It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Last year (and pretty much every year for 10 or 12 years beforehand) my sister did all of the Christmas decorating.

And then last year, 12 days before Christmas, my sister died. Needless to say, we were all pretty much numb for the holidays. I went back to work shortly before New Years and couldn't bring myself to take the decorations down. So my mom and my nephew did it one day while I was at work. See... Jamie was BRIGHT. She had some pale green, bronze, and gold ornaments... That went on a light purple tree. That was her tame tree. The tree in the living room? Was white, with a mostly red, hot pink, lime green, and turqouise/aqua-ish ornaments, along with her variety of ornaments that she had bought or been given (glittery cupcakes, a frog prince, two Frosty ornaments, ornaments the kids have made). That tree was fondly called the Dr. Suess tree. So there was a lot of her personality tied up in it. Christmas is just... JAMIE for us. Last year we were numb, this year we're remembering...

Double-Cheese Chili

Double-Cheese Chili Original Recipe

Being as we ARE such a large family (most nights I'm cooking for eight - and a half if you count my little womb-resident) I always have to alter recipes I find to feed a crowd. So I'm going to regularly post recipes on this blog - partially just so I can keep up with how I've modified them in the past! This is the first time I've tried this Double-Cheese Chili, and I'm kind of looking at the recipe and wondered what makes it qualify as "double cheese"? But okay, they call it that, so that's what we'll stick with.

Crisp, New Blog

I've been trying to figure out how to summarize my crazy life for the first entry of a new blog.

And then I realized the only followers I'll have for the first entry, probably, are people who already know me. So trying to summarize the insanity of my life for people who already know all about it is relatively pointless. SO. Instead, I decided just to start with something I wanted to blog about. And I have to say, yesterday is a pretty good thing to blog about. It was a long, crazy, awesome day in these parts.