Tuesday, December 23

We slept really late this morning, not getting up until nearly 8:30 a.m. I headed for the treadmill right away, postponing breakfast until afterward.

While I was getting ready for the day, Mother came over and started a pot of 11-bean soup with ham, onions, banana peppers, and a can of Rotel. We'll serve this when Hubbie's daughter visits tomorrow. I won't indulge, of course, but there will be choices of heart-healthy leftover chili or chicken noodle soup for me.

After that, Mother sat down to her jigsaw puzzle, while we watched a Christmas movie. This mornings's fare was "A Christmas Carol," performed by the Northern Ballet Theatre of England. I taped this from the public television channel several years ago, and have enjoyed it every year since.

We had time for only one movie before lunch. After lunch, Hubbie and I ran errands...to the Post Office, to the store that has a sale every weekend, to a bank, to the everything's a dollar store, and to the WDCS.

The parking lot at the store that has a sale every weekend was packed, so Hubbie let me out close to the door and then went in search of a parking space. I looked for something for Hubbie for Christmas at the store, and found it. The problem is, in my rush to pay for the item and get it bagged before Hubbie came looking for me, I forgot to use a $10 coupon I had. So now I'll have to go back to the store tomorrow, return the gift for a refund, and then buy the item again, using the coupon this time.

Actually, we had two $10 coupons, and I did use one of them to buy two on-sale corduroy shirts for myself. The shirts are alike, except one is brown and one is tan.

From this store, we went to the everything's a dollar store, where I hoped to find small Christmas bags. No luck. So we went on to the WDCS for grocery items. Besides foods for us, we bought ingredients to make dog biscuits. Hubbie picked up several homemade biscuits at a craft fair recently, and Shih Tzu loves them. So we decided we'd try our hand at making some for her, using a recipe I found online.

While at the store, we met our neighbor, who said she had baked sugar cookies, using a recipe we gave her last year, along with samples of the cookies that we had baked. She said she wanted to send some of the cookies over to our house this evening. So when we got back home, I made up a plate of crackers and Italian cream cheese ball to have on hand as an exchange gift.

After we got back home, we watched another DVD, this time the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in a story titled, "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve."

By the end of the movie, it was supper time. Tonight, we had boiled chicken with dressing from the freezer that had been leftover from Thanksgiving, gravy made from low-sodium chicken broth, and no-salt green beans.

After supper, the neighbor's husband delivered the cookies, and we gave him the cheese ball plate. He said they were on their way to another town for a Christmas celebration with family, so I hope the cheese ball will be a welcome addition to their holiday goodie table.

Later, we made the dog biscuits. Once they had cooled, Shih Tzu sampled one, wagged her tail furiously and begged for more. Looks like we'll be making these often, rather than buying the little homemade bone-shaped ones at $3 a dozen. Tonight, we used cookie cutters that I already have on hand, like a lion, a reindeer, and a leaf, but maybe we can find a bone-shaped cookie cutter somewhere.