Merry Christmas Eve

Good morning, my friends. Santa comes tonight. I'm pretty sure he's not bringing me anything. We don't even have a chimney, so he'd have to break down the door to get inside anyway. Maybe I'll just turn out the lights. Better safe than sorry. I've warned the kitties about the reindeer, and they're keeping an eagle eye out.

Yeah...that's an old picture, but it's one of my favorites of Smitty. He'd just seen the bobcat that sometimes roams around here.

So it was a day of cooking yesterday, and it will be a day of cooking today. I've already started the Burgundy Mushrooms this morning. It's one of Ree Drummond's recipes. They'll be simmering away on the stovetop all day long.

Mike will be doing our prime rib roast on the Traeger Grill. I'll be making garlic mashed potatoes and gravy and these Balsamic-Glazed Brussels Sprouts. Here's the picture from the website. 

I've made these before, but I couldn't find any pictures among my old blog posts. It's a recipe from Fine Cooking, and it's one of the few ways I've found to please the Brussels sprout haters in my family. I happen to love them, and sometimes I get my way.

Also yesterday, I made these Tart Green Beans with Bacon...a family favorite of many decades.

And most of my day was spent on this beauty. This is a Cranberry Cheesecake. I took this picture before adding the sour cream topping because I wanted you to see the cranberry swirl. It's made from a whole bag of cranberries, and then one cup of the "filling" is added to the cheesecake before it goes into the oven. The rest will be ladled over the individual slices.

And so the only sewing I did yesterday was slow stitching. I was able to make quite a bit of progress on the "Bicycles and Lace" block for the Girls' Getaway quilt. I finished stitching the blue bicycle. Pay no attention to that blue cast in the pictures that follow. That was my own shadow falling over the scene...a reminder to me to use better light than that over our dining room table.

I still needed to move my hoop up to stitch the "lace."

That was pretty quick to stitch, and so I moved my hoop to the right.

And I stitched some more there.

Here's how it's looking so far.

I was tempted to continue stitching the lace past the yellow bicycle...

But then, I figured it didn't matter which I stitched first, and so I went for the more interesting bicycle. I noticed I neglected to color a little bit of the rear fender. I can fix that before I start the stitching.

I have a slightly larger hoop in my supplies. I'm considering switching to the larger hoop in order to fit the whole bicycle within its boundary. It wouldn't matter except that this is a large piece. It's rolled up and folded over and then pinned to keep the excess fabric out of my way. It makes it a major effort to unpin and unroll everything to move my hoop, and then re-roll and re-pin everything. 

And that's where I'll start next. With the mushrooms simmering away already, I can relax for a couple more hours. I still need to set the table, but that can wait a little while longer. So it's going to be a busy day of cooking for me. I'm looking forward to seeing the family tonight and enjoying a Christmas feast together. I hope y'all are getting your final Christmas preparations finished up with no trouble, and that your holiday is very special. Merry Christmas Eve everybody!