Open Doors Arizona - November 2018 by Jonathan Himlin

CONTENTS | NOV | 2018

SPOTLIGHT

Holiday Decorations & Children’s Toys Safety Tips

GOING PLACES

Falling In Love with the Mediterranean

OUTDOOR SPACES

Decorate Your Outdoor Space for the Holidays

CULINARY ART

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

HAPPY HOUR

Service Tips for the Holidays

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SPOTLIGHT

Holiday Decorations & Children’s Toys Safety Tips By the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit www.aap.org and follow us on Twitter @AmerAcadPeds.

Holiday Decorations Safety Tips

Twinkly lights, candles, holiday trees and plants, ornaments and other decorations are an important part of holiday celebrations. Besides being festive and fun, the decorations your family brings out every year can help children feel connected to family traditions. To help make sure your decorations are safe, the American Academy of Pediatrics offers some tips: 6

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• When purchasing a live tree, check for freshness. The needles should be hard to pull off and should not break when you bend them. When you tap the tree on the ground, only a few needles should fall off. Cut a few inches off the bottom of the trunk before putting it in the stand and be sure to keep the stand filled with water. • If you have an artificial tree, make sure it’s labeled “Fire Resistant.”

• When setting up a tree at home, place it away from fireplaces, radiators or portable heaters. Place the tree out of the way of traffic and do not block doorways. • Use only non-combustible or flame-resistant materials to trim a tree. • Check all lights before hanging them on a tree or in your home, even if you have just purchased them. Make sure all the bulbs

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SPOTLIGHT

work and that there are no frayed wires, broken sockets or loose connections. • Be cautious about trimmings that may contain lead. Choose tinsel or artificial icicles of plastic or nonleaded materials. Light strands may contain lead in the bulb sockets and wire coating, sometimes in high amounts. Make sure your lights are out of reach of young children who might try to put lights in their mouths and wash your hands after handling them.

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• Before using lights outdoors, check labels to be sure they have been certified for outdoor use. To hold lights in place, string them through hooks or insulated staples, not nails or tacks. Never pull or tug lights to remove them. Plug all outdoor electric decorations into circuits with ground fault circuit interrupters to avoid potential shocks. • When lighting candles, remove flammable materials from the area, and place the candles where they will not be knocked over. Never leave a burning candle unattended. Do not use lighted can-

dles on a tree or near other evergreens. For more fire safety tips, listen to “Holiday Fire Safety” on HealthyChildren.org. • In homes with small children, take special care to avoid decorations that are sharp or breakable. Keep trimmings with small removable parts out of the reach of children to prevent them from swallowing or inhaling small pieces. Avoid trimmings that resemble candy or food that may tempt a young child to eat them. • Wear gloves to avoid eye and skin irritation while decorating with spun glass “angel hair.” Follow container directions carefully to avoid lung irritation while decorating with artificial snow sprays. • Remove all wrapping papers, bags, paper, ribbons and bows from tree and fireplace areas after gifts are opened. These items can pose suffocation and choking hazards to a small child or can cause a fire if near flame. • Keep potentially poisonous holiday plant decorations, including mistletoe berries, Jerusalem cherry, and holly berry, away from children.

Children’s Toys Safety Tips

Giving gifts to children is a favorite part of winter holidays, whether they’re wrapped under a tree or exchanged with the lighting of a candle. When choosing a toy for a child, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the toy be appropriate for the child’s age and stage of development. This makes it more likely the toy will engage the child – and reduces the risk it could cause injury. Below are some additional tips from the AAP on toy selection and safety: • Select toys to suit the age, abilities, skills and interest level of the intended child. Toys that are too advanced may pose safety hazards for younger children. • When choosing gifts for babies and toddlers, consider toys that will build developmental skills. Toys that can be manipulated, such as shape sorters, stacking blocks, and baby-safe puzzles, are great for developing fine motor, cognitive, and perceptual skills. For more tips on choosing toys for babies, see these toy selection tips on HealthyChildren.org. • If you are considering a digital device for a child or teen, such as a tablet, smartphone or game system, think about the purpose of the device and the rules you want to set around its use. For more information, see these tips on mindful technology use, and healthy digital media use for young children.

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SPOTLIGHT

• Be cautious about toys containing button batteries or magnets. Children can have serious stomach and intestinal problems – including death – after swallowing button batteries or magnets. In addition to toys, button batteries may be in musical greeting cards, remote controls, hearing aids, and other small electronics. Small, powerful magnets may be part of building toy sets. Keep button batteries and magnets away from young children and call your health care provider immediately if your child swallows one. • To prevent burns and electrical shocks, do not give children under age 10 a toy that must be plugged into an electrical outlet. Instead, buy toys that are battery-operated. • If you are buying a gift for a young child, look for toys without small pieces. Young children can choke on small parts contained in toys or games. Government regulations specify that toys for children under age 3 cannot have parts less than 1 1/4 inches in diameter and 2 1/4 inches long. For more, see How to Buy Safe Toys. • Children can choke or suffocate on broken or uninflated balloons. Do not allow children under age 8 to play with them.

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• Remove tags, strings, and ribbons from toys before giving them to young children. Watch for pull toys with strings that are more than 12 inches long, because they could be a strangulation hazard for babies. • When your child receives a gift, be sure to read the label and instructions. Warning labels give important information about how to use a toy and what ages it is for. Be sure to show your child how to use the toy. • Parents should store toys in a designated location, such as on an open shelf or in a bin, and keep older kids’ toys away from young children. If you use a toy box, choose one with no lid or a lightweight, non-locking lid and ventilation holes. See Toy Box Safety on HealthyChildren.org for more tips.

GOING PLACES

Falling In Love With the Mediterra There’s a special air that accompanies autumn in the Mediterranean. On port-intensive cruise voyages mild temperatures and lighter crowds create the perfect setting to feel as if you’re one of the locals. Discover a few ways to connect with the Mediterranean through cultural experiences. SULTRY SOUTHERN SPAIN After the soaring temperatures of summer, Andalucía shines in autumn as locals gather to celebrate regional treasures from chestnuts to jamón ibérico. Get your own taste of the land sipping the wines that flourish in sunny Alicante. Enduring cultural treasures also entice, like an excursion to Granada’s famed Alhambra fortress, with intricately designed corridors, courts and gardens - a UNESCO World Heritage site. PICTURESQUE PORTUGAL Boasting sun-filled days and warm temperatures, Portugal is delightful in autumn months. Spend a day in Funchal on the “garden island” of Madeira, ascending a cable car up to Monte for panoramic vistas as green foliage and red-roofed villages meet the sea. In Lisbon, the grand plazas of Baixa give way to the maze-like cobbled streets of Alfama that lead up the hillside to the stunning Castelo de São Jorge.

Rhodes, Greece

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rranean

Italian Piazza Venice, Italy

The stunning architecture of Greece

GRACE IN THE GREEK ISLES Get the best of all worlds on an October cruise through the Greek islands by spending cool mornings exploring ancient ruins and sunny afternoons gazing into the crystalline Aegean Sea. Step into the past in the old fortified city of Rhodes and its medieval Grand Master’s Palace. Bypass the summer crowds as you visit the Minoan ruins at the Palace of Knossos in Crete before feasting your eyes on the whitewashed buildings clinging to cliffs in Santorini, Oia and Fira. INSPIRATION IN ITALY Incredible food, robust wines and a spectacular palette of foliage — autumn in Italy is one of Europe’s best-kept secrets. Savor fiery sunsets over wide-open piazzas, and enjoy long strolls through Italian villages as locals greet you with a friendly “buongiorno!” Contributed by Ford’s World Travel with offices in Sun City and Sun City West. Ford’s Travel consultants have a combined 350 years of global expertise to help you plan your next vacation. Call: 623-9338256 or visit: www.fordstravel.com

Italian Mediterranean

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OUTDOOR SPACES

Decorate Your Outdoor Space for the Holidays By Anesia St. Clair Anesia is a licensed contractor and owns Pure Patio, a design center and retail store in Goodyear, Arizona.

The holidays are such a cherished time of year for many reasons, not the least of which is that we get to decorate! While many focus on an indoor Christmas tree, we spend a lot of time outdoors during the holidays too. Guests that come from out of state generally want to spend as much time outside as possible. Let’s make our outdoors festive and inviting by implementing a few design tips. If you have pots or have room to add some, plant them with red annuals, general greenery, and junipers. At this time of year, the nurseries are stocked with red geraniums and petunias. Use solid red in mass, or red and white for the most festive display. In smaller pots, accent with a simple spike or a Lady’s Slipper (Pedilanthus macrocarpus) in the center. You can also mix in trailing potato vine in the chartreuse color to contrast with your reds and darker foliage. Large pots look amazing with a tall juniper in the middle and trailing plants around the perimeter. Junipers come in the form of spirals, round ball topiaries (called pom-poms), or in a natural, conical shape. You can easily add white lights to these junipers too – either strung throughout the tree or just laid out around the base. Artificial garland that includes pine cones, pine boughs, holly berries, and some gold bling can be wrapped around the trunk. Consider hanging ornaments in your tree. Shatterproof shiny ball ornaments are easy to find and come in different sizes to support the size of your arrangement. Most of these ornamental junipers will come from the nursery with a center stake attached to the

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trunk. You’ll likely need to leave this in place for season because the trunk will not support itself or the added weight of any lights or ornaments without it. If you have a wrought iron view fence or pool fence, pine garland and lights can be easily woven in and out of it along the top rail or draped in U shapes from one end to the other. At the bend between each U, add a large red bow or hang a ball ornament. You’ll notice huge ball ornaments at the stores that are probably too big for your indoor tree but are perfect for outdoor garland. Add a wreath as a focal point and be sure to differentiate it with some contrasting colored ribbon or lights.

