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What’s your favorite Christmas ornament?
Every year as we decorate the tree, we remind each other of the signifcance of each ornament.
“Here’s the skating moose from our trip to Banff!” or “That’s the Santa starfish your old girlfriend painted for you,” or “Oh yes, the Mardi Gras mask from New Orleans–pre-Katrina.”
Of course, we all have our favorites. Mine is the sugar plum fairy. 
Why? Because I love ballet and took lessons into my young adulthood. Because I took my children to the Nutcracker when they were young. Because the music is marvelous and evokes Christmas every time I hear it.
I also love the ornaments my children created when they were wee little things. Some were constructed in school, like the famous double Dixie cup dangle:
Some were spontaneous outbursts of creativity, albeit not necessarily talent, such as the blue sticker star:
My children are always trying to persuade me to throw such priceless artifacts in the garbage. However, I continue to treasure them and hang each one with misty eyes.
Another ornament no one understands my attachment to is this plain blue ball:
I cling to it because my roommates and I bought a box of them to decorate our suite’s Christmas tree in my sophomore year at college. Seeing it brings back wonderful memories of stringing popcorn and cranberries until our fingers were bloody, while we sang carols off-key. We were all so young then.
This little reindeer was the first ornament I bought with my own paycheck from my first job, a major milestone.
My family has their own favorites, of course. My daughter’s beloved ornaments all involve cute puppies, such as this one:
My son has a crush on Emma Watson so this dubious likeness of Hermione Granger is his personal fave (it certainly doesn’t do the glamorous Emma justice):
Finally, my husband’s No. 1 pick:
So decorating the tree becomes a trip down Memory Lane, a catalogue of our passions, and a time to share all of them with each other. Just another reason I love the holiday season.
Transformation of the Tree
The tree is finally finished. Yay! I thought I’d share the stages of decoration since the tree’s transformation from bare naked fir to glitzy Christmas totem took several days.
Stage 1: Nothing but needles. The Fraser fir is a gorgeous shape though.
Stage 2: Lights and the star. I put blinking lights up the inside of the trunk to give it some movement, not that you can see those in a photo.
Stage 3: Add the feather boas. This was a new addition this year. A local designer (chosen to help decorate the White House) was featured in a magazine, which showed her own tree decorated with white feather boas. Since I’m always looking for an excuse to use feathers in my home and personal decor, I jumped right on that bandwagon. It really does look like snow on the needles, don’t you think?
Stage 4: Ornaments, bows, and candy canes are hung on the branches with care. Our tree will never be one of those designer creations because our ornaments are a hodge-podge collection representing our family history (more on that in my next blog). Literally every ornament I hook onto the tree has some significance to me or another member of the the family. I love seeing them all once a year.
I think Santa will approve.
Holiday gift #3: For the golfer in your life
Called “Golf Balls in a Sack”, this gift could go to either a male or female golfer, with slightly different subtexts. Dare them to hang it on their golf bag!
You can get 2 for just $13.50 each at www.lighterside.com .
Holiday gift #2: For all us moms
Do I really need to comment on this? I know I want one!
Gift idea #1: A magic wand
Tis the season for holiday shopping, and as always, I try to be helpful to my readers since I know what a tough job it is to find just the right gift. Here’s my first suggestion. It’s especially perfect for Harry Potter fans, but I think almost everyone has wanted a magic wand at some point in their lives. This one actually works!
It doesn’t zap Voldemort, but it will change the channel on your television with a swirl of your wrist. Here’s how X-treme Geek describes it: “a total of 13 programmable commands are controlled by circular movements, up and down gestures, or back and forth whisps of this vibrating wand. It uses the same accelerometer technology used in Wii remotes.”
Evidently it requires some practice to master, but I think it’s time well-used. Think how impressive it would look to chant “speedio fastus”, wave your wand, and have the DVR zoom into fast forward!
It’s a mere $79.95 on Amazon.
Oh, the irony! I’m posting a recipe.
I’m sure many of my friends will laugh hysterically when they see a recipe on my blog. But all my Facebook pals have asked for my world-famous Carrot and Ginger Soup recipe so I’m happy to oblige. The joke: I hate to cook and I make this soup exactly once a year–at Thanksgiving–to take to the family feast. As you will see, it’s incredibly easy, just a bit time-intensive. However, it is delicious, if I do say so myself.
Carrot and Ginger Soup
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh ginger root
3 cloves garlic, minced
7 cups chicken stock
1 cup dry white wine
1.5 pounds carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces (I use those bags of “baby cut” carrots just as is.)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Pinch curry powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Snipped fresh chives or chopped fresh parsley (garnish)
1. Melt the butter in a large stock pot over medium heat. Add the onion, ginger, and garlic and saute for 15 to 20 minutes.
2. Add stock, wine, and carrots. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered over medium heat until carrots are very tender, about 45 minutes (or a little longer if you’re doing a double batch).
3. Puree the soup in a blender or food processor fitted with a steel blade. Season with lemon juice, curry powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with the chives or parsley. Delicious either hot or chilled.
6 portions (about 200 calories each).
(Sorry about the lack of accents over “saute” and “puree”. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get those with this blog software.)
Here’s wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving, filled with many blessings.
Workshop Report: Plotting the Romantic Suspense Novel
Do you like to kill people in your books? Or at least strew a dead body or two around? Then Annie Solomon’s “Plotting the Romantic Suspense Novel” workshop is for you. Boy, do I wish I had attended this one before I started Music of the Night. It took three tries to get that book right. Annie’s advice would have saved me the first two.
Here’s a sneak peek into the excellent ideas Annie gave her students:
Required characters: Hero, Heroine, Dead person, Villain.
You must define the hero and heroine on a professional level that makes it a requirement that they be involved in the investigation almost all the time. You may choose to have them be: investigator, suspect, witness, lawyer, actual or potential victim, competing investigator, or bodyguard, etc.
Then you must go beyond that. If the heroine is the investigator, WHY is she involved in this case? What are the stakes for her? Possibilities: the victim is a friend/relative; solving the case will earn her a promotion; she’s assigned the case as punishment for a previous screw-up; the case is related to a crime she worked on in the past.
Also, give the victim some attribute(s) which relates to the hero/heroine, so that there is a personal stake in the crime.
In romantic suspense, it is important to keep the hero/heroine together physically. You can have them in a safe house or have one be the bodyguard for the other. If you make one of them the suspect, then the other must find admirable traits in him/her that contradict the suspicious evidence. Events in the romance can bring those out.
The two stories–romance and mystery–merge when trust and commitment enter the relationship.
Annie told us lots more, so I recommend you catch her workshop at another conference, if you can.
Workshop Report: Query Letters by Lisa Verge Higgins
At the fabulous New Jersey Romance Writers “Put Your Heart in a Book” Conference, I attended a great workshop on writing query letters. Multi-pubbed author Lisa Verge Higgins presented a well-organized, information-packed class on how to write a polished, professional query letter that will have an agent/editor begging to read your manuscript. She calls it Get Your Foot in the Door: Writing a Killer Query.
For those who are just venturing into the crazy business of getting your book published, a query letter is the one-page introduction you write to an agent and/or editor. It describes your book in two or three paragraphs and includes any biographical information relevant to your project. It’s a bear to write, mostly because of having to do such a short summary of your 90,000-word masterpiece.
So, without giving away all of Lisa’s trade secrets (come to the conference next year!), I will share with you her excellent tips on how to write that darned book summary:
Don’t tell too much. Include just the basic premise: main characters, their motivations and conflicts, and their growth. Make it emotional! Use verbs that hit you in the gut. Include the following:
1. Hook ’em with your characters. Describe each main character in 2-3 sentences. What’s interesting/different/unique about your character and his/her goal? Pick two adjectives to attach to each character. Then pick a third adjective that contrasts with the first two.
2. How do you torture your characters? What is preventing that person from getting what he/she wants? Again use 2-3 sentences. You can use juxtapositions to show conflicts, rather than having to explain at length.
3. Choose one of the following to show the action of your book:
a) Inciting incident–what gets the conflict rolling;
b) Major crisis;
c) Point of growth–a plot point where the character decides to change.
Lisa emphasized that :
1. Your pitch should be emotionally compelling with high stakes for the main characters;
2. The “voice” or tone of the pitch should match the tone of your manuscript;
3. You should not be afraid to be creative and mix things up a bit. However, keep it professional at all times.
The great thing about writing this summary is that you can use the same pitch when you meet an agent/editor face-to-face at a conference. It’s all there!
After Lisa’s workshop, I went back to my room and rewrote the pitch for my current work-in-progress. Guess what? The first editor I emailed it to requested my manuscript! Thank you, Lisa!
Random act of spookiness
My husband was sitting in the family room last night when the doorbell rang. No one was there. However, this is what met his wondering gaze:
This may not look strange to you, but here’s the thing: those pumpkins were all intact when we put them on the porch. No evil scowl, no mustachio-ed grin. Just blank, boring pumpkins.
Some wonderfully whimsical person pumpkin-napped them, carved faces (on both sides!), returned them to our porch with candles lit, and vanished into the night.
So whoever you are, thank you for your random act of spookiness! You got us empty nesters into the spirit of Halloween!
Tree Trauma
The tree in our back yard took a sudden dislike to our fence. It hurled not one, but two giant limbs down on top of it. This is the second limb protruding through what’s left of our fence after the first limb hit it. This is taken in our neighbor’s yard, BTW.
The green plastic mesh is the temporary fix we put in to confine the dogs after the FIRST branch took out a section of fence (no photos of that one since we didn’t plan to file an insurance claim for it).
Here’s the branch from OUR side of the fence:
Can you believe our gargoyle Freddy survived? That limb hit less than an inch from Freddy’s wingtip. He was completely unscathed.
Not so our neighbor’s garage which got bashed in several places. So my husband decided the tree must go, since it was now attacking innocent garages. I was sad to see a tall old oak tree taken down but the process was quite fascinating.
Here’s Andreas the Tree Guy sailing through the branches, buzz sawing as he went:
This next picture gives you some idea of how high up he was while swinging and sawing. I can’t even imagine doing his job!
Here they take down a section of the trunk.
And here’s the bottom of the trunk. It gives you an idea of how big this tree really was.
I was glad to hear that they would sell this beautiful straight trunk and not just cut it up for firewood. I hope someone has my oak’s planks in their floor or made in a desk. Even though the tree had turned violent, I feel its trunk can become a useful member of society with the proper rehabilitation.
While the tree’s absence leaves quite a gap in my back yard, I am relieved it is no longer a threat since Hurricane Earl is supposed to graze us this evening. Who knows what the Evil Oak would have thrown at us, given a high wind at his back!
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