Category: Daily Thoughts

Daily Thoughts

No More Bah Humbug

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2014-12-11 12.21.15

This morning has me in the kitchen baking for the cookie open house I am having tomorrow. I have been so busy that I didn’t stop to ask Frosty why he kept going in and out the back kitchen door, but when I went to get more butter out of the garage fridge, there he was with wrapping paper, scissors and tape, just wrapping away. When I ask him what he was doing, he responded that this year he was not waiting until Christmas Eve to wrap presents, as was his normal tradition. Since we had only bought Sponge Bob and Princes Elsa wrapping paper thus far, (for the grandkids presents, not outs supposedly),  he informed me that one of my presents would be wrapped in Sponge Bob, one in Frozen  and one in Trader Joe’s brown paper sack, but he had actually cut ribbon and wrapped it around the brown paper wrapping..

Last night we had sat and watched The Middle and laughed till we cried. If you have not watched it, you must take the time to do so. That show is just so real regarding how Mom’s and Dad’s think about Christmas trappings and what we spend so much time and energy on the last few days before Christmas morn. I guess it really made an impact on him, as I cannot remember in 20 years, Frosty wrapping presents before the 24th, much less doing it with a smile on his face, listening to our Ipod playing Christmas carols. What has happened to my Bah Humbug Frosty and what has retirement done to him?

This is the same man that surprised me a little over a week ago, when he turned down the tollway and headed downtown to look at the Christmas lights! WITHOUT ME ASKING!!!!. This is actually getting a little scarey. I  have come downstairs in the mornings the last couple of weeks to the sound of our TV playing Christmas Carols at 7:30 a.m. He has already replaced the battery in my Christmas Carol clock. I wonder if he has seen me thumbing through travel magazines of ” how to spend your husbands insurance money after he is gone”? A wife does have to plan you know!

He has just walked back through the kitchen with the presents which he finished wrapping, singing Frozen………now I’m worried. Let it Go, Frosty, really, Let it Go….

Daily Thoughts

The Best Seat in the House

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Last night we had friends over for dinner and I was just going along with cooking, setting the table to make it look festive. I wanted it to be just the perfect December entertaining evening with great food, all the while our guests would be listening to beautiful Christmas music in the background. I envisioned that they would get in their car on the way home saying, “how does she do it? How does she create such a beautiful meal with beautiful decorations and just make the evening so special?”

That dream came crashing down on me this morning as I was over on the side of the table putting away a few of the “special” Christmas dishes that I had brought out to use last night, when I glanced down and saw something that any “perfect hostess” would not want to see.

There in the chair that my friend, Janet, was sitting was a stack of about 6 placemats that I had forgot to take out of the chair and put away. So the entire evening, as we sat around the table, refilling tea glasses and taking in all the compliments of, “you really did make these delish individual peach streusel pies”? my precious friend was spending her entire evening trying to balance herself atop the placemats…quilted placemats, no less.

If we still lived in California and I was still having to find innovative hiding places for all our things, because no closets, I could maybe use that excuse, but being back in the land of Big Closets Texas…the only excuse I had now was….oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m going to say this…”I’m old and forgetful.” There I admit it…I thought she was a little ADHD last night when she kept fidgeting, but thought maybe she is just ansy to get to the living room couch where we could just stretch out and talk about how lovely the dinner was and how great it was to be around all the Christmas décor that my oldest son, Jason, says, “looks like it is a craft store in here mom where you should have price tags on everything.”

Well, maybe I’m no Martha Stewart, but maybe I have invented a way of getting rid of guests that you hope won’t stay to long after dinner…….

I just texted Janet (yes I texted my apology, I told you I am not Martha) and she texted back that she wondered what it was but thought it might just be more decorations….I guess she looked around and figured that that was about the only space left that needed filling with Christmas décor…Jason, I think you might be more right than I care to admit.

Daily Thoughts

Happy Thanksgiving to All and to All A Good Night

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IT is official, when the last Thanksgiving plate is washed today, we can unpack the Christmas dishes without guilt or fear of being criticized that we are rushing Christmas. Truth be told, I am one of the closet Christmas fairies that hide all the Christmas décor until I feel safe to bring it all out. For weeks I have had the trees up and the mantel decorated, plus Frosty has had the outside lights up for a week. To me it is just so much fun to have all the decorations up with lights to welcome the family and friends who come over. I just have a hard time waiting until after turkey day to put it all up. So we leave the dining room decorated with turkeys and use turkey dishes until Thanksgiving night, but then….drum roll please……those disappear and by morning the Christmas dishes are washed and in the cupboard and the turkeys are packed away until next November. The house is then completely transformed into Christmas by tomorrow morning, which gives us a feeling of relaxation since the decorating is done and we can just sit and enjoy the lights and sights of Christmas all through the house.

