Welcoming in 2008

Christmas has come and gone. A fabulous time was had by all here in the Tylee-Silberfein household. My family made the drive down from Seattle, and I invited some friends over. We ended up preparing Christmas dinner for 12, which was actually a lot of fun. My camera batteries were dead, however, so Marcy took all the photos. Once they complete their 1300 mile drive home and she has time to send me pictures, I'll be sure to post them.

Today I was able to leave work early, and started to put away some of the Christmas decor. We had hung our Christmas cards on ribbon around the living room, and had gotten quite a few this year, from Adam's friends and mine. It seemed a shame to throw them all away, and then I remembered something we had done when I was younger. You cut out interesting parts of the cards:Then paste them on squares of colorful paper, attach a ribbon, and voila! Gift tags for next year:

I also finished some hats for the nieblings. Jester hat for C, and cable knit for B. I hope they fit.

Finally, I want you all to meet Gilbert Glugg, the latest member of our family. He's a calico goldfish, and he certainly has something of an attitude:

Hope everyone has a wonderful New Years. Here's to 2008!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

Those nifty stocking hangers I found on-sale at JoAnn's certainly helped with the stocking hanging! We are all set for Christmas. No traveling for us this year, since I'm on wards and only get one day off per week. I'm on-call Christmas Eve, which people seem to think won't be too bad, because really, who wants to come to the ER on Christmas Eve? We'll see. My lovely family has decided to make the trip down here, so we will be hosting the Tylee Family Christmas this year. Complete with ham, which only Adam, Dad and I will be eating since I somehow belong to a family of vegetarians. They clearly do not understand the wonderfulness that is bacon. Mmm... bacon... Christmas dinner will be a group effort, given that I'm likely working until 1 pm on Christmas Day. I'm making the dough for the rolls tonight. Adam is responsible for the appetizers, mashed potatoes and apple pie. The fam is responsible for their non-beef, non-pork, non-chicken entree. Dad will be making the famous corn su-full. I'll throw together some veggies (maple roasted carrots and green beans with shallots) after we finish opening presents. And after my disappointment last year with the cranberry shortage, I stocked up on cranberries earlier this year, so even though they are no longer available in any grocery store anywhere, I can make my fabulous cranberry nut bread.

In other news, we have designed our save the date cards for the wedding. I just have to print them up and we'll send them out after the new year. Not much else going on on the wedding front. We're in that period of down time before the craziness of last minute planning happens. Fellowship applications are done. It seems endocrine has joined the match this year, which means I don't find out until June 18th where I'm going for fellowship, and similar to match day for residency, I have no choice in the matter. I've gotten a few interview offers so far: OHSU, Colorado, the NIH and UCSD. I haven't scheduled anything though. I'll get around to it after the holiday, and once I'm done with the wards.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

Loose ends

Friday I go back to the wards. I'm on call the first night. And also on Christmas Eve. I think it will be nice to be busy again, but I've really enjoyed having all this free time. I've started a lot of different projects; since my mind hasn't been occupied with saving lives, I've found other things to keep me busy. Today I tried to get some of those other things finished:

Christmas cards and Christmas wrapping: the cards are done, and the first package is being mailed off tomorrow. Since I ended up doing all my Christmas shopping via amazon.com this year, I'm still waiting for all those packages. They ended up shipping my last order in 5 different shipments.


Stockings: I made these years ago, but figure since Adam is in it for the long haul, he deserved to have his name on one.

Wedding stuff: we should be getting the save the dates out after the new year. We found a wonderful blog by someone in Seattle, and they will be providing the art work. I would show you what they will look like, but I'd like to maintain some element of surprise.

Knitting: I'm still trying to catch up with the baby knitting. The latest niebling arrived Monday, but his gift still isn't done. Plus I want to make hats for the older ones. Don't know if that will happen by Christmas, but I'm trying!

