Christmas Jars Quotes

I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.

I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas,

Treating everyone she met like family, and burying needless critism of others so deep beneath the soil of everyday living that only kindness ever saw the light.

I should have loved a thunder bird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again

It was the day after Christmas and a gray sky bellied over us, fat with snow. I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.

I know the mall is just a lot of fake plants and fake food and people buying crap for too much money, and at Christmas people pay for their kids to talk to Santa, learning greed the way some kids learn piano. I know all that. I can hear the Muzak, smell the waffle fries. Like everybody else, I walk around stuck inside a cliche, like we're stars of some TV show we plan to watch later, if nothing else is on. But still, there's something hopeful about this place, too, and maybe it takes having a crazy mother to get that. People buy stuff, because they think they are going to need it, because they think their lives are going to keep skipping down the same old path, and I want so much for that to be true for them that it nearly makes me cry. The mall says, Nothing is terrible. The mall says, Life is small and adequate.

Then I thought, how could this Doctor Gordon help me anyway, with a beautiful wife and beautiful children and a beautiful dog haloing him like the angels on a Christmas card?

When he’d seen her standing at the stove. . . . that familiar wave of possessiveness and love had welled up in him. He felt it every time he saw her. It was jarring, foreign and…perfect. She’d filled a hole inside him he hadn’t even realized existed. Making the transition to civilian life had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Somehow she’d made it easier, just by being herself. He couldn’t imagine his life without her. Didn’t want to. Now that he’d finally surrendered to his feelings for her and they’d crossed over from friends to lovers he knew there was no going back for him. The fact that she’d agreed to move in so quickly soothed the most primal part of him. Because he wanted a hell of a lot more from her than that. He wanted forever. It was too soon to ask the big question just yet, but by Christmas of this year, he was going to make sure a diamond ring was on her left hand ring finger. He wanted the whole world to know she belonged with him.

Dusk had fallen, and when I stepped outside, I was drawn to the light spilling from the barn, golden and inviting. I poked my head in. Margaret had outdone herself. The long tables were covered in cream linen. Squash-colored tapers stood tall in sparkling silver candelabras. Fat bouquets of sunflowers, goldenrod, and black-eyed Susans stuffed into mason jars were surrounded by tiny pumpkins and crab apples. I looked up to see a thousand white Christmas lights hanging from the rafters. The whole room glowed.

Serena has no idea how lucky she is to have someone willing to brave the cold to ensure she’s warm—to open the impossible pickle jar, carry the bulk of the heavy load. Little things men do to care for their women. Things that are taken for granted over time by those in a relationship.

Candy loved to shop and she couldn't seem to shop smiling. They'd gone out the front door of The Cookie Jar and into the next building over. There were party dresses on the mannequins in the windows, and Hannah has said they were going to buy something for her to wear to the party tomorrow night.

These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sunroof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil.

It's nothing fancy, I opened a jar of sauce and cooked the linguine. But there's fresh Parmesan and I even found a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon." "You found wine." Earlier he'd been thinking about microwaved Who Hash, solitude and if he was very lucky, beer. But a hot, fresh-cooked meal? Candles? Wine? And a chatty yoga-elf chef? With a body like a Las Vegas showgirl?

About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is.

It was that boy. I said “Here; you better take a holt of my hand” and he waited and held to me. I be durn if it wasn’t like he come back and got me; like he was saying They wont nothing hurt you. Like he was saying about a fine place he knowed where Christmas come twice with Thanksgiving and lasts on through the winter and the spring and the summer, and if I just stayed with him I’d be all right too. When I looked back at my mule it was like he was one of these here spy-glasses and I could look at him standing there and see all the broad land and my house sweated outen it like it was the more the sweat, the broader the land; the more the sweat, the tighter the house because it would take a tight house for Cora, to hold Cora like a jar of milk in the spring: you’ve got to have a tight jar or you’ll need a powerful spring, so if you have a big spring, why then you have the incentive to have tight, wellmade jars, because it is your milk, sour or not, because you would rather have milk that will sour than to have milk that wont, because you are a man. And

Skye shook her head at Jess, who kept nudging the ball towards her. She was too tired to keep throwing. She needed a rest. Pregnancy, she’d discovered, felt a lot like grief. There was the weight and the heft of it, the way it fatigued you; there was the inability to think clearly or do very much at all. A house opposite the park still had its Christmas decorations up, she noticed, though it was almost the end of January. Skye knew how its owners must feel. She was out of sync too: married and pregnant to one man, but thinking of another. Everything jarred; nothing was the way it was supposed to be.

