Hello!
It’s hard to believe it’s already December 23rd! How did you spend your weekend? Shopping, wrapping, baking, traveling, visiting, decorating, celebrating……???
It was a whirlwind weekend here. To start it off we had a Christmas party with friends, “old” friends from our years in Monterey, CA. We were just newlyweds then, and these are the wonderful neighbors that lived just down the street. Amazingly we all live close by after all these years, now on the East Coast. It was our turn to host the party this year. We enjoyed Randy’s champagne punch (he even forgot to add the frozen lemonade but no one noticed!), Patti’s beef tips and Rhonda’s Bruschetta. I made my favorite Hot Artichoke Dip which I just can’t resist…if you want an appetizer that will have everyone coming back for more, just contact me for the recipe! The kids made super-cute reindeer brownies, complete with a sour cherry nose. The younger crowd played “Pass the Parcel”, attempted to play “Freeze Dance”, shared their Pokemon cards, and exchanged gifts. We enjoyed the food and drink, reminisced, shared stories about Life and exchanged gifts as well.
Now I realize I may have never ever shared a photo of myself before anywhere on this website…so here’s a rare one! Here’s a party picture for you, my faithful and few blog readers. 🙂 The face behind sweet bead studio is right there in the middle.
In other other holiday happenings, we visited the National Christmas Tree last night in Washington, DC. This is a tradition that is very important to my husband, and we go no matter how cold it is! We bring our thermos of hot chocolate along and brave the weather. We were super lucky last night. It was not only somewhat warm, it started raining once we were in the car heading home! It was a beautiful sight to see the big, bright tree flanked by the Washington Monument on one side and the White House on the other. This year my youngest was so excited to see the many trains that wind around the base of the tree…my 7 year old counted 10 train sets chugging along.
And last but not least, we ended the weekend with yet another family tradition: making sugar cookies! I remember when my Grandmother would come over at Christmas bearing tins of chocolate chip and sugar cookies (do you remember those great tins, they promised something wonderfully home baked inside!). I pulled out my special rolling pin that my Grandmother gave me around the holidays when I was in college. Three sets of helping hands sure make for a challenging evening of cut-out cookie baking, but it was worth it. And we only burned one batch.
I hope you are all enjoying many happy family traditions, and maybe even creating new ones as well.
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