Tag Archives: holidays

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Turn Summer Trash into Christmas Cash (A Holiday Ecology)


The holidays cost big bucks, bigger bucks than some out-of-work elves and cash-strapped consumers can afford.

But if you want to pay for Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanzaa gifts this December, especially during difficult financial times, now is the time to plan ahead, now is the time to turn summer trash into Christmas cash.

I sometimes start as early as May or June, making quilted Christmas ornaments, sometimes to give as gifts, other times to sell, raising the funds to purchase presents for my partner, perhaps  iTunes for my nephews, a mirror for my mom.

These tree ornaments can be made from found fabric and repurposed paper—skirts to shirts, magazines to maps.

fabric version

another fabric ornament

paper version made from canned tomato labels

variation on the label ornament above (notice ingredient list)

This mixed fabric and paper ornament uses recycled New York Times.

close-up of the same fabric and paper ornament

What you will need:

–found fabric (40 squares per ornament, 2 inches each) OR

–repurposed paper from books, maps, or newspapers (40 squares per ornament, 2 inches each)

–straight pins (approximately 200-210 per ornament)

–Styrofoam balls (2.5 inches each)

–ribbon (5/8 inch, ½ inch, and ¼ inch)

–beads

–scissors

–ruler

Follow these steps:

  1. Cut fabric and/or paper into 2 inch squares.  You will need 40 squares per ornament.

  1. Pierce center of first square with pin.

  1. Fold fabric/paper  as shown in photos below and attach to ball.

  1. Add fabric/paper squares until you have 4 in the first circle, 8 in the next, and 8 in the last.

secure with 4 pins across the bottom of the triangle

secure second folded triangle opposite the first

add the third triangle

add the fourth to complete the first set of triangles

add the first triangle of the next set between triangles of the first, inserting the top pin about 1/4 inch from the center

add the second opposite the first

attach the third triangle of the second set

add the fourth

the fifth

the sixth

eighth triangle finishes the second set

second triangle of third set

third triangle of third set and so on until third set is complete

  1. Repeat steps 2-4 on the opposite side of the ball, again adding 4 squares in the first circle, followed by 8 each in the following 2 circles, until fabric/paper squares nearly meet in the middle and you can see only a narrow band of Styrofoam circling the center of the ball.  (See images below.)

side one and side two meet in the middle

  1. Pin 8 inch strip of ribbon (5/8 inch wide) around the middle of the ball to cover pins.

secure one end of ribbon with two pins

where ends meet secure with two more pins

  1. Add optional ¼ ribbon over the 5/8 inch ribbon to create layered effect and pin in place.

secure quarter-inch ribbon on either end with pin

  1. Attach ribbon to form bow on top in desired pattern and color.  Secure with pins.  I usually use two colors, applied in opposite directions and crossed in the center.

attach first half of bow in the same direction as 5/8 inch ribbon

attach the second perpendicular to the first

  1. Secure loop for hanging with decorative beads and pin.

loop attached with pin

decorative bead finishes the top

  1. Pin optional decorative beads in the center of the smallest star on either side of ornament.

feed bead onto straight pin

finished ornament

(Note:  I would make a number of ornaments with fabric before proceeding to paper, which is more difficult to manage.)

Will you rethink your ethic of giving this Christmas?  Do you have a holiday ecology?

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Lexington, Kentucky, Where Only the Horses Run Fast


Lexington, Kentucky may be known as the “Horse Capital of the World,” but I’m proud to announce that the lovely and amazingly lazy town where I live has also made the Colbert Report.

Recently, Men’s Health Magazine ranked Lexington the most sedentary city in America, inspiring Colbert to award this city-of-sloth the highly coveted “Reacher-Grabber Award.”

So, kick back, grab yourself a big ol’ bag of Lays, and allow Colbert to laugh you into the long, holiday weekend the right way, the lazy Lexington way:

Whether or not you, like Lexingtonians, avoid sweat at-all-costs, tell me–what lazy-ass thing will you do to save yourself a few steps this 4th of July?

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Real Boys do Cook Quiche: a Reflection on Fathers’ Day


(in memory of Sam’s daddy Dino–Happy Fathers’ Day from far away)

Much to our delight, my nephew Sam came to visit Sara and me this weekend.  His mother, my younger sister Lynn, is in Cuba for 10 days, so Sam has a series of family, friends, and camp to keep him company.

And his stop Friday and Saturday just happened to be our home.  Goodness–what a gift to us!

The boy is precious–kind, smart, creative, with not only a soul of gold, but also a spirit bright and brilliant.

Sam is eleven.  He plays football, basketball, and a bit of soccer.  He golfs.

But his primary passion is in the kitchen.  He loves to cook, to bake, to create.  I don’t imagine there are many eleven-year-old boys in Kentucky whipping up quiche in the kitchen.  But Friday morning that’s just what Sam did.

So today–a journey in photographs–a quiche-cooking boy–a foodie’s young life:

Aunt Kathy holds her new-born nephew–Sammy’s first day of life:

for the love of nephew!

