gingerbread display

every year local architects design gingerbread houses to help raise money for the juvenile diabetes research foundation. the kitchen staff at the sheraton downtown then create these gingerbread houses and the houses are displayed in the lobby of the hotel during the christmas season!

eric and i decided to do a little christmas date one saturday night and took the bus downtown to have dinner and check out this year's designs. we spent the majority of our time enjoying dinner at purple...man that place is SO GOOD!!! we started with the baked brie, which let's be honest - i could live off this stuff. it is delish! eric went for the lamb burger and i had the apple-walnut-stilton salad which is my favorite purple salad. i also "helped" eric eat the shoestring fries that came with his burger (by "helped" i mean i ate 85% of his fries).

after enjoying our dinner we debated on dessert but came to the conclusion that any dessert at purple would be better than something else, so we stayed a bit longer to enjoy creme brulee (for me) and apple crisp (for eric). they serve their desserts tapas style, so you get a little dish of whatever you order...actually they are the perfect size after a meal. eric had a hard time deciding between the apple crisp and the red velvet cupcake, so our very nice bartender/waiter brought both! i like red velvet cake but i can't stand cream cheese frosting, so i usually avoid it but this particular cream cheese frosting was lavender infused and had pieces of real lavender on top - it was pretty yummy! still don't like cream cheese frosting though :)

after dinner we walked over to the hotel and spent some time checking out the display. i think our favorite was the tree house one!

sorry this one is a little blurry! i took these with my phone not a real camera :)

space aged north pole

our favorite the tree house!

christmas cookie baking day!

when i was growing up my mom taught piano lessons (actually she still does) and every year around christmas she held a recital. after the recital there was a cookie reception and wrapped lifesaver candy books for each student :). those cookies all came from somewhere though...our kitchen, where one saturday after thanksgiving my mom and my aunties crowded into the space to make all sorts of yummy treats.

this was a highlight of my childhood...and although i was too young to remember some of the funnier incidents there was the year my aunt minda made green rice krispie wreaths with red hot hollies...and proceeded to eat way too many and pooped green for a day! the typical goodies were the peanut butter hershey kisses, fudgy mint brownies, peanut brittle, and of course, sugar cutout cookies that us kids were all too happy to help decorate. :)

i've been to cookie exchanges before, but honestly the experience of baking everything together and the kitchen being one big mess of sugar and flour and sprinkles is just so much more fun, so i decided to reinstate the tradition at my own house! saturday morning about 10 of my lady friends (and some of their daughters) came over with loads of dough, ingredients, baking sheets and lots of laughs as we baked, talked, and enjoyed some yummy breakfast & mimosas (made with cranberry sparkling cider for me & mary!).

the table was covered with russian tea cookies, snowball surprises, oatmeal raisin cookies, almond sugar cookies, sprinkled cookies, reese's peanut butter cup cookies, and chocolate chip cookie bites with a mint glaze by the time we were done! everyone left with bags or containers full of yummy treats to take home. i will sadly admit that a little over a week later...all my cookies are gone. i promise eric helped eat them too!! good thing i have more baking planned for next week! ;)

i tried out a new recipe for breakfast that morning and it was a huge hit, so i'll share it here!

breakfast braid

1 pkg crescent roll
cooking spray
1 tbsp olive oil
5 oz breakfast sausage, cut up
4 eggs, beaten
1 C fresh spinach, cut up
1/2 C feta
1/2 C cheddar cheese

Spray baking sheet with cooking spray and unroll crescent roll. Heat oven to 375. Heat oil in skillet; cook sausage then add eggs. Sprinkle feta and spinach down the middle of crescent roll, place egg & sausage mix on top, then with sprinkle cheddar cheese. leave about 2 inches on either side; take a sharp knife or scissors and cut strips at an angle about one inch apart to within a half inch of your egg/cheese mixture. "Braid" the roll over the top of the eggs, folding the ends in. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the top of the pastry is golden brown. Slice and serve immediately!

*as a side note - i didn't use cheddar when i made this but it would have been better if i had; granted i also love cheese :).

all things christmas

yay yay yay it's christmastime!

so i have a very strict rule about not listening to christmas music until the day after thanksgiving. which i definitely broke a solid three weeks early. ah, rules are for breaking anyway, right? :)

last year we did the hard work of putting hooks in for christmas lights, but didn't get a tree or do much other decorating. i was looking forward to not only spending a LOT less time on the lights, but getting a bigger tree than we've been able to get in the past since we technically have a bigger house! so saturday after thanksgiving we pulled all the christmas stuff down from above the garage and started hauling strands of lights and ribbons and bows out.

the lights were much faster this year, and since the gutters are up we were able to use gutter hooks for most of the lights. we had gaps in random places though, as we put the lights up in a slightly different order this year. eric found 10 foot strands to fill in the gaps but didn't notice that the boxes said "LED" on them before he put them up, so we have 95% icicle lights with a slightly yellow/white glow, and 5% icicle lights with a bright white glow. thus far, we haven't fixed it. don't know if we care enough to fix it :).

later that afternoon we made a quick stop at REI to buy eric some snow boots that were on sale, since this winter is supposed to be a nasty one (and we got dumped on the week of thanksgiving - so early!!) before heading up to north bend to cut down our tree! we did make the slight mistake of waiting too long, so it was pretty much dark by the time we got out there. no worries though, we found a pretty good tree and although it looked big we figured it was fine. fast forward to us getting the tree home, and figuring out that it won't fit in our tree stand, and is WAY bigger than originally thought. oops.

we got it in our stand, but it wasn't super stable, and i needed food so we took a break to go to chipotle and then stopped at home depot for a bigger tree stand. that was much easier and much faster, but i was so pooped from the activities of the day that the tree didn't get decorated until monday night when eric came home from work :). now it is quite lovely...oh minus the fact that the middle of it is already dead and brown :(. next year we'll go during daylight hours to cut down our tree!!

give thanks

we've been busy lately, so it feels like there is a lot to update about! i think to spare you all the hassle of reading forever i'll just write a bunch of short posts :)


to back up a bit, we lost in the finals again this year for soccer. it was a very good game, and we had chances to score but didn't put the ball in the net. bush managed to break the score 60 minutes into the game, and the final was 1-0. it was disappointing but we have such a young team that to even get to this game was a huge accomplishment. i know all eyes will be on us next season though, as we lose only three seniors (two of whom start) from this year's team.


thanksgiving was very low key and very, very yummy :). mary hosted and prepared about half of the meal, while i did the other half. the leftovers have lasted us quite awhile! after dinner we played a new game called truth be told. a little like dictionary and loaded questions combined, it was pretty entertaining. the "host" for the round reads a fill in the blank question, and then everyone at the table writes down what they think the host will write for the answer. the host then reads all the answers, including their true answer. everyone else guesses which one they think is the true answer. guess correctly, you and the host get a point. if you fool anyone else at the table with your answer, you also get a point! close to the very end, rick pulled out ahead of me in the very last round. even better was that the boys did the dishes at the end of the night!!


since then christmas has kicked into full gear, but that is for some future posts :)