News from the Nest, December 12

Happiest Monday to you, my friends.

Just a little more than one week until my nest (and heart) is full! Terry and I head to NYC this weekend, where we will meet our daughter for a long weekend of all the holiday hubbub NYC has to offer, along with a basketball game and a Billy Joel concert! I know, right!? Then, one day after the three of us come home, our son arrives from California! Last Christmas was the last time my two were home at the same time! This is one excited mama!

Speaking of my son, I closed last week telling you I was going to get busy baking his favorite pizzelles and amaretti cookies to send to him. Well, I did! I baked and packaged his treats, along with a darling little tree and a scented candle in a glass votive, and put the package in the mail Tuesday morning. I put the baked treats into two cookie tins to keep them fresh in the transit from the east to the west coast.

Sadly, it appears the box was run over by a semi, which then backed up and ran over it again. Without exaggeration, the tins are now frisbees, and the Christmas tree is in pieces. But here’s the head-scratcher. Someone scooped up all the crumbs and put them, with the tree pieces and frisbees, in a whole different box! 😲

And even more curious, the glass votive candle was unscratched!! So, I said to my son…”Well, at least your apartment can smell festive.” To which he replied, “Mom, we aren’t allowed to burn candles in our apartment!” 😯

Clearly, I’ll be baking more pizzelles and amaretti before he gets home!

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new on the blog

If you are entertaining over the holidays, add this Spiced Pomegranate Cocktail to your menu!

A close-up of a cocktail glass on a table.

Table of Contents

I’m sorry I didn’t get this published sooner, but you still have time to put in action some of these suggestions for this year and ALL of the suggestions for next year.

from a festive kitchen

This Festive Christmas Salad Recipe is an easy recipe for a gorgeous salad and a lovely addition to your Holiday Table.

Rosemary and Goat Cheese spread with ginger preserves is a lovely holiday appetizer.
These Coconut Christmas Trees are perhaps the easiest Christmas cookie, which also happens to be too darned cute! Edible gold stars are the piece de resistance!

Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, you are most likely in full festivities mode! I hope you are setting aside some time to take care of yourself!

Seven Mindfulness Exercises that will help you crush holiday stress.
I’m a fairly clean eater for eleven months out of the year, but I throw all that out the window in December. And I feel it! I will make a couple of trays of these Ginger Lemon Tea Cubes today to give my digestion and overall body a reset each morning.

Oh my heavens, these Santa buttons!!! If you have a little one in your world, you NEED to get one of these.

Over the years, my husband and I did all sorts of things to keep the magic of Santa alive.

One year, we made Santa footprints out of flour that led from the fireplace to the Christmas tree. The kiddos were very young, and it was supposed to look like snow. It was all fine and well until our pup licked all the flour on the flour, which turned it into flour paste. We had to get the carpets cleaned to get the footprints out! 🤣

Then there was the year it was raining, and my we sprinkled water over the carpet to leave the impression that we had just missed Santa!

But the very best was the year we bought our daughter a hamster for Christmas. If you’ve had hamsters, you know that they are very active at night. So, in the middle of the night of Christmas Eve, little Buttercup (as he would soon be named) was getting his exercise in his cage in our room. Our daughter woke up, came downstairs into our bedroom for something, heard the noise, and immediately knew that it was Santa on the roof. She high-tailed it back to bed so quickly and was a believer for several more years!

Deb recently wrote to me, and I absolutely LOVE this! You know my dad was career Navy, so I get goosebumps with anything that supports our troops. But that these stockings were knit and filled with their gift requests takes it up a notch. Thanks, Deb!

I have made 4 and my neighbor has made 4. We sent them out today for Stockings for our Troops – filled them with treats that were on their list! I will make more of them AFTER the holiday (during that dull, dreary winter time) and put them away for next year so I don’t have the made rush to get them done on time….this year was a last minute thought…. LOVE your patterns and look forward to your Monday morning postings…..Hope you and your family have a wonderful Holiday Season and Happy New Year!

I found several organizations that send troops stockings if you are inclined. There are many more, but these two have high ratings on the Charity Navigator website.

winter knit projects

What are your knitting plans for the upcoming long winter days? (for my friends in the Southern Hemisphere, what are your plans to avoid the heat and stay indoors in AC?)