10 Days and Counting

We have officially finished decorating for Christmas. Bruce put away all the boxes today, I cleaned up and now we can enjoy it all. At least for awhile...until I started working on Christmas dinner which I'm doing at our house this year. So, today we started figuring out the dinner table. One long table did not work in our dinning room without being too crowded. So, we tried side-by-side and it worked a lot better for the 15 people coming.

There is plenty of room this way and we both liked it.

I will be "tweaking" the table for a least a week so I always start setting it early. We had two tables side-by-side last year for the Christmas party and it worked out very well.

We are so excited to experience Christmas this year in our new home. We bought a live Christmas tree this year and put our old, artificial tree in the spare bedroom. (You can see where the built-in lights are no longer working)

Now, a Christmas tree can been seen in our window from the street since this bedroom faces the front of the house. I really like this room so it was deserving of a Christmas tree. There are lots of Christmas decorations in this room, including stuffed animals.

The main floor hall bathroom is next to this room which is also decorated.

I put a basket of hand towels behind the toilet

and lots of Christmas soaps in this room.

The copper lights I wrote about in My Favorite Things post are used to decorate the shelves.

In the living room, the glass shelves also look perfect decorated for Christmas.

This is where I have my mom's memory displayed in photo ornaments hanging from a reindeer's antlers.

The coffee table has the church steeples that will light up at night with candles inside.

You can see the fireplace mantel behind it with the laser cut wooden trees, also from My Favorite Things list.

I have glass beads on the window sills in the living room and dining room that will sparkle when the sunlight shines in.

Every year, I hang our family's Christmas cards on a ribbon starting with 1987 when Nick was a baby. There is getting to be a lot now. The first card is actually from 1980 when Bruce and I were dating. Then it skips to 1987. The second string starts in 1998 when we moved to Idaho. The third string starts in 2010 when Sachiyo joined our family. I love looking at every single one of them.

Our beverage area is also decorated with a lighted bough on the china cabinet.

We are ready to PAR-TY!

The entry is very welcoming with again, lots of lights. I told you, I LOVE those copper lights.

I'm welcoming Nick when he comes on December 22nd with a Dilettante's chocolate on his pillow.

If you look closely, you'll see the chocolate says "Nicholas". I just couldn't resist...

They had those at Metropolitan Market at the check out stand. See the temptations I must put up with on a daily basis? Nick will be here in a week and I'm getting excited. He has seen our house but not with furniture. He will actually have a bed to sleep in this time instead of a pad on the floor. Phase two of moving took patience while we waited for our house to sell.

I even put some decorations in the laundry room. Why not?

And to top it all off, I got a package in the mail today with my sister's fruitcake from Colorado.

It is my mom's recipe, a tradition that she is continuing. She makes it every year and sends us each one. It is the most delicious stuff.

Some day I will put this recipe on my blog. It is wrapped in rum-soaked cheesecloth. It brings back many childhood memories. I just love it.

Now that my decorating is over and the table is set, I want to just enjoy the season for awhile (and eat fruitcake...) I did go to the Nutcracker with my sister last week and it was beautiful and festive.

Then, we went to Boise for the office Christmas party and back again in time to see the Christmas ships. It has been a very fun season, so far. The next 10 days will be planning the Christmas dinner menu (or should I say "tweaking it" since I have most the menu planned. (I do a lot of "tweaking" this time of year) I hope you are all surviving the holidays and finding time to enjoy what this wonderful season has to offer.

Meatloaf by Mark Bittman

Once again, I turned on the television yesterday and saw that Mark Bittman was on the Today show and was making his version of meatloaf . This must be meatloaf season. It was surprisingly similar to the Pioneer Woman's version who was also recently on. I was a little surprised of his version because Mark Bittman is into healthy eating and has lost a lot of weight and improved his health by changing his diet which he writes about in his book, Food Matters . His meatloaf recipe also included bacon and cheese! I must be doing something wrong. The thing to remember, which he writes about in his book, is that you can eat healthy without going extreme or changing your whole life. If you don't know who Mark Bittman is, he is a food writer and a four star chef with multiple cookbooks who loves to eat but changed his food philosophy to improve his health. He tells his story in Food Matters and provides ...

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Oatmeal, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't have very many gluten-free cookies on my blog because quite frankly, I usually don't like gluten-free. But occasionally, I do find a good recipe and this is one that is from the back of the Trader Joe's oatmeal and it's a good one. My friend brought some over to our house last weekend when Nick and family were here for our birthday celebrations and we all loved them. My friend lives a few blocks away and we walk the neighborhood together on weekends. We can easily go 5 miles in no time, talking non-stop. She loves exploring our neighborhood as much as I do and we discover so many favorite little spots. We even found a property with a horse (or more like a pony, I should say.) The views are always quite lovely, too. Bruce and I had our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary on July 18th and I made a point of walking past the house where we had our wedding reception. I told my friend, "Thirty-nine years ago today, t...

Waking Up in Vegas

and just like that...we were Waking Up in Vegas. Just like the Katy Perry song. We went to her 78th performance which was her second-to-last Las Vegas residency show entitled "Play". That was perfect for us because we went to Vegas simply to play. Her concert was a great finale for us because it was high energy and full of silliness, just the way Katy Perry is. And we were feeling it after three nights in Las Vegas. "Get up, and shake the gutter off your clothes now, That's what you get for waking up in Vegas". Here's what she said about her show: "I created this show after the birth of my daughter, Daisy Dove. When I met her, it was like all the love I was ever searching for finally showed up. This show is for everyone’s inner child and for the hope that maybe if we could all see life through the eyes of a child, we would be free. Because never forget, love is and will always be the key,” she said. We went to Vegas spur of the moment because Br...

Sylvia's Scenario

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