Posted by terrepruitt on December 15, 2021
How is your Christmas Season / End of the Year going? I am very late decorating this year and also doing less, but it is still so time consuming. I hope you are able to keep your time as stress free as possible. Here is is with some ornaments. Not quite done, but . . . I will have a picture of that later I am sure. 🙂 Plus some of our new tree.
Posted in Misc | Tagged: Christmas Ornaments, Christmas season, Christmas Tree, Christmastime, decorating, end of the year | 6 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on December 1, 2021
I am one of those people that opens gifts right away. If you send me a gift, I am going to open it. In person, though, I am shy about opening it unless you ask me to open it. If I am asked NOT to open it, of course, I will wait, but without instructions I am digging in. I think my friend sent me an advent calendar to help me exercise patience and control. It is cute and I am excited.
Funny, it is like advent is in the air. I had thought to send them out this year to everyone. I couldn’t find ones with the idea I had in mind for everyone so I only sent a few and . . . I got one. So fun. I also have an idea to do one with my husband next year, but we will see if that actually happens.
Do you/your family have advent calendars?
Posted in Misc | Tagged: Advent, Christmas season, Christmastime, Holiday season, kitties, pets, puppies | Leave a Comment »
Posted by terrepruitt on January 12, 2018
My family, students, and friends know me so well. I received such cute cat things and wonderful yoga related things this past Christmas season. Look at these super cute mugs. Such a bright addition to the kitchen. Now, if I could just get the Christmas stuff put away!
Here’s this week’s Friday Photo.
Posted in Friday Photo | Tagged: Christmas gifts, Christmas season, clowder, Friday Photo, kitty mug, Nia students, yoga students | 3 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on January 6, 2015
So I always thought the Twelve Days of Christmas were the days LEADING up to the 25th. It was about 2009 when I was talking with one of my Nia students about Christmas and taking down the tree and decorations that she mentioned it. She is quite savvy when it comes to etiquette, traditions, and customs so she said something about waiting until the Epiphany. And I didn’t know what she was talking about. She said she didn’t take her tree down until January 6th. I did like the sound of that because it was a date in January. Usually we take our tree down the weekend after New Year’s Day. I need help as there is so much packing to do. That is the worst part to me. I hate putting everything in its own box. But I will not just put all of my ornaments into those ornament holder boxes . . . . OH NO WAY! So, yes, I cause my own misery. Thankfully I have a husband who helps. I take stuff down and hand it to him with the box and he puts it in. He gets to sit and “relax” and watch a movie and I get my ornaments put in their original boxes. Yay. This year on the day we typically would have taken down the tree, I just didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready. We were gone for – what I think of as – a long time so I felt as if I “missed” some days of Christmas decorations. Plus I knew it would take longer than one day and I had a Nia Class at the YMCA on Sunday so I knew we wouldn’t get it all done. We decided that I would start this week and we would finish this weekend. This is when I said that we could abide by the “whatchmacallit?”, ya know the days after Christmas? The . . . I couldn’t remember so I had to look it up. The day my Nia student had referred to was the Epiphany. But when I looked it up there were some other days I don’t ever remember hearing about.
Could be that I didn’t know about these dates because they look as if they are related to the catholic faith. At least the website that I found is. My family was once catholic, but we stopped going to a catholic church before I had to go through all of my catechism classes and take my first communion.
The website states the below:
“What are the other feast days and holy days during the Christmas season?
In addition to Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Christmas and Mary, Mother of God, Catholics celebrate:
The Feast of the Holy Family, honoring Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a family. It is celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas or on December 30. When Christmas falls on Sunday, it is celebrated December 31.
The Epiphany, the oldest of the Christmas feasts, is also known as Three Kings Day for the three magi who found the Christ Child after following a star to Bethlehem. It is celebrated on Jan. 6 and is the major holiday of the Christmas period in the Eastern Church.
The Baptism of Our Lord brings the Christmas season to a close. It is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Epiphany.”
So basically what this timeline is telling me is that the Christmas season comes to a close on January 11 this year. Which is pretty perfect because that is when I hope to have all of our Christmas decorations taken down and stored away.
I really thought the Twelve Days of Christmas were the days LEADING up to the 25th. So that is why I am not familiar with the Epiphany. If I knew the Twelve Days STARTED on Christmas, then I would have “got” the whole Epiphany thing.
Am I the only one? Did you know what the Twelve Days of Christmas were?
Posted in Misc | Tagged: Catholics, Christmas, Christmas decorations, Christmas feasts, Christmas season, Christmas Tree, Epiphany, Immaculate Conception, Mary and Joseph, New Year's Day, Nia class, Nia student, Twelve Days of Christmas, YMCA | 2 Comments »
Posted by terrepruitt on January 3, 2013
I have been getting a lot of use out of my blender. I use it almost every day. There are additional lessons I have learned in the time I have been using it. The blender shows how many times I have used it, according to the blender I have used it 168 times. I have tested it and the cleaning of the jar that I do after I use it does not get added to the count. There might be a few extra counts because I’ve blended somethings twice, so the second blend might be added to that, but I haven’t done that often. Some of the lessons I have learned are really additions to some of the things I have already shared.
In my first post about what I had learned I stated that kale in a smoothie is really bitter. I thought about this every time I made a smoothie with kale. It was so bitter. I didn’t add more than two fruits because I didn’t want that much fruit in a smoothie, but I did put at least two, plus avocado and cucumber, but it still didn’t cut down on the bitter. I kept thinking about how bitter it was. I couldn’t understand why it was SO much less bitter when cooked, because when I cook it I don’t cook it THAT much. I usually just kind of wilt it. Well, after thinking and thinking all I could come up with was salt. When I cook kale I cook it with salt and I believe that salt helps with any bitter flavor. So I tried it in a kale smoothie and voila! That did it. By salt, I mean not even a whole shake, just like a little tip of the salt shaker. I bet that I could count the grains that go into the smoothie. I am not trying to add flavor but just take a little bitter out. It works great. I was so excited to figure this out because I like the idea of being able to “eat” a lot of kale. I really couldn’t EAT as much kale as I can drink and kale is a great green to add to my diet.
Since I mentioned frozen banana and ice in my first post about lessons I do have some follow up information. While a cold smoothie is better than a room temperature one sometimes adding FROZEN banana AND ice makes it way too cold. Drinking freezing cold smoothies in the winter is not that great. Using a banana that has not been frozen and ice is fine, but using both is sometimes too cold.
Beet greens make a smoothie red. I used the leafy green part AND the entire stem and the smoothie came out red. It was rather pretty. I think it was actually perfect for the Christmas season. That is when I learned this fact.
While I have not tried freezing a smoothie and then letting it defrost a bit and drinking it, I have let one sit a bit before drinking it, and I have let one sit in the fridge overnight and they do not taste as fresh. I am sure that is a no brainer, but since I am sharing I thought I would mention it. The smoothies that have sat out for a bit or in the fridge overnight were still good and totally drinkable, it was just not as fresh tasting!
So there you have it. A few more things I have learned. You? Have you anything to add?
Posted in Smoothies | Tagged: beet greens, Christmas, Christmas season, cold green smoothie, frozen banana, green smoothies, High speed blender, Kale, lessons learned | Leave a Comment »
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