Gingerbread Girls!

On Sunday afternoon, Auntie Tam Tam (as I am known to some) went over to start a new, annual, holiday tradition with Madeleine - building & decorating a gingerbread house together! Since she's only 3, Maddi of course was more excited by the frosting and candy than the actual decorating, but while it was still new and fun, she put a lot of the candy on the roof.(And I made a note to myself that I didn't necessarily need to buy the large house! It was a fair bit of work, which is why the whole roof is not white!)

It's My Cat in a Box!

If you don't get the reference, you don't have a very long pop culture memory...

Here Comes Santa Claus...

Saturday night, we were invited to head down to Marina Del Rey and watch the annual Boat Parade on Camilla's parents' boat. It was a great time with lots of yummy food, four toddlers running around and some pretty decked out boats!

We were worried that rain and wind would call off the parade this year (like last year!), and in fact, it felt a bit disorganized and like some people may have bowed out b/c of those worries, but there were still a lot of boats lit up for the occasion. Some were VERY high-tech, including one that had a program going where the lights were blinking in time with the music it was playing. Chris said they were playing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra... whatever. A couple of other boats were decorated like sleighs, and a couple were pulling their dinghies behind them with a lit snowman or Santa Claus on them. Very fun! The kids were excited by them for a bit, before they took to running back and forth along the boat and trying to tackle each other. I managed to avoid most of that mayhem and stood at the front of the boat absorbing all the Xmas cheer!

Party People

We had our annual holiday party yesterday and as always, it was a blast! Chris and I started prep on Friday night, moving furniture around a bit, making jell-o shots and getting stuff ready for Saturday's bake fest!

I began the day early around 9:30am and got to work immediately. I got to use my new mixer for the first time - and I must say, wow! It works so well and makes all the dough so fast!! - as I prepared peanut butter cookies with chocolate filling, pecan & cranberry tassies (which didn't turn out as well in terms of presentation, but oh well), almond cookies and magic bars. Chris made hummus from scratch, crostinis for dipping, guacamole and we has a bunch of other snacks assembled too.

Sage and Jeff came over a bit early and so we toasted the night with some champagne as guests began to arrive. While we had a slightly lower turnout than last year, still over 40 people showed up! We managed not to get any red wine on the new couch - a very good thing! - and only one jell-o shot spillage....but our carpet's been destroyed for so long, we don't care.


About 2:30 I think the last stragglers headed home and we crashed. I say "I think" b/c I was pretty hammered by the end of the night, the jell-o shots having done their job. Around 9:00am this morning, I woke up and though I was going to die. I managed to will myself back to sleep after having some water and advil, and awoke once more at 12:30. I felt much much better but the rest of the day was spent lounging, drifting in and out of sleep and eventually cleaning up. I was in the mood to do so little and think so little, I even watched Britney Spears' documentary "For the Record" on MTV for an hour and a half...even the cats got into the laziness of the day, as well as trying to get their hands on some leftover. :)

A post about nothing....

This week's been mainly about getting our apartment and us ready for tomorrow night's holiday party, so there's not much new to report....though I thought I'd share a funny anecdote.

Wednesday morning, I was still asleep when Chris was getting ready for work and I started giggling in my sleep, which then woke me up. Chris was looking at me strange and asked me what I was laughing about. So I relayed the last part of my dream to him, which went something like this..."Well, I was dreaming that Gerald Ford was competing on American Idol and Ryan Seacrest came on and did the Dana Carvey voice from SNL as Tom Brokaw saying, 'Gerald Ford dead today...blungeoned to death by a microphone on American Idol.' " LOL....sigh. maybe you had to be there.
Anyways, if you have no idea what SNL stuff I am talking about, see the clip below.....

Favorite of the week...

Check out this hi-larious Prop 8 video from Funny or Die -

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Let's hear those sleigh bells.....

With our annual holiday party less than a week away, we drove out to one of the tree "farms" here in LA to get our Xmas tree. We spent a good part of the day (okay, who am I kidding- the whole day pretty much!!) decorating the tree and putting up all my holiday crap around the apartment. I was very excited!! And as always, the cats got very into the tree....and up to no good! we had to keep reprimanding them for eating it.

Before....
After....