Because there’s a silent, shrugging, stoical acceptance of all the things in the world we can never be part of: shorts, swimming pools, strappy dresses, country walks, roller-skating, ra-ra skirts, vest tops, high heels, rope climbing, sitting on a high stool, walking past building sites, flirting, being kissed, feeling confident. And ever losing weight, ever. The idea of suggesting we don’t have to be fat –that things could change –is the most distant and alien prospect of all. We’re fat now and we’ll be fat forever and we must never, ever mention it, and that is the end of it. It’s like Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat. We were pulled from the hat marked ‘Fat’ and that is what we must now remain, until we die. Fat is our race. Our species. Our mode. As a result, there is very little of the outside world –and very little of the year –we can enjoy. Summer is sweaty under self-conscious layers. On stormy days, wind flattens skirts against thighs, and alarms both us and, we think, onlookers and passers-by. Winter is the only time we feel truly comfortable: covered head to toe in jumpers, coats, boots and hat. I develop a crush on Father Christmas. If I married him, not only would I be expected to stay fat, but I’d look thin standing next to him, in comparison. Perspective would be my friend. We all dream of moving to Norway, or Alaska, where we could wear massive padded coats all the time, and never reveal an inch of flesh. When it rains, we’re happiest of all. Then we can just stay in, away from everyone, in our pyjamas, and not worry about anything. The brains in jars can stay inside, nice and dry.

I think the desire to create will last all my life – I realize that the time for me to be that person has not been available, or should I say right – I have become aware that the young stage of my children’s life is passing and there will be more time for me later – it’s too easy to be a “want it now” person. But I am so glad that I will have more time very soon. Without doubt though, as luck would have it, the very best thing I have ever made is my children. I feel my spirit rise as I listen to Elizabeth’s words, and so I reach over and take the bowl… Before I had children I had a dream. A dream of the sort of mama I wanted to be. One who always had a homemade cake in a pretty tin and a jar of homemade cookies, a stylish handmade home with French-print curtains, a carefully tended cottage garden, lots of time to play together outside and making all our own Christmas presents. Happy children, happy stay-at-home mama and a beautiful life.

office into a sauna. She dropped her purse and keys on the credenza right inside the door and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. The electricity had already gone out. The only light in the house came from the glowing embers of scrub oak and mesquite logs in the fireplace. She held her hands out to warm them, and the rest of the rush from the drive down the slick, winding roads bottomed out, leaving her tired and sleepy. She rubbed her eyes and vowed she would not cry. Didn’t Grand remember that the day she came home from the gallery showings was special? Sage had never cut down a Christmas tree all by herself. She and Grand always went out into the canyon and hauled a nice big cedar back to the house the day after the showing. Then they carried boxes of ornaments and lights from the bunkhouse and decorated the tree, popped the tops on a couple of beers, and sat in the rocking chairs and watched the lights flicker on and off. She went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, but it was pitch-black inside. She fumbled around and there wasn’t even a beer in there. She finally located a gallon jar of milk and carried it to the cabinet, poured a glass full, and downed it without coming up for air. It took some fancy maneuvering to get the jar back inside the refrigerator, but she managed and flipped the light switch as she was leaving. “Dammit! Bloody dammit!” she said a second time using the British accent from the man who’d paid top dollar for one of her paintings. One good thing about the blizzard was if that crazy cowboy who thought he was buying the Rockin’ C could see this weather, he’d change his mind in a hurry. As soon as she and Grand got done talking, she’d personally send him an email telling him that the deal had fallen through. But he’d have to wait until they got electricity back to even get that much. Sage had lived in the house all of her twenty-six years and

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

CHRISTMAS CHEESE ROUNDS For each cheese round you will need: 1 cup finely shredded cheddar cheese (measure after shredding, but pack it down in the measuring cup—I prefer a sharp cheddar.) 1 cup finely chopped pecans (measure after chopping) 8-ounce package softened cream cheese (the brick kind, not the whipped kind in the crock) ½ cup finely chopped green onions (you can use up to an inch of the stem) 1 small jar jalapeno jelly (I used Knott’s) Combine all the ingredients except the jalapeno jelly.

Of course, come to-morrow" I said and gave him my address in Brooklyn. Before he arrived, he sent me a magnificent arrangement of flowers. We had moved to Brooklyn in November and had the essentially necessary furniture, but no flower vase. When the flowers arrived, I used two borscht jars to put them in. Carlos Bendayan arrived and we talked and talked. He was the son of a wealthy Sephardic family from Venezuela. Carlos was a young man, about 21, on his first trip abroad alone. He was telling me that he realized that I must be Jewish and it became clear to me that I knew very little about Sepharadim. His name was Hebrew, it meant: son of the judge. He was going to spend the Christmas vacation with his parents and younger brother in Spain. Actually, he was being groomed to enter his father's business.

Although discovering an unattended, blue eyed, newborn baby girl was not on her list of expectations, Louise was the faithful brand of woman who believed that everything happened for a reason.

I just think there is so little positive news out there, that we should showcase the good whenever we can...

You couldn't get more beautiful if you swallowed last month's edition of Cosmo.

