janice's mash-up

happy new year's eve!

2011 is coming to and end and we are staying home this evening to celebrate the year we are saying good-bye to and the year that is ahead of us. New Year's Eve has always just been for our family of four. I know this is likely going to change as the boys get older but for now, I cherish this evening together to reflect on the year and to think ahead to where we want to be as a family.

subway art from eighteen25 found here

Highlights from 2011 included sports experiences and successes for the boys, a great trip to Oahu, the amazing journey we took with the Canucks this year, a decision to complete my dissertation and a long bike ride for Neil from Seattle to Vancouver. Most importantly, we all had lots of health and happiness and time together as a family just doing our everyday things. 

Tonight we'll be playing some new games and some old ones, having chocolate fondue, playing with sparklers and party poppers and having a sparkling drink to welcome the new year. Oh, and there's a Team Canada Junior game and a Canucks game on too ;)

Bottle cards are from here. I used these last year too and checked back this year to see if she had updated them with 2012! We delivered some of these new year's kits to some neighbours and friends this afternoon.
 

Update: The plan to play several board and card games tonight was aborted and we had an epic game of the new Monopoly Canada.

And we watched the fireworks at the Space Needle on tv...wow! Maybe we'll have to be there next year, what with my space needle crush and all!

Happy New Year!

december projects

I have been working on two main projects this December. As I write this, I realize that maybe taking on any sort of "project" in an already busy December isn't so wise. Hmm.

Project one is a major writing project and our dining room table has mostly looked something like this. I have a deadline of the 31st for a first draft of some chapters. It is slow going and my heart is not really in it.

Project two is a December Daily mini-album. I have done different versions of this over the years and wanted it to be super simple this year.

    
I took at least one photo a day this month. I cut up some scrapbooking paper to 6x8 size and covered some chipboard for the covers. I've glued photos in during the month and used number tags from Elle's Studio  to label the day of the month.

For a few days when I had a lot of pictures from a special event and for Christmas Eve and day, I added a little pocket sheet protector to add some extra photos like for this day when we cut dowm our tree.

I'll use some of the journalling tags from the same site to add some narrative details (but not til after the 31st!) and bind it with the BIA. This December doesn't seem quite as action-packed as other Decembers have been which is due to project one!

snickerdoodle muffins

My sister and two nephews spent the morning with us on their way to the airport today. They so like to just hang out with our boys, playing games together and talking. When the doorbell rang before 10am, I jumped out of bed and woke up the boys. They are much earlier risers than us, partially because they are still sort of on east coast time. While my sister and I talked, I made these snickerdoodle muffins. No bran, no oats, no applesauce,no flax...all white flour, white sugar, butter, etc!

We love snickerdoodle cookies, and so does one of my nephews, so these were a yummy breakfast treat.

pancake mornings

I am not a morning person. At all. Ideally, I would wake up around 9 and start work around 10. Waking up in the darkness of the morning is so not my thing, especially in the winter. I love the holidays so that my natural sleep cycle can line up with my real-life sleep cycle. I can stay up until 2 or 3 and sleep in til mid-morning. And brunch is my favourite meal so the boys and I usually don't eat our first meal of the day until about 11 since they have been sleeping in late over the holidays as well. Neil, on the other hand, has been up for hours by the time we are getting up and is ready for lunch ;)

Neil bought himself a new largish tv for our bedroom for his birthday and Christmas gift. Food Network has been running holiday specials and one night I was up rather late watching a series of Jamie Oliver Christmas specials. He made pancakes with his darling daughters and the recipe was so easy peasy, I had it memorized, even in the middle of the night! I did find the recipe online here. I don't use self-rising flour so I just added a teaspoon and a bit of baking powder to the all-purpose flour.

Late this morning I made a batch of pancakes with grated apples for the boys and I.