And a few other organizational projects (recipes, decorating, convincing Adam that it will be fun to go to Macy's and register for pots and towels) but all in all, things are going well. I can't wait for Christmas. The family is coming down here, so even though I have to work, I still get to celebrate because I can put them all to work cooking my ham and whatever the vegan-vegetarian-non beef or pork eating side of the family wants for dinner. And the corn souffle. Yum!

Christmas Shopping

I am done. And without having to set foot in a single store. I used to love Christmas shopping, the festive decorations, the Christmas music, the egg nog lattes. But that has lost it's magic. Christmas is still my favorite holiday, but more because of the tradition, and the wonderful memories I have of Christmases past. I'm not a religious person, and Christmas has never been a religious holiday for me. It's always about family, and finding ways to show those around you how much you care about them, and enjoying time together. I've always enjoyed getting gifts for people. I love the challenge of finding the perfect gift. And I find the internet makes this that much easier. Not only can you search for exactly what you want, without having to go from store to store and wait in line after line, but there are so many unique and wonderful things to be found on the internet. I have a few favorite places to do my shopping, so if you are still looking, check these sites out:

amazon.com--yes, you all know and love them. I am quite pleased, everything I've ordered through them this year has arrived in less than 3 days! With free super-saver shipping!

mightygoods.com--a lovely person finds fabulous things on the internet and tells you where to find them. I love this site. She also has mightyjunior.com, just for kids

etsy.com--a collection of extremely talented people who makes things and sell them to you. I love the idea behind this site. There are so many artistic and gifted people out there who make fabulous things, and here they have a chance to sell their arts to us.

Tonight is the start of the holiday parties. Adam's company party tonight, department of medicine party next week, and one of Adam's friends is having a holiday cocktail party next weekend. Fun fun fun!

I have a problem.

I actually have many problems, but most of them aren't worth discussing here. One that is, is my problem with clutter. Now most of you don't live with me, so you may or may not be aware of this problem. I am not the neatest person in the world. I tend to leave things in piles. I try to make them organized piles, but nonetheless, if you follow me around the house on any given day you will see the piles I leave behind. Knitting in one pile. My mail neatly stacked in various locations. And in the bedroom, piles of clothing from the last few days. Somehow actually putting it in the hamper requires too much effort. Dear lord, I am lazy. Anyway, so this is all problematic, but mainly for Adam, since he's the one who has to deal with these piles on a daily basis. What is problematic for me is when I do not have my piles. While these piles may appear to be clutter to the outside eye, for me, this is my way of organizing. I need order in my life. I become paralyzed, unable to accomplish anything if I am lacking in order. I have been known to reorganize my yarn stash repeatedly because I can't take it all in unless I have it sorted in some logical fashion (initially by color, but that didn't work for me, so now it is by yarn weight). Recently though I have been paralyzed by the lack of organization when it comes to cooking.

I love to cook, and I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. I get recipes from various sources: cookbooks, magazines, the internet. My problem is how to organize these recipes. I make something good, and then I forget where I found the recipe. It gets lost, never to be made again. There is no order to my recipe collection, and as a result, I find it very difficult to cook on a daily basis. I hate going to the grocery store, because without having n idea of what I'm going to cook, I have no idea what to buy. So I need help. How best to keep track of my recipes? I need a good list of basic things that I can have ingredients on hand for, so I don't have to research recipes everytime I want to cook dinner. And I need a place to keep those more elaborate, but so good it will be worth making again at some point recipes so they don't get lost forever. I also need some way to keep track of all of those things I want to make. And I don't want to use the computer for this. I need a good old fashioned recipe box. Or something. Any ideas?

Hat Update

I have a nasty cold, which means I had plenty of time for knitting while lying on the couch all day yesterday. First, the slouchy hat:

Not sure what I think of this. I can't decide if I like the stitch pattern or not. Perhpas I should have gone with your normal everyday stockinette stitch? Another yarn maybe? Thoughts, Emily?

And a made to order baby hat, for Adam's latest nephew/neice (or as I have dubbed them--niebling, you know, like sibling):

It's probably a bit too big for a newborn, but having little to no knowledge of newborn heads, it's really the best I could do. Cute, isn't it?