Sylvia's Scenario

And so it begins. The holiday season is upon us.  Are you ready for it?  For us, it helped that yesterday we attended our favorite Holiday Open House in our neighborhood at The West Seattle Nursery.  It's an excellent Open House to get you in the mood. We learned how good it was three years ago when we moved here and now we attend every year.  It's a wonderful place to shop for unique gifts and decor.  I always love looking at their displays which are more like a work of art.  They have multiple Christmas trees decorated throughout their grounds that are gorgeous.   This tree is a maritime theme.  You can purchase plenty of ornaments for this theme, appropriately so because of where we live.  Need a special gift?  There's plenty to choose from here, that's for sure.  They always offer an assortment of amazing refreshments each year at thei...

Boo!  What were you for Halloween?  Bruce and I pulled out these old masks from when the kids were in preschool to wear on Halloween.  They have an eerie realism to them, especially this one that matches my hair color.  We wore them to answer the door to trick-or-treaters. Well, sometimes we wore them.  The kids weren't really sure what to think since they didn't know what we really looked like.  Real or no?  Here's another one, the Toreador. We had the most trick-or-treaters so far since it was a beautiful evening and no rain.  There hasn't been a Halloween without rain in Seattle for a decade.  Yep, it's true.  This is Seattle, after all.  Rain comes with the territory but not this year and everyone was out in full glory.   We've gotten with the groove of the neighborhood now and our house has an acceptable welcome-to-Halloween attire to it. It's still fun to walk the neighborhood and look a...

This is another lighter version of a popular dish, macaroni and cheese.  It's adapted from Weight Watcher's again where 1 cup of this dish will provide 6 points.  I made this dish for our latest visitors who were here from Minnesota for three days.  Bruce's nephew, his wife and three kids were here taking in our local sights after visiting the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Peninsula.   We had so much fun with them here and especially with their children.  Children bring a whole new dimension into the household and I loved it.   We babysat on Saturday night while mom and dad went to Depeche Mode concert.  Babysitting meant popcorn and movies... During their visit, we had lots of ping pong tournaments  family dinners sightseeing visiting Farmer's Markets spending time at playgrounds riding the water taxi and the monorail and just enjoying this marvelous time of year. ...