We are also experiencing something new this year. We are being treated to Thanksgiving dinner at our oldest son’s home where he and Tracy have been cooking all day and we are just suppose to show up with a few dishes. What a treat. Last night, Jason came over to pick up some green chile soup I had cooked. I had told them that since they were over there cooking their little hearts out that he could stop by on his way home from work and pick up a pot of soup so they wouldn’t have to worry about last nights dinner. When he came over he remarked that , “my goodness, cooking Thanksgiving dinner is really hard work, we have gone to the grocery store every day this week and now Tracy is out looking for a needle and thread to sew the turkey and what in the world were we thinking?” I just smiled and said, ‘yes and we are so appreciative that we just get to show up and enjoy it.” Isn’t it so cute that all the years that mom’s cook the complete dinner with kids all competing for attention and insisting that their favorite dishes are being served; trying to make it all come together at the same time, and trying to make it a table that would make Martha Stewart proud, the kids just don’t have a clue what all is involved until they feel compelled to begin their own traditions. Mother’s Day should be the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. I think that we would receive much better presents from our adult kids who have decided to host Thanksgiving dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you around the work who are kind to take the time to read chocolatecastles. May God’s blessings fall upon you and your families and may we all try harder to be more grateful for our blessings and keep our eyes open to opportunities to help someone who crosses our paths….To God Be the Glory for His abundant love and grace to all who call upon His Name!

Daily Thoughts

Christmases Past

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Early this morning Frosty’s phone rang and lo and behold it was some of our friends Face Timing us from Richmond Virginia. Of course, friends who you don’t see very often Face Time you before you have had the chance to comb your hair or caked on layers of make up that is now necessary to make myself presentable. But there we were, In our robes, bed hair. Thankfully they can’t tell over the phone that we hadn’t even brushed our teeth yet. But, back to the story, we laughed about times past when Ken use to make fun of us for having so many Christmas trees in the house. At this point, I admitted that our oldest son, Jason had dropped by the other evening and when he walked through the front door, he just looked around and said, “mom….the house looks like it should be in a craft store that has price tags on all the junk that you have.” I informed little smart alec that just for that, I will not clean out any of the hundreds of boxes of pictures or closets so that he will have to do that when we are gone. That will teach him to be a little more respectful of our Christmas “memories” that adorn our gingerbread house.

Ken and Reny ask us if we were going Christmas light looking this year. Immediately it brought back so many great memories of what we use to do every other year. Because Frosty and I love the lights of Christmas so much, we use to rent a 15 passenger van and invite friends over for a chile dinner before taking them Christmas light looking. Frosty would done his Santa hat as he drove and acted as tour guide, as our guests would sip on hot chocolate and snack on the box of goodies each little elf would be given as they stepped into the van. We have such great memories of the laughter that filled the van on those nights. The last Christmas we had the van, we had so many friends ask us if they could be a part of our little tradition, so we ended up doing it for two nights, Fri and Sat with a different group of friends each night. Frosty retired after some of our kids, who shall remain nameless, (but they live in Phoenix now) began to criticize Frosty’s driving and tell him that he wasn’t driving fast enough and that they were certainly glad that they hadn’t had to pay for the light looking evening. They told us that there is an app that you can download of Christmas lights and that they would have been just fine, staying home and watching the light app on their phones. Kids, you can’t live without them….pass the….wait, yes, we can live without them.  I guess after the first couple of hours of driving around to different neighborhoods, our precious adult kids got bored and wanted to go home to watch Big Bang Theory. We have assured them that after that year, we will stick to asking our “senior friends” who appreciate us going slow so they can see all the lights.  We think this year, we will go by ourselves. We will wear our ugly Christmas sweaters, have our Christmas mug of hot chocolate, singing along to our Pandora Christmas station and look at as many Christmas lights as we want, or we run out of gas. We will be sure and take lots of pictures as to give our kids more stuff to go through after they put us in the home…

