Cooking, eating,and drinking ahhh Thanksgiving!

First off, I hope every one had a wonderful Thanksgiving with their family and friends. The next few photos capture all the cooking we did and our Thanksgiving celebration.
I always make my pumpkin pies the evening before, I'm not sure why,but I kinda find it relaxing to make pies in the evening. I used my new Williams Sonoma cutters to make these lovely oak leaves for the crust. I use to free hand them in the past,but this is so much better,and it was loads of fun to do!
Ready for the oven
Yummy!
Caitlin decided to make a chocolate pumpkin pie out of the November issue of Martha Stewart magazing....here she is building her pie.
I think I could just eat this alone. After she got her pie in the oven,we stayed up until it cooled,and headed off to bed.

Time to make the stuffing
Mix and stir...
Caitlin melting more chocolate to finish her pie
Caitlin's pie
David makes the cranberry sauce every year, doesn't this look tart and tasty?!
A new green bean dish I tried, shallots and slivered almonds.
Turkey is all done!!
Ready to eat....Pierre is hiding off to the side....
enjoying the feast
Mom gets to sit down and finally eat.
You can't just have one slice of pie can you? I don't think so!!!

Tag you're it!

These beauties came from our back yard...Yummy!

This is a short post,since I'm busy getting ready for the big food day that is coming. My daughter over at Feather,
tagged me with a very popular tag, that I have read a few times on other blogs. Since it has circulated around a lot, I will not tag anyone,but only let people play if they would like to.
This is the tag: Name six unimportant things that make you happy.
If you want to play by the rules,here they are: Choose five bloggers to tag, then make a comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.
Like I said though, this time I will only invite anyone to play along who wishes to do so.
mine are:

1. magazines in the mail

2. babies

3. squirrels

4. that first sip of coffee in the morning

5. silver anything

6. autumn light

Look what I got today.

You meet such nice people when you blog. Valerie sent me the winter issue of Marie Claire Idees. It doesn't arrive here in the U.S. until mid December if you are lucky to find it. Thank you so much Valerie for sending this from France. She also enclosed a very charming little calendar.
There are so many pages of eye candy in it. I would really love to attempt the cute advent calendar in the beginning pages.
I'm off now to plot some projects!!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Isn't this a darling little picture?!
This is one of my favorite pictures of my dad when he was a young guy

My dad lives near Chicago area, so we can't spend his birthday together,but I sure hope he is having a wonderful day. Last year he and my step-mom were here for his 70th birthday,and Thanksgiving. We had such a good time,and his birthday gathering was a surprise party in San Francisco,with a lot of friends from everywhere, and family.He really was surprised,so it made it extra fun. Hard to believe that it has already been a year! I'm off to give him a call........

Sorting and getting ready

I bought this book some time ago,and I have been meaning to do a few projects with the charming images in it. It is not the type of embroidery I normally do, so it will be a nice switch from some of the more time consuming work that I have done. I can't really say what projects I will be working on with the book, because most of them may be some Christmas gifts. Before I even get started on anything, I really need to......
sort out all of the floss first! I'm sure this is a familiar sight to most needle workers. This is what I will be doing the minute I get off the computer!

On a side note, I keep forgetting to update all of you who might remember little Oliver, my sisters puppy. He ended up being adopted by the vet team who diagnosed him with all his health issues. He is, I'm happy to say alive and doing quite well,despite all of his problems.

Is it just me?

