A Thanksgiving Recipe

I'm so thankful for all my wonderful blog readers, so I'd like to share a family recipe with you, which I will be making for my family this Thanksgiving. These little morsels are huge crowd pleasers, so I usually double the recipe.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Swiss Cheese Tartlets

ingredients:
1 pre-made pie crust (in this recipe store-bought works better than homemade)
3 eggs
1/4 cup cream
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons very finely minced onion
1/4 lb. grated Swiss cheese
1/4 teaspoon poppy seeds (or up to 1 teaspoon as desired)

instructions:
Roll crust thin and cut out rounds about 2’’ in diameter. Press into greased or nonstick shallow muffin tins. (You can use a regular muffin tin as well, just press the crust in gently so it will be easy to remove later.) Beat eggs and mix in rest of ingredients. Pour 2 teaspoons of egg mixture into each crust shell. Chill for 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 425 F. Bake at 425 for five minutes, then turn down oven to 350F and continue baking for 12 minutes or so until lightly browned on top and on edges and center is puffed up a bit. Best served warm. You can freeze and reheat in the microwave or oven, but they won't be quite as good as fresh.

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Poll #5: Planning for the holidays

I was a little surprised at the results for my last poll: Is it too soon to start planning for the holidays? While I'm a bit torn on this issue myself, I didn't expect it to be so close! 60% of respondents said Not at all, while 40% said Yes, it is. Personally, while I love the fun and family aspects of the fall to winter season (back-to-school all the way through the new year), I never want to start so early with the planning and celebrating that the magic wears off or I get overexposed to holiday fervor. However, there are some things you can do to prepare that aren't going overboard and will make the season go more smoothly:

• Find out how the people you tend to spend holidays with are feeling about travel and hosting. Figuring out where you might be on the major holidays is a big first step. Then you can make travel, lodging and time-off arrangements.
• Focus on the early fall holidays, like Rosh Hashanah or even Halloween, so you can feel some of that holiday spirit without getting too far ahead of yourself.
• Make lists. Lists are a good way to order your thoughts, but you don't have to act on them right away. Lists I've already begun: Halloween card recipients, menu ideas for Thanksgiving and Christmas gift ideas.

I'm really looking forward to the traditions that make holidays so much fun in my family, but I'm practicing patience as best I can...the holidays will be here soon enough for us all, I'm sure!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by nao.k

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Technology I'm thankful for

Thanksgiving is this Thursday. I'm thankful for so much great stuff in my life, it would take a really long blog post to document them all. So here are a few techy things that I'm thankful for that make my life and my work simpler.

• Gmail. I manage several email accounts and Gmail makes it easy to do it all from one portal. I love the labels and filters features, but most of all, I love the search function and the enormous amount of space I can take up, all for free. Gmail Labs also has some awesome add-ons that really enhance my use of basic Gmail.
• Goodreads. I really like being able to keep track of which books I've read by updating my Goodreads profile whenever I finish a book. It's a great holding place for books I want to read as well.
• Bento and Pages. These two Mac programs are a joy to use. Bento makes my financial and business tracking simple and easy to search, modify and combine. Pages makes any word processing document a pleasure to create.
• Evernote. Evernote creates searchable pdfs out of almost anything that you can look at on your computer. The free version has plenty of functionality for me, but the paid version is great, too. 

What are you thankful for this year?

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Organizer's Blog Digest: Thanksgiving 2010

Here are some excellent posts from around the web that might help you as you plan and execute this year's Thanksgiving day.

Lelah's 2009 Thanksgiving dinner plate before.

Lelah's 2009 Thanksgiving dinner plate after.

Real Simple magazine had a great recipe section devoted to Thanksgiving recipes in November's issue. Here is their comprehensive timeline/checklist for planning for the holiday.

The New York Times has a beautiful spread of vegetarian and vegan dishes that would be fantastic additions to any Thanksgiving table.

Lauri Ward, of Use What You Have decorating, posted about the benefits of cleaning out your kitchen clutter before Thanksgiving dinner. Her point that "if you haven’t put the stuff to use in half a decade do you think you’re going to start on November 25th?" is well taken. I say, don't stop there. If you decided to keep it because you thought you might use it for holiday prep or presentation, and you didn't, then let it go without a second thought.

Last year's blog digest on this same topic is evergreen. Here it is for more links.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

A year ago: unholidays and clutter-free gifting

November is zooming along and many of us have started to let the idea of the winter holidays creep into our consciousnesses. Thanksgiving is a mere three weeks away. Last year at this time I wrote about the fun you can have by creating your own holiday, or choosing a less widely celebrated one to be your annual entertaining ritual as a way to spread out the fun (and stress) of the holiday season.

I also posted the first of what seemed like endless entries about clutter-free gifts. These ideas, broken down into general categories, are good year round for any gift-giving situation. I'll be reposting them in one giant roundup later in the month, but you can check out the full list of them here, if you want to get a jump-start on brainstorming.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to throw out a few things you might not want to get the clutter-conscious person (unless they expressly ask for such items):

• Magazine subscriptions will add to their reading pile and keep coming every month
• Live plants create work and possible stress if they are not good at taking care of living things
• Fancy foodstuffs or alcohol if they are not foodies or drinkers, they will just gather dust or be regifted

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by chatirygirl

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

I'm thankful for...

There are lots of things to be thankful for in life, and it's nice to have a holiday that inspires one to reflect on them. So often we only appreciate the things we have after they are gone. I think our daily happiness can be boosted by realizing how lucky we are the rest of the time, too.

