DECK THE HOLIDAY'S

   Are you a trivia buff?  If so, perhaps you'd be interested in knowing a little bit more about the poinsettia plant you buy every Christmas season.  This knowledge should really impress your friends and family at the holiday dinner table.    Did you know that the poinsettia's main attraction is not its flowers, but its leaves?  The flowers of the plant are the yellow clustered buds in the center.  The colored leafy parts are actually bracts or modified leaves.    Red is the most popular color, accounting for roughly tow thirds of all sales nationwide, followed by white, pink, marble and peppermint candy.   Poinsettia's also come in a variety of other shades of salmon, apricot, yellow and cream.  There are also unusual speckled or marbled varieties like "White Glitter".  New varieties are introduced yearly with even more variation in height and colors.    How many poinsettias do you think are sold ea...

   I finally got around to getting the pictures from my  camera onto my computer.  I always took pictures in the day time, but this year I decided to take them at night with just the lighting I used on them.  Some didn't turn out like I planned, it might be time for me to upgrade my camera.  Everything was hand made, the windows were covered with styrofoam boards, the ground breaker coffins were also made from styrofoam.  So without further ado here they are:   The vacancy sign blinked on and off        This is the front door where the trick or treaters would come    The ravens eye blinked on and off  

\    It's simpler than you think. Years ago, it was red wine with beef and perhaps a robust pasta and white wine with chicken and fish.  This is fine to use as a general guideline but the main thing to re member is to drink what you like.  Having said that, here are some good pairings.    It's fun to pair wine with food to make a meal more enjoyable.  The light-bodied wines go best with lighter foods and the heavier wines with heavier, very flavorful foods.  The body of a wine is how powerful and weighty it feels in your mouth.    As you pair wine with beef, wild game, barbecued meats, and/or pastas in a heavy red sauce select a heavy-bodied, flavorful red wine.  Consider there wines-a Syrah, Merlot or a Cabernet Sauvignon.  If you're serving light seafood dishes, poultry, ham and mildly flavored cheeses look to the lighter wines.  For a red wine, these would be Beaujolais, burgundy or a Pinot Noir...

   With Thanksgiving a little less than a week away, it means that alot of us start to think more about Christmas.  We start to think about what theme or decorations that we're going to put up and how its all going to look.  Also we've got to start thinking about putting the lights up onto the house and anywhere else that you want them to go.  Just think of how many trips we're going to take up into the attic to bring down all of the boxes filled with Christmas decorations (by yourself most of the time, because everyone else disappears during this fun filled time).    One of the main items that we ponder on the most though, is the Christmas tree.  Whether it's an artificial tree or a real one.  The Christmas tree is usually the focal point of your inside the house Christmas decorating. Most of what we decide to do with the tree and how it gets decorated, coinsides with  what the rest of you...

   Christmas in Ireland includes several Christmas traditions that have been adapted around the world.  The hanging of holly, candles in the windows, and whitewashing the house are a few Christmas traditions involved in celebrating Christmas in Ireland that go back to the early years of Ireland.    Using holly growing naturally in Ireland during Christmas time.  Because of the availability, even the poorest of families could deck their homes to celebrate Christmas in Ireland.    To this day although Christmas trees decorated with tinsel and ornaments are common, the tradition of using holly at Christmas still stands and the Christmas tradition has spread around the world to include many parts of the world having "Hanging of the Greens" festivities prior to Christmas.    A candle in the window is another Christmas in Ireland tradition seen around the world.  The single candle placed in the window of homes originated to welcome...

   The annual airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas has become as much a part of Christmas as Santa and Rudolph.    Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, Snoopy's decorated doghouse and Linus' classic recitation on the true meaning the season have become true baby-boomer Christmas icons.  Throw in Vince Guaraldi's classic soundtrack, and you have an animated special that has defined a generation. A Charlie Brown Christmas was not the first time the Peanuts characters were animated.  In the early 1960's they appeared in a series of commercials for the Ford Motor Company. A Charlie Brown Chirstmas was conceived, written, animated and produced in only six months, and was finished only a week before the air date.  The first airing, on December 9, 1965, was sponsored by Coke. A CBS executive who watched a preview was disappointed and declared the program, "A little flat....a little slow", and said he thought Peanuts was better suited for the comics page....

   Are you looking for "Thanksgiving quotes? Thanksgiving inspiration messages or sayings? Here is just a small collection of some of  some inspirational Thanksgiving quotes.    Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated with a big turkey dinner shared with family and friends.  Oddly enough it is the most traveled holiday of the year and the perfect time to say "Thanks" and teach children the importance of being grateful for what you have.  The following Thanksgiving inspirational sayings are here for you to inspire your family this Thanksgiving.  So read though them and maybe ponder them in thought.  Maybe you could even use one of them when we say grace or our thanks before you eat a bountiful Thanksgiving feast. "If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness.  It will change your life mightily". --Gerald Good "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by ...