Yum.

celebrating christmas: it's all about family

Last week, I was listening to the radio in the car and the radio guys were discussing a recent Ipsos Reid poll that asked Canadians what Christmas meant to them. The leading answer by far was being with family. The analysis was that a Canadian Christmas is aligned with an American Thanksgiving as a time for families to travel and come together. The second response in the poll was gift-giving with the third being religious celebration. I wonder how these poll results might have differed 50, 20 and even 10 years ago? Canada is a diverse, ever-changing country with many families like ours with multi-faith and different cultural backgrounds trying to make it all work. At the core of most faiths and cultures is family, so it really should be no surprise that this is what emerged as of greatest meaning to Canadians at this time of year.

Neil's brother and dad came over on Christmas Eve and for brunch on Christmas day.  The boys are so lucky to have these two strong, inspirational men as a part of their lives on a regular basis.

For Christmas dinner, we drove out to my parents new home in Boundary Bay where we spent the evening with the boys' grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. My parents flew in from Arizona and my sister and her family from Pennsylvania. My youngest sister and her family drove down from Whistler. There are only a few times each year that my side of the family is all together and Crhistmas is one of them and it is nice to feel re-connected.

Of course along with the coming together of family there is always food involved and little traditions like gingerbread house decorating, holiday treats and Christmas light drives.

And we do participate in gift-giving and the whole Santa thing. As the boys have gotten older though, this has become so less important to them and this year there were no "lists" of things they wanted. This so changes the whole feeling around this time of year. 

For us, Christmas is a time of traditions, a blending of family backgrounds and most importantly, time to spend with our family. It was very merry merry!

the simple things: peace

Knowing this was my last The Simple Things post for 2011, I wasn't quite sure what photo to share. Of course there are many holiday related photos I could have used that capture family traditions at this time of year - our holiday getaway, the Christmas tree, decorating gingerbread houses, etc.

As the year draws to an end though, I find myself reflecting on 2011. It was a good year for our family with health, happiness, learning new things, lots of travel and time together. For me, I worked on a more peaceful state of mind and embraced the concept of peace in many aspects of my life as I focused on my one little word for 2011. 

When a good friend dropped off this Christmas ornament earlier this week, I took a photo of it on our newly cut tree. When I was looking through my photos from this past week, this was the one that spoke to me and captured the essence of the simple things for me this week and for 2011.

This is this week's The Simple Things photo. I am proud to say I posted a photo every Sunday in 2o11! I have especially enjoyed this photo challenge as it has helped me to appreciate the everyday things and capture images and the stories that go with them each week. My plan is to create a photo book anthology of the stories and photographs from 2011.

Check out other "simple things" photographs on Rebecca's blog.

 

buche de noel

Buche de Noel is the traditional dessert for Christmas Eve in France. Its origins date back to pagan celebrations of the winter solstice and celebration of the new year by bringing in yule logs to the fireplaces of homes. They were supposed to bring good luck for the new year. 

This morning I embarked on my first buche. I won't go into the details but I got my recipe inspiration from here (cake and filling) and here (ganache and meringue). There were double boilers, candy thermometers, jelly roll pans, lots of whisking and fingers being crossed involved.

I made chocolate ganache, Italian meringue, genoise sponge cake and a chocolate cream filling. Basically, it is a cream-filled rolled cake decorated to look like it has just come in from the forest. 

The meringue mushrooms turned out well but I should have made those yesterday as I had originally planned.

The log had some moss growing on it (pistachios)...

And then it snowed all over the log and mushrooms (closest we're getting to a white Christmas!)...

Merry Christmas!

cool christmas cash cans

This is the first year that we have given some cash to our older nieces and nephews as gifts. We've always said "we'll never do that" but we also go with the flow and the last thing the kids need is more "stuff". As they get older, they are starting to want to save towards more expensive and long-lasting purchases. I get that and we'll make our contribution towards their savings efforts!

I just couldn't hand them an envelope with cash in it though, so being the crafty aunt that I am, I searched pinterest for some ideas and was inspired by a pop can idea.

I bought some cans of fire-roasted diced tomatoes (pasta sauce to come) with pull-tab lids. I used a can opener and opened up the bottoms leaving about 2cm still connected, emptied them out, washed them out and let them dry overnight.

 

 

I filled the cans with some wