Wishing you all a lovely Christmas!!! We are going to be on vacation for a little while, a week or so. So I won't be updating. I will update when I get back from the holidays with everything we did.

Please have a lovely Christmas and a very safe New Years...see you all in 2007!!!

Love, Keith and Michelle

Let's have a get together... For Christmas...and call it ugly sweater dinner..

So a few weeks ago I told the ladies that I wanted to have a holiday dinner, just because well it was almost the holiday. So we decided on the 16th, Nicole mentioned an idea she had about inviting friends over in their ugly tacky sweaters for a party...so in all our smartness we combined it. It was a bunch of fun!!!

Me in all my planner ways printed out a bar menu and framed it, menu card, and planned the menu. We had a champagne bar that was fun to try... and for dinner it was London broil, Nicole's wonderful potatoes, and green beans. It was all led up with a salad, and of course topped it all of with dessert. Sofia brought great gingerbread cookies, and Niki provided some really good appetizers. We all had on our sweaters, laughed, talked and played a board game at the end. It was fun. I had a really good time.

Here are some pictures of the party!

I made these cute penguins for the party

The centerpieces I made..
The Champagne bar all set up
Appetizers, missing one..
Just because they were so cute!

Here we go!!
Nicole didn't bring just the sweater she also brought the JACKET!
we decided this looked like a starter at a fine dining place...
Let the fun begin! Niki and Nicole with their drink of choice!
A knockin- Noel...

Ahhh here we are in front of the tree...
Sofia had matching pants!
See...
Poor gingerbread man!
Niki and Nicole did a sweater change halfway through.. Nicole brought the old school back...

:
JAC

Santa is coming, Santa is coming!!

I have been meaning to post this since last Thursday. However with each passing day the loom of this beast we call Santa was coming!! Which as you get older means a rush to beat the calender trying to get everything done. So with that said I haven't had much time to do anything. Every day I look at the calender and say...oh my gosh it is only a __till Christmas!

One thing I did manage to do is bake! I did it the evening that Devyn and I looked at lights. It was a wonderful evening...because the niners won. Hey I just realized the started really winning when Devyn was there, oh perhaps she is my good luck charm! Sorry I digress, but I know what she will be doing on Sundays next season.

Anyhow as the niners picked up speed I baked. I made gooey pumpkin bars this past week. They are like pumpkin pie with a cake bottom, a little richer cause it has cream cheese in it. They turned out good and they were a HIT!

Here are some pictures... remember the disclaimer about reading while typing!

The cake part all pressed in the pan ready to go..
Next came the cream cheese, eggs, and pumpkin
Then went the powdered sugar, nutmeg, and other spices
and it was all poured over the top of the cake part and in the oven it went..
Here is the finished product...not the best pic but they were great!

Look at all the lights!!!

In true Christmas spirit Devyn and I went looking for the Christmas lights. Of course it can't be Christmas without some hot chocolate right (peppermint hot chocolate for me). So we mapped out our route which lead us first to a drive through Starbucks...which had the most spastic drive through person I think I have ever encountered. All his words ran together "hiwelcometostarbucksistheresomethingicangetutoday" at about a million words a minute. Then when we pulled around to get our hot chocolate he proceeded to tell us what shopping he had left to do (a million words a minute), and how he buys gifts for his dog-- because his dog gets him gifts too. Poor Devyn was stuck talking to him while I was whispering under my breath "um just give us our hot chocolate". She was laughing, but the spastic thought it was at his story --not at me thinking he was odd. We drove away talking about how many coffees you have to consume in one day to be like that (careful Natalie that was a warning).

So off we set, the lights were fun to look at. Especially if you could have looked at them with us because we decided that the ones that were WAY over the top were scary and we wouldn't want to be their neighbors --and the ones where they had the characters of all sorts were creepy too. There was also a house that had THREE crosses all lite up in decorative fashion and we were not sure what that had to do with Christmas or at least happy decorative Christmas. We took lots of pictures for the blog so I won't hold you any longer so you can enjoy them all. Some of these places take donations for PG&E, including Mr. Christmas. A man who has over 42,000 lights in his front yard---and he himself was lite up waving at people (yea a bit creepy but funny although I think Devyn hit the gas a little more when she saw him).

It was fun, lots of laughs, hot chocolate and sarcasm. The only way Devyn and I would ever do a Christmas light tour!

Those specs you see at the top are fireworks that look like they are going off and spinning bells see the crosses on the right...
This was my favorite house...

Only 2 weekends till Christmas!!!!

Only 2 weekends till Christmas!!!!

Yikes Christmas is creeping up on us! We have not really finished shopping nor are we in the mood to do so. I am going to get to it I swear!! In the meantime I am having fun partaking in lots of Christmas type activities!

This weekend was a good one. Saturday I drove to Stockton to see Chris, Julie, and the two cutest girls I know! The plan for the day was gingerbread houses, and a photo shoot. The gingerbread house went over really really well! The photo shoot umm not so much. Ivy didn't feel up to the model shoot, no matter how cute she is she wasn't having it. She did tolerate us for a while before completely giving up. Malia on the other hand has been watching some America's Next Top Model, because when we told them we were going to do a photo shoot she said she didn't see any blankets up (like the sheets they use for backdrops) :). Too cute. I had a wonderful time playing and visiting!! The gingerbread houses were a lot of fun to make. After the drive back from Stockton I went to see my Dad with Keith. Then Devyn came over and we went to dinner and to have a drink.

The place we went for dinner was a new place in Walnut Creek called the San Franciscan. It was interesting place. It was as if it wanted to be fancy and really casual at the same time. As Devyn said "This place perplexes me". First off the place settings are really nice, but then the menu they give you is 8 1/2x11 20# White Copy Paper. Not even nice copy paper. The food was pretty good, the drinks were good....the ambiance was off. SO after that we headed over to Spoontronix for a drink. It is a little hole in the wall place, but it has a young funky vibe that is nice about it. We were both tired and headed home after that.

Sunday I had an appointment in San Francisco at 10:00 am that I was sort of dreading. It was in a part of the city that parking is not very easy, and I don't like to be late or having to drive for 20 minutes to find parking. So Keith was nice enough to come with so he could drop me off, find parking and read a paper till I was done. When I was done we decided to grab breakfast since we were in the city anyways. Then on the way back home we stopped off at Bay Street shops to walk around and go to Tea Cake Bakery. We grabbed some cupcakes and a couple cookies, this place is REALLY good I think you should all go. After that we headed home to watch the end of the niners game ....if I would have known it was going to end the way it did I think I would have stayed at Bay Street!!

Here are some pictures of the lovely weekend....

The drive from my house to Stockton, it is so pretty and weird that you can drive 30 mins. and feel like you are in another state.

All ready to go make gingerbread houses....
Getting the fun started...
She's a professional people... stand back..
Told you...
And her older sister is fast in decorating!
After all the fun was over..you can tell by the icing on the cloths huh..
Julie and I ....awww we are cute too...
Back at the house before the photo shoot...Running and singing at the same time!
Very pretty ....
Our photo shoot
" okay hold those up like this "
photo shoot break...
This is when we knew Ivy was done with the photo shoot.....

We knew what could make her happy again...


The martini at The San Franciscan

Spoontronix decor

yummmm...teacake bake shop...so goooooddd
cupcakes!
The Christmas Tree at Bay Street...

Sorry your drooling again....