He’s grown a bit and is visiting Aunt Kathy again:

rock-a-bye-baby

Sam and Daddy–(Sam’s daddy died when Sam was only six.):

Sam adored his daddy!

Sam and big brother Johnny visit Santa:

seasons greetings from the nephews

Sam graduates from pre-school:

entering the land of "Big Boy"

Sam tends to under-arms:

Sammy does deodorant.

When Sammy was six, we rode together in our town’s 4th of July parade:

I pedaled and pulled. Sammy sat.

Sam’s school picture:

Our boy is growing up.

This weekend Sam and I ate dinner at the Atomic Cafe, a block from our house in downtown Lexington:

We each ate shrimp linguine.

When Sam visits, he and I almost always collaborate on an art project:

Sam adds a logo to his painted bottle of wine.

Saturday morning we visited our local farmers’ market:

Sara and Sam

Smoothie goes green at Farmers’ Market:

pedaling toward smoothie

Yet another bike invloved in Sam’s Saturday:

Riding home fom Farmers' Market

So Sam is off to camp this week, but with Daddy gone, our boy has big pants to fill, as Fathers’ Day approaches:

Sam pulls himself up, britches better than boot straps

Happy Fathers’ Day, Dino!  We love you and know if you were here, you’d assure your son, that real boys do cook quiche.

But then Sam knows that already!

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A Sister Lost: a Twin Remembered


In honor of Memorial Day, I’m remembering my identical twin sister Martha, who died several days after we were born. 

Twins born a month premature had little chance of survival in 1962, a time before medical science knew how to save the tiniest of infants.  I weighed just over 3 pounds, Marty just over 2.  The doctors promised my parents neither of us would survive, but it seems even then I was determined to beat the odds.

This poem is written in the voice of my sister, who describes our experience in the womb:  the veins lining the inside of the placenta we shared, her efforts to recite poetry about our time together , the fact that I was growing more quickly than she.

Hope you appreciate this poem about a primal kind of bonding and the profound sadness of losing someone whose DNA was identical to mine, someone who mirrored me even before the beginning, when “I” was “we” and “we” were wombed as one.

 

 To my twin sister who lived to tell about it

 

The room, which was poorly lit

     and warmer than we wanted,

     curved around us

               like planetarium

                    ceiling

               like the rind

                    of cantaloupe

                    as seen from the inside

 

I remember how you traced

     the networking of veins

     with the stub that became

                  the index finger

                  of your left hand

              

While I recited garbled

     poems about

           the splitting

                  of space

          the fact that you were

                 gathering more

                 matter

  

 

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A Weekend Away from Post-a-Day


Over the weekend Sara and I have been busy hosting Easter dinners for each of our families.  Sara roasted a leg of lamb with ginger carrots.  I decorated our house for the holiday. 

Here are a few photographic highlights of my weekend away from the blogosphere:

our library ready for Easter hors devours

living room set up for egg hunt
I hand-painted eggs for the occasion.
table set for Easter dinner

 What was the highlight of your holiday weekend?

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Saint Sara’s Celery and a Broth Debacle Averted


As Sara, the dogs and I struggle  to “suitcase”  a year’s worth of Haiti into a less-than-large shipping container (all in an effort to return to the US next week), please notice how our dog Lucy “assists” with the effort.  She has her paw in the sorting and boxing, packing and wrapping:

Lucy "helps" with the packing!

Lucy’s romp through our packing not withstanding, today, in the spirit of looking back and celebrating some of our biggest adventures  in Haiti, I bring you Part 2 of my Thanksgiving post.  (To read part 1 click here.)  Enjoy!

Yesterday, promising a series of posts this week about the difficulties Sara and I face trying to celebrate Thanksgiving from Port-au-Prince, I outlined what I called the “oven-related challenges” that could jeopardize our thankful feasting this Thursday.

Today, however, shopping-related issues take center stage—the consumer-driven hazards that could take down even the most well-intended and tradition-centered of holiday celebrations.  In fact, it may be that the more one tries to model any Thanksgiving feast in Haiti on the one Grandma would have catered, the larger the obstacles threatening it loom.

So, buyer beware.

Wisely, Sara and I anticipated some of these issues and brought back from the US several Thanksgiving menu items we thought might be needed—imagined we wouldn’t find here, even in the expat-oriented grocery stores in Petion-ville. 

But as you might expect (those of you who know my pathetic track record when it comes to poor packing), I anticipated incorrectly—finding here in Haiti what I did bring back but not bringing what I didn’t find.  Just my bad Thanksgiving luck!

Except for canned pumpkin—that is. 

Here I hit the pie-filling nail on its not-so-proverbial-pie-filling head.  I swear there’s not an ounce of Libby’s to be had on the whole of this damn island—cherry pie filling, yes—canned yams, yes—canned pumpkin in time for Thanksgiving pie-baking—no sir—none of it—anywhere.  And believe me, I have looked. 

But we need not worry.   I may not have a thermostatically controllable oven to bake the pie in, but I have a full 29 ounce can of “America’s Favorite Pumpkin” to put in it.

