, hold a candle to Ned). :-)
I hope you enjoyed your visit and our sing-along! ;-) Now help yourself to a freshly baked muffin and some tea. Speaking of which, Mountain Rose Herbs is having a fantastic giveaway this week for all you tea lovers out there! Deadline is Sunday at a stroke before midnight (PST). Cheers and good luck!
First, the Holiday Giving part: AdventureJo is the winner of the Santa Giveaway!
List Randomizer
There were 3 items in your list. Here they are in random order:
AdventureJo
Rose
Jenny
Timestamp: 2010-12-07 01:00:37 UTC
Congratulations, Jo! As you observed, you made it in the "Nick" of time! :-)
And as for the Holiday Sharing...
We have three identical dog beds for our three dogs. So naturally all of them want this one particular bed. They'll race each other through the door in order to get dibs on the blue one.
They usually take turns laying on the coveted blue bed, but on this one occasion I caught Tess and Josie sharing. Judging from their expressions, they were sharing begrudgingly, but they were sharing!
Why is the blue bed so favored and exalted? Only they know, and they're not telling!
...I am giving away Santa Claus. (Four of them, actually!)
I've been decorating since yesterday, and there are a few decorations I just never seem to find a spot for anymore. No need to keep hanging on to them year after year, packed away in storage, especially since we're trying to downsize.
I painted these ceramic Santas a hundred years ago. Okay, maybe not quite... I honestly don't remember when I painted them. At least 20 years ago, when I seemed to have a lot more time on my hands! (Nah, I just spent it differently). Anyway, these Santas are a little too sentimental for the garage sale box, so I decided to try to find them a new home through my first-ever Giveaway.
Closeup of lantern-toting Santa & woodland Santa
Each Santa is about 3 1/2" high, hand painted in acrylic paint with an antique glaze and matte varnish. All four Santas will go to one winner.
Closeup of Santa with boy and girl
and Santa who walks softly and carries a big stick. ;-)
If you live in the US or Canada (unfortunately, cost precludes shipping these elsewhere) and would like to enter the giveaway, just leave a comment about your favorite December holiday movie, book, song or candle fragrance :-) along with a way to contact you. Leave as many comments as you'd like, only the first one will count as an entry. Even if your location renders you ineligible or you're not interested in the giveway, feel free to chime in with a comment anyway! I'll do a random drawing (good excuse to give Random.org a spin, or I may go low-tech and just write names on pieces of paper and draw them out of Tessa's Santa hat) at 6pm MST on Monday, Dec 6th so I can have them ready to mail on my weekly trip to town Wednesday.
You get a bonus entry if your name happens to be Virginia. :-)
And now here's a little Santa Claus humor to get your weekend going. Happy Friday and Happy Hannukah!