Large lanterns can be positioned symmetrically or in a grouping of three - small, medium and large. Fill them with shiny balls you find at the big box stores. These inexpensive balls are often sold in large containers with a color theme. You can intertwine battery operated white string lights inside to really make them sparkle at night. Fire is always cozy and reminds us of snowy Christmas nights, warming up at the ski hill, Santa coming down the chimney, or snuggling up to watch a holiday movie. Don’t forget to add that extra holiday cheer by using your fire feature, whether it’s cold outside or not! If you don’t have a fire feature, you can use candles or tiki torches to give you just enough flame.

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OUTDOOR SPACES

Your patio furniture is an easy place to introduce holiday décor. Add throw pillows in red, green, plaid, and Christmas prints to your seating areas. The more pillows the merrier! There is no need for them to match. Feel free to mix prints with solids and textures. They will all match by way of general color scheme or by being Christmas themed. Keeping a fleece blanket on hand will add a sizeable accent color. It also may allow you to enjoy your space a little longer and more often as our mornings and evenings become crisp.

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I’m a huge fan of using rugs on our outdoor seating areas. In the winter, our hardscape is cold. You’ll feel this through your socks and even in the air. Adding a rug will insulate you from this cold surface and make your space more enjoyable. It will also make your space feel like a second living room. A rug will add color and draw people to a defined space. You can choose a rug with traditional holiday colors or a green botanical print, or just a textured rug in a solid neutral color. Today’s natural looking rugs that look like yesterday’s jute are actually very good quality and inexpensive. They go with anything and definitely add a coziness to your patio.

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OUTDOOR SPACES

Outdoor dining areas are perhaps the easiest to decorate due to the huge variety of items widely available. Start with a table cloth or table runner in a color that complements your cushioned furniture, throw pillows, or general theme. A solid red or green will work great if this is the main or only place that’s being decorated. Add holiday placemats, chargers, napkins, and napkin rings. Add a sizeable centerpiece or elongated bit of décor if you have a rectangular table. You can use a lantern filled with ball ornaments again, fill it with garland or artificial greenery, outdoor candles, or lights. Alternatively, place garland, pine cones in a bowl, or arrange holiday stems of berries and greenery. You can wrap a few different sizes of boxes with wrapping paper and ribbons and arrange them in a stack or use them as risers to set snowmen or other cute accents on. Small pine trees with burlap bases work well as center pieces. You can cluster a few together and fill the gaps between with ornaments or poinsettia stems. For round tables, you can lay a wreath in the center and put something taller in the middle of it. Burlap pine trees look great, as will a potted poinsettia, or a large glass hurricane with a candle inside of it. A Christmas tree on your covered patio in addition to or in lieu of one inside the house is a great idea too. If you like a real tree, this allows you to water it a little easier and to keep all the needles outside. Cleanup after Christmas is a breeze as well. If you don’t want to decorate an outdoor tree with ornaments, you can double up on the lights and have it serve as your lighting during the season. Instead of ornaments, you can stuff the tree with plant picks. Use poinsettia stems, berries, and the many options that come covered

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with glitter. Get one of the large round rattan bases that you’ll find at the craft store, weigh your tree base down with some bricks or sandbags, and hide everything by stuffing a piece of burlap around the base. You’ll find burlap very inexpensive in the garden section at the home improvement store. Wrap some pretend presents in pretty paper for added color. If you’re short on time and/or storage space, perhaps the easiest and most impactful items to prioritize would be festive pillows, a throw blanket, a real tree you can dispose of after the holiday, and wrapping empty boxes as decorative presents. You can purchase zippered throw pillows and reuse the inserts with different spring pillow covers after the holiday. Fold up your Christmas pillow covers and store them in your linen closet. The rest of your décor is temporary and will be thrown away. Potted annuals add a lot of fresh color and are well worth the effort because they will last long after the holidays are over. To whatever degree you decide to decorate outside, start early. You want to enjoy it for as long as possible. If decorating feels like work, do less of it. Fewer, larger items can make a nice impact and it will be quicker to set up and tear down. Kids love to help as they get more and more excited for the big day. Happy holidays!