So here are just a few of things that I'm thankful for today: my health, the health of my family, the fact that I'm getting married to my partner of eight years in the spring, the fact that we have everything we need to lead healthy and productive lives, being able to live in a place like Southern California with all of its wonderful attributes, my amazing and interesting clients, Sharpies, apples, the new chocolate-chip oatmeal cookie recipe I found that embodies everything I love about cookies, and having time to read books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by net efekt

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com 

Organizer's blog digest: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is now less than a week away. I'm calling upon the fantastic community of professional organizers with blogs to give you some helpful tips for coping with the holiday in an organized fashion. For me, Thanksgiving has always been a wonderful day full of sharing time in the kitchen, and then the table, with family. Since my family is pretty easy going, I've never felt stressed about having the "perfect" holiday, which allows us to enjoy the simple pleasures of cooking and eating together. This will be the first Thanksgiving with our newest addition to the family, my niece, who is just four months old!

Mrs. Organized, the organize.com blog, shares a thorough set of tips for Thanksgiving prep two days before through day of, as well as a post on setting a Thanksgiving table with flair.

Krista Colvin of Organize in Style shares some great tips to keep Thanksgiving "simple and sane," including making a "why yes you can help me" bowl with a bunch of little tasks written on pieces of paper for kids or guests to draw from. Cute idea!

Mary Frances Ballard, author of Orderly Places, has the awesome tip of keeping records of your Thanksgiving planning, so you'll be able to remember things like exactly what recipe you used and if there was enough stuffing to go around. That will come in handy when you start planning next year!

Finally, Ellen, a Houston-based professional organizer, reminds us that during the holidays it is really important to take care of yourself first, by getting enough sleep, nutrition and exercise so you can enjoy the holidays rather than simply endure them.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com 

The un-holiday holiday

Halloween is behind us and the fall holiday train is now chugging right along toward Thanksgiving, with Christmas not so subtly waiting in the wings if the displays at my local stores are any indication. At this time of year it can be hard to make time for socializing with friends when family usually takes precedent on these major holidays. In today’s world, people often live far from family members and take the opportunity to travel and visit. But many of us have formed new families with our friends, who we’ll see far more frequently, but sometimes not on the days that are set aside for family bonding. It can be stressful to have to choose between friends and family, and also to deal with the pressure that these high profile holidays can put on even a simple gathering.

One solution to this annual dilemma is to start a new tradition with your friends (or your family, depending on your situation). Create your own annual holiday on a date that doesn’t conflict with any universally recognized ones. By choosing to entertain in an off season, you can avoid the stress of committing to too much during the fall holiday rush, and take time to really have fun, appreciate your loved ones and make a unique memory.

Here are some un-holiday holiday examples:

• For people with birthdays that fall on a holiday like Christmas, celebrate their half birthday instead.
• Find an obscure “national day of” something you love and turn it into an annual homage to pie, or pi.
• Co-opt another country’s holiday, such as Canadian Thanksgiving (Second Monday of October), or Boxing Day (December 26).
• Love poetry or the epic ramble of James Joyce’s Ulysses? Stage your own Bloomsday celebration on June, or celebrate your favorite poet’s birthday with an annual reading and feast.
• Make up something out of the blue. My family started “Salmon and Pork” night accidentally one year when a casual dinner party turned into a night of declarations about goals and resolutions. Now the fourth Sunday in April is a unique, five-year running event.

Creative Commons pi pie photo posted to Flickr by pauladamsmith

Creative Commons Bloomsday photo posted to Flickr by Barnacles Hostels

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Pre-holiday organizing

The holiday season seems to encroach upon us earlier and earlier every year, so I’m reluctant to even bring it up in this last full week of September, but we’re on that slippery, speedy downhill slope towards Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/etc. I love all of those holidays and the fall-to-winter season in general, but I truly feel that they are best enjoyed in small doses. If you spend three months prepping for Christmas, you’re going to be all Merry Christmas-ed out by the time the 25^th comes around, let alone be raring to party on New Year’s Eve.

However, you can do a bit of pre-holiday organizing that hopefully won’t kill the holiday joy in you yet. Here are some ideas for getting the process gently started:

• Popular Halloween costumes can sell out early, so plan ahead if you’re going to purchase topical costumes.
• Don’t buy Halloween candy far in advance unless you have a place to store it where it won’t get raided before the 31^st. If not, you’ll just have to buy more when the holiday actually arrives.
• Think about ordering your Thanksgiving turkey in advance if you want a specialty one, such as an organic free range bird.
• Book holiday airplane flights now, in addition to rental car and hotel reservations if necessary.
• Keep an eye open for deals on holiday cards and stock up in advance if you really like the card, the price and have somewhere to put them out of sight until Thanksgiving.
• Order holiday stamps online and have them delivered with your mail.
• Plan your gifts budget ahead of time. Instead of having a massive credit card bill in December or January, open a savings account for your holiday gifts and have money deposited automatically each month into year all year long, then you can pay cash for presents.
• Think about gifts you can buy online and have delivered by the company, avoiding post office lines.
• Alternately, consider patronizing local businesses for your holiday shopping to help the local economy, and make sure you bring a good book to the post office with you.
• Brainstorm clutter-free gifts that your friends and family might like and that you and your family might like to give. Clutter-free gifts can be consumables, gift cards or gifts of experiences or services.

Good luck getting through the next 91 days!

Creative Commons candy corn photo posted to Flickr by calmdownlove

Creative Commons Christmas card photo posted to Flickr by wordridden

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com