Happy Holidays!


So, my youngest, firmly believing in my cooking/baking abilities, decided she wanted to make a gingerbread house. Now, I've never made one, but found a recipe and templates for one in my magazine, and we set out to create a masterpiece.

Uh...this would be one of those cases when the best of intentions don't always make for succesful results.

The gingerbread turned out great. It produced rock hard pieces. The "glue" seemed less than adequate though. We tried, and did manage to get the the walls to stay up. The roof...well, not so much. After a long period of trying, I admitted defeat. My dh called and said save the house pieces and we'd all try again the next day. So youngest daughter and I scraped off the less than sticky glue and set the house aside.

Now, this is where I should mention my dog, Ethel Merman's favorite treat is gingersnaps. The spicier the better. Well, she sniffed out the house, and in a wolf chasing little pigs sort of thing, ate it. SIGH. Our gingerbread house was not to be. LOL I asked my youngest if she wanted to try again. She just snorted. That was the end of our gingerbread house making for the year. Maybe we'll try again next year.

Now, all this was slightly humiliating, but to add insult to injury, every show on the Food Network the next day featured...wait for it....wait for it...gingerbread houses. And I'm not talking the tiny cottage we attempted, I'm talking whole villages...people....animals. Some of the people said they spent more than 250 hours on them. And my dh kept skimming over to the shows, calling us to view the masterpieces. Grrr. Guess who's getting coal under the tree? LOL

Speaking of trees, and gingerbread...may you all have a wonderful holiday (whichever holiday you're celebrating this December)! May it be filled with family, friends, fun and lots of love!

Holly

(The gingerbread house at Walt Disney's Grand Floridian...this is not what ours looked like! LOL)

Last July's Here With Me (cover to the far left) is being reprinted in January '07 by Thorndike. It's a large print/hardback edition and you can find it at Amazon.com.

I love when my books travel! Here With Me is also out in Spain!

Holly

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful..." Okay, I might be in the Christmas spirit, but this isn't quite the right song, because today, it's everso beautiful out! The sun is shining and the temp is supposed to get near 50, which is very rare for Erie, PA in December. Last week, we had Lake Effect snow, and my fireplace was in use all day. Today, I'm thinking I'll be fine outside with just a sweatshirt! Love that.

But despite the unseasonable weather, I'm in the holiday mood! We put the Christmas tree up on Sunday, I've made five batches of hard candy and a slew of cookies. I love this time of year. And because I love giving gifts, I have a cool contest going on my website. Visit me at http://www.hollyjacobs.com/ and go to the contest link. I'm giving away a very cool, handcrafted purse. The material is bookshelves (it's hard to see in the picture) and is perfect for readers. I'll be drawing New Year's Day, so get your entry in now!


Happy Chanukah, to everyone who celebrates it!!

Holly

Power-Shopping

Well, I did my own variation of Dashing Through the Mall on Saturday morning...I call it power-shopping. Now, truth be told, I hate to shop, but if I have to do it, I go in knowing what I need, get it, then escape as quickly as possible. My kids have all learned the fine art of power-shopping. Unfortunately, my husband has not. And to make matters worse, we were shopping for gifts that involved tools. Yes, I had to take my non-power-shopping husband into Sear's tool department, where row after row of Craftsman tools required that my he weigh their merit next to his own. So, power-shopping wasn't all that powerful. As a matter of fact, it pretty much came to a standstill in Sears. My daughter and I made short excursions into other departments, only to return to see if he was done...and find he wasn't. The good news is, the boys on our list he was tool shopping for will have a very nice Christmas morning!

Okay, now that I've totally ratted out my husband's tool obsession, I have to confess, there is one store in the mall that is my downfall. A store I can't manage to power-shop through. The bookstore! Our is a Borders Express with some of the nicest employees ever! I always go into the store, smile at them and set off with the best of power-shopping intentions. I find the book I want, and feeling smug in my power-shopping abilities, head toward the cash register and...a book calls to me. It demands I pick it up and admire the cover, check out the back blurb, maybe skim a few pages. I swear, it's like a siren's song, befuddling me to the point I forget all about power-shopping and the fact I hate shopping as they weave a spell and make me not only pick them up, but by them...a quantity of them. I used to read a book a day easily. But now that I write, I don't have as much time, so my speed has slowed down, but that hasn't slowed my purchasing. I have a TBR (to be read) pile that's growing on its own! Last time I went in for a couple presents, and ended up buying myself Norah Ephron's, I Feel Bad About My Neck. What a riot! I couldn't put it down.

Hope you all are making headway with your holiday preparations! Check back next week...I'm doing a little holiday contest (with give aways).

