T Stands for More Pre-Holiday Chit Chat

 Hi everyone. It's time for T day once again where we share our drink and other things over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

What have I been doing?

For the last few weeks the upstairs of my house was an absolute mess. Every time I would start to pick up parts of it there would be a reason I couldn't finish. The worst of it was my daughter's room. Maybe you remember this photo?

I still had those boxes to take care of along with my clothing seasonal change over, some clothes I was donating, as well as my Christmas gift pile,  so I had quite a mess. I didn't think to take any photos, so you will just have to believe me. The good news is that last week I got that all picked up and sorted, and my daughters room is now back to normal. 😀  I'm happy to have removed that mess-finally. ❤  And I'm happy to get my clothing change-over finally done too.

I also did some baking last week and made a non-marzipan stollen. In fact the cookbook*  I used  said

this is a Bavarian style stollen, and I know some of you would know about this much more than I do. If my cookbook is wrong could you let me know.

I had all the dried fruit the recipe called for except on the day I went to bake I could not find the dried currents I bought. Instead I substituted some dried cherries. When I soaked the cherries in orange juice they of course made a dark liquid, which, when I added them to my dough, made it darker like a whole wheat loaf. (It is  made with white baking flour.)  The cherries added a great taste, and I'm  glad I used them. And still haven't found the package of dried currants I bought.

 I've also done a bit more decorating. I have a collection of Santa's that my daughter gave me through her childhood and that I usually put out, but this year I decided not to. 

However, I remembered I had this set of jolly snowmen that I haven't put out for a few years, and I decided this would be perfect in place of the Santas.

In fact I really like them, and I wonder why I haven't put them out for awhile.

I also managed to get the living room fireplace mantel decorated.

In the living room we have a live tree, but in a dark corner of my dining room/kitchen area I have a thin artificial tree. I usually put this tree up right before Thanksgiving and leave it up until the end of January/early February because it helps light up a dark space.

 This year I bought myself a new ornament that I liked. We finally finished  winterizing my bees so this ornament (I hope) is my good luck charm that they'll make it through the winter. 

And some of you probably know I get a kick of Bigfoots and Yetis, so here are my  toppers on this tree.

They have names; they are Eddie and Betty Yeti. 😉

Before this post gets too long, let me share my actual T day drink. How about another take like last week only with a different mug and different tree decoration.  My mug is not empty; I partially drank some of my tea before I decided to take this photo.

 My mug has some Bigelow ginger-snappish tea in it once again.

Before I sign off, I want to share my latest sweater knitting update. I like sharing my progress, and it  also makes a great week by week timeline for me to see how far I have  gotten during the previous week.

I'm still knitting away on the yoke. The first several rows had the most stitches of any part of the project since it is body and sleeves. I'm now slowly decreasing to make it more narrow around the neck. I'm more or less following the pattern for this sweater, but I'm also throwing in a few pattern changes as well as picking my colors (from what I bought) as I go. 

That's all for me this week. Have a super T day and week ahead.

*Here's the cookbook I got my stollen recipe from ( and no, it's not a formal citation): The New German Cookbook:More Than 230 Contemporary and Traditional Recipes Hardcover – October 13,1993 by  Jean Anderson (Author), Hedy Wurz (Author)