Club Flamingo Gets A Makeover!

So the other day I drug out and dusted off all of our Chickam supplies.

When I got to the flamingo lamp, our go-to traditional baby chick keeper-warmer and pseudomama...well, let's just say that the last 38 or so years have not been kind to it.

 Yeah...YIKES. My favorite part is the burn-yer-house-down spliced wiring.

It's current state is entirely my fault. I originally bought this delightfully gaudy thing around 1980, and it sat proudly on my desk for many years as a desk lamp. It's attributed to George Kovacs as its maker, and I recall when I bought it at Lamps Plus or someplace similar, it was part of a collection of other animal-head deck lamps. Well, one day the ceramic flamingo head shade suffered a catastrophic incident and got broken into a dozen pieces.

Heartbreaking.  Oh well, that's why epoxy exists...Sadly, the gap in the shade where the initial impact powdered the ceramic proved too annoying to work with while writing, and the flamingo lamp was banished to the garage, where it became a servicable lamp for my work bench. Eventually the plastic cover on the gooseneck also crumbled and my husband replaced it with a length of heavy-duty plastic tubing he had handy. Not pretty, but servicable.

And there it stayed until 1998 or so, when we ran our first baby chick hatch without a broody hen for a mama--and I realized that the battered ol' flamingo lamp, with it's adjustable gooseneck and who-cares-if-it-gets-pooped-on style, was perfect for keeping baby chicks warm.  Not to mention it was also perfectly hilarious.

Once we created Chickam and started webcasting the hatch and subsequent 8 weeks of the chick's lives, Chickam fans found the flamingo lamp entertaining and dubbed the chick box 'Club Flamingo'.

It wasn't long before Chickam fans started creating fanart...

So yeah--the flamingo lamp was lookin' beat, I knew it was time to revamp it!

And presto--a few days later (and a heaping helping of cussing when the new wiring proved to be just the teensiest bit too thick to willing go through the metal gooseneck and had to brute-forced into cooperating), Club Flamingo lives again!

Sadly, nothing could be done about the various chips and cracks in the flamingo head, but overall the flamingo lamp just looks heaps better! Not to mention not such a scary fire hazard...

Did I Forget Anything?!

I can never escape that 'I've forgotten something SO basic, people will laugh at me' feeling when gearing up for Thanksgiving.

Today I'm making two pies, one pecan and one pumpkin.

Tomorrow I'm making:
Roast turkey with sausage/walnut stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Green bean/mushroom casserole
Gravy
Rolls
Cranberry sauce (THAT'S what I forgot! Back to the store...)
Relish tray: pickles, black olives, green olives

The nuts & Applets & Cotlets will be for us to snack on, I'm also making some blanched & toasted almonds tonight. I'm thinking or getting a port wine/nut cheese ball & crackers to set out too, along with some cut-up apples to keep people out of the kitchen and the Hell out from under foot.

Just for fun, I loaded all of tomorrow's food on the kitchen island for a photo op:

Holy cats, what a mountain of food! Birdzilla weighs in at a little over 15 pounds. They had some truly gigantic turkeys at the store, but I didn't need some 25 pound monster squatting in my oven and bending the rack. This one will likely take 4-5 hours to cook as it is.

Breakfast goodies, including lovely fresh eggs from our girls.

J. requested some mixed nuts to snack on, not ALL of these will be used in the stuffing, which will be a sausage/walnut type. The gravy I got to augment the REAL gravy I'll make from the pan drippings, we all love giblet gravy so I want to be sure there is plenty.

Pie makin's! One pecan (my mom's recipe) and one pumpkin, with homemade whipped cream.

I'm a big believer in Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners being special--as homemade & from scratch, made with the best ingredients, as I can get it. This will be the kid's first time helping me stuff & roast a turkey, she's all excited...we'll see what she thinks when I tell her to grab a big ol' handfull of moist bread and ram it up a dead turkey's nether region. :)

Ah, new life experiences--!

New Year's Eve...

Today was rainy, so it consisted mainly of mopping up tracked-in mud from the kitchen floor--although it is such breathtakingly ugly early 1970's Harvest Gold linoleum that mud actually improves it. We also had to bring in one of the Silkies and all three Polish chickens for a session with the hair dryer, they were soaked to the skin and looking especially pathetic. Since crested poultry all have the same non-Darwinesque trait--a hole in the top of their skulls through which their brains protrude--wet crest feathers on their heads weight their head feathers down so as to cause brain injuries. This is thanks to dumbass humans breeding the birds for bigger and fancier head crest feathers. So when it rains, in come the Silkies and Polish chickens to lounge in the house, get their feathers blow-dried, eat snackies and watch TV (the 'Twilight Zone' marathon). Today two of the Silkies had the sense to stay in the coop and remain dry.

