Christmas Eve

Little supervising sugar cookie decorating.

Sugar cookies ready for hungry bellies.

 Delicious crab cakes made by E & L.

The frantic search for the pickle ornaments.

Opening the medium pickle prize.

Holiday Party

The Mad Men style holiday party was a success. Fun was had by all as you can see from the array of bottles, dishes, and glassware in the background. I realized last night after everyone went home that we didn't take one single photo together. So, I set up the Gorillapod and we posed for the camera before collapsing on the couch. Jesse had already removed his tie, but you get the idea. I'm pretty sure I also forgot to take photos of the food and drink, but maybe there's a stray shot of the nibbles in the background here and there. 

With J at the makeshift bar whipping up champagne cocktails, martinis, gimlets and sidecars, it was practically a crime to walk around with an empty glass. One of our friends had the brilliant idea of bringing a case of candy cigarettes, which were quite a hit. I initially thought they'd be great Bah Humbug props (for those who chose not to dress up), but everyone came dressed to the nines. It was awesome. I'm pretty sure we'll be scrubbing simple syrup, Creme de Casis, and those little white sticks of sugar off our floor for months. However, as a good friend of mine recently said, "The floor is disgusting. That's the sign of a good party." 

As for Mr. M, he slept like a charm through the party, hence the lack of photos. After such a good night's sleep, he was happy and alive at six o'clock sharp. I brought him into bed with us and he thrashed around until I relented 45 minutes later and decided to let J sleep in. I popped two Advil and a Lindt truffle, chugged a glass of water, and waded through the kitchen to find the french press and coffee beans. As I waited for the kettle to boil, I dreamed of bagels and leftover smoked salmon that we talked about before bed. For a split second, I thought I'd head out to the bagel shop with M and surprise J. Then, I saw that it was 35º and decided that another truffle and some stale popcorn sounded like a perfectly reasonable breakfast. I think I will definitely need two cups of coffee to make it through the day, but it was totally worth kicking off the holiday season with a splash.

Oh (Giant) Christmas Tree!

J, Little and I went out to Costco in Vancouver, WA to pick up supplies for our party. We decided to venture up to Washington because we didn't think it possible that they would have state controlled liquor stores like Oregon. I'm not sure why we didn't bother to look up this "fact" on the internet. As it turns out, Washington too only has state run stores for booze. Boo. Also, as it turns out, the Vancouver Costco has a pretty crummy cheese selection. Total bust (except for the flat of pomegranates that we used to make grenadine). 

On our way home we picked up our Christmas tree. Like last year, it's a cute Noble Fir, but quite a bit taller at 5'6". We cleared out a spot in the corner of our living room and I was really excited to put it into place. Now, our stand is supposed to be good for a tree up to 6' tall, but clearly ours has a very large trunk. I guess that's what you get for buying a $12 Christmas tree stand. I rushed out to the hardware store with the mission of either buying a new stand or a hacksaw to get rid of some of the nubs at the bottom. I decided to upgrade to the $17 -- good for trees up to 7' -- since we were pushing the height limit of our miniature one at home.  

Now that I'm a pro at putting together these crappy tree stands, I was eager to get home and impress J with my Christmas ninja skills. And....Christmas tree fail. With our bigger stand the stumpy little Noble Fir trunk did not reach the bottom spike. In retrospect, I should have bought the stand AND a hacksaw. We both had a good chuckle, but neither of us wanted to go out in the rain to the hardware store again. So, we improvised.

J dug deep into our toolbox and pulled out a knock-off Swiss Army Knife branded with "Motorola" on the side. It was likely some giveaway that my Dad picked up at the office. I'm not sure if we had ever used it before. J pulled out all of the tool attachments and found one that looked like a saw. Rather, I should say "saw", because we might have been better off using a nail file. I got to work on one of the larger branches and quickly realized that it might take a while. Thankfully, Little was taking a nap and we were able to take turns hacking away with our mini Motorola pocket knife. 

J developed a good technique of leveraging the tree branch with his foot and in no time we had cleared an entire row of branches. I held my breath as he lifted the tree off the floor and made our third attempt at getting this darn tree standing. It was a Christmas miracle. The tree plunked down into the stand with a crack. And Little promptly woke up screaming. Since J was holding the tree upright, I had to go tend to our little cherub with sap coated hands and forearms. He didn't seem to mind and giggled when we walked into the living room and saw the tree. 

After dinner and a few cooking projects, I started to put on the lights. Since we have at least another foot or two of tree than last year, we're going to need one more strand to make it around the bottom. Given that this is only the second year that J and I have purchased trees for ourselves, I'm guessing our experiences could have been much worse. I'm very happy with how it looks so far and am pretty excited to finally bust out the Christmas music and get to decorating. I think it's going to make a great gathering spot for all of the friends and family that are going to share the holidays with us this year. I'm really looking forward to having a full house for the rest of December!