Wrapping up the weekend

Our Saturday was pretty low key. Lots of Bananagrams, some errand running followed by dinner with M & J and an epic set of Rock Band. Very, very fun.

On Sunday, we wandered over the the Ballard Farmer’s Market and browsed through the local shops nearby. There was an innovative potato display at one of the stands:

We also indulged in a Banana-Nutella crepe. Yummy!

We wandered over to the Locks to help work off some of the crepe calories (Ha!) It was totally different from T’s and my visit back in the fall:

There weren’t all of the fish that we saw previously, but it was still fun to walk around. On the way back home we came across this lovely piece of “social commentary.”

Oh hippies, what is wrong with you? And do you not realize the irony of placing a cardboard sign in protest of trees being cut down? Really? Suddenly, I’m feeling nostalgic for Berkeley…

At any rate, we had a great visit with Erik & Nerissa. I wish they lived closer so that we could hang out more often, but I guess it just makes the visits more special when they do happen.

Giving thanks

I’m not a big believer in “holiday-mandated” behavior (i.e. telling some one you love them on Valentines Day.) I feel that we shouldn’t be bossed around by random days on the calendar, but deep down inside I do like what Thanksgiving draws attention to — those areas of our lives that we may not appreciate as much as we should. Maybe it’s because I really enjoy the company of the friends and family at my Thanksgiving table, but this year I felt much more in the spirit of the holiday than usual.

We were hosting this year’s dinner, which was thankfully much smaller than J & M’s epic gathering last year. T & I have cooked quite a few Thanksgiving dinners over the years, so we have a pretty good routine down. After the Turkey Trot, T made bagels for breakfast and we hung out for most of the morning. In between games of Bananagrams, I popped into the kitchen for various dinner-making tasks. It was very low-key and fun. The only thing that was even remotely stressful was figuring out how to configure all of the food in the fridge.

Later in the afternoon, M & J came over with more delicious food to wrangle into the fridge and keep Wally out of. As usual, the last hour was a blur of food prep:

But the table got set and actually looked quite nice, given our low-key approach compared to years past:

Here’s the gang at dinner:

Since M is making a silly face above (and I’m about to post another not so glamorous shot of her) here’s M working the Thanksgiving table:

FIERCE! I made a beet salad to start us off and I made M try a golden beet, which she clearly didn’t enjoy:

After a ton of food and a little too much wine, we lounged around in the living room. Wally eventually wrangled himself a couch spot, while Nerissa & Erik were doing dishes and got snuggled by M for his trouble:

It was a great evening – filled with good food and enjoyable conversation. J & M made a pumpkin creme brule with candied nuts and bacon sprinkled on top – an unusual but delicious combination. A delicious ending to a delightful evening.

Happy Halloween!

We were pretty lazy with Halloween this year, but here are some odds and ends from our Halloween weekend. On Saturday, T came up with this amusing costume for work (yes, he had to work on Halloween.) I give you Coffee Man:

He also brought home some Halloween candy, which Wally thought was his:

Then today while walking to lunch, I passed this awesome house

with the following sign:

I particularly like the eyes:

 

Happy Holidays!

Before the big snowstorm hit, our Christmas plans were nice and low-key: casual Christmas morning at home, dinner at M & J’s house and then enjoy the long weekend, sleep in and lounge around. Alas, this was not to be. We got to spend Christmas day as planned, but the rest of the weekend was spent driving down to Oregon for a whirlwind visit with T’s & my parents. Here are some pics of Christmas morning:

Our pretty Christmas tree, all decorated and stuff

Other holiday decorations – I made these Christmas stockings many years ago and they still make me happy. I’m not much of a seamstress, but these came out pretty well.

My brother sent us some great gifts, the most amusing of which were these salt & pepper shakers with the note pictured here and a scrap of the package, which Wally proceeded to finish off:

Such a bad dog…

Todd had gone out into the snowstorm to get my present earlier in the week, before the roads completely closed and spent the remainder of the time fretting about it and telling me things like: “Okay, you’re totally going to love your present, but it’s okay if you want to return it.” Each day the ‘warnings’ got more elaborate while simultaneously more vague and mysterious, so understandably it was a bit maddening and by the time I got to open the thing, I was more curious to hear all of the backstory than I was to see what the actual present was. As it turned out this is what he got me:

As it turned out, he was totally right. I LOVED it, but I did end up returning it and for a variety of the reasons he alluded to. We have a really nice set of knives and all we really needed was the actual stand, so it felt silly and wasteful to take all of the knives that came with it and throw them in the camping box, not to mention that it’s a pretty expensive stand. But T gets all of the “thoughtful gift” credit, because I do think it’s the coolest knife block ever.

As I said, the rest of the weekend was a blur of driving and visiting family. We got great gifts from the family, including a nice chunk of Christmas cash from T’s family, which we chose to spend on a Wii and Rockband2. T had to call around to a number of places to find a Wii, but we managed to track one down while in Oregon, so we saved the sales tax, which was nice. I’ve never been a big videogame person, but I must confess the Wii is pretty fun. All in all, a really nice Christmas this year.

Oh, Christmas tree…

Last weekend we were out of town, so this weekend the mission was to go out and get our Christmas tree. Though we have gotten pre-cut trees sometimes, I really like the ritual of going out to kill it ourselves. So, this year I looked up a farm and roused T for an early morning start. (Bribing him with Cafe Besalu softened the blow… ) We headed out to the Carnation Tree Farm, chosen because it sounded nice and wasn’t too far away. It turned out to be a great choice:

My favorite part was the farm mascot, Burton:

Burton has an exhausting job:

We headed out into the fields to look for our tree. It was really pretty with all of the trees and the farm in the background:

When I was a kid, my parents would use us kids as tree markers, leaving us near potential picks. Naturally, we were terrible at this job, wandering off or picking trees we liked better and standing by them. Now that I’m older, I really wish I had four kids I could post at various trees so I can more easily compare them, but they’d probably cost a fortune to rent (and be as terrible at the job as we were) Luckily, it wasn’t too hard to find a nice tree:

T set about the messy task of sawing it down, which was hard work given the rain-water that had collected in the middle of the tree, making it very hard to cut down. Me taking his picture probably didn’t help…

But finally, success!

Then it was just a simple matter of baling it, tying it to the roof of the car and transporting it home. I’ll post some pictures of it in it’s decorated form when we’re all done…

Gobble, gobble…

After our awesome Turkey Trot, I had a few hours to shower and chill at home. T had to work at Safeway Starbucks (booooooooo!) so not only did he not get to go to the Turkey Trot, but he only had about an hour for shower/chilling before we had to head over to M & J’s for the Thanksgiving festivities. This was their first time cooking and hosting Thanksgiving dinner and I was excited to see what they’d come up with.

T & I arrived early to help with some of the prep work and hang out before the other guests arrived.

As expected, everything looked beautiful and smelled delicious.

M & J had been cooking for the past two days. J threw down some major bread-making skills:

There was also plenty of wine:

Fergus was also very helpful:

Soon enough, other guests started arriving and the flurry of activity in the last 45 minutes before dinner kept me too busy to take pictures. Suffice it to say, a mind-blowing array of food was prepared including stuffing, mashed potatoes, two kinds of sweet potatoes, a big green salad, three kinds of cranberries, green beans, carrots and artichoke hearts. And of course, J’s beautiful (and very trendy apparently) dry-brined turkey:

After some unconventional carving (vegetarians and the squeamish may want to avert their eyes… )

And then it was time for the eating to begin. Another shot of the beautiful table (taken before the madness began.)

So much delicious food! Plus the lively conversation with M & J, their friends Graham and Sarah, Graham’s sister Emily, her boyfriend Brian and their friend Brian. It was a good group of people, all of whom can cook their butts off! Afterward, we lay around in the living room digesting and chatting. Here are M, Sarah & Emily being goofy:

Graham and Sarah had brought some games along, so we played Catch Phrase for a while:

Somewhere in there was a flurry of pies and some homemade ice cream (courtesy of Graham and Sarah) I tried hard to not go too crazy, but I still ate a ton of food. Guess I’ll need to keep up the running! But overall, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving and a nice introduction to our Seattle holiday season.

Hallowienie

I must admit, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. When I was younger, I loved thinking up cool costumes and dressing up. Now, I don’t tend to dress up unless we have a party to go to. But I still like to decorate the apartment and carve pumpkins and all that jazz. This year, Halloween sort of snuck up on me so we didn’t have a chance to do the jack o’lanterns, but I did manage to hang some of my lights up. With the balcony, we have the perfect apartment for future halloweens, as I can put my pumpkins outside without fear of reprisal…

(It’s hard to see in the picture, but these are little cartoon eyes, a la Scooby Doo)

Happy Easter!

So on Sunday, we went over to visit my parents and celebrate Easter, which to my family pretty much means we have ham for dinner. (Mind you, when I was a kid, we did the whole Easter-shebang: baskets, church, crazy Easter-egg hunts where my dad would hide eggs in places like the ventilation system and the bottom of a jar of peanut butter… ) But since we don’t have kids (as my mother frequently likes to mournfully point out) and there’s only so much Easter candy I’m allowing into the house, the celebration has mellowed.

My parents live in Oregon City, which is about 20 minutes away from Portland, but feels much further. A neighbor on one side of their house collects antique tractors, and on the other side has 20-30 ducks. But it’s nice and quiet and our dogs LOVE to romp around the giant backyard. So, we had a nice day of visiting with the parents, letting the dogs run around and lots of yummy food.

My parents have a little pug named Jasmine, who is simultaneously attracted to and terrified of our dogs, particularly Wally. So she tends to just follow them around the house and then cower if they pay any attention to her. Todd likes to torment her and wind her up, as seen below.

As we were getting ready to leave, she co-opted one of the toys that we’d brought to throw in the backyard and carried it around which was pretty freakin’ cute. Especially since I think it weighs about as much as she does!