Christmas Greetings

I hope everyone is getting into the mood for Christmas. I think I finally am. I can't decide what to do with the blog template yet, so I put this one up temporarily.

We have had our tree since Thanksgiving and I am finishing up my decorations. I don't have any pictures yet so I'm including one from last year and a link to my post about my challenge to myself to decorate my house for Christmas with just $14.

I've got some recipes to share and a couple of other ideas. So I'll be posting those soon. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy my Christmas flashback.

Beautiful Blogs: Cherry Hill Cottage

Am I the last person to find this beautiful blog, Cherry Hill Cottage? If so why didn't someone tell me about it earlier? Tina has a beautiful home and an extreme talent for decorating. Her pictures are amazing. I want her to adopt me so I can live there or she can come to Tennessee and decorate MY house...yeah...that's the ticket.

Little Big Star

I found this video on a friend's blog. This girl, Charice Pempengco, who is 14, is on a show in the Philippines call Little Big Star as a competitor. I assume that it is something like an American Idol.

This is from an appearance on a Korean show called Star King. She does speak English and you can pick up a little on her accent in her song. I was so blown away by her performance I decided to share it here. The English subtitles are hilarious so be sure to watch them.

The Best Political Ad EVER!

Royal Family A-gassed!

I'll let you write your own caption but " Go ahead, pull my finger." does come to mind.

Just For Fun: Retro Cartoon

I found this cartoon on YouTube and just had to share it. I remember watching this back when I was a kid and it was old then. It was made in the 1940's. Times have surely changed. So skip over the the side panel, pause the music and enjoy. Hope you get a kick out of it like I did.

Recipe Link: Corn Syrup

Have you noticed that Hershey's Chocolate just doesn't taste as good as it used to? Neither do Cokes. I hadn't really put my finger on the reason why. I thought that maybe I was just getting older and sweets just didn't taste as good as they did when I was a kid.

A few years back my daughter brought a present of English chocolate home to us from her trip to London. Ahhhh, there was that chocolate taste I remembered from childhood! Looking at the ingredients I noticed that the English chocolate was sweetened with real sugar. After drinking a Jones soda made with real sugar I realized that corn syrup must be the culprit and is a very poor substitute for the real thing.

All over the media these days they are talking about how corn syrup is making us fat and sick. I am making an effort to remove as much as possible from our diets and it is proving to be a daunting task. I think it may be impossible to remove all of it but there are ways to get started.

I was happy to see this morning that Patty over at Morning Ramble has posted a recipe for a corn syrup substitute. I'm looking forward to trying it out and seeing what a difference it will make in my homemade Pecan pies.

Update: I made the syrup and used it in Pecan pie. The pie turned 0ut fine, maybe not as firm as usual but the taste was good.

I Protest!

It was around 70 degrees yesterday. We got a much needed 2 inches of rain this week. But the news tonight is just too much. Snow. Up to 4 inches of snow over the mountains. When I went out to check the mail this afternoon sleet was pelting me. I'm not ready for cold weather. This is the South for Pete's sake and it isn't even Thanksgiving yet! I'm just going to post a couple of pictures I took yesterday of the beautiful leaves and mope around feeling jipped out of even a minute of my much loved rare Autumn days outside.

How quickly pass the days

and Autumn's beauty quickly fades

While our feet may seek a different path

our hearts still bring us home.

What I Saw: Pioneer Doors

"Be Still And Know That I Am God."

Sometimes life overwhelms us. Some days it all seems so unfair. We lose sight of the truth, the never changing fact that no matter how deep and dark a valley we traverse, even when our hearts and eyes seem to search frantically, God is there.

Ann at Holy Experience has a beautiful post about the miracles we are given each and every day...

"In a fractured, diseased world of cancerous bodies, broken marriages, dying babies, illness, starvation, poverty, we are a people, en masse, holding out for a miracle. His ear is low, His heart attuned. We need but whisper and He swings open the door and graciously, abundantly gives. The miracle falls softly, imperceptibly."

Be still. Be still and know.

Saturday Savings and A Couple Of Deals For This Week

I found a couple of good deals currently at my Walgreens. They have Turtles candy on sale this week for 99 cents after instant coupon. There are coupons from the 9/16 Smartsource flier for $1 off 1. So they are free with the coupon. Also Bayer Aspirin, 24 count, is on sale for 99 cent this week, and there are 55 cents off coupons from the 10/7 Valassis flier so the aspirin would be 44 cents. Good deal.

This past week I shopped 4 different stores: Krogers, Ingles, CVS and Walgreens. The Dukes mayo in the picture below came from Ingles. It was on sale for $1.50 and I had .90/1 coupons so it was .60 each. I can't find the ticket but around $4.54 after tax. Everything else in the picture came from Kroger and along with a rotisserie chicken came to $71.06 , down from $134.98 before coupons, for a savings of $63.92.

At CVS I bought one of the blood glucose monitors with the coupon, so I got it for free and got the $20 ECBs. I have more coupons but it says only one per customer on the coupon so I don't feel right about doing it again with the coupon. I got the Advil for 99 cents.

At Walgreens I got John Freida Hair Gloss and Dove conditioner on clearance and with coupons for about 20 cents each. The apricots were.99 cents each and the witch hazel came to $1.69 I think. The caramels were .50. All of it was around $6. I really need to get my receipts before I start posting.

More mayo from Ingles. I got 12 total. Enough to last until the next sale and enough to donate. The Cascadian Farms cereal was on clearance and with a coupon was $1.25. The Post Trail Mix Crunch was on clearance for $1.01 with a $1/1 it was .01. So an additional $6 something at Ingles. All in all a very good shopping week.

Remember When: The Osmonds

I switched on Oprah this afternoon and found an all Osmond hour. It seems that they are celebrating 50 years in show business. There was an audience full of their families.

Regardless of what you think of the Osmonds it really is amazing that they have all turned out to be as normal as they are. They all have beautiful families and seem to all get along.

Earlier this week their father passed away and they buried him today.

All this brought back memories for me of the 70's. I was an Osmond fan and I got to meet them in 1975. All the news about them made me look through my old pictures until I found pics from those days and thought I would share a few.

Mrs. Osmond was a truly kind person. She treated me and my friend like we were her own kids. She reminded us not to stay up too late, to eat well and to call our moms.

One of the highlights of meeting them was having Alan sing "Carrie, Carry me Through" to me in an elevator. It is so sad that he has MS now. He seems to be handling it well and has a great deal of support from his wife and kids.

Merrill was married by then and missing his wife Mary. They collected Tea cups and he bought some in a local antique store to take back to her.

Donny was much shorter than I expected. I am 6 ft and I was disappointed he was such a little guy. He was warming up his voice at the hotel, I guess it was before the concert, and I was shocked how strong his voice was. I had never heard a professional singer up close with no microphone. It was amazing.

Jay was my favorite and I was pretty nervous around him. He was a cutie back then and a great drummer.

I have some pictures with Marie and Wayne somewhere. I just can't find them right now.

The Osmonds were the first celebrities that I ever met and I have to say some of the nicest. They set a good example for young people unlike many of the popular singers today.

Their father was very much in charge of things and really took care of business and his family. He was a no nonsense kind of guy but you could tell he really loved them, especially Mrs. Osmond. May they both rest in peace.