Diagnosis: Bronchitis

After 2 weeks of this cold, I finally went to the doctor today. I hope those antibiotics kick in soon!

A Slow Start to the New Year

I had such high hopes about posting frequently in the new year, and perhaps even posting all of the stuff from December that I never got around to posting about. Unfortunately, work has been busy (the quarter just ended and everyone wants something), and I've had a bad cold since last week. It's not at all uncommon for me to get sick around the holidays...I pretty much always do, but this cold I have just won't go away, and it's not getting any better or worse. If it got worse I would go to the doctor, but I don't need to go to the doctor for just a cold.

So, I've been treating my cold with medicine I got when I was in Greece this spring for my honeymoon. The day before D and I left Crete to fly home, I had wicked sinus pain. There was no way I was going to spend 8+ hours on a plane with my head like that, so I spoke with the concierge at the hotel about seeing an English speaking doctor. He said they have a doctor that has office hours at the resort twice a week and I could get an appointment in a few days. I explained that I was flying home the next day. He asked what was wrong and I gestured to my sinuses and said I had a sinus infection.

After a quick conversation in Greek, the concierge said the doctor would be at the hotel in 1/2 hour. When she arrived, she was looking at me very strangely and said "you don't seem to have an infection of the face"--that's what the concierge told her I had! So she ended up doing a quick exam and agreed with me that I had a sinus infection. She wrote me 3 prescriptions--a 5-day antibiotic, a decongestant nasal spray, and some cough syrup. She had the pharmacy deliver them to my room. Oh boy, I thought, what's this going to cost?? It ended up being 80 Euros for the doctor, the prescriptions, and the taxi for the pharmacy delivery! I was ecstatic, but also felt guilty--the Greek government should really charge American tourists more for medical care--I mean, I don't pay Greek taxes.

So, this week I've been taking Ronal, the decongestant nasal spray, and Bisolvon, the cough syrup. I have a 250ml bottle of Bisolvon--that should last me a while!

In other news, it's cold!! Last night when I got home from work it was already below zero (this is Farenheit folks). It's supposed to warm up this weekend and next week. I hope we get more snow. We've had about 36" so far this season -- more snow then I've seen since I was in college. I am so glad that I have a garage! I'm so glad that I don't have to dig my car out of the snow on the side of the street and then pay a ticket for parking in a snow emergency zone. The snow this winter is a good introduction to the burbs for me. I remember when I first moved to Middlebury, the winter of 1994 was almost recordbreakingly cold and snowy. It was a good initiation for me. I learned to almost look forward to my nose hairs freezing the moment I stepped outside.

No nose hair freezing yet this year thankfully, but here's a picture of D and the snowblower in action!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 2007 was probably the best year I've ever had. I married the best guy in the whole world, and we moved into our cozy house with a beautiful yard. Hopefully 2008 will be a little less busy than 2007, but equally great.

I took some pictures of a project I did a few weeks ago and hadn't gotten around to posting them (I now have a backlog of things to post). For some relatives for Christmas I put together baskets of amaryllis bulbs. I had meant to do them in November so they would be close to blooming when I gave them for Christmas, but time got away from me.

The bulbs are from Park Seed. I ordered lots of daffodil bulbs from them in the fall and was really impressed with the quality. When I saw they had all kinds of varieties of amaryllis, I had to order some for gifts. I've always liked amaryllis, but the ones you can get in "kits" at the store don't always turn out so well. I ordered 4 types of amaryllis: Mambo, Liberty, Christmas Star, and Baby Star. Then I found some perfect baskets to plant them in at the Crate and Barrel outlet.

To plant the amaryllis, I consulted the instructions that came with them, and also some tips from P. Allen Smith's website. In addition, I used these instructions on the tags I made for each gift. The best trick I used was putting a coffee filter in the bottom of the nursery pots before adding the soil--that way no soil falls out. I also wrapped the pots in aluminum foil before placing them in the baskets.

For the tags, I used pictures I grabbed from the Park Seed website, and wrote a description of the bulb and instructions based on the Park Seed website description and P. Allen Smith's planting tips. Add a little scrpabooking paper and some ribbon, and voila! Gift tags!

Look what I got!

Look at what my sister gave me for Christmas:It's from the company BlueQ in Pittsfield, MA (where my sister-in-law lives). Check them out. They have terrific products (a number of which I own, like this, this, this, this, and this).

I like their products almost as much as I love Anne Taintor. My mom gave me this book for Christmas, but I already have it (I bought it for myself). Perhaps I'll give it away to one of my blog readers, that is if anyone says they want it...

I have many Anne Taintor items, and I covet just about everything in the collection. I just wish I were as clever as she is!

Wow, I really am boring!

