Sunday, December 30, 2007

3rd Annual H Christmas Party

For recipes of items mentioned here, check out my food blog, food for my life.


Note - everyone is around the dining room table - where all the food is.


Not many people in the front room - where all the decorations are!


Fondue and cookies for dipping are in the lower right corner.


Cheesecake brought by one of the guests on the lower right corner and my homemade marshmallows in the bottom middle.


Close up of the cookies - Mexican wedding cookies, orange sugar cookies and pecan mandelbrot - along with the chocolate fondue. It's a beautiful Bodum fondue pot compliments of my Turkish friend, EE

One last view of the table - on the far end are cheeses including manchego, garrotxa, brie and cheddar. In the middle are deviled eggs and sandwich rolls. These were such simple but popular items!

Phoebe The "Not so Terror" Cat


Her new "house". It even matches her.


Such a poser.


Is she thinking about that mouse from long ago?


Santa and I go way back.


Such a proper lady.


I'm tired now.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Checklist Update (and Additions)

Here's an update on what's left:

1. Phoebe - the not so terror cat
2. Thanksgiving - Done
3. Running - Done
4. Christmas Decorations
5. Christmas Party - Gave a quick update
6. Awesome Dress
7. New Furniture - Done
8. Resolutions
9. NYE Party
10. Christmas

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Party Update

The party was a huge success. I have some pictures that I took as I was cooking on that Friday but no pictures from day on SAturday nor that night from the party. Thank goodness someone else took pictures at the party with their iPhone. I'll eventually post those as well.

One resolution for the New Year - at least one post per week!

Friday, December 07, 2007

3rd Annual H Christmas Party Eve, Pre-Cooking

I'm off from work today in order to get ready for our Christmas party tomorrow. I'm back from the grocery store and now need to start cooking. I'm planning to take some pictures of the preparation.

Monday, December 03, 2007

My Food Blog, Take Two

According to one of my faithful readers, my update post below about the food blog was not clear. So, here's my second try.

I will not be posting within this blog when I update the food blog. Instead, I'll update the link to the right with the date that I made the udpate. Please check out the link and you'll see when I last updated the blog (12/2/07 as of this writing). Let me know if there is still confusion (if you're interested)!

Checklist Update

Here's an update on what's left:

1. Phoebe - the not so terror cat
2. Thanksgiving - Done
3. Running - Done
4. Christmas Decorations
5. Christmas Party
6. Awesome Dress
7. New Furniture - Done

Retropost

For the fun of it and because I just love this picture, here's a post from 1/29/2006:


I'll admit, part of the fun of running is buying the clothes. MTH on the other hand, was running in shoes with holes in them until a month ago. But, this outfit this morning definitely takes the cake. It was cold outside but he didn't want to wear his running pants because in his words, "they make my butt look fat". So, here's what he came up with instead.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

My Food Blog

I'm going to try to keep up with that blog again. You may notice a pattern. I started that blog almost a year ago exactly. I think I get in the mood for cooking because of Thanksgiving and Christmas. In case you're interested in reading the food blog when it's updated, I'm going to update the title on this blog with the date of update. That way you won't be disappointed by clicking through and finding that I haven't updated the food blog yet.

Conversation at Thanksgiving

Person 1: I once knew a person whose name was "Bunny"
Person 2: Are you sure that was her real name? Maybe her real name was "Rabbit" and "Bunny" was just a nickname.

Long Overdue

MTH and I bought new front room furniture back in September and new dining room table in early November. Here's some pictures:







Phoebe loves this new carpet. The good part is that when I say love, I mean that she loves to lay on it, not scratch it!


We have one of these shelves on either side of the fireplace in our front parlor.

Thanksgiving

Our family came to visit for Thanksgiving. It was our first time hosting MTH's parents. With our bigger house, we were able to have my parents, my sister and MTH's sister stay at our place. His parents stayed in hotel. We probably could have squeezed them in too but it was helpful that they stayed at the hotel.

My parents got in on Tuesday evening so that my Mom could help me with the grocery shopping on Wednesday morning. MTH's parents got in on Wednesday morning. We had a nice group lunch and then my Mom, MTH's mom and I worked on as much preparation as possible. Our goal was to have as little to do on Thanksgiving as possible. There are no pictures from that day. My Mom made some awesome homemade bread and MTH's Mom made some great homemade pie crusts for the pumpkin pie, pecan pie and the traditional day after Thanksgiving Day turkey pot pie. For dinner that night, I made personal pan pizzas. Anyone can do this trick. You go to your favorite local pizza place and buy the pizza dough there. My Mom brought me a pizza stone so I used that in the oven instead of grilling the dough as I usually do. The pizza stone worked a lot better because the oven's heat is much more even than our grill. Everyone loved the dinner and it was easy for me. My sister made peartini's for all. It's going to be one of our signature drinks at the Christmas party next weekend. By that time, everybody was tired so we didn't play any of the games we had planned.

On Thursday, MTH and I ran a hilly 10k starting at 9am (pictures to come later). Instead of trying to have a breakfast before the race, we decided to have brunch around 11am and not worry about lunch. For those that got hungry prior to the brunch, we had fruit and bagels available. The brunch menu was Georgia stone ground grits (cheese optional), eggs made to order (cheese optional), bagels, pork sausage from the butcher, biscuits and fruit.

Then, we cooked for the rest of the afternoon. I guess we wouldn't have been able to finish on Thanksgiving if we hadn't done any preparation! My sister made stuffed butternut squash.





MTH carved the turkey with our new electric carving knife.





My sister folded the fabric napkins for a special touch.







That night, we played Apples to Apples. It's a great game for a disparate group of people. There's no board or die involved - just some cards.

I didn't mention this fact before but Thanksgiving Day was my Mom's birthday. So, on Friday, we headed to The Jefferson Hotel in downtown Richmond for afternoon tea. It was a nice afternoon. Unfortunately, MTH's Mom and Dad left earlier that afternoon so only my sister, my Mom and Molly were able to go.







Note that the weather was cold enough for my green jacket!

We spent the rest of Friday starting to decorate for Christmas and making a turkey pot pie. On Saturday, we shopped for more decorations. Then, we went out for dinner - no more cooking!!