These are the two latest holiday issues of Bon Appetit. When I received the November issue, I was so annoyed at how lack luster and poorly photographed it was. It was not inspirational, nor was it eye candy like last year. Today I received the December issue,same thing,BAD!
Let me back track here for a bit. I was a long time subscriber to Gourmet magazine,until they started filling their issues with perfume adds and just way too many adds in general. We started our subscription in 1982,and then finally canceled it in the late nineties I think. I got a call from them asking me what had happened. Wow, I could not believe that they called me. I told them why I had stopped my subscription,and they were very polite,and hoped one day I would reconsider and give them another try. At that time, Bon Appetit was on the top of the list for me,with gorgeous layouts,and wonderful inspiration, I couldn't wait until the next issue.
Years have passed since then, and I have way too many cook books and magazines that I have kept,so I decided to pull the plug on all of them,unless one issue caught my eye. Last year Bon Appetit did such an amazing job with their holiday issues that I thought I'd pay for a subscription again. Well, my very first issue was this past spring,and that is when they decided to reformat the magazine. I had flashes of bad memories when the magazine "Victoria" did this in the early 2000's and failed. I think Bon Appetit is now heading in that way. Gone are the eye candy layouts and wonderfully photographed travel articles,and my favorite section "Bon Vivant," is no longer. Instead they have very sterile layouts and what they think is artistic, drawings of food. In the July issue they did a feature on pies of the summer. The whole thing was drawn in graphics only, and you didn't even know what your end result would look like. Am I explaining this right? Has anyone else noticed how awful the new issues are?
I wrote them an e-mail, telling them that I'm letting my subscription run out,and why.Never got a response back from them.
I have noticed that "Gourmet" seems to have gone back to their old ways, so maybe it is time to give them another shot.

Play along with this meme

Taken in a small gallery in Barcelona Spain. All posts should have a picture!

This is a one word meme that was on Alicia's blog,so I thought I'd play along. Today is also the day that Alicia's book comes out! I'm excited to see all the fun projects.





Where is your mobile phone? bedroom
Where is your significant other? work
Your hair colour? brown
Your mother? creative
Your father? reader
Your favorite thing? coffee
Your dream last night? forgettable
Your dream goal? none
The room you're in?cold
Your hobby? embroidery
Your fear? operations
Where do you want to be in 6 years? alive
Where were you last night? home
What you're not? mathematical
One of your wish-list items? camera
Where you grew up? norcal
The last thing you did? drive
What are you wearing? socks
Your TV? entertaining
Your pets? parakeet
Your computer? slow
Your mood? peaceful
Missing someone? no
Your car? Volvo
Something you're not wearing? bracelet
Favorite shop? Target
Your summer? yuck
Love someone? yep
Your favourite colour? red
When is the last time you laughed? today
When is the last time you cried? Nov.4th

Play along — it's fun!

A sneak peek at Thanksgiving

My dessert plates
Cute place card holders
My new crystal goblets



I love Thanksgiving. The food,the colors and the meaning of gathering around and sharing some time with family. It is very important to us, so much so, that we even celebrated it when we lived in France! It was difficult,but we were able to find all the ingredients there to make our feast.
Thought I'd share some of the elements that will be on my table. I can't wait to use my goblets this year. My husband and I bought two of them when we visited Scotland in 2004. At the time we could only afford two, and called it a gift to ourselves for our anniversary. I had hoped they would be easy to find once we got back to the U.S. so that we could slowly add to the count. I was mistaken though,and really had to hunt them down on the internet. I finally found them here. On our 25th wedding anniversary last June, my dad and step mom gave us two more! The count now being up to 4, we decided that we would try and get two more before Thanksgiving,since there will be possibly 6 people total this year. We placed our order last week,and hopefully they will arrive soon. I love the weight of them and the pattern too.
Usually, I break out the bone china and set a more formal table for Thanksgiving,but this year it will be a bit more "elegant casual." The whole table will be reveled later.
I'm off now to start planning the menu :)

Random post and a reminder

First, the random part of the post. The above photos were taken in Berkeley. I love Berkeley, if I haven't already said so, because you get to see weird random things like this! I have seen a few cars similar to this with real fun and wild stuff on it,and wished that I had my camera, this time I was lucky. I didn't get to read all the stuff on it,so I don't know the whole story,it is just for amusement and doesn't really depict any one city. Click on the photos to get a closer look at it. I just thought I'd share a little piece of random weirdness.
as for the reminder part of this post, I think you know what I'm going to say.

..............................VOTE TOMORROW!!!.....................................