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CULINARY ART

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls By Vanessa Coppola Visit www.seevanessacraft.com for more crafts and recipes.

Make a batch of pumpkin cinnamon rolls for Thanksgiving or Christmas morning or to serve with a slice of pumpkin or apple pie, or all by itself. The fall holidays are all about the food and all about the pumpkin desserts, the more the merrier! These homemade cinnamon rolls will also make your house smell amazing. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really nothing like the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls right out of the oven. ROLL INGREDIENTS 6tbs butter (divided) 1/2 cup milk 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast 3/5 cups flour 1/4 cup sugar 1 tsp salt 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 can pumpkin 1 egg FILLING INGREDIENTS cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar mixed together in a bowl ICING INGREDIENTS 1 cup powdered sugar 1-3 tsp milk (mix together to make) 20

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DIRECTIONS To make the dough: Combine yeast and milk together, stir vigorously, and let sit for 10 minutes. Combine the rest of the ingredients and mix with a stand mixer. Cover with plastic and let sit for 30-45 minutes. Roll out, sprinkle the filling, then roll up and cut into rolls. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Once out, let cool and drizzle with icing.

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HAPPY HOUR

Service Tips for the Holidays By Michael Franz You can find more reviews from Michael Franz and other talented writers at www.winereviewonline.com.

Here are a few pointers that may help you, and perhaps one or two that might come as news even to more experienced wine lovers: If your wine glasses have been sitting in a cupboard for a month, they’ve surely picked up a little dust even if they don’t look dusty, and some of these particles can produce undesirable aromas or flavors that can seriously screw up your wine. Be sure to rinse your glasses out with hot water and dry them with a lint-free dishtowel. If you’ll be serving sparkling wine or Champagne, these glasses need to be washed differently. As beer lovers know, soap residue kills bubbles, and whereas a flat beer is a disappointment, a flat glass of Champagne is a catastrophe. If you are prepared to rinse endlessly and take your chances (like my WRO colleague Michael Apstein), then go for it. However, my mantra is: No soap, ever! You can remove fingerprints and lipstick from the outside of glasses when perfectly inverted with a lightly soapy sponge, but never let any soap into the interior, which should only be rinsed with very hot water. Dish towels can retain soap residues, so air-dry sparkling glasses or use paper towels. If one of your guests thinks it is “icky” that you don’t use soap on your sparkling wine glasses, solve the problem by striking that person from the guest list. If you’ll be serving sparkling wine (and if you’ve got it, you should damned well serve it!) please take note: Don’t put a damper on your dinner by blasting someone with the cork. This is serious: A Champagne cork can really do a number on your eyeball, and since the hospital emergency room will already be packed with inept turkey carvers, you’ll be there for hours if you suffer a mishap when opening your bubbly by the ballistic method. So: Keep constant and very firm downward pressure on the cork, even when unwinding the wire cage, which will require exactly six twists. Keep the cage on the cork, as it will enhance your grip. Ease the cork from the bottle by grasping it firmly as you twist the base of the bottle from side to side. A nearly inaudible result is what

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you want, with the faintest “pfffffffft” showing that you know what you’re doing. Pay attention to serving temperature! Most Americans are guilty of serving their whites too cold and their reds too warm. Wines pulled directly from refrigerators--much less ice buckets--are typically so cold that aromas are suppressed and flavors flattened. Similarly, the old rule of thumb about serving reds at room temperature has led millions of people to mishandle their wine. The rule made sense when coined by some guy in the 18th century, but only because he lived in an English manor house without central heat. Reds lack focus and seem overly alcoholic at 72 degrees and are much better at 62. So, stick your reds into the fridge for 20 minutes and pull your whites out of if for 20 minutes before cracking into them. Don’t overfill glasses when serving wine at the table. Sparkling wines can be filled to slightly above halfway, since they look much better with that fill level, and you don’t want your guests thinking

you are cheap on a day when you are supposed to be celebrating bounty. However, glasses for table wine should never be more than half full. An overfilled glass has no open space to collect the wine’s aromas, which are absolutely crucial for appreciating it fully. Last but not least: When you’ve gone through all of this and are finally ready to wine and dine, just relax and enjoy this wonderful beverage. It is famously difficult to get a perfect wine to harmonize with everything involved in your holiday dinner, and you shouldn’t be shamed if your choice isn’t perfect with everything on the plate. After all, this meal brings wine-pairing experts to their knees. And if some self-appointed expert at your table makes a nasty crack about your choice, don’t dignify his (it will surely be a he) comment with a reply. Just roll your eyes. And know that everyone else at the table is on your side!

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