A Merry Little Christmas

I'll let most of the pictures do the talking. This post is both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so there are many photos.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this year, I know we did. It was just four of us, so things were mellow and not too much fuss was made.
We finally got around to decorating the gingerbread cookies we made the previous day. Lots of fun with the royal icing! Do you see the silver dragees on them? I had to order those on line, because, as of 2003, they are banned in the state of California. I have such fond memories of these silver little balls, when my grandmother use to put them on her cookies. I always ate them. Some people are afraid to, and I'm pretty sure they are not the most healthy thing for you, but I don't eat them everyday, so down they went :) How about you, do you use these little silver dragees only for decor or do you eat them?

From left to right; Cyrous, Caitlin, Dave, and me.


This is suppose to be Quincy, our parakeet. I know its a dove, but that is all we had. Hey, we at least sprinkled yellow sugar on it.
Cyrous came in time to finish decorating some of the gingerbread.

This is one of his masterpieces!
Caitlin was pretty proud of this little moon cookie she decorated.
Also these.
Our little table set for our annual crab feast on Christmas eve.

The quiet of the evening, before we headed out to mass.

Who else has a guilty pleasure of watching Beavis and Butthead? I just don't know what it is about that cartoon, but I think it is super funny in a juvenile middle school way. Caitlin and I picked these lounge pants up for Cyrous. They are too funny!
Caitlin's childhood nutcracker lost its nose, so Cyrous found a new one for her. He is pretty cute.


Last year, I started a new tradition of buying a few lottery tickets for fun, to put in the stockings. Now that the "kids" are all over 18, it is kinda fun to include these. I think this year they only won a free ticket.
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I love these chocolate orange slices.
They are all cleaned up and ready to lounge for the day.


Dinner this year was super simple. I feel like I should have done more, but I was not super inspired to try any new recipes this year, and I just wanted things to be simple. There aren't many pictures of the food. I made yummy ham from Whole Foods, garlic mashed potatoes, and a brussels sprout recipe that we all love from Epicurious. It has caramelized shallots in apple cider vinegar. They are a good match with the ham. The only industrious thing I did was, right before dinner, I made buttermilk biscuits from scratch.



This was the first year we bought a buche de noel from here. I will have to say, that I like Whole Foods version much better, and was slightly disappointed with this one. Mainly because 95 percent of it was mousse! I wasn't prepared for that, but I do remember when we lived in France that some of them were made like this one.


See how there is hardly any cake?! Oh, well, now I know I will stick with the other next time, or make my own dessert.

Our day was relaxing and Santa was very good to everyone this year, how about you?