Insanity is the sound of a metronome

Recently we added piano lessons to the munchkin's weekly school plan. We found an old piano on craigslist, set it up in the living room, and brought in the most fascinating little battery controlled black box. It's not one of the older metronomes, with the swinging pendulum - I could see the cat tackling that and it being a short lived part of our home. It's one of the ones you can spin the dial to change the tempo and then flip a switch to change the tone. It goes fast, slow, fast again, REALLY fast, then quiet, loud, kind of in the middle, REALLY loud, and then it goes up on a shelf. A high shelf. Turned off.

One joy of the season in our home is sugar cookies. This is the only time of year that I make them, because I could eat dozens of them in one sitting. Royal icing is too tempting for me to resist. I love the fun of rolling out the dough, then playing cookie-cutter-tetris, trying to fit in as many shapes and waste as little dough as possible. Who am I kidding - dough doesn't get wasted in this house. Somehow we ended up with pastel green trees, and yellow gingerbread men, but they were all tasty.

This past year I have decided to experiment more in the kitchen. Tonight it started with a pork taco recipe that was done in the slow cooker, topped with queso blanco crumbles, and served with a fresh diced mango salsa, all on warm corn tortillas. It was really yummy, and reminded me of a mutton dish I had in India (a couple decades ago). Rich flavors, a hint of sweet, but a LOT of work to prepare the sauce for the crock pot. Hubby was a fan, and went back for seconds. Munchkin gave me another "meh", sideways thumb, but did manage to finish her meal. We're trying to encourage her to try new things, within reason, and if it's not too spicy (or something that the cat wouldn't eat), then what is served is what is to eat. Thankfully she is a good sport, and has found quite a few things that she enjoys and to which she will give an enthusiastic thumbs up. We haven't had to resort to frozen pizza, yet!

Stitching has not been a priority over the past week, even though I would have loved to make more progress on the new hymn design. The end is in sight, and I likely have only 8 or so more hours to work on it. At this point, on the second stitching, I have the border mostly memorized and don't have to look at the pattern often. The two pieces at the framer should be done this week, and it's exciting to be that much closer to new releases!

Last week I added a note to the end of my post that I wanted to do a giveaway, and would love to hear from you about your favorite holiday memory or stitchy story. Thank you to all who emailed. I laughed, cried, felt comforted, and shared in a lot of your lives. I couldn't pick just one, so I'm picking two. Congrats to Tricia and Brenda! This was so much fun for me, keep an eye out and I'll do these again throughout the year.