Twas the night before Christmas Eve.....

...and all thru my house, all was quiet, as quiet as a mouse.  There are no stockings hung by the fireplace...there is no place to hang them, but we still hope that St. Nick will be here.  Hmmm....I need to play with that story a bit.

I also have a very irreverent adaptation of "Deck The Halls" that I am toying with....the first line of my re-write of this classic song popped into my little pumpkin head today and I couldn't stop laughing.  I ended up laughing so hard that I had to shut my office door.  I texted it to a friend who really needed the kind of laugh that started at her toes and ended up at her nose.  All has turned out well, but she was dealing with a very serious medical emergency in her family over the last couple of days.  God is good!  

Now that I have relaxed a bit and watched some TV, I realized that Christmas is only a day away and I have lots left to do.  I promised my husband that I would hang up my clean laundry....I am so very good a procrastinating, especially when I don't like the chore at hand.  But...put me in the kitchen, and I will be there for hours, make a huge mess and clean it up when all the cooking is over.....just don't ask me to put up my clean laundry.  There has to be some significance to this weird little aversion.....oh well....back to the topic of food / cooking.

So, tomorrow I will be reluctantly putting up the clean laundry, baking a chiffon pumpkin cake, making Pioneer Woman Cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning (outstanding recipe), and from that recipe, I will use the dough to adapt and make turtle rolls with.  I also have roasted garlic mashed potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts with caramelized shallots and crispy maple bacon, pork tenderloin with a selection of 2 sauces to make.  The sauces are a Dijon mustard, maple syrup and rosemary sauce and the other is a cranberry, tomato and chipotle salsa.

I decided that I am going to use the old fashioned food mill to make the mashed potatoes with.  These will be loaded with butter, a bit of cream and TONS of roasted garlic.

My father and my in-laws will be joining Jason and I for dinner, and I am looking forward to having everyone over.  I am also hoping to make it to the midnight Christmas Service at church, but its not looking so good, especially after a day like I will have tomorrow.  Hopefully, I will be able to stay awake...but this brat turns into a pumpkin at approx. 9:30pm CST.  I just realized that it is 11:00pm here and I am still upright with open eyes.

I'm not sure if I will have an opportunity to do any writing tomorrow, so I am wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, peace, love and a very safe holiday.

As always,
Susan