Holly

PS Another angle on shopping comes from Isabel Swift at http://www.isabelswift.blogspot.com/. Her November 30th blog.

Well, I just got the official title for my October '07 release. It's The House on Briar Hill Road. It will be my first release for Harlequin's new Everlasting Love line.

I'll share more about the book soon.

Holly

Just got the news that last summer's Silhouette Romance, Once Upon a Prince, won a Laurel Wreath Award! The other two books in the trilogy have also done well. Once Upon a Princess is a Holt Medallion Award Winner and a Reviewer's Choice winner, and Once Upon a King is a Golden Leaf Award Winner!

That's my day's happy news!

Holly

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a great holiday! I adore Thanksgiving! I love turkey and stuffing. I love the whole family getting together. Most people like the family aspect, but I know that some people aren't so fond of the cooking aspect, but the truth is, I love to cook. A certain friend finds the fact I love hanging out in my kitchen rather suspect. The idea is foreign to her. She prefers her food from her favorite restaurant. I can't help it, I like cooking. I like fudging recipes, adding more of this and less of that. I love the smell as the food cooks. Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chicken Noodle Soup, fresh bread...they're all smells that warm a house! And of course, I don't mind the eating! LOL

I don't know that I realized how much of a cook I was until we had our kitchen renovated in the fall of 2004. We'd bought my husband's family home, a place of so many happy memories, but a house with the smallest kitchen in the history of kitchens. I mean, it was tiny. I used to say that you could spit and hit pretty much every surface, not that I spit in the kitchen, but you get an idea of how small it was. LOL One night, BA (before addition), I was baking. I leaned down to open the oven, and hit my butt on the counter behind me. I moaned that it was a symptom of the smallest kitchen in the world, but my husband–who likes to live dangerously on occasion–implied that it possibly wasn't the kitchen but the size of my butt. Hurmph. He thought he was quite amusing. Me? Not so much! LOL

Anyway, we added on a ten by twelve addition, with a huge island, tons of counter space. We connected it into the existing family room. What a great living space. It's gorgeous. But it didn't come easy. It was four months in the making. That's months, as in weeks and weeks of not cooking. Months of eating out. That's when I realized I was indeed a cook! It got to the point that I'd ask the kids where they wanted to eat out at and the only response was groans. Even McDonalds lost its magic.

After the kitchen was redone, I went on a cooking spree to end all cooking sprees. I invested in new cookbooks. I got a subscription to "Cooking Light." Yep. I was more of a cook than ever. On that note, tonight, being a bit turkeyed out, I'm making a pork roll, homemade sauerkraut (cooked in beer). I buy both the sauerkraut and pork at a local meat market. If you're ever in Erie, PA, try Urbaniak's meat market. It's got an old world feel, where the people know your name and take a great deal of pride in their business. Okay, back to the menu, sauerkraut, pork, mashed potatoes and apple crisp. We picked up a twenty pound bag of potatoes yesterday from a farm out by our camp, and the apples come from Fuhrman's Cider Mill, another Erie landmark. I'm not just someone who loves to cook, I'm someone who takes a great deal of pride in my hometown! I guess it's good that you learn that early on in my blogging!

While, I don't have pictures of Urbaniaks or Fuhrman's Cider Mill, I do have a number of pictures from Erie on my page. You can visit at http://www.hollyjacobs.com/PS.htm. And if you're looking for something new to try in the kitchen, buy some sauerkraut (I know, you can't get it at Urbaniak's, but try one of the refrigerated varieties in your neighborhood grocery store), toss it in your crock pot with a can of beer...doesn't matter what kind, whatever's your favorite. Cook it for at least two or three hours. The beer mellows the sourness. It's great with pork, or on hotdogs!

Hope you have a week filled with cooking, hometown pleasures and family! Of course, as a writer, I should probably also hope the week is filled with good books!

~Holly

Welcome to Hollyworld, my online blogging home. Who am I? I'm author, Holly Jacobs. I write for Harlequin, Silhouette and Avalon Books. Of course, I'm not just a writer. I'm a wife, a mom, a daughter, a friend... I have a lot of hats.

So, why name my blog, Hollyworld? It all started at a conference a few years back. I was taking some new-to-the-conference-world friends around and told them not to be nervous...they were in Hollyworld. And in Hollyworld, there are only two types of people--those who know you and love you, and those who don't know you but will love you. LOL It became a bit of a joke. And every year, more friends join me in Hollyworld. I hope you will, too!

I plan to try and add a new post every week. What are we going to talk about? Books, kids, dogs...life in general! I have a book on the shelves now. Dashing Through the Mall. It's a Harlequin Anthology with pals Sherryl Woods and Darlene Gardner. I hope you'll check it out!

Thanks for dropping by! Come back again soon!

~Holly