I love this time of year. There are so many fun holidays leading up to Christmas. Dec 19th is Look for an Evergreen Day. This day is typically celebrated one week before Christmas. For many, this is an important day because they love live Christmas trees and love the hunt for the perfect tree.

The evergreen has a long history in our holiday celebrations. I found some very interesting history facts about the evergreen.

The first decorated tree on record was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas Tree with candles, to show his children how the stars twinkled through the dark night.

In the 16th century, Christmas markets in Germany provided everything from gifts, food and more practical things. At these fairs, bakers made shaped gingerbreads and wax ornaments for people to buy as souvenirs and take home to hang on their Christmas Trees.

In 1846, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were illustrated in the Illustrated London News. They were standing with their children around a Christmas Tree.

During this time, decorations were still homemade. Young Ladies spent hours at Christmas Crafts, quilling snowflakes and stars, sewing little pouches for secret gifts and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Small bead decorations, fine drawn out silver tinsel came from Germany together with beautiful Angels to sit at the top of the tree. Candles were often placed into wooden hoops for safety.

I have given you just a few of the  excerpts from The Christmas Archives. You can read their complete history on their site. It is very interesting.

Whatever your traditions are, find your perfect tree! Christmas is coming!

Chia Pet Rescue

December 18th is Bake Cookies Day. Woo hoo, that means that Christmas is almost here. I love all the Christmas cookies. But I still have a few favorites. This is the official day to spend  making your Christmas cookies. My kids, who are older now, still love coming over and spending the day making cookies with me.

I featured one of my favorites in my blog entry Caramel Refrigerator Cookies. These are great cookies and easy to make. Another really good cookie (and easy) are Cranberry Noels. Try these, they will be a big hit.

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Cream the butter and sugar using the paddle attachment. Add milk and vanilla. Beat until just combined. With mixer on low, gradually add flour, salt, cranberries, and pecans; continue beating until fully combined.

Shape each piece into an 8-inch log, about 2 inches in diameter. Wrap logs in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut logs into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Place on parchment-lined baking sheets, about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until edges are golden, 14 to 16 minutes. Remove from oven, and transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Check out my lens on Creative Gift Giving for ideas on packaging your cookies to give to your friends and family.

Chia Pet Rescue

We’ve all done it. Re-gift something. It has actually become an accepted practice. Dec 17th is a day to celebrate re-gifting. Bring those gifts you have out of the closet! “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…. Re-gift!” This holiday always falls on the Thursday before Christmas. Most think that is because many companies hold their Christmas party on that day.

Our team always has a “pink elephant” game at Christmas. Most people find the worst gift that someone has given them and wrap it up. It is a lot of fun because the game allows others to “steal” your gift. Last year I ended up with a Cyborg bust. Cool!

With our current economy, it is becoming more popular to re-gift.  Consumer Reports conducted a poll and found that 36 percent of consumers plan to re-gift this year. That is up from 31 percent last year.

I found a website that has re-gifting stories. Check out Regift.com. Some of the stories are hilarious.

Some of the key rules about re-gifting that you should remember are:

• Only re-gift something that you know the person will like (unless, of course, it is supposed to be a joke gift).
• Wrap it nicely
• Make sure there aren’t any tags on it with your name!
• If there will be a group of people, don’t give something one of them gave you last year (again, if it is a joke gift, this is OK).

What will you re-gift this year? I know that I’m not giving up my Cyborg bust.

Chia Pet Rescue

WOW! It doesn’t get any better than that! Covering stuff in chocolate makes my day anytime. I read some interesting entries about covering stuff in chocolate. For example, someone talked about covering pickles in chocolate! Hmmm… that is very strange, but interesting. Some of the other items mentioned are:

• bacon
• grapes
• strawberries
• pretzels
• mangoes
• pancakes
• orange slices
• raisins
• nuts

To make your melted chocolate, put chocolate chips (I like semisweet) into a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on med-high heat, stopping and stirring about every 20 seconds. This will keep the chocolate from overcooking or burning. Once they are melted and you have stirred the chocolate, you can dip your treat and place on wax paper to let them cool.

Chocolate fun facts:

• The cacao bean is the main ingredient in chocolate. They were very valuabe to the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. So valuable, in fact, that they were used as currency when paying for taxes and commodities.
• The word Chocolate comes from the Aztec word xocolatl, meaning, bitter water.
• Cacao beans come from a tree that is a species of the genus Theobroma, which translated is food of the gods.
  Melting chocolate in your mouth raises brain activity and heart rate more intensly than passionate kissing, and lasts four times longer!
• The Maya prepared chocolate strictly for drinking. The way they prepared it wasn’t very different from the way it is prepared today.
• When the Aztecs conquered the Maya, they kept the chocolate tradition alive. The Aztecs dominated the region and continued using cacao as currency from about 1200-1500. Cacao could not grow in the capital city, Tenochitlan (Mexico City), so it had to be imported through trading and, taxes.

What will you cover with chocolate today? I think I might try the chocolate covered pickles.

Chia Pet Rescue

Professional Cat Herder

Isn’t it wonderful that we even have a day for Cat Herders? I can’t count how many times I have worked on a project that I have felt like I was trying to herd cats.

From what I could find, it appears that the origins of the phrase came from the IT industry and the problems typically encountered when managing computer programmers. Some attribute the phrase “Managing senior programmers is like herding cats” to a Dave Platt (computer programmer). But he says that he was not the person who originally came up with the phrase. Funny how something like this becomes a part of our culture. The phrase has evolved to include more than just programmers. It now refers to  a task that is extremely difficult or impossible to do, due to one or more variables constantly changing or out of your control. Most often, it refer to a group of people you can’t control.

Whenever I hear this phrase used, I think of the cat herding commercial. I think it is one of the funniest commercials I have ever seen. I have included the video in case you have forgotten it.

Celebrate the independence of all cats today (or maybe just the chaos in your life)!

Chia Pet Rescue