An Incredible Coincidence!

Several years ago, back when my niece Katy was perhaps 16 years old (she’s in her 30s now, so that gives you an idea of just how far back this story takes place), she and her mother were trying to come up with ideas for Christmas presents. 

Katy decided that she wanted to give me an antique cookbook because I like antique books and she & I had begun to share recipes with each other. An antique cookbook just seemed like the perfect combination of interests.

So, Noel took the idea with her to work and asked one of her clients to look for one since they were driving up to Fairbanks that week. As luck would have it, the client found one from 1941 and brought it back to Palmer for Katy to wrap up and give to me on Christmas day.

As I was opening the gift, they both told the story of how they got the book. It’s a pretty cool story, so I was happily listening while leafing through the book looking at all the different recipes. While doing so, I just happened to come across an old bookmark that somebody had used to mark their favorite recipe – and it gave me quite the jolt of surprise!

“Katy, where did you say you got this book from?” I asked her, with an amazed look on my face.

“From Fairbanks,” she replied “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Look at this!” I said, showing her what I had found.

Turns out, it was two raffle tickets from 1976 that apparently MY MOTHER had bought for a chance to win a horse that she planned to give to Kelly!!!

How the heck did THAT end up in this random cookbook that somehow managed to find its way into MY hands?!?

Later on, I asked Mother if she’d ever seen the book before, but she doesn’t remember it. She does remember buying the raffle tickets, however. Needless to say, she did not win the horse.

Happy Thankgiving!

I had a fabulous holiday weekend – how about you?

Thursday: we slept in a little bit, since neither one of us had pressing things to do that morning. Eventually we wandered out into the living room and got our days started. Bryan made us some oatmeal for breakfast, then I made my Brussel Sprout Salad while he got the wood box filled up again. We go through a lot of firewood: Mother loves her heat almost as much as my kittens do.

About 12:30 we got the car all packed up with the three of us and all our gear and then headed on up the mountain to my niece’s house for Thanksgiving Dinner with the family. She had quite the spread laid out, with two large turkeys and ALL the fixings. Each family member brought yet more food, from salads to deserts to appetizers, so we were well fed. Katy’s new house has a balcony overlooking the living area, so we took advantage of that to take our Group Photo.

From left to right: Tabitha, Autumn, Heather, Kaylee, Reed Hank, Darren, Corbin, Kelly, Annalise (the baby), Laurel, Danny, Mother, Tara, Maurice (the Great Pyrenees ) Lisa, Ruth, Bryan, Noel, Willow (the Corgi), Katy, and Maddie (a Lab-Corgi mix)

After eating dinner at my niece’s house, Bryan and I then drove into Anchorage to eat yet another dinner at his cousin’s house! Chris and Terri had a much smaller dinner party (only 9 people) but we still had a good time. They have twins, Madison and Maverick, who are just the cutest little 6-year-olds. Their older son Robert (15) was there as well, but he spent most of his time in the back room on the computer, listening to his music.

Friday: was our regular flex day so neither one of us had to work that day either. We spent the day doing chores around the house and just generally relaxing. Bryan installed the new water machine to our kitchen sink while I cleaned our section of the house and played with the kittens. I made a few cards while I was at it using a new-to-me technique of cutting a bunch of skinny strips of paper and gluing them down onto the paper with the die cuts. As you can see, I used both the die cut and the negative left over. Both cards are pretty cool, I think.

Saturday: Heather and Tabi came over that afternoon to do an art project with me. I had seen a picture online of some Christmas Tree Ornaments made out of old Scrabble Tiles and figured it couldn’t be that difficult to make. We had fun with it, each of us making at least 5 or 6 ornaments. Tabitha invited us all out to ice cream afterwards, so we got to prolong our fun and have good home-made ice cream too!

Sunday: Mother and I drove into Wasilla to do some Christmas shopping that afternoon. She had picked out several flyers from that morning’s newspaper listing all the sales going on, so we took advantage of them and got most of our gifts taken care of. It was a fun outing: Mother enjoyed just sitting in the passenger seat and watching the views out the window.