Christmas 2015 and Birthday Celebrations

Our December was busy with work and the holidays, just like everyone else. I worked on some special orders like I have mentioned in my previous post, and Caitlin just started her new job at Anthropologie.   We kick off our December festivities with Cyrous' birthday on the 17th. I met Cyrous 7 years ago on his 21st birthday! Seems just like yesterday, and now he is part of our family.
I, like many others, have big plans around the holidays. Per usual though only one or two creative things that I did have planned came to fruition. I have no one, or thing to blame for not getting more done this year! Perhaps dreaming on Pinterest sucked up too much of my time hahahah. Oh well, I did manage to make a boxwood wreath studded with red tea roses for our Christmas dinner table, and I had a lot of fun making it. Especially when total cost of it was five bucks for the roses, and the wire wreath form, which I got a steal of a deal on at Michael's, for maybe three dollars. The boxwood came from the front yard. The beautiful candelabra I had purchased from Anthropologie with birthday money back in October. I was going for an old world/old time Christmas. It's funny because I purchased this really cute snowball garland at Target, and had full intention of a more modern look in my living room. When we bought the tree though, I ended up going a different way because of the bough, which I think I already mentioned. My furniture and this house combined, lends itself more to old time more than modern I suppose, or maybe it's just that I like the coziness of it.
Christmas eve we went to visit  our dear friends near by and spent a lovely time with them chatting and having a few drinks before we went to dinner here. We had the most incredible paella dishes. One was more seafood with black rice, made that way with squid ink. The other had clams and rabbit. Really nice relaxing dinner.
Earlier in the day, Cyrous' mom dropped Caitlin's gift off. A car! She didn't see it until we got home from dinner. I made a video of her reaction, it was funny hahaha.
I love our small Christmas with just us four. I love entertaining, but at Christmas I love not worrying that things have to be perfect for company, and you can stay in your PJs for as long as you want. Since we are slower risers, our dinners are always closer to when we eat normally. When I take a break and look at Instagram, and see everyone already eating or relaxing, and I haven't even put our food in the oven, I start to have a bit of anxiety for some reason. I shouldn't but I always do!
This year I went with a prime rib. It's the second time only that we have had prime rib for Christmas dinner. The first time I had some assistance, so I almost don't count it as me cooking it. It turned out really good despite me freaking out that I thought I'd ruin it. I made a Jamie Oliver carrot recipe, which I think in it's simplicity, is quite genius, and I think from now on I will cook them this way. Here is the link for those( Jamie's carrots). Then Dave talked me into making mashed potatoes in the Scottish manner. You boil potatoes, rutabagas, onions together. Then mash by hand and leave chunky. Pour a little milk and butter, and chopped chives.  I tend to not make a lot of sides on Christmas, especially since it is just us four, and we really should be consuming so much!
Dessert, I bought an English pudding by my favorite brand, Tip Tree. Not everyone ended up liking it, I won't name names hahah. It was still a fun experience and fit into our loosely based English Christmas theme.
The last picture on here was a super sweet gift from my sweetie pie. He first gave me a subscription to Audubon society. A bird was adopted in my name, and the plant is a miniature pomegranate bush to attract humming birds! So sweet, and I can't wait to see it bloom, and hopefully visited by some birds.
Caitlin and Cyrous were so thoughtful and gifted us a new TV. Ours apparently is too small according to Caitlin hahah. It was a total surprise and look forward to all the cool features on it.
So, on that note, I'm going to jump off here to set up the new TV, or help rather.
Hopefully I will get to fit in an end of the year post sometime this week.
Have a wonderful relaxing time with friend and family, for the rest of 2015!

Caitlin's Golden Birthday

How old were you when you had your golden birthday? I don't remember mine because I was four. Golden birthdays are when you turn the age that your birth date is on. I don't think I knew this until recently when someone spoke of it.  Anyway, Caitlin had hers this past Wednesday on the 25th. It was a beautiful spring day, which sometimes this isn't the case on her birthday, because the weather is still a bit topsy turvy, but we were blessed with a gorgeous day this year. We had dinner with Cyrous' parents and a friend of Caitlin's later in the evening here.  After dinner we came back to the house to have cake and ice cream. The cake, oh boy the cake. I love this recipe and I've mentioned it before on my blog, but I gotta say, when the directions say active time one hour,  I just don't believe this to be the case! So I don't stress myself out, I do the cake the day before and the frosting the day of. The frosting starts out as a cooked custard, which when cooled, you add lots of butter and two types of melted chocolate.  This year I nailed the frosting!!! You can't rush this one or walk away to answer the phone hahah.  I hope she had a nice "golden" birthday :) Oh to be 25 again!!

Friday I met Caitlin in the city to check out the bridesmaid dresses and color swatches. We loved the dress and the quality. We had my niece Natalia come meet up with us so she could see it, and we could see how it will look on. I think in the colors Caitlin chose it will be super pretty on the girls. The dress she picked for them is by Jenny Yoo, and the style is "Annabelle." You can go here if you want to see it.  She picked begonia pink and cherry blossom. The colors are so pretty together!

I've been washing and prepping fabric to cut out the most darling dress that I'm excited to make, so stay tuned for that!  I'm also going to start making some things for myself, because I'm really discouraged with what is out there for spring summer for me. We will see how fare I get with this past haha, but I think I'll make some skirts and maybe at least one dress.

I'm also starting to look through a few cook books to get my Easter dinner together. I've always made a leg of lamb and seasonal veggies to go with it, but this year I think I want to make something a bit different, so I'm on the hunt.
All the roses in my yard are blooming, which makes me very happy and I love the color variety that was planted. This time of year is just eye candy for color isn't it?
Well, I'm off now to get some things done. Have a wonderful time preparing for Easter if you celebrate. If not, enjoy the beauty of the season!

June Catch Up

The whirlwind that is June is now coming to a close, and I'm just now coming up for air! Long time readers know that June is a very busy month for our family and I disappear for a while on here to enjoy celebrations, and try not to go crazy doing too much.  Starting with Father's day, I made a wonderful apricot tart, where I combined a regular French sweet crust and filled it with a Thomas Keller recipe from the Bouchon Bakery cookbook. It was really nice and not overly sweet, just the way we like desserts in our house. In between celebrations, I was able to make this Liberty of London, baby dress/top for the shop. Its available for purchase in my Etsy shop, and hopefully I can squeeze out one or two more items before I go on vacation.
Our 31st anniversary was celebrated at our favorite restaurant and was  laid back  with wonderful food and drink.   David's birthday was also a relaxed affair at home after we took him out to a birthday lunch. He was more than happy to be at home, since the World Cup is in full swing!  Caitlin and Cyrous made a wonderful Indian dinner from scratch, and the birthday boy wanted another dessert made from apricot, so this time I used a recipe from "The Bojon Gourmet." It was really good, and I want to try it with peaches soon. I also made some Ice cream using Williams Sonoma ice cream starter. I had been wondering if this was easy and good, and it really was!  I bought the caramel flavor, but they have chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. They also have a frozen yogurt starter as well, and hope to try those out too. I had a photo of the ice cream, but blogger is not letting me upload it at the moment, but if your really, really want to see it, go to my instagram and see it there.

Hope everyone is having a nice summer so far!