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#Post#: 22387--------------------------------------------------
Holiday Oopsies
By: Thitpualso Date: December 27, 2018, 1:54 pm
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Every family has had a holiday oopsie or two.
An oopsie is something that seems like a disaster at the time
but becomes a great source of fun to recount at family holidays
in later years. My oopsie came when I was 5 years old. When my
Dad used a rotary mower on the lawn during the warm months, I
loved to follow him with my doll carriage and pretend I was also
mowing the lawn.
It was decided that I would receive a child-sized rotary lawn
mower as a Christmas gift. I loved it but there was nothing to
mow in December.
Well, maybe there was. The tree was the biggest green thing
around and, while Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, I plowed my
new mower up the tree with all my might. As might be expected,
the tree crashed to the floor.
Dad was all ready to give me a good whoppin’ but Mom stepped in.
When she was my age she’s done something similar. Her parents
had a Christmas tradition of a blue trumpet ornament that could
be blown and produce a note. It was a competition among the
children to be the first to blow the trumpet. Mom was the
fourth child in the family and, at the age of five, she decided
it was her turn.
The trumpet was off on the side of the tree but Mom had a plan.
she climbed on the chair by the window. Then she hauled herself
onto the window sill. From the windowsill she moved to the
bookcase. She could see the trumpet and, by leaning just a
little bit out she could finally get to blow it.
Not quite. Mom fell into the tree and knocked it down.
Because of her misadventure Mom couldn’t punish me much for
mine. I was denied library privileges for the month of January
but that was it.
What are your holiday oopsies?
#Post#: 22638--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: Rho Date: December 29, 2018, 9:48 pm
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My family Oopsie was a Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house
when I was a teen. Mom cooked a turkey and probably some side
dishes but everyone else brought a contribution. Straight laced
Cousin Eudora, who would have been an old maid school marm
except she finally married a widower, brought a pan of sweet
potato casserole studded with marshmallows on top. It was a
trendy food back in the day. Mom took the pan and put it in the
oven to warm up. The marshmallows caught fire and burned to a
crisp. Knowing this was no laughing matter (pun intended) Mom
quietly replaced them with some from her pantry and served the
sweet potatoes as if nothing had happened. Later she told a few
of us and we had a good laugh. Decades later I think of Cousin
Eudora when I see sweet potato casserole.
#Post#: 23011--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: Hmmm Date: January 2, 2019, 4:20 pm
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Our's was just a few years ago. We were serving beef tenderloin
and fried oysters. DH was going the frying and grabbed a large
bag of crawfish boil out of the pantry instead of the fish fry
coating. $100 of oysters were too salty to eat!
#Post#: 23034--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: Chez Miriam Date: January 2, 2019, 5:59 pm
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[quote author=Hmmm link=topic=899.msg23011#msg23011
date=1546467650]
Our's was just a few years ago. We were serving beef tenderloin
and fried oysters. DH was going the frying and grabbed a large
bag of crawfish boil out of the pantry instead of the fish fry
coating. $100 of oysters were too salty to eat!
[/quote]
Ooh, ouch!
#Post#: 23047--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: Wanaca Date: January 2, 2019, 6:37 pm
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One year my dad thought it would be cool to hang the Christmas
tree upside down. Said tree dried out quickly since we couldn't
water it.
Another year he decided to have a holly tree instead of a normal
tree. I actually thought it was a good idea at first. The tree
he cut down was a bit sparse so he had extra branches. He
drilled holes in the trunk and stuck them in. It really looked
nice for a short period of time. Then we learned that holly
trees dry out very fast when they're cut. If you think that
stepping on fir needles barefoot is uncomfortable, imagine what
stepping on dried holly leaves is like! Ouch. It drew blood.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. But it's still a happy memory of something
that didn't quite work out as planned.
#Post#: 24285--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: wonderfullyanonymous Date: January 18, 2019, 2:11 pm
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My son Josh, that child I swear...
He was 4, that Christmas. I had bought my husband at the time, a
very nice, and also very sharp knife for his gift. After all the
packages were open, we told the kids we had to get ready to go
to grandma's house. There would be time to play with things
later. Hubby and the 2 older kids went upstairs to get dressed,
while I was doing something down stairs. Josh came up to me with
his thumb just dripping blood. He took his fatehrs knife, which
was left open, (didn't know) and tried to cut a gift out of the
package.
I was not very amused, to say the least.
Hubby says, what do we do? I growled at him that since he left
the knife open, he could take Josh to the ER, and explain to the
doctors what happened.