Daily Thoughts

Frosty’s Big Surprise

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We have hit an all time low. Today after running errands, Frosty tells me he has a big surprise for me. Since it was around lunch time, I began to wonder if this was going to be the day he drove us down to Neiman’s for a special lunch ending with our favorite coconut cake that has always been one of the huge reasons we would drive down to North Park. But as we pulled into QT, I’m thinking that he will be filling the gas tank for our little trip across town, when he pulls past the gas pumps right up to the front door. I thought that maybe he was going in to get a drink so I wouldn’t get thirsty driving so far, but as he puts the car in park, he just looks at me and tells me that, “surprise, we are getting some of the best hot dogs and they are 2 for $2.12..what a deal. They have all the condiments you could want” he says, I just look at him and follow him into the store. We head to the hot dog counter where Frosty pulls out the buns from out of the warming tray. Is this gourmet or what? When I tell him that it’s not a real hot dog unless we have chile and that I don’t see any pot of chile. He points to a machine that has a lever which lets you pull it for chile  or cheese. You have got to be kidding me. I am topping a hot dog that has been warming for probably several hours with chile that comes out of a machine just like getting soft ice cream at Dairy Queen. I get enough napkins to cover my face for the walk back to the car. My big surprise was lunch at QT. It was at this moment that I gave thanks for our car windows being tinted and that you can’t really see in. The thought that friends might visit QT and see us sitting in our car eating hot dogs was just too much. It’s ok to do that at Sonic, but QT? It was not to long ago that he surprised me with a Walmart picnic. He buys Hawaiian rolls and gets chicken strips from their deli and sits in the car with his sandwich of chicken strips on the rolls. We do live an adventuresome life, Walmart parking lot picnics one week and QT picnics the next. Retirement just keeps getting better and better. Who knows what next week will hold? But if he pulls our car into Golden Corral Thanksgiving day, I will be calling a divorce attorney first thing Friday morn. It will be easy to find Frosty to serve him the papers. I know at the swell places where he hangs out now.

Daily Thoughts

Frosty & Noel’s Gingerbread House

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Ugly Christmas Sweaters
Ugly Christmas Sweaters

It is here….the week that we go from Peter and Penelope Pumpkin to Frosty & Noel. It is also this time of year that our adult children, bless their little hearts, cease to call us because they are afraid that if we don’t answer the phone, like when Wheel of Fortune is on, that they will have to listen to our voice mail in order to leave us a message. Both of our cell phones have this as our voice mail message, ” hi, this is Frosty (or Noel if it is my phone). I’m at the mall  and she’s baking cookies, when we are through we’ll give you call.” It just makes the Christmas season at our house. My phone, of course will say, “Frosty’s at the mall and I’m baking cookies, when we get through we will give you a call.”….

When we first married, I found a little pillow that had “Bah Hum Bug” stitched across it and I bought it to place on his side of the bed. But I have to admit, Frosty has come along way. Without me even asking now, he gets the boxes of Christmas décor out of the garage and brings them all in (all 27 boxes) and begins to set up the trees, then proceeds to put up the lights outside. Frosty has become Clark Griswald, I’m happy to say and it makes the season so much sweeter to have a hubby that doesn’t smirk every time I mention that I just need to make one more trip to Hobby Lobby. This year, he even suggested that we go early before the ugly sweaters get picked over and buy matching for our Christmas Card…is he a great Frosty or what? All this to say that the decorations are up, the candles are lit and the first of the family is coming over tonight to eat.

Last night, we met friends at a Greek Restaurant here in Frisco. It almost ended in us going shopping for a wig. We were sitting there having a great time with a platter of pita bread and hummus sitting there, when all of a sudden I felt this enormous amount of heat all down the back of my neck. Before I could turn around to see what was happening, I hear, “oompa” and this flash of fire is inches from my hair as the waiter has lit this platter of who knows what for the table of 4 sitting behind us. Apparently he doesn’t realize that in Dallas, you never get that close to ladies big Dallas hair. With the can of hair spray that is on my person to keep this Dallas big hair in place, my hair will go up in a flash. When I yelled, the waiter realized how close to my hair he was. W When the table on the other side of us ordered the platter of fire, before the guy lit up the sky and yelled “oompa” he remembered to turn around to check how close he was to me. We managed to finish our meal and leave before any more of my hair was singed. let’s just say that my hair stylist won’t need to cut the back of my hair now…the waiter did it for me

Daily Thoughts · Uncategorized

Positive Joy

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Am writing something a little different today, but has been on my heart lately. Last week I heard a preacher on the radio talk about the things we hear day in and day out. Instead of us hearing, “we have a 70% chance of sunshine” we hear, “there is a 30% chance of cloudiness”.

Instead of hearing, “we have 85% of teens who make good grades and do well in school” we hear, “we have 15% drop out rate of troubled teens.”

We are not use to hearing that 90% of preachers keep the faith and serve, congregations for 30 plus years, we hear about the 10% of the ones that walk away from their calling. Why is this? Because the negative news gets our attention. Then we wonder why 65% of adults in our country are taking anti-depressants. We are losing our joy and we are living with a underlying fear of what all is going on around us in the world.

This morning at church, the sermon was on Joy and how we can have true joy and peace even when things are falling apart all around us.

He used the example of when Paul was in prison writing from his jail cell that “the joy of the Lord was his strength.”