Tonight we will have our little family New Year's Eve party, complete with sparkling pomegranate juice, party hats, noisemakers and confetti poppers, plus a few leftover Fourth of July tidbits. We're celebrating at 8PM our time so N. can participate, then she's off to bed for a few hours till we wake her again at midnight to stand on the front porch and bang on the good Revere Ware stainless steel pots with wooden spoons (family tradition).

Tomorrow we take down the Christmas tree and pack away all those wonderful holiday baubles until next year. Normally I watch the Rose Parade during the tree untrimming, but because years ago the Rose Parade folks struck a deal with the local churches never to have the parade on a Sunday, no parade till January 2nd--on which day it is supposed to rain VERY heavily. It always feels very weird to take down the tree without the parade going in the background. We'll each write our memories from this year on the tissue that wraps the ornaments, and read the comments from previous years aloud to each other as we do so. N. will write her own comments beginning this year.

I also prune back all my rose bushes at the beginning of the year, which always makes them look like wretched little sticks but does them good in the long run...sad since this time of year I get my best roses--no sunburned blooms like in summer.

Whatever your New Year's Eve tradition is, have fun and celebrate safely and in style, Happy New Year!

A Serious Question...

OK, I have to ask...is it possible to have too many Christmas ornaments? I know that my sisters would instantly scream, "No!" but looking at my tree tonight the thought did occur to me. The thing almost looks like it was dipped in glue and rolled in ornaments, and I have to admit that I did have trouble getting all of the decorations situated on the branches.

At least I come by this honestly, care of my mother. When I was a kid, every year we would all join in decorating the tree. Carefully unwrapping each ornament from miles of toilet paper and stealthily repositioning favorite ornaments that someone else had foolishly hung in the wrong spot. Sometimes this happened to the same ornament two or three times.

There's something about Christmas ornaments that carry powerful memories, so poignant and sweet that just holding one in your hand can instantly transport you back to when you were 8 or 10 years old. My collection has been added to slowly over the years as I search for the exact decorations that I grew up with. Thanks to estate sales, thrift stores and ebay, I've partially succeeded. My tree sports, for instance, two oddly shaped ornaments that look just like the ones we used to call "Ramblers" as children. Not until years later did I think to wonder why we named these particular decorations such an odd name--it is because they were the same pale metallic blue as my Dad's Rambler American, a faithful but boxy little car. My ornaments even have the same stripes as the ones from my childhood, and I call mine "Ramblers" as well. Note to self: Explain this line of descent to my daughter, so she won't suddenly wonder in her later years why the Hell she's calling those damned things "Ramblers". Another fav is a plain red ball from the 50's with a white snowy church scene and the words, 'Silent Night' painted on the side. Nearby are the colorful glass clip-on birds with the fiberglass tails, the fabulous indented teardrop ornaments, the red, silver and blue glass bells, the oversized glass balls with the elaborate, glittered scenes painted all around them and the four color glass church with glittered 'snow' on it's roof.

To these nods to childhood I've added my own special pieces: the ornate set of red, gold and silver plastic teardrops that were attached to the top of the first Christmas gift from my husband, the 24 long, sliver-like glass icicles that are ALWAYS a royal pain to retrieve off of the tree each year, the three small handpainted china bells from an estate sale of a couple named Ken and Shirley who lived down the street from me, the two beautiful tiny glass chickens from my sister, the wooden cat ornament from my sister--it waves it's arms and legs wildly when you pull on it's string--, the delicate snowflake sequin ball from Eva, the cinnamon-apple dough ornaments my 5 year old and I made last year, the three ultra-tiny wooden ornaments that barely cling to the very tippy-top of the tree each year and somehow over the last 20 years have miraculously never gotten lost, the gigantic silver ball that I refer to as 'The Queen Mother'--always the last to be hung, with a large red glittered set of poinsettias on one side and an ornate old-world 'Merry Christmas' in blue glitter on the other. And new this year--a replica ornament of the fabulous 'leg lamp' from the movie 'A Christmas Story', a gift from my husband.

The decorations mentioned here barely scratch the surface, of course. This year and last, it took me three days to finish decorating the tree. Last year I put it down to being ill and moving slow, and to some extent the same was true this year thanks to a sinus/ear infection. But the truth is that decorating the tree is something I really love to do, and taking the time to unwrap each ornament and getting that childhood zing and a smile just by seeing it again and holding it in my hands just can't be beat. The tree will stay up until New Year's Day for my OTHER personal tradition, rising early in the quiet while everyone else sleeps, removing the ornaments and packing them away while watching the Rose Parade. So what if I end up watching the Rose Parade a few times because it takes so damned long to unload the tree, right? Which brings me back to the original question: Is it possible to have too many Christmas ornaments?

Ah, um...never mind--I see a bare spot on the tree. There's room for more. Come to think of it, I'm still searching the the heavy plastic filligree bells and the handpainted pale blue ball with the glittering white snowman on it from my childhood.

