Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la!

It's official. I am completely insane. Last weekend, I spent an entire day playing a computer game (about 8 hours' worth; I could hardly walk when I stopped for the night). And while I was happily smooshing CGI monsters, I was also listening to Christmas music. You read correctly - Christmas music.

Every year at about this time, I haul out the Christmas CDs and begin playing them (albeit quietly) in the livingroom while I craft my annual holiday ornament-gifts for my coworkers. Well, one year I started in March and it took all summer to finish up, but that's another entry. Last year, my ornaments completely fell apart before I could even get them out of the house. So this year, I resolved to do something simple, that required no new supplies, and I'd start early enough so if they self-destructed, I'd have time to come up with Plan B.

That meant starting last weekend. Which actually meant Sunday, since I was playing computer games all day Saturday... and I mentioned that already, didn't I??

Critter helped me -- we split out the supplies, and I showed her how to make the ornament, and we went at it. Pretty quickly, we realized an assembly-line style would be more efficient. So I cut squares, she trimmed the squares, then she folded, and I taped.

And Monday, we came back to see that our tape hadn't held, and I'd need to glue the ornaments in place. Oh, and hold them with rubberbands, since they wanted to spring apart. So all week after work, I re-folded and glued all the ornaments.

Then about Wednesday, Critter and I began decorating the ornaments. More glue, lots of ribbon, and some precariously perched ornaments sitting in cans until they dried. Oh, and on Thursday, I found a few more that had come unglued from the earlier attempts to keep them together...

Yesterday (we're on to Saturday now, if you're keeping track at home), we hit the home stretch. All of the trim was on, just needed to finish up a detail that would allow the ornament to be hung. [Sidebar: For my birthday this year, JewelGeek got me a Crop-a-Dile which is this nifty punch that punches holes and sets eyelets that are 1/8 or 3/4 big. I found all kinds of uses for that on this project!] Happily punching and gluing and taping away... I FINISHED all of the ornaments at around 8am this morning. [Did I mention I'm an early riser??]

And then I launched into full swing making the invitations for our annual holiday craft party and cookie bash. We had originally thought we'd host it over Veterans' Weekend, but decided against it. Last year, we held it the weekend before Thanksgiving and had the best turn-out ever. So we're doing that again. Of course, this year we have all of our livingroom furniture in place, so we're not sure where everyone will sit to work on their projects! It will be interesting...

Oh, and the Christmas music is still playing, softly, in the background. I just finished addressing the last invitation, so I really could stop for the night and turn the music off. But I need the inspiration to work on my Christmas cards...

Cutting Chicken

When I moved out of my parents’ house and started living on my own, I was thankful for any money-saving, practical advice and tips. Things like “You only need about an eighth of a scoop of laundry detergent to wash a large load” are not written on the packaging, because, of course, the manufacturer wants you to buy more detergent. But it worked, and saved me a bundle of money.

One of the money-saving tips my dad, Mr. GoGoGo, passed along was how inexpensive whole frying hens are. For about $5 (less, if you watch the ads), you can get an entire chicken. With a slow-cooker, you can cook the whole thing and feast on it for days. Or, you can cut it up yourself, and have the pieces for other sumptuous dishes at a fraction of the price of buying the butcher-cut pieces.

Dad showed me how to cut up a chicken a million times. He got me the fancy filleting knife, with its thin and slender blade that fits neatly between the joints for easy disassembly. He taught me how to remove the skin off the pieces to reduce fat intake. And he’d disinfect the knife, the entire counter, and the cutting board when he was done. I also watched Alton Brown’s episode on cutting up a chicken, too, with the nifty dinosaur skeleton as a visual aid to show joint locations. For a while, I actually hung on to the “how to” pretty well.

I think I’ve cut up 1 or 2 chickens in my day. The fact of the matter is, I think it’s gross. I simply don’t like how it feels between my fingers. I don’t like pulling the skin from the muscle (gross), snapping the leg joint (gross), or even reaching inside the “cavity” for the little baggie of innards neatly packaged so I can throw them away (super gross). Not to mention the carcass. My dad always cooks the carcass for broth – or freezes it to cook for broth later. Um, that means a chicken skeleton in the freezer (gross).

And I’ve discovered a few things about eating chicken, too that made this ritual even less desirable. Once you cut up a chicken, there are still only 2 breasts, 2 backs, and 2 drumsticks. No one eats the wings (too bony), and with the distribution of the parts according to my family’s preferences, I always ended up eating the back (also pretty bleepin’ bony). If I wanted pure, un-bony chicken breast, well, that’s another chicken… So I stopped buying whole fryers and cutting them up myself. The $6 I spend on fresh chicken breasts means I get to eat the good stuff, too, and I don’t have to stick my fingers where the sun don’t shine on dead poultry.

And why is all of this relevant now, you ask?? Well, I’m working on an overall quilt. It’s a quilt made from old jeans – a tradition my grandma started when pristine bolts of fabric were a luxury. She came through the Depression, and learned not to waste the “good” parts of a worn-out pair of jeans. The first step in making an overall quilt, naturally, is to cut up the jeans. I was struck suddenly how similar cutting up the jeans was to cutting up chicken.

Depending on the size of the jeans, in the end, you get 2 breasts (the large front portion from which you can cut the “prime” large squares), 2 backs (the back pocket – bones and maybe some useful meat), 4 drumsticks (strips big enough to cut smaller, clean, no-seam squares), and a couple of wings (strips where a smaller square is possible, if you include a seam). There’s a carcass to toss (the waistband, thick seams, and often the front/back pockets). And some juicy bits that are too small for the main meal, but perfectly good for soup (seamless pieces that could be turned into a strip quilt… but that’s another entry…)

See, Dad, I was paying attention.

The whole "chicken".
The cut-up pieces.
The good bits, too small for the main meal.
The carcasses.