Thank you all for your wonderful words! Even though I couldn't find the chargers I wanted and didn't have the energy to shop for material to make tableclothes, I was pleased with how it turned out. Everyone loved the dinnerware and the centerpiedces. The wine cooler was a hit too! I rent tables and chairs and last year I did one large table that took up almost the whole room so this year I decided I would try two to give a little more elbow room. It was much better. Feel free to use the idea. :) It was a great shindig filled with lots of good food, laughter and love and that is what matters. Plus I did much better than last year with timing. This year I was finished with all the food, had the appetizers set up and was dressed and ready when the guest arrived. As you all said I have all year now to shop around and find exactly what I want for next year. Thanks again everyone! Karen Its not pathetic. I'm single have been for years and I am well asleep before midnight too. LOL Somehow though I always seem to wake up a minute or so before midnight. I turn on the telly and watch the ball drop and all the people yell Happy New Year in Times Square then click it off and go back to sleep. I must have somekind of subconcious New Years clock. LOL

I have to laugh at the "bugs in the flour" reactions. When I was a kid we lived overseas in Brazzaville (in the Congo in Africa); San Salvador, El Salvado; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When you used flour you sifted it to make sure you got any bugs out. Granted, this was in the 60's and early 70's, but no one ever got sick from the flour after it was baked or cooked. You also checked the cereal, rice, etc. One time, about 10 or so years ago, my Mom and brother were doing the Nutri-System diet. They send out prepackaged food. On the forums, someone mentioned they found a bug in their food, were outraged, and called Nutri-System. The company said they would replace the product or offer a refund. The person wanted some other type of compensation. I told my Mom about it and she said "I lived too many years overseas to let a little bug bother me." Would I eat food that had bugs in it these days? No. But it doesn't cause a gag reflex either. Now if we were talking rodents....

Things are changing hourly, lol. Good thing we are in a festive mood. Our boiler stopped working, scratched our heads about that mysterious 'boiler' room downstairs and the temp seemed sorta fine. Turns out we have two...one for upstairs and one for down. Rarely use the downstairs heat as it is half in soil built into a hill and keeps a nice 65. DH was fussing down there and cranked the heat... Called a # on the unit and the owner of the company stopped by in an hour and changed the thermostat. (when does that ever happen!?) Turns out he installed the originals and was full of stories about the neighborhood and our original owners...and yes, we need a new boiler and it is ordered...MerryChristmas, yikes. $ Had to postpone our trip by a couple days...travel xmas morn. Menu is still the same. Pork butt is in the oven on low and slow for tamales. Ground all my spice mixes. Making 3 mustards. Toasting croutons for the oyster stew that is now going to be a seafood stew Saturday. Soaking salt cod for cakes. Managed our shopping trip after the boiler was semi-fixed. Near a re-peat of the Thanksgiving shopping...one of everything for a mixed veg roast with the turkey. Crazy crowded but they had all lanes open for quick check-out. Jolly crowd and seems good moods are all around. Scrapped Costco and Rockland Bakery as the traffic was unusual for 2pm and it has been gray and raining for two days. Can live without any of that. Guessing it is gift shopping and kids are off school tomorrow so mom's are doing the last minute things. Always amazed what little it costs for feeding 6-8 for 5 days when so much of it is harvest garden goods. Food, meals and cooking is always my gift so no other shopping is needed and the type of shopping i don't like is gifting and wrapping. Need a substitute for file/sassafras. DH has everything for an oyster/andouille gumbo he is insisting on making...thought i had some deep in the cupboard. (but it would have been 20yrs old) If this was colder temps we would be deep in snow right now. Wow is it raining non-stop....

I forgot to make latkes! And I have the potatoes, but lately I've been making frittatas with them instead of latkes. The frittata (similar to Spanish omelet) is more work, but it makes better leftovers. Our blu-ray player went on the blink last Friday, and so we had to buy an emergency player on Dec 24, which was not bad because we went to Best Buy early - before it got crowded, which it did by noon. Since we bought an HD player, Kevin decided to buy a 65" 4K TV, and so we spent the week-end trying to get everything working together properly, which included mounting the new TV on the wall. Therefore I did not have as much time to spend cooking. I was going to put this info on your "How did your meals come out" thread, but since I didn't cook much, I thought it fit in better here. I don't even remember what we ate except that one meal was leftover stromboli. By yesterday, we had no more leftovers, and so I took some ground turkey meat from the freezer and made mushroom-turkey meatloaf, and I can use the leftover meatloaf in a pasta sauce. I'm going to start storing ground turkey in the freezer more often because it defrosts very nicely in my MW. BTW, our TV was eight years old and I was ready to replace it. The Blu-ray player was not quite that old, but it simply would not work any more. I do not like the new remote controls we have, and we cannot zoom the picture on the TV when watching cable. At first we hooked up both cable and an antenna, and that got the TV confused, and so we disconnected the antenna. We use it mainly when cable goes out. Our sound system is old also (5.1 surround), and if we try to play discs that have 7.1 sound, it comes out in just stereo. Some discs support both 5.1 plus 7.1, and I told Kevin only to buy those. We do NOT want a new sound system.