Oooh Picture windows....

The glaziers/construction crews got around to installing windows on the front upper level.  This will be the entrance for patients coming for laboratory tests and radiology examinations. 

This week has seen the Christmas decorations go up,  we are once again faced with decorating an artificial Christmas wreath. 

It lay around for well over a week while departments smartly hung their finished products.  This morning I suddenly thought that it might be nice if we decorated the wreath as a memorial wreath for Judy Kollen.  Everyone else fell in with the idea as no one else had had time to even think about the project. So, I went to the flower shop and the lady cheerfully gave me three yards each of wide black ribbon and thin red ribbon. There was also a nice fabric "window" with a lacy angel to hang in the middle.  I also had some red ornaments.  I went to the hospital and dragged home the wreath and the embossing machine.  I embossed three strips In Memoriam Judy Kollen 1939/2011, those all had peel and stick backing that went on the lace window very well.  The ribbons wrapped around the wreath and I used five or six shiny red plain ornaments to fill in the voids between the ribbon and voila, our finished wreath.  Housekeeping loaned us on those magic decoration hanging devices.  I will take a picture Sunday.

On a slightly different season note I have made two batches of fruit cake this year.  The first batch involved dragging out the various packets of dried fruit I had squirreled away and soaking the fruit in rum over night.  I found dried mangoes, raisins, dried cranberries, apricots, apples, pears, peaches, candied pineapple and cherries.  I also found pecans, cashews, Brazil nuts and walnuts.  Since this was a biggish batch I doubled the recipe and got 8 loaf pans.

I made a second non alcoholic batch the next day with dried dates, raisins, cherry flavored cranberries, golden raisins, dried applies and walnuts.  House smelled pretty good.  Do be careful when you bite down, some of that fruit is a little on the crunchy side.