February 22 - Makes you smile

Our digital photo frame is one of the best gifts EVER! I've loaded it with
family photos, of course, but also with some of my favorite Instagram shots.
Sometimes we sit and watch it like TV. Heh.

I have it on good authority …

that the marmalade turned out great. The friend I was helping with the holiday card went home with two jars and he called it "mmmmmmarmalade." Sounds to me like he liked it!

I'm still working on the 2010 jar I opened the other day. When I tilt one of the new jars, the contents move a little and the color is lovely. Last year's overcooked batch was darker, and the content wasn't really mobile in the jar unless it had been warmed. Delicious, but not something I would serve or give away.

That's the thing about home-canned jams and jellies – you don't know how they'll behave until you open the jar. Surprise! It's like Christmas every time you want a piece of toast. And you can process two batches identically with different results. That happened to me with apple jelly last year. One batch was truly perfect, while the second was a little runny. Which, of course, adds to the charm of home-canned fruit. Heh.

I have enough citrus "in stock" to make two more batches of marmalade, with a couple pieces of fruit left over to eat, though I'll probably just make one. Six pounds of fruit yielded 13 8-ounce jars on Friday. Which reminds me, I should probably check my jar supply.

I spent yesterday hunched over a scanner and the computer, preserving old photographs to load onto the digital picture frame we're giving my husband's mother. I hope she likes it, and I'm wondering if I could hire myself out as a digital picture frame loader-upper. People my mother-in-law's age would really enjoy the memories, but generally don't have the equipment or technical skills to set up the frame. Hmmm. I think I'll put an ad in the paper.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my weight and fitness and health in general, and I have some stuff to say about it, but not today. All those ideas need to cook a little bit more. Like, maybe, until January 1st. In the meantime, there's football and knitting and Christmas dinner to plan. This week I'll be making candy to go with the cookies we're taking to the Christmas Eve open house we've gone to for the past 15 years.

Probably not a good week to write about my weight and fitness and health. I'm just sayin'.

Late night shenanigans

I'm an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kinda girl. I usually toddle off to the bedroom around 9 to read magazines or a Nook book, and am asleep by 10, meaning I'm up before the birds start chirping.

Unless it's July. Then the birds wake me up.

I was still awake, hunched over my laptop, last night at 10:30, working on resizing/reformatting digital photos to display on the electronic frame my husband and I are giving his mother for Christmas.

My husband's son and his family gave us ours, and we love it. We think she'll enjoy one but she doesn't have a computer so it's up to me (because my husband is computer-phobic) to get the images ready to load. He's going to pick up some prints that she's gathered, which I will scan. The SDHC card has been ordered, along with a card reader.

These digital frames look easy, but there's a lot of prep work before you give one to someone who isn't computer-savvy. And believe me, my mother-in-law isn't! She paid for wireless internet with her cable bundle for several months before we realized it. Wireless services aren't much use if you're a computer-free household.

But I digress.

Going to bed late (well, late for me) doesn't necessarily mean sleeping in. I've been up since 5:30, thinking about everything I have to do today. (At 5:30 a.m., thinking about it is all I can manage!) Here's a partial list:

• Wrap gifts for my daughter and her family.
• Package and mail those gifts.
• Write thank-you notes.
• Either make or buy Christmas cards.
• Print out address labels for cards.
• Walk.

Yes, it's such a busy day I thought I'd better add a line item for exercise.

This is old news if you're one of my
Facebook friends. And if you're not
one of my Facebook friends, why
aren't you? Just sayin'.

Yesterday's three-miler went well, and I wore the Vibrams for the first time on a walk. They were surprisingly comfortable, and I even jogged a little bit on the way home. There's more of a mid-foot strike, rather than a heel strike, which must be a good thing for non-aggravation of the plantar fasciitis.

Right?

In other news, I've been playing around with the blog a bit, adding a couple tabs at the top that will take you to some easy knitting patterns and a few of the food topics I've written about. Feel free to share links! The more the merrier!

Merry, get it? Holidays ... gifts ... NaBloPoMo December ... heh.