18-oz. jar blackberry jam 18-oz. jar raspberry jam 1-1/2 oz. container dry mustard 5-oz. jar prepared horseradish 1/4 t. cayenne pepper 1 T. pepper 12-oz. container whipped cream cheese toasted bread slices or buttery crackers Combine all ingredients except cream cheese and bread or crackers in a medium bowl. Stir well and set aside 30 minutes. When ready to serve, spoon cream cheese onto a serving plate; spoon jam mixture over cream cheese. Serve with toasted bread slices or buttery crackers. Sauce may be refrigerated for up to 3 months. Makes 12 to 16 servings.

When my grandmother comes to dinner at our house she always carries her own jar of Turner’s Special Blend. She knows how much she needs and doesn’t want to be caught short. My brother remembers her at Christmas one year, an especially weepy time for her, when she put her hands around his neck and murmured, My little angel, you wouldn’t be so hard to kill. And though he knew it was only the whiskey talking, he also knew that the whiskey talked daily.

The person who lived here loved to cook. Rows of brightly colored jars lined the open shelves. Preserved cherries, peaches, pears, and apricots filled one side of the pantry. On the wall opposite were rows of jams and chutneys. She could have stayed in the kitchen for the rest of the night, admiring what the owner had done.

Hullo, Aunt Jen!” “Bronwyn, hello. Please tell Scout not to knock anything over.” On the mantel, Timothy had come to attention, though he remained sitting. He hissed at the dog and added a low, menacing growl for good measure. “Scout, come.” The dog ignored his owner, another Windham grandchild, this one down from the North with St. Just and his countess. The scent of Elijah’s boots was apparently more compelling than the punishment for indifferent hearing. “Scout, come here this instant.” Bronwyn sounded like her papa, the former cavalry officer, but the dog had apparently never bought his colors. Elijah nudged the beast in the direction of the door with his knee. “Miss Winnie, was there something you were looking for? Something you wanted to tell us?” “Yes!” The dog walked over to the girl while Jenny steadied a jar of brushes his tail had nearly knocked to the floor. “I forget—oh, I remember. Aunt Eve is here. You have to come get kissed. She’s going to have a baby, and Papa says from the size of her he thinks it will be a baby horse.” Jenny hoped St. Just hadn’t said that within Eve’s hearing—though he probably had. “We’ll be along presently. You can tell everybody we’re coming.

She looked for Andrew but couldn’t find him. So she searched through the crowd of neighbors and hired help until she spotted Captain Winston walking toward her—with Andrew cradled in his arms. Alarm shot through her and she hurried toward them. “He’s fine,” the Captain whispered as they drew closer. “He just finally ran out of steam, that’s all. That, and he has a full belly. Five pieces of sausage, at least. And tenderloin and corn bread. This boy can eat.” Smiling, Aletta brushed back the hair from her son’s face and kissed him. He didn’t stir. “Thank you, Captain,” she said softly. “Are you feeling better? Tempy said you’d gone to lie down.” “I am. It was good to rest. Although I feel guilty for having napped while the rest of you were out here working.” “The rest of us don’t have your reason for being tired, Mrs. Prescott. Besides, I saw you up fixing breakfast long before the day even started.” She looked at him. “You saw me? Did you come by the kitchen and I missed you?” He opened his mouth as though to respond, then smiled. “Actually, no”—he glanced away—“I-I can see into the kitchen from the front window of my cabin. And when I woke up and looked out, I saw the light in the window, then spotted you standing there. I saw Tempy too, of course,” he added quickly. “Not only you.” His expression looked a little like that of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and the discovery put her at ease, for some reason. “Are you hungry?” He motioned to a table off to the side. “Roasted pork, fresh sausage, butter beans, and corn bread are ready to eat.” “I think I will, if you don’t mind holding him for a moment longer?” “Not at all. I’ve enjoyed his company today.

James"---- Diana tapped her American Express card on the table--- "tell Cassie about the food hall at Harrods." "The architecture is Beaux Arts style, all gold finishes and intricate ironwork. The floors are black-and-white marble, and the most amazing chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The cheese hall has more than three hundred varieties of cheese, and the meat hall serves wild boar and Cornish hens. The candy hall is like Christmas every day with giant jars of jelly beans, caramels, lollipops, and candy corn.

The sinful woman chose joy in the alabaster jar. In return her story is a precious example to us all. I can think of no greater gift this Christmas season than to hear Him say, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.

The next three days were busy ones for the ladies at Flint Cottage. Red-berried holly, pale mistletoe and glossy ivy were collected, and used to decorate the living room. Two red candles stood one at each end of the mantelpiece, and a holly garland hung from the brass knocker on the front door. The cake was iced, the pudding fetched down from the top shelf in the pantry, the mincemeat jar stood ready for the pies and a trifle was made. One of Mrs. Pringle's chickens arrived ready for the table, and sausage meat came from the butcher.

The food we managed to gather was considerably more limited than we'd been led to believe. An excess of individually wrapped panettone and reindeer-shaped chocolate- the dregs of Christmas. Baskets of savory biscuits and variations of chutney. Kitsch American stuff like packets of Froot Loops and jars of marshmallow spread. Large decanters of flavored oils but nothing to dip into them. There weren't even any cheeses or cured meats. But the alcohol was good: bottles of champagne and prosecco, Żubrówka in sculpted glass jars. We sat on the hard floor. Stevie had brought blankets and paper plates, plastic cups and cutlery. It felt like a picnic at the end of the world. I made a plate of Gruyère cheese twists and port-and-fig chutney. I slathered salted caramel dip over savory oatcakes. I had a slice of hazelnut panettone. I finished with some shortbread and sea-salt truffles.

Maud placed two small cartons of rollmops in the basket of her wheeled walker, followed by a larger pack of herring salad. They were soon joined by a Stilton cheese in a blue porcelain pot, a mature Gorgonzola, a piece of ripe Brie, a packet of salted crackers, an artisan loaf that was still warm, a bunch of grapes, fresh dates, a jar of fig preserves, two bottles of julmust (the traditional Christmas soft drink), a small pack of new potatoes from the Canaries, a few clementines, and a box of After Eight chocolate mints. She was very pleased to find a portion of Jansson's Temptation in the pre-prepared-foods section and quickly added it to her basket.

No-Process-Pickles 1 cup water 1 cup white vinegar 2 teaspoons salt 1 tablespoon sugar Handful of fresh dill Whole peppercorns and peeled garlic cloves Kirby cucumbers (or regular cucumbers, cut into quarters lengthwise) Red radishes, sliced thin Fill clear glass jars with the pickles and radishes, creating a nice color palette of red and green. Add the herbs and spices. Combine the water, vinegar, sugar and salt in a jar with a lid, and shake to dissolve. Pour over pickles in the jars. Seal and refrigerate. These will be ready the next morning and can last up to a month—after that, please discard for safety’s sake.

Am I living, working and playing with integrity? If not, what changes should I make to fulfill my destiny and find true

Am I living, working and playing with integrity? If not, what changes should I make to fulfill my destiny and find true happiness?

When we got back, we opened Bella's posh hamper which contained lovely luxuries that were pointless on their own. But we ate the olive biscuits and the chocolate mints and the jar of cherries in kirsch as well as Christmas cake and Beatrice's Jamaican rum cake and we drank champagne.

The Rules of Improvisation That Will Change Your Life and Reduce Belly Fat* The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we’re improvising and I say, “Freeze, I have a gun,” and you say, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger. You’re pointing your finger at me,” our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if I say, “Freeze, I have a gun!” and you say, “The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!” then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun. Now, obviously in real life you’re not always going to agree with everything everyone says. But the Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you. As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live? The second rule of improvisation is not only to say yes, but YES, AND. You are supposed to agree and then add something of your own. If I start a scene with “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you just say, “Yeah…” we’re kind of at a standstill. But if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “What did you expect? We’re in hell.” Or if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “Yes, this can’t be good for the wax figures.” Or if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “I told you we shouldn’t have crawled into this dog’s mouth,” now we’re getting somewhere. To me YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. It’s your responsibility to contribute. Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.

Mental Accounting Alarm clocks and Christmas clubs are external devices people use to solve their self-control problems. Another way to approach these problems is to adopt internal control systems, otherwise known as mental accounting. Mental accounting is the system (sometimes implicit) that households use to evaluate, regulate, and process their home budget. Almost all of us use mental accounts, even if we’re not aware that we’re doing so. The concept is beautifully illustrated by an exchange between the actors Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman in one of those extra features offered on DVDs. Hackman and Hoffman were friends back in their starving artist days, and Hackman tells the story of visiting Hoffman’s apartment and having his host ask him for a loan. Hackman agreed to the loan, but then they went into Hoffman’s kitchen, where several mason jars were lined up on the counter, each containing money. One jar was labeled “rent,” another “utilities,” and so forth. Hackman asked why, if Hoffman had so much money in jars, he could possibly need a loan, whereupon Hoffman pointed to the food jar, which was empty. According to economic theory (and simple logic), money is “fungible,” meaning that it doesn’t come with labels. Twenty dollars in the rent jar can buy just as much food as the same amount in the food jar. But households adopt mental accounting schemes that violate fungibility for the same reasons that organizations do: to control spending. Most organizations have budgets for various activities, and anyone who has ever worked in such an organization has experienced the frustration of not being able to make an important purchase because the relevant account is already depleted. The fact that there is unspent money in another account is considered no more relevant than the money sitting in the rent jar on Dustin Hoffman’s kitchen counter.