december begins

last night we had some friends over for a tree trimming party. jason came, along with another couple we know. after a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, caesar salad, and garlic bread, we got to work on the decorating. tony and i had already put up the tree, which is a martha stewart beauty. thank god for pre-lit trees! the guys all made the work go quickly and the results are spectacular. it was all very relaxed, with lots of chocolate cake, eggnog and cognac…and still it was done in a couple of hours. thanks, guys, for all the help and for the conversation. i think a tradition has been born.

i have been in the kitchen with some mixed results. two identical batches of fudge brought two very different outcomes…both of them salvageable. a double batch of peanut brittle was not so fortunate and ended up in the rubbish bin. successes have included pear ginger cakes, panettone, meringue mushrooms, rocky road candy, dundee cake, raspberry linzer bars and chex mix. my sister has been busy baking as well, and we’ll share our wares. if we stopped right now, we would certainly have plenty. i am betting there will be more coming out of our ovens, though!

we woke up this morning to our third (fourth?) snowstorm of the season. it’s just beautiful. i am grateful for the limited size of our lot. the driveway is less than twenty feet long (and only one lane wide!) and the sidewalks are quickly cleared. so far, i have not minded the shovelling. check back with me in a couple of months on that. i know it’s early for all this snow, but the views out the window are sweet.

|