Christmas delights

This is the delightful new bedspread Amberlee sewed for me for my birthday. It makes me so happy, almost giddy, every time I walk in the room and get a shot of all those bright colors! It's exactly the picker-upper I crave in the middle of winter.

These are the Thomas Keller gougeres we made for Christmas dinner (from Bouchon, I think). Wow! Another deluxe delight this Christmas!! I have to say though, that I like the Tartine gougeres a LOT too, and the Tartine variety are so beautiful. I'd like to make them both the same day next time so I can compare them, especially the flavors, more fairly. It's been too long since we made the Tartine gougeres, so it's hard for me to be sure of which ones taste better. Josh thinks the Thomas Keller version tastes better while the Tartine version looks better.
And here I am eating a chocolate pot de creme (recipe courtesy of Cook's Illustrated) at the Christmas Eve party. The chocolate was topped with whipped cream then garnished with crushed peppermint candy and a peppermint meringue cookie. Make sure to serve these when the chocolate creme is at room temperature. They taste much better (smoother, creamier, lighter, yet still very rich) than when they're cold (too rich and overwhelming...you can only eat one or two bites when they're chilled).
Seems like I forgot to take pictures of the rest of our Christmas festivities. Oops. I was too busy making the festivities happen to also make some pictures happen. At least Josh remembered the camera on Christmas morning. The videos he took are the best. See the videos of the kids on Christmas morning.

The Beehive Bazaar—December 2009

For the Beehive Bazaar at the beginning of December I made candy rings, some papier mache, and some felt hair clips and felt flower pins. I had several other projects in the works, but didn't finish them in time, including the paper dolls (there was a big mishap by the place that did some laminating for me...kinda ruined most of the project). It was fun to share a booth space with Josh's cousins, Briana, Tess and Candice! They had lovely things and delicious treats to sell.

Halloween Highlights

A ghost.
A seal.
This boy LOVES to cook! "Sawt, sawt," he says as he grabs the nearest thing he can find and shakes it over whatever he's cooking.

This girl LOVES to hug, squeeze, kiss, chase, tickle, and boss her brother.
This boy busted his chin open on the wooden stairs at the French House at the tail end of a family Halloween party. A few days later he busted it open again on the metal trim of the bench in the dressing room at Old Navy. The day after that he busted it open again when he tripped and smacked it into the carpeted stair between the kitchen and tv area. We used super glue to repair it each time, but after so many repeats the final result left a solid line of scar tissue in the middle of the healed wound. Oh well, at least it's on the underside of the chin, and not very visible. Poor little guy—that was a tough week.

Sock Monkey

I love my little sock monkey and Jack loves being a little sock monkey. He gets excited every time, running around repeating "monkey, monkey"!
Could he be any cuter?! His jacket was a dingy, whitish, hand-me-down that I upcycled with a bit of leftover dye from a tie-dye party at my sister's house last summer. I like the brown and grey version much better—it's just right for this little boy.