Christmas Menu

I feel like I have so much to do before my family comes next week...I'm still menu planning and that includes the cookies I'm baking this weekend! The cookies I'm planning on making are snickerdoodles (made some this weekend so I already have the dough frozen), compost cookies, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate earthquake cookies and whoopie pies. M is a big fan of chocolate whoopie pies with peppermint frosting..he's fixated on some that his mom used to make when he was little and every recipe she thinks it was, he assures her that wasn't it. I think he's given up on finding 'that' recipe now, and is just looking for a solid whoopie pie.

I am planning appetizers for Christmas Eve but have yet to pick them. I am considering doing miniature chicken alfredo in a large shell and a phyllo dough pizza that I've made befor and is very tasty and very easy. Aside from that, I'm unsure.

The main course for Christmas Day is a standing rib roast recipe from Bon Appetit a few years ago which was excellent the last time we made it. There is a spinach and porcini mushroom stuffing that goes with it, I think I'm going to make an au gratin potato casserole (also from Bon Appetit), rolls, I need to decide on a vegetable yet...

For Christmas morning, I'm making cinnamon buns.

I've started making my shopping lists and timetables....but I still feel so scattered!

On top of the meal planning we need to:

clean the house
get liquor
iron the curtains in the dining room (we just put them up right out of the package with the intentions of ironing and of course never did)
find A a holiday outfit
get a tree
decorate the tree
bake the cookies
find the rest of the Christmas decorations

I'm sure the week is going to fly by...I can't believe one week from tomorrow the family is starting to filter in!

Home Reno

M and I are planning on redoing our half bath this winter...my head is spinning with paint colors!

We have long term plans to rip up the carpet in the living room and replace with hardwood and when we do, we will paint the living room, downstairs hallway, staircase and upstairs hallway. The idea is to do a taupe/brown/tan type color in the hallways and staircase and then do a darker shade in the same color family in the living room.

Then, because that won't jive with the bright yellow in the dining room, we'll need to paint the dining room. I like having yellow in there and I think it needs a light color because we don't get very much sun, but I think I would go with a more subdued yellow, more creamy.

My other thought was a bright orange in the dining room...crazy I know, but I love orange and thought it would look nice and crisp with our wainscoting.

Which brings me to my bathroom dilemma. Do I pick a bathroom color that flows with the current dining room color or pick something more neutral that will go with the future dining room color? My other dilemma is that I keep looking at taupes/browns for the bathroom but I shouldn't do that if I'm going to be using those colors in the halls and living room. Now I'm thinking of a creamy egg nog-y type color. It would like nice with our white baseboards and is neutral so it would blend with the room colors regardless of what they are, but is it too boring? My initial thought was to do orange so you can see this was a quite a leap...

We are thinking of a vanity kind of like this....I think M prefers the dark wood but I could be conviced to go with white...

ny thoughts readers of the blog?

Santa! Cookies!

I'm ridiculously excited about taking A to see Santa on Sunday! M thinks it's silly because she obviously won't remember it and no amount of explanation (it's for us, not her) seems to get him in the spirit.

It's at the town country club which has a nice little restaurant too, we might parlay this trip to Santa into our first lunch outing with little Y since I'm sure the place will be over run with small children...I'll be ok with being out with her there if she starts to cry.

I'm plotting what outfit she should wear, I think one that Grandma Y gave her will fit the bill nicely.

This weekend we are having a couple over...I have to make some cookies and pick up some egg nog. What cookies should I make? I'm debating between our friend B's snickerdoodles or a mint chocolate cookie recipe that J's sister sent. The downside to the mint cookie is that M won't touch it if it has chocolate so the snickerdoodle's just might win.

I have to seriously get finalizing the Christmas menu..did I mention I'm cheating and making the same meal I made last time I hosted? I really don't have time to sit and pour over cookbooks at this point so I'm taking the easy road...sort of. Those recipes weren't the easiest to make. Next weekend is the annual cookie baking day with S and A and the kids, so I have to figure out exactly what I'm making. I'm excited that this year there will actually be lots of people at my house to eat them! We have to find time to get the tree also....so many things to do and not enough time!

Thanksgiving Recap and Other Assorted Tidbits

Thanksgiving was nice, M's parents came down for the holiday and it's always fun to have them. It's always a nice low key time, full of cooking, wine drinking, and now....baby ogling. We had the usual suspects: wine, turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade rolls (my contribution), green beans, cranberry sauce, and stuffing.

The next morning, I maded a buttermilk crumble coffeecake thing, everyone else liked it, I found it a bit boring and I don't think I would use that recipe again.

The inlaws left on Saturday so we decided to check out a new bookstore/cafe that recently opened in our town that really has nothing of interest. I was thinking it wouldn't be very good, a half hearted attempt at both, but we were pleasantly surprised! The parking lot has been full since it opened (this place has been listed as coming soon since we moved here a year and a half ago). It's very cozy inside, the cafe offers some sandwiches/wraps and salads and an assortment of baked goods and coffee. The cafe has a roaring fire with leather couches and chairs around it and lots of tables. People were lingering, reading magazines and chit chatting. Little Y was a trooper, she was quiet the whole time and was entertained by this little salt shaker toy that she has. We were sort of doing a trial run for actually bringing her to a restaurant and she passed. The next time we are free we might try going to lunch, like the old days!