Now about the celery—

Here I should mention having a bit of scare yesterday morning trying to find this vegetable, almost as essential to stuffing as sage itself.  Standing in Giant Market (right here in Petion-ville), I came so close to a celery-induced heart attack, I was imagining, “What would Jesus do?”  What would the son of God himself (assuming he were a turkey-stuffing kind of carpenter) use in his stuffing were the stalks of stringy stuff not available?  If he turned water into wine, could he turn carrots into celery?

But, again, you need not fear, as Saint Sara herself performed the miracle, finally finding what she called a “not very robust” celery (but a celery-looking substance nonetheless) in the grocery store near her office. 

Catastrophe averted.  We are that much closer to a celery-ed stuffing inside our bird that’s to be roasted at a temperature the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will themselves determine.

Then there’s the chicken broth—

Yesterday Sara sent me to the super market for some cans of it, among other things.   Actually, Giant carried the item in both the Swanson and Campbell’s variety—the Swanson, carton-ed with no added MSG and the Campbell’s, canned with all the blood-pressure-raising MSG one would ever want.  And being a health-conscious, not-wanting-to-consume-excessive-amounts-of-salt American, I selected the broth without MSG.  In fact, I tried to check out with three cartons of the stuff, since Thanksgiving dinner calls for broth in both the gravy and as a moistening agent in any well-celery-ed stuffing.

Here’s the hitch.  Though the store stocked the Swanson’s (over-stocked it, in fact)—they wouldn’t sell it to me.  And, if sheer quantity were any indication, wouldn’t sell to anybody, for that matter.  They couldn’ t figure out the price.  So, when, after thirty minutes of trying to determine one, no member of the sales or management staff could still settle on the number of Gourde to make me pay, I suggested they charge me anything. 

“Over-charge me,” I even offered—a concept they seemed not to grasp—though they seem to get it well enough when selling products on the street and doubling the price when any non-Haitian tries to buy.

But undeterred and unwilling to waste any more of my time-is-money American minutes, I gave up, bought the cans of Campbell’s, and headed home, risking ill-health all the way.

So the bottom line is this— the shopping obstacles, though they were multiple and at times bizarre, did not obstruct in any hugely significant way.  These were more imagined obstacles than obstacles of real substance—

So Saint Sara, the wise and proper packer, was (as she is in all things) probably right about this, as well–

—Since the anticipated shopping obstacle was, like the celery itself . . .

. . . “not a very robust” obstacle after all.

Have you had any strange, even borderline bizarre, shopping experiences?

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The Butterball Challenge (Haitian Style)


As Sara and I continue to pack up our lives here in Haiti, and I continue to reflect and reminisce about some of Haiti-related “challenges” we’ve faced over the last year, I simply must share, for those of you who may have missed it, the following about our effort to prepare a sit-down Thanksgiving dinner for 24 under, shall we say, less-than-ideal conditions:

In honor of the upcoming holiday, I’ve decided to share, over the next several days, a few of the challenges we’re facing trying to prepare Thanksgiving dinner from Haiti.  So stay tuned all week for the sometimes amusing, sometimes maddening, sometimes mind-numbing complications that inevitably arise when celebrating this most American of holidays in the least American of locations.

Today I give you the oven-related challenges.

 

Is my Haitian oven up to the Butterball challenge?

 

I told Sara when we were looking for a house here in Haiti, that I simply had to have an oven.  Neither of the two homes we had in Vietnam had anything other than a cook top in the kitchen, which bothered me to no end, since I like to bake—cookies, cakes, biscuits, pies, muffins.  The only thing I like more than making them is eating them, but that’s another post for another day.

 So Sara did what any Tollhouse-cookie-loving partner would do.  She got us an oven—a real honest-to-goodness gas oven—minus the thermostat.

 I kid you not.  There’s no way to set any specific temperature on this most essential of kitchen appliances, any temperature either Fahrenheit or Celsius.

 Now, I love Sara more than anything, even more than my daily dose of cake and cookies, and those of you who know my inclination toward carb-consumption, know that’s saying quite a bit.  But sometimes she misses the most obvious of details.

 “Oh, that’s not that important.  You’ll figure that out.”

 Twelve attempts and twelve burnt batches of cookies later, I’m still figuring. 

 Which brings me to the matter of needing an oven this week, a temperature controlled oven, I might add.   In America we can’t celebrate Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie.  It’s the most Thanksgiving of Thanksgiving desserts—even when celebrating from here in Port-au-Prince—especially when celebrating from any far-away, cholera-sickened, earthquake-toppled part of the planet!

 A pumpkin pie likes to bake for the first 15 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit and the final 45 to 50 minutes at 350, temperatures too precise even for the oven thermometer I brought back from the US.  It only seems to get me in the ballpark of a particular temperature, give or take 100 degrees. 

 But what about the turkey Sara plans to roast, what about the thermostatic requirements of the old Butterball?

 Oh, that’s not that important.  She’ll figure that out.

Have you had any memorable Thanksgiving dinner disasters?