How to stay in on a weekend....

TD and I's 1st pic of New Year.

First post of the new year….smells so fresh and timely. What you don’t smell is how dang cold it is. It’s so cold that I’m passing off athletic socks as dress socks and debating about wearing long underware under my dress clothes. It’s so cold that we are running the fireplace at night while we hunker down to relax. It’s so cold that I welcome the cats to sit with me, defiantly a two cat night, if I’m lucky. The temps are saying they’ll feel like they are between 30 and 50 below. Glad we are parking in the garage. 

Our first weekend, we weren’t too exciting. If I had my way, I wouldn’t have left the house. I had two goals: take down Christmas and take out tomatoes. We started the weekend off with a little tradition, Friday night pizza. First time in the new house. First time with the new mixer. We made 1 pizza and 2 calzones and had 0 complaints. 

We pulled the tree down, I got all the decorations corralled and put away. We put the totes (we even had to add one more to the Christmas stash) in storage, we vacuumed, I even played with my Christmas spot bot, which is really slick, even though it didn’t work like I thought. I carted it around the house looking for spots. The house began to have some semblance of normalcy for the new year. 

My other goal was to find a bit more of the freezer. We were blessed to be given tomatoes, which I will never turn down. I canned close to 50 pounds this weekend. That came down to 35 pints and 5 half pints. In it was two different types of spaghetti sauces and 2 different types of salsa. Matt hadn’t been impressed with my last batches of salsa. How dare I put corn in the salsa! Gasp. I know there are still a few tomatoes hanging around still frozen that will become something greater than just tomato. I do think that the only things I have left are deseeded and peeled, but I’m scared to get too excited until I’m sure! We did reach an interesting problem:

MJR: You brought me jelly jars to sterilize?

ALR: Yes. I know. We are out of pints. We have a couple options: 1. Can in jelly jars or quarts, 2. Start eating to free up our pints. 

MJR: I suppose those are good options.

The cats have survived New Years and are settling into 2015. Nike has been surprisingly good natured. Don’t think for a moment that her and I settle in with a cup of coco and she lets me braid her hair but she isn’t quiet as mouthy and fighty as normal. I say this and remember the two-sided argument a couple days ago about her being in the utility room. Lola enjoys the stools and I think I caught her watching her own version of reality tv.

Meal of Note: We had eggs in purgatory, Batch 1 Spaghetti sauce with capers with poached eggs with Parmesan cheese over a bed of noodles. Matt was super happy, which means that I was super happy! We'll have that again. 

ALR: Hurry up, we can watch the ball drop.

10, 9, 8,.....

ALR: Happy New Year.

MJR: It's not the new year.

ALR: Close enough for me.

Watching.....

ALR: Who's the guys in the yellow?

MJR: I don't know.

ALR: And that's how I know we are old.

MJR: What?

ALR: If they are there when the ball is dropping, they are a big deal. And we both have no clue.