A very belated Merry Christmas

I've kind of been busy with this other thing I can't yet talk about (soon hopefully) and my blogging time has taken a major hit (as has my knitting/baking time). However with the New Year looming in mere days, I'm hoping to get back into the groove of regular posting/baking/making.

Here are some photos from the past week or so.

Our Christmas tree this year

Blooming paperwhites

Gooey Chocolate Coconut Truffles (recipe here)

My sweet Nannie on Christmas

Doug with our nephew on Christmas

Holiday Pictures

Christmas Eve through Saturday night was a blur. So much so that we spent Sunday laying around watching an all-day long Law & Order: SVU marathon.

Vanilla bean cupcakes, recipe here (toppers from Bake It Pretty)

Christmas morning tree
Maggie losing her mind over the catnip we put in the stocking for cats (yeah, don't judge)Doug opening up his new chucksMy Nannie opening the Walton's DVD's we gave herOur niece, who was not 100% thrilled with the books and shoes we gave her, oops.
Hope your holidays were bright!

Real! Tree!

Most of the time I try to plan things out but occasionally I get a whim and end up doing/convincing my husband, to do spur of the moments things. This was the case Saturday. So we put up our little tinsel tree last week and it was fine but I couldn't shake the disappointment of not having a real, actual tree. So Saturday morning as we're sitting in our pajamas drinking coffee I convinced him we should go buy a real tree, even though it's less than a week before Christmas. We went to the Schnuck's parking lot to purchase a little 5 1/2 foot-tall Norman Fir. It was a very painless process to un-decorate the old tree and relocate the ornaments to the new one. Plus it looks so.much.better. I love it. I keep sitting on the ottoman in the living room staring at it.In crafty news, I was inspired by Amanda at Bake It Pretty to make these little faux-cupcake ornaments. I used glitter instead of faux snow and my cupcake papers actually came from Bake It Pretty. I also forgot how when you use glitter it gets everywhere, usually in a spot on your forehead where it will stay for days, despite the fact that you shower regularly and wash your face.I know Christmas is mere days away and you probably have eight million things to bake and at least three people to still buy presents for and lots of uncomfortable family functions to sit through, but you should mix up a batch of this homemade hot chocolate, make yourself a mug of it and listen to David Sedaris's Santaland Diaries on NPR. It'll make you feel better, I promise.

The KISS (Gingerbread) Army

I have friends who have three little boys, two of them really like KISS. For Christmas I had the idea to make KISS gingerbread men. It wasn't a roaring success but it wasn't a complete fail either. For the gingerbread I used this recipe from Martha. Pretty easy to make, after chilling the first roll was hard and caused the dough to crack, but once it softened a little it was much easier to roll out. Probably my only regret is not mixing up my own icing and using piping tools. I bought Wilton Sparkle Icing and it's gel-like and hard to control. Paul's the only one that really turned out well, everyone else was kind of hard to do. I'd love to try this again and use real icing/piping tools. The kids knew who they were supposed to be though so that was nice (the bottom 'plain' one was for the non-KISS lover in the family). Speaking of cool gingerbread go see NotMartha's fabulous gingerbread Partridge in a Pear Tree and her tiny, mug-side gingerbread houses, so pretty and clever!

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas

The tree is finally up, later than usual. We chickened out and opted to keep our little silver tinsel tree instead of going for a real full-sized one. Most of the ornaments are Seuss characters, with a few special ones scattered around. The "Oh The Places You'll Go" ornament is my personal favorite.

Our weekend was pretty low-key, Saturday morning I made Chocolate Chip pancakes (recipe here, it's Paula Deen but miraculously there's isn't a whole stick of butter involved).

Our friends had a Christmas party Saturday night and Lynsey and I decided to class it up by making a cocktail weenie tree, an idea found in this book. I made the base with an empty chicken broth can covered in wrapping paper and ribbon, a foam tree form, aluminum foil, glitter, toothpicks and a lot of hot-glue. Doug helped too, as he's a much better wrapper than I am. I think it turned out pretty awesome looking.

Sunday I did our Christmas cards, which I picked up from three different sellers on Etsy, The Black Apple, La Bella Couture and Letterary Press. They're headed out to their respective recipients today.

I cast-off that blasted Woodland Lace Shawl I've been knitting since July and found time to block it. I've never blocked a lace shawl so I'm hoping it doesn't come out looking too wonky...

Using some of my Seattle yarn loot, I cast on a little cable hat in Rowan Felted Tweed, I'm halfway done. It's only my second cable project but so far, so good. The brim is a little tight for my big noggin, but it's a wool blend so maybe it can be blocked a little to stretch it out.