During the day what are we filling our minds with? If we are continually listening to the news, we are being bombarded with negative news. I know that we need to keep up with what is going on around us, but how many hours are we sitting and listening to the same news, over and over.

What if we used some of that time on our knees before the God of the Universe?

Phil 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worth of praise, think about these things.”

Phil 4: 4-6 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God.

When we are tempted to worry or anxious about anything, take those worries to the Lord in prayer.

Mark Twain once said that as an old man, he had seen many troubles, troubles of which most of them never materialized.

Psa 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Rest, Reflect and Rejoice in the Lord, who is our strength and joy. We don’t have to live our lives in fear. We just need to ‘take it to the Lord in prayer” and trust Him for “He is our light and our salvation.”  He has promised to never leave us or forsake us.

Daily Thoughts

Peter Pumpkin Not Allowed in Walmart

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Today was the last straw. I will never EVER ask Randy if he wants to go with me to Walmart, much less on a weekend.  I have noticed that he is always a little to excited when I ask him if he would like to go, after all, what husband wants to go to Walmart with his wife.  Today I found out why. As I usually do, he pushes the cart while I dash around from aisle to aisle picking up items that come to mind. On one such trip back to the cart to throw in my grocery items because my arms were full, I cannot seem to find Mr. Congeniality.  Because I was carrying around more items than I should be, I am desperately looking for him to unload all the stuff. There in the produce aisle, he is pushing the cart and when he gets it going, he lets go to see just how far it will go by itself. It crashed into a old lady, riding on one of those motorized chairs, who was not a happy camper.  Slowly, I hid behind the baking items aisle that they had placed right by the frozen foods. When I came out from my hiding place, thinking that that incident would probably show him that he shouldn’t be racing the grocery basket, he is pushing it straight to the deli where he proceeds to buy chicken strips, because after all, “he hasn’t had a Walmart picnic in a long time”. So there I find him, people staring at him, pushing the cart with one hand, with fried chicken hanging from his mustache and looking for more people in the motorized chairs. He claimed that he actually had the right of way and she should have watched where she was going. I have told him that he should treat them with more respect because one day that might be him. His response was, “well if it is, I will drive it fast and not just stop in the middle of the aisles”.

We have a new name for Peter this season; COM: crotchety old man….so if you are ever in Walmart in Frisco, watch out. You never know who you might run into, literally. Maybe I should say, who might run into you.  If the person running into your basket has a chicken strip in one hand and a Hawaiian roll in the other hand, please get out of the way, you will be glad you did. COM escapes sometimes from the house without me knowing it.

Casseroles · Daily Thoughts · Starches

Rice & Lentil Casserole

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After scraping the pan this afternoon of the caramel banana pudding that I made for dessert tonight, I thought the least I could do would be to post something healthy to make myself feel like I have not completely gone to the dark side of life…..an all sugar diet.  This is one of the recipes that I told you about that I found while waiting in the Dr’s office in California. When you read the ingredients….well, even just the title, you can tell that it would come from a Dr’s office magazine and not a Southern Living Magazine, I think Lentil and Southern comfort food might even be an oxymoron. Anyway…for all you folks out there that  are on restricted  diets of no meat, no gluten or diary, this one is for you. But please at least end your meal with a cookie or Red Delicious apple, you can only go so long without sugar. At least that is what I tell myself around 4 every afternoon.

1 cup uncooked basmati rice

1 cup dried split green lentils

1 (10 oz) package chopped spinach (thawed and squeeze as much moisture as possible out of spinach)

1 teas salt

1/2 teas pepper

1 teas turmeric

1 teas ground cumin

1 Tables grated fresh ginger

Be sure to rinse lemtils before cooking.  In a large saucepan, add rice, lentils, salt & pepper, turmeric, cumin and ginger.

Bring mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, covered, cooking for 45 min, stirring occasionally. Cover the saucepan, continue cooking over low heat until all liquid is absorbed. Add more water if needed to be sure rice and lentils are completely done.

Makes 6 servings

Breakfast · Daily Thoughts · Desserts

Pumpkin Poppers

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I know I posted these last Fall, but I wanted to remind you how good these are. Am taking a platter of them in the morning to a group of ladies who are getting together to cut out blue jeans to make shoes for an organization called Sole Hope. The shoes are used to keep children from getting infections in their feet in countries that struggle with disease from children and adults who have no shoes. The poppers will be the perfect snack to “pop” in our mouths as we cut, talk and fellowship together.

Just use any pumpkin bread mix and follow directions on box for baking. Use a miniature muffin pan to make them. When they come out of the oven, while still hot, roll them in a sugar-cinnamon mixture.

Because I have a little left over cream cheese frosting, I am going to drizzle some of the frosting over the poppers.  Whistle (and eat) while you work….my motto! Happy Fall Yall