Forget I said anything.

Another Christmas...so far!

Well, another day of happiness, Conspicious California Consumer style. Right now I don't care if I EVER see another chunk of that Hellish gray wire that toymakers insist on winding around every toy in weird, inaccessable, unexplainable places. And that damned super-strong clear tape they then cover the stupid gray wire with, as if it wasn't already anough of a pain in the neck. All this while an over-sugared, under-slept, hot-wired 5 year dances and emits high-pitched yowls of anticipation at your feet. Something about this makes my brain just flatline and I lose what little fine motor skills remained in my fingers. Soon the kids are watching me with an expression pretty darned close to pity on their faces. This year I tried to circumvent this somewhat by taking the items out ahead of the wrap session and doing away with the annoying gray wire and tape and placing batteries. This worked fine at home but I still looked bad once we got to N's paternal grandparents home and tore paper there. And we still have another family holiday shinding to go to on MY side of the family. I'll tackle that when the time comes, hopefully I'll have a day to rest up beforehand.

The big hit with N. this year (so far) is the replica stuffed bunny I made, using her favorite, worn-out-to-the-nub toy as a pattern. The problem was that I could only work on it at night after she was asleep, and by then I was so tired and wrung out from fighting a sinus/ear infection that I was making all sorts of weird mistakes--sewing heads on backwards and the like. But eventually New Bunny got done, and N. now carries them BOTH around. The other big hit of the day was the huge--HUGE--34 inches--plastic spider courtesy of our ol' fav, Archie McPhee.

She LOVES things like this--no dolls for her, she's a plastic dinosaur and rubber bug kinda girl. She hauled both the stuffed bunny and the spider along to Grandma and Grandpa's house to share. They looked at us as if we had three heads, but oh, well.

My big hit of the day is the beautiful black and purple velvet dress/blouse that J. got me. It's got dragons on the purple velvet, a lace-up bodice, long, flowing sleeves and a long, draped back the reaches below my knees. It's so cool I don't think I'll ever take it off.

Along with the goodies, we try to get N. to appreciate and savor the season. We check NORAD's website as they track Santa's progress on Christmas Eve. We make a point of reading The Polar Express and The Night Before Christmas. Another treat is to turn off the TV and stereo and turn off all of the lights in the house except those on the tree, then just sit quietly and look at it. I remember as a child doing this-I'd crawl under the dining room table all by myself, take off my glasses and just enjoy the beautiful, blurry, colored blobs. Our tree this year is a nice one, but sadly is too full to allow the hanging of the lead tinsel (NOT plastic, haz mat be damned). Another fun tradition we started, is that every year on New Year's Day when it is time to take down the tree, we each take a pen and write a short note, memory or comment on the tissue that wraps the ornaments. That way we have a fun history of notes to read aloud to each other NEXT year when we unwrap the ornaments. So far we have about 7 years worth of this. My favorite is the one from a few years ago that notes that N. took her first steps that New Year's Day.

Last night we went for our annual drive to look at Christmas lights. I took along a bundle of jingle bells and periodically held them out the car window and shook them in a Santa's sleigh-type cadence. Several times we got small children to freeze in their tracks. The outing to view holiday lights always turns up with lots of strange ones. This year's oddest was the large, expensive McMansion wearing obviously the OLD house's lights. Waaaay undersized and pathetic looking in a amusing way. Interestingly, we started our annual Christmas light hunt armed with a video camera to search out the hideous, tacky houses. We'd tape it to show our family--surely no one would beleive us otherwise--and our snarky, smart-ass comments ended up on the tape. It's impossible NOT to comment when you see some of these (Santa on a surfboard!). The trip got to be popular with the family and ended up becoming a Pointless Family Tradition--just like putting the bows off of the packages on a sibling's head.

I've just spent the last 2 hours clipping tags from new clothing, setting up new toys, wrestling other items from their packaging and reading instructions. Our giant curbside trash can is stuffed to the gills, it's maw overflowing with bright shreds of paper and loose strands of ribbon. "A Christmas Story" has been running all day on one of the TV stations, last night they were running "A Miracle on 34th Street" over and over. Today we allowed N. to tank up on as much candy as she wanted, to her cautiously puzzled happiness. Little half-eaten bits of it are gathered in a small dish for tomorrow. I'm sure this is typical and a great reason why school resumes NEXT week.

N. still gets up at a reasonable hour, today was 7AM. We are especially thankful for this when J's sister tells us that HER kids start trying to get everyone up starting at around 4AM. I'd use strap clamps and industrial strength epoxy to keep them in bed if they did that to me.

Time to download today's pictures off of the camera. As an aside, the chickens were NOT amused by the giant plastic spider that N. ran out into the yard to "share" with them. I believe they will need extended therapy after today...