Holidays 2024

With Thanksgiving complete, we prepared to head into the holiday season. Ryan and I started off with the play Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward at Seattle Repertory Theatre - we went with our friends, enjoying dinner out with them beforehand. Slightly different kind of ghost story than The Woman in Black, much more comedic rather than gothic, but equally enjoyable. Then a few days later we went with them to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sweater performed by comedy troupe Second City.

My work secret santa started and I got The House on the Cerulean Sea from my "santa" - just in time too as I had to be Ryan's driver for his colonoscopy, so needed something to read during my wait! The first weekend in December we picked out our Christmas tree and got it decorated. We also started our advent - this year I'd gotten the Bonne Maman jam advent and it's been a lot of fun to try several unusual jam flavors through the weeks.

We finished all the house decorating and the kids decided to have some fun with our Merry Christmas letter blocks:

We spent the second weekend in December baking. Each of the kids picked a cookie recipe they wanted to help make. M chose ginger citrus shortbread while G chose peppermint patty shortbreads. Also on my list were gingerbread blondies, iced oatmeal cookies, pistachio pinwheels, cranberry orange pinwheels (these are actually a Better Homes and Gardens recipe, but weirdly I couldn't find it on their website, so you get one of the several online blogger versions that is the BHG recipe with minimal to no acknowledgement that the recipe came from elsewhere - the "adaptations" in this particular case simply being their extra commentary in the method), pine nut rosemary shortbread, eggnog snickerdoodles, and rum-buttered almond cookies. I did not get to all of those that weekend, though we did eventually get to them all. And G helped with the iced oatmeal as well because their calculus compatriots had decided to have a cookie party the last day of school. It's been so much fun to actually do a lot of baking this year and to include the kids in it as well. If you make the peppermint patty shortbreads, we suggest replacing the honey in the marshmallow with corn syrup - honey and peppermint battle for top billing as the flavor and it was just odd; we also plan to use dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet for the ganache if we make them again.

Piping marshmallow onto shortbread!

I had to include both the cranberry and the pistachio pinwheels on my list because the idea of red and green pinwheels makes me happy. Even if I am generally terrible at keeping their shape round while cutting them.

The last weekend before Christmas we attended our friends' annual white elephant party. It felt a little odd because M was sick with a cold and G was completely exhausted from all the tests and schoolwork that last week so Ryan and I went without them for the first time ever. But enjoyable as always. That weekend we did some final present shopping, some more baking, and some prep for Christmas Eve. Back at Thanksgiving I'd found a recipe for beef tenderloin that I wanted to try. So when we made a Costco run the Saturday before Christmas (crazy idea, I know, but it shockingly wasn't any worse than a usual Saturday!), we picked up a tenderloin there so we could make it for our Christmas Eve dinner. I'd never tied a roast before, but found some helpful videos and I think it turned out pretty well.

M doesn't like the blueberry bake that we've traditionally eaten Christmas morning, so we decided to try some new coffee cake recipes this year instead. We split into two teams on Christmas Eve and each made one of them - rye chocolate and pumpkin streusel. I could only find dark rye flour instead of the medium they called for and we tried to make adjustments to account for that, but that one was still a little dry, though tasted delicious so would still recommend. Not too sweet and a nice chocolate flavor. The pumpkin streusel was much sweeter, which I'd probably tone down a bit the next time, but also very good. M, predictably, only tried the rye chocolate and didn't like it (I think he'd like the pumpkin but he was also not very hungry Christmas morning and missed out on the chance to try it before it was gone). So we'll be trying some other new options next Christmas in what may become a never-ending search for something that M will like.

We came down Christmas morning to discover that Santa had come, and fixed the letter blocks while he was here.

It was a fun day, very relaxed as always. We still have one mystery gift that we haven't solved where it came from (did you donate to MOMA in our name? - let us know!). We chatted with my siblings in the evening and all the kids talked about what they got for Christmas. The next morning we got up and headed to Glo's on Capitol Hill for our annual breakfast out. Otherwise, we've been enjoying lots of time just hanging out - and trying to get G to finish up their college applications!

Fall 2024

I forgot to show off the pottery M brought home at Halloween - he's taking a ceramics elective this semester, and this mug was very fitting for the season:

I finally managed to get an action shot of M at fencing - this was the first week of his beginning epee class, moving up from the intro class and now required to have his own gear. He's the one advancing toward the right. Classes are currently off for the holidays and he was so disappointed that there wouldn't be class for a couple weeks.

This tree at work was stunning:

I spent time with Anne while cross-stitching - almost always under a blanket and with a cup of tea by my side. Maximum coziness.

Because my time off at Christmas/New Year's was going to be so spotty in order to accommodate my on-call schedule and co-workers' desired days off, I insisted they also give me the day before Thanksgiving off. I made rolls for the first time in years and made apple gooseberry and pumpkin pie. I messed up a bit on the apple-gooseberry. Couldn't remember what I usually brush the top with and used an egg wash, which I had from the rolls. This made it taste a bit funny because of course what I usually do is brush it with milk and a little sugar! And my cut out designs/vents got a little messed up when the bubbling filling expanded so much it broke the crust. Good thing I've got lots of gooseberries in the freezer, so I can keep working on perfecting the pie!

We also had pork tenderloin instead of turkey this year. M decided he doesn't like turkey all that much and G and Ryan didn't feel strongly about having it either. So we opted to go a little non-traditional. And for unknown reasons, I decided to add to my work the morning of Thanksgiving by making pice ar y maen for breakfast. They were delicious though, so worth it.

To wrap up fall, a couple months after starting it, I finished my latest cross-stitch project! Now I just need to wash the ones I've finished and take them to get framed...