Thanksgiving weekend :: in photos

Thanksgiving morning there was snow on the ground.  just a bit, but the flurries kept up all day.  She & Him Holiday station on Pandora, a fire burning..... and of course food prep.

I heartily recommend Ashley English's Rosemary-Bourbon Sweet Potato Pie from A Year of Pies.  very heartily.  yum.  a couple years ago I made the Gingersnap Pumpkin Pie on Thanksgiving and that one was delicious as well.  she knows her pies.

my mom drove out for a visit the day after Thanksgiving.  this is a big deal.  if you've read here for a while or if you know me in person, you know she came very close to dying this spring due to a severe case of pneumonia that lead to ARDS that lead to long-term intubation and multiple organ strain, sepsis,  a tracheotomy, etc, etc, etc.  but she is here, and she is very much alive and well, and she is doing great.  she just started driving again (she got sick the end of February, so that was a long time not driving!), she isn't requiring supplemental oxygen.  she is healing.  gosh I love this woman.  she got here and came walking in (even that- watching her walk up the driveway unaided, was huge for me) and scooped Claire up in her arms with just the littlest bit of difficulty.  she read Claire stories and they played and we made about a thousand paper snowflakes.  giving thanks for all of that.  many, many thanks.

we took care of the farm-school dog, Bailey, for a few days.  what a sweet and gentle old man he is.  Claire and I are working the dog angle on papa a bit these days.  we'll see.

there was some greenery collecting, some evergreen swag making.  we brought one to an elderly neighbor who lives alone and two others to friends' houses.  we've yet to make our own, but the goods are still sitting on the table out back so we'll get to them soon.

we got out in the garden on Saturday and pulled the remaining parsnips and carrots.  I think I'm done with spring/summer carrots because these are just SO much tastier!  we picked some greens and delighted in our hens' renewed laying and had a yummy kale-and-eggs brunch.

I bet some of you have seen the cute little orange peel star garland on pinterest, right?  if not, here it is.  well, I don't know how they cut the little stars, but I used an apple corer and now we have a bunch of little orange peel circles that are going to become a garland for Claire's (rosemary topiary) Christmas tree.  tada!

we went to Asheville Saturday afternoon to see a one-man show (well, one man, some puppets and a puppeteer) of Dickens' Christmas Carol with my dad.  It was great and afterwards she and I walked around town a bit enjoying street performers and picking up tickets to see these ladies on December 20th.  I haven't seen them in a couple years~ they are so, so good.

We almost went into the new location of the French Broad Chocolate Lounge (yumyumYUM!), but this is what the line looked like and we needed to get home and get dinner started.  this is often what the line looks like, actually.  but so worth it.  I love their Indian Kulfi (rose petals, cardamom, pistachios...) hot cocoa.  mmm mmmmm good.

as we were driving back into town I noticed a crowd gathered in the town square, noticed a large unlit tree that wasn't there earlier in the day.  so we stopped and got out.  a few minutes later they lit the tree and a small group broke out in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".  very festive.  very cold, also.  so we ran around for a couple minutes and called it a day.

today was another warm day.  she and I took a bike ride down to the Lake and played with some buddies for a while and then rode back and chatted with neighbors for a bit.  there was turkey soup and the hanging of her advent calendar.  A nice long weekend, a gentle nudge into the holiday season.  looking forward to easing in a bit more over the next week, and looking forward to a visit from Nana and Pipop nest weekend.

cheers!

weekending with Karen