He ended up with 4 stitches in his thumb.
#Post#: 24288--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: pierrotlunaire0 Date: January 18, 2019, 2:54 pm
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Years ago, I tried making a Stollen at my mother's house (my
mother loved anything with candied and dried fruit). Although I
had made bread before, this was my first experience with a
sweeter dough (as I remember, it had more sugar than basic bread
dough). My parents' house was quite drafty, and I had to rig up
a place warm enough for the dough to rise. Couldn't use the
oven because my mother was making fruitcake (again with the
candied and dried fruits).
But I finally got the dang thing to rise, and was able to finish
baking it before midnight Christmas Eve. We were cleaning as
the oven and the Stollen and fruitcake cooled. Then my mother
and I turned around, and the cat was on the counter, taking a
bite from the Stollen. We shooed her off, decided the bite mark
wasn't too bad. Carefully cut away anything the cat's mouth
would have touched, covered the Stollen with Saran Wrap, and
stuck it into the now cool oven to protect it from the cat (who
I now realized shared my mother's love for candied and dried
fruits). We finally went to bed at 1 am.
Christmas morning, we are just getting ready to open presents,
and my mother decides that she will bake some biscuits, which
will be ready by the time all the presents are open. She turns
on the oven to preheat while getting the biscuits ready. A
smell reminded us of what we had placed in the oven the night
before.
Well, we only used a little Saran Wrap, and we managed to pull
off most of the melting plastic. So a little more trimming with
a knife (by now the Stollen seems to be suffering from some kind
of mange), and a liberal application of fondant.
In addition to the Stollen, I don't know how much melted Saran
Wrap and cat saliva I ingested that day. It has been nearly 40
years, so I guess there were no ill effects. But I have had
absolutely no desire to eat Stollen again.
#Post#: 24305--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: EddiesMom15 Date: January 18, 2019, 8:39 pm
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The year my Grandfather got whipped cream in the spray can
banned from family holiday dinners.
Back in the day, whipped cream in a can was a fairly new thing.
Uncle's wife, Aunt D, thought it would save her the time and
effort of whipping real cream. Grandfather had never seen the
canned stuff. He tried to squirt some on his pie, but nothing
came out. He shook the can vigorously, pointed the nozzle at
his pie and pressed hard. Really hard. The cream came out of
the can with so much force that it bounced off the pie,
rebounded, and flew into Aunt D's face.
She didn't think it was nearly as funny as the rest of us. From
then on, she whipped the cream herself.
#Post#: 24814--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: Twik Date: January 28, 2019, 11:26 am
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The first year we had a microwave oven, my mother set it to heat
up the Christmas plum pudding. Didn't really believe the
instruction booklet that said things took much less time to heat
up.
The pudding reached what is technically called the autoignition
temperature. We were left with a cannon-ball-sized lump of
charcoal, a microwave that took days to clean, and a frantic
call from the neighbours who thought the smoking mess we'd
hastily scooped into a pot and shoved onto the back deck was an
indication our house was on fire.
#Post#: 24843--------------------------------------------------
Re: Holiday Oopsies
By: MinMom3 Date: January 28, 2019, 5:54 pm
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We were barely above the poverty line when I was small. Fake
Christmas trees weren't something we could afford, and mom was a
snob, so fake wasn't anything she was interested in. So we had
real trees, but they were realllllly little real trees. One
year, the tree was about 2.5 feet tall. Nearly a Charlie Brown
tree, and about to become more so. No water wells in those days
that I recall (maybe just not in our budget), just the
criss-crossed slats holding up your tree. That tree was
perilously dry the day it came in the door. It only got drier.
The last few days before Christmas, it lost its last needle.
I'd say there was a big old heap of needles on the floor, but
the tree was so teeny it was a teeny heap of needles. Too late
and too broke to get another tree. Couldn't afford to get a can
of green paint and fake it. What to do, what to DO?!
Tissue paper. Mom always had tissue paper for gifts. She
either went and got or had, some forest green paper. She cut
strips of tissue paper. Wrapped the 'trunk'. Made strips for
each branch, pinned them on, and cut fringes like the ones on
the back of an old suede jacket that had fringe along the back
of the sleeves and yoke. Voila! Newly green tree! Cats weren't
sure what to make of it, so they left it alone. It lasted until
the day after Christmas and then mom carefully took her sewing
pins out of the tissue paper, and disposed of the entire mess.
And we still had a green tree when push came to shove.
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