I just took an online quiz that's supposed to tell me what kind of yarn I would be if I were yarn. guess what? I'm dishcloth cotton! I was really hoping I would be hand-dyed merino, but no, I'm not even a nice cotton sock yarn--I'm dishcloth cotton:

You are Dishcloth Cotton.You are a very hard worker, most at home when you're at home. You are thrifty and seemingly born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain Jane, but you are too practical to notice.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that 27% of the people who took the quiz are also dishcloth cotton. I will agree with some of the statements above, but born to clean I was definitely not (though when I do clean, I really go all out).

In other knitting-related news, I started a new project last night. It's a hat for D. I'm using the "hot head" pattern from Stitch 'n' Bitch, but with 2 strands of Lamb's Pride Worsted instead of the Lambs Pride Bulky which was suggested (I'm using blue flannel, blue boy, and brite blue). I cast on using a 2 needle technique taught to me by the leader of my new knitting group. The project requires 10.5 needles, so I cast on (using long-tail cast on) to 2 needles held together--my 10.5, plus a 7 dpn. The cast on edge ended up being perfect--not too tight and not too loose.

Oh, and I didn't use this last night when I changed colors on my new project (or when I knit my first row after casting on), but I love this tutorial for weaving in ends while you knit. Link Here.

There's also one for continental knitters (which I am learning). Link here.

Update: So that blue hat I was making for D? Well, I only cast on 56 stitches instead of 64 (this is what happens when I knit and watch TV at the same time). So, the hat was tiny, but it looks really cute on my 3 1/2 year old nephew Matthew!

Christmas Cookies

In the past 2 weeks I've started making my Christmas cookies. First, I made creme de menthe brownies for a cookie swap. I don't use a recipe, I just make up a batch of fudgie brownies (my grandmother's recipe), ice them with buttercream frosting that's been tinted green and spiked with creme de menthe, and then coat them with chocolate (semi-sweet chips and some butter melted).

The second cookies I made are peanut butter balls. This is a heavily guarded recipe that originally came from my neightbor/my best friend's step-father's ex-wife. My friend Amanda makes these every year and we call them Mandy's Candies. The recipe is out there all over the place in the Internet, so I don't need to post it here and risk upsetting the balance of the universe of my old neighborhood.

Finally, I made sugar cookies. My sister is the queen of cut-out sugar cookies. She makes them for every holiday, bridal showers, etc. She's also a great pie baker. I don't have a lot of patience for rolling out dough (or a lot of time), so I made our grandmother's sugar cookie recipe, rolled it into a log, chilled it for a couple days, and then sliced and baked. They came out approximately round, and I knew that they would look great iced. Here is the recipe:

I also made up a 3/4 batch of my grandmother's christmas cookie icing. Techinically I guess it's royal icing, but I always refer to it as Christmas cookie icing. The icing gets very hard, and I love the combination of soft cookie with a coating of hard icing on top. When I was a kid, my grandmother always made sugar cookies like that. I can still picture her pink-clad santas (I have that cookie cutter now). The santas were pink because she used liquid food coloring and it takes a whole lot of liquid food coloring to dye icing red. These days I use gel food coloring and am able to get more of a red color.

I simply use a ziplock bag instead of a pastry bag for most of my decorating needs. It's easy and disposable--just fill with colored icing and snip a very small hole in the corner. For the holly leaves I did use a pastry bag and tip, but the disposable pastry bag split at the seams before I was finished--I had green icing all over my hands!Here's the recipe for the icing (Doris Arnold is my grandmother):

The recipes are from this cookbook:

I made it a number of years ago by covering a blank book with cut outs from magazines (and the Williams Sonoma catalog). I covered the whole thing with contact paper, and even included measurement equivalents table inside the front cover. I love this little book. It contains my favorite family recipes (banana bread, brownies, cranberry bread, cookie recipes, coffee cake, etc.) as well as some of the recipes I've cut out of magazines. I've always loved cutting and pasting!!!

O Christmas Tree

Here is a collage of some of the ornaments on my Christmas tree. Each ornament has a story. In the top row, the 2nd from the left is an Austrian girl given to be my my mother one year when I was studying Austria for a project in elementary school. The 2nd from the right in the top row is an ornament that belonged to my maternal grandmother--it's very retro! The cows are from my time in Vermont, the sled is from my kindergarten teacher. The lollipop is a craft I made at a friend's Christmas party in elementary school. The Pittsburgh Penguin hockey player belongs to D (his father is from Pittsburgh). Donder has been around as long as I can remember. My sister has Dancer. I believe the 2nd from the left on the bottom row was made by my paternal grandmother, and I'm not sure who made the clothespin doll next to it. So many memories wrapped up in these ornaments, and no doubt each new ornament I receive (or give to D) will also by laden with memory.