In Little Y updates, she has now tried rice cereal and contrary to what my mother said, she is still waking up every three hours at night. There have been two times where she has eaten the entire serving of rice cereal, tonight I think I'm going to double the serving and see what she does with that. Maybe she'll sleep if the quantity is more...

We got some holiday decorations up yesterday, we bought two topiaries to go next to the front door, and a berry wreath for the door. I have some berry garland that I wrapped around the light in the barrel by our drive way and M wants to try to put some lights on the topiaries today. I need to get around to picking out this years cookies and finalize the Christmas menu so I can place an order with the butcher. Due to Little Y's arrival, both sides of the family are coming to our house this year so there's lots of menu planning to be done. My MIL had a great suggestion of having some of the other guests cook for some of the non Christmas nights since people are going to be here for a few nights before and after the actual holiday.

We aren't really doing gifts this year, although I keep teasing M that if he has the desire to buy me something, a nice new kitchen stove would make his wife very happy...and I'm sure he wants his wife and mother of his child to be happy, no? I really enjoy Christmas with no gifts, it's so much less stress and now more than ever, we just enjoy having family around, drinking holiday drinks, telling family stories for the millionth time, and laughing, laughing, laughing.

Mall Walker....

I finally did it...I had been entertaining the idea of mall walking with A for some time now and the number not budging on the scale in conjunction with my need to stare at something other than my own four walls finally won out. And I didn't even buy anything!

We went yesterday and I'll plan to do it again in the future. A was entertained by the skylights and plentitude of things to look at, but I think next time we'll try a different mall. This one didn't have any elevators that weren't in anchor stores. We were there for about 2 hours and she even fell asleep (I think I've mentioned before that Miss A rarely sleeps in the stroller) at which point I took the liberty of browsing in a few stores (and was surprised to see that there were a few appealing items in Forever 21...aren't I way too old for that? Maybe it's because I feel old that they suddenly looked appealing).

Friday, we're going to try grocery shopping for the first time. My mom did it with her when we were home for the wedding and she said she was watching the lights the whole time. She does fine in Target, so I can't imagine this would be any different

This weekend is somewhat busy...I may be going out for drinks with a work friend on Friday, M has to work on Saturday morning, I desperately need to get on the treadmill, there needs to be a trip to Target, then Sunday M has band practice and then the whole thing starts again...

Baby Y's First Plane Ride

First of all I will tell you, we did in fact, survive. A was so wonderful! As soon as the plane started moving she was out like a light for the duration of the flight. On some of them (we had four) she would wake up as we were starting to land so then we just fed her and she was totally fine. She did not do as well after the feeding was done and the plane was no longer moving because we had already landed and we had to wait for people to get their stuff together. Mental note, do not book seats near the back of the plane, we need to get this baby off the plane and quick!

I also learned that we had to pick a seat with an infant air mask, I'm still not sure how we would know that while booking seats online but for both of our smaller flights we were placed in the first row which meant we had nowhere to store our luggage. This required a bit of preplanning on what exactly we would need from the diaper bag, but we managed just fine.

In Detroit yesterday, we encounted a two hour delay because of an engine leak but this gave her time to make the biggest messiest diaper while we were still on the ground rather than dealing with it in the air. I don't think she would have been a happy camper for long sitting in that. M was the one that changed her and he went through most of our wipes cleaning her up, luckily we weren't detained longer. It got on her pants and we came to the realization that our extra outfit had been used as pajamas by Grandma and we forgot to reload a spare outfit. She wore just her onesie and a blanket on those little chubby legs on the way home, but she was fine.

She adapted very well to the different schedule when we were visiting, we had some minor problems getting her to calm down enough to put her down but eventually we got there and she went back to her waking at 1230 and 330 schedule. She's back at daycare today and we're back at work....what a whirlwind weekend!

The house is horrendous right now, hopefully she takes a nice long nap tomorrow because the house is in a serious state of disrepair. The luggage is literally laying in the middle of the dining room floor, I'm sure one of the cats will be cozily sleeping in it today.

The wedding was great, it was nice to be a part of all of the pre-wedding festivities and then to be in a wedding for the first time!

Halloween

I can't believe Halloween has come and gone already! A was a little duckling this year, I'm not an inventive or creative person so I grabbed the cutest off the rack thing I could find (thank you Costco). It was the little duckling suit with extra padding in the belly region and yellow and orange striped tights. She was super cute and didn't fuss all that much when we put the little hood up even when it went over her eyes. We managed to get some cute pics of us outside by the pumpkins on the steps and then some more inside where it was a bit toastier.

We had planned on putting the costume back on her when trick or treating started at 6, but by that time she was already having her last bottle o' the eve and rubbing her eyes. The schedule is key so we opted not to bother.

We got 17 trick or treaters this year, which is about the same as we had last year. Most were very polite but a few didn't even say thank you and disobeyed my instructions to take one treat bag! She took the treat bag and then she kept grabbing more and more until finally I just pulled the bowl away. I think the key is that I should be handing it to them, not letting them choose. There was another girl who kept asking me what was in the treat bag (2 fun size bars in each one) and I kept telling her candy not realizing that she probably was asking what kind. I put different candies in each one so I wasn't sure what was in that particular one. She figured out that she could look through the side of it to see, and then was like, 'Meh'...put it down and began foraging through the bowl, presumably for something better.

Seriously young one...you take what's given to you and you love it! You love it! Back in my day that's what we did. (Dana Carvey, anyone?)