It's Thursday already!

Do you ever have those weeks where time gets away from you and all of a sudden it's the middle of the week?!? This has been one of those for me. We celebrated Chinese New Year on Monday, which meant I cooked ALL DAY ! Holy moly, I didn't think it would be so exhausting! Don't get me wrong, it was worth it and I would do it all over again if needed, but I was so tired by the end of the night that I fell asleep on the couch. Then, I've been working on the template, etc. for my new blog, and that always takes longer than I think it will. Oh, the decisions.......text color, font and font color, background color, label color, design, width, yadda yadda yadda! I know you know what I'm talking about. It's fun, but it's time-consuming. I posted my first "real" post today, introducing my partner and just saying Hi to get started. I hope you will go visit us at http://grammcrackers.blogspot.com .

Then, I spent yesterday at the temple and the Family History Center. I left at 7:15am and got home at 4:00pm. A long day. But the kind of day that gets me pumping for the rest of the week, so here I am, on a Thursday, blogging about my week.

I promised pictures of the celebration, so here you go. We started at the top and worked our way down.

Chinese lanterns help set the mood.

This is our table. Notice no silverware, only chopsticks. We all had fun getting the rice in our mouths!

Here is an individual place setting. Everyone had their own menu, plus a treat of chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks and rice candy, and their Good Luck knots and dragon masks. We forgot to get the noisemakers out until after dinner.

I made WAY TOO MUCH food. This isn't even all of it. Some had to stay on the stove because we didn't have room on the table.

Aren't we lovely?

                                       Maybe we looked better WITH the masks?

 

   Hally and Cameron have a close-up. Cameron actually was born in the Year of the Dragon, 2000.

This is probably the ugliest cake I've ever made! I ran out of frosting and had neither the time nor the ingredients to make more, so I made sure to cover everything but the body, so at least he looked symmetrical. It was our fire-breathing cake.

This is what the kitchen looked like afterward. I think I used every bowl and most of the pans in the house! And guess what? My sweet hubby did the dishes for me! And I was going to help him, but he wouldn't let me, so my daughter-in-law helped instead. Wasn't that nice of them? I was so tired I could hardly stand up, so I was glad to let them do it.

Well, that was our celebration. I hope you enjoyed sharing it with us. Did you do anything for Chinese New Year? I would love to hear all about it. Send pictures and I will post them. Until tomorrow,

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is Chinese New Year and it's officially the Year of the Dragon! We are going to celebrate by having a Chinese dinner with dragon decorations, masks, and a dragon cake, if I get it done. I got most of my ideas from FamilyFun.com. Just go to their website and scroll down 'til you see the dragon, and then click on the things you want to see. They have lots of fun ideas and even recipes for easy dishes. Some of them my kids would never try, like the shrimp wontons, but I'm just adjusting them by using ground pork instead of the meats or seafood that they won't eat. I found a Chinese/English translating website and made a menu with real Chinese characters and I will put one of these at each place setting, along with a Chinese Good Luck knot. I got those instructions from YouTube. (You can find almost anything there!) I hope it will be lots of fun, and that the kids will learn a little something about the Chinese culture. I'm going to find out when it will be midnight in China and we will all yell "Happy Chinese New Year!!!" and use our noisemakers and then have Dragon Cake. I will post photos of the table when its all set. I'm excited to do this with my grandkids. I used to do crazy things like this with my own kids and they still remember, so now it's time to make memories with their children. I just wish more of them lived close enough to join in.

Any way, here are some photos of our Chinese New Year projects. In the first one you can see all of our dragons.

We have little felt dragons, dragon masks and a ribbon dragon to go down the middle of the table. In the second photo, you can see all the noisemakers. They have a dragon on one side and the Chinese character for Spring Luck on the other side. I found out that the Chinese have a different character for luck in each of the seasons, and since it's almost Spring, that's the one I used.

We decorated the paper strip that goes around the side of the noise maker, too.  The last two photos are the Chinese Good Luck knots. I made them from some leftover Parachord I had. They were really easy to make. I was surprised at how fast I learned!

The close up looks like I had some kind of filter on the camera. The cord is actually hot pink! I'm not sure what happened, but I wanted you to see the knot up close. I couldn't believe how easy it was.

I'll be back tomorrow with a report on the dinner and whether it was a success or not, plus photos. Until then, here's an old Chinese saying for you: "If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a month, get married. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else." Pretty good wisdom, if you ask me. See you tomorrow!