Celebrate Purim

I love seeing the signs celebrating Purim outside local synagogues in my town. I looked into it, and I think there is about 128 synagogues in and around Los Angeles. I know that my friends that celebrate Purim especially love this holiday for their kids. Good food, celebrations, giving to charity, and fun costumes. I always send them Purim ecards to wish them well.

Some of my friends try to make  Hamantaschen pastries for this holiday, but I understand why some of them end up buying them instead…

In this New York Times article, it says they take two to three day to make! These days, I feel like I’m lucky if I find 20 minutes to bake a Dr. Oetker organic cake mix. I give kudos to anyone who devotes two to three days baking these Hamantaschen pastries. They do look delicious, though, filled with prunes or poppy seeds. The pastries are made to look like “Haman’s Hats,” and they represent the victorious escape of the Jewish people from being executed during their time in the Persian Empire, all due to the courage of Queen Ester. I am excited to support my friends celebrating this holiday, so I am going to send them Dancing Hamantaschen ecards and other Purim ecards.

March 8 at sundown, it begins and last for two days. I want to wish everyone a Happy Purim. The Jerusalem Post says that there will be carnivals in the streets of Jerusalem with colorful costumes, acrobats, and puppets. Hopefully you are having a celebration on your own neighborhood block. Just remember to clean up the confetti afterwards and send plenty of Purim ecards!

 

 

Last Minute Handmade Christmas Gifts

Crafters and knitters go all out this time of year. Oh what fun it is to make a Christmas stocking from a pattern. Yarn mills and spinneries sell Christmas stocking patterns for $4 online (or you can buy the kit for $20.) But for some of us, it might be too late. The hands on the clock have ticked past, and we can no longer enjoy the luxury of plenty-of-time-to-prepare; instead we must resort to what I call last minute “Christmas Eve Crafting.”

 

 

Martha Stewart’s site has a great idea for a last minute handmade gift. Fill organza sachets with herbs such as lavender, tansy, wormwood, cedar, patchouli, rosemary, cinnamon, or cloves to repel moths. These sachets are a sweet-smelling alternative to your grandmother’s chemical smelling mothballs. They are pretty easy to make. Just buy the organza squares and decorative ribbon from a Joann Fabric Store and dried lavender from a flower store.

Another idea comes from a mother and creative designer in Charlotte, NC. She blogs about this great last minute handmade gift idea.

DIY family photo magnets. Get your magnets from Hobby Lobby and follow this blogger’s tutorial. All you need is photo paper, chipboard from the back of a notebook, rubber cement, and a white marker. Such a personal and inexpensive gift for your family and friends!

Our favorite last-minute ideas are Christmas ecards. A life szver if you forgot to send a printed card to someone. Frankly, I save myself time and effort and send all my friends and my family members a fun or a heartfelt ecard with a personal message from me to them.

Our Sexy Fruitcakes ecard makes light of that time old culinary Christmas gift – the fruitcake. Whether you hate the taste of them or love them, fruitcakes get a bad rap. Lucky for us, The Food Network’s Alton Brown gives the fruitcake a makeover with an updated recipe finally allowing the fruitcake to, in the words of Justin Timberlake, bring sexy back.

Christmas ecards are the ultimate last minute gift. We hope Doozy helps you this Christmas Eve Eve so that you remember everyone on your list.

Weather Forecast: Snow?

Christmas is less than five days away. What’s your weather forecast?

 I recently watched Irving Berlin’s White Christmas On-Demand. I love the lyrics to the  song, Snow, that Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, and Vera Ellen sing on the  train from L.A. to Vermont. The lyrics go:

“I’ll soon be there with snow
I’ll wash my hair with snow
And with a spade of snow
I’ll build a man that’s made of snow”

The show business foursome leaves the palm trees of Southern California for the snowy scapes near a New England Inn. According to the Chicago Tribune, “A white Christmas, as defined by the National Climatic Data Center, is one with an inch or more of snow on the ground at 6 a.m.”

The places in the U.S. with the highest probability for White Christmas each year are two cities in Michigan (Marquette and Sault Ste Marie), two in Minnesota (Hibbing and International Falls), and one in Washington (Stampede Pass.)

 

 

 

Chicago has a 40% chance of White Christmas each year. New York has a 10% probability. And Los Angeles is 0%. So think of us this holiday season when you send Christmas ecards. We’re warm here in the balmy weather of Southern California busy making gifts; instead of the toys Santa makes in the snowy North Pole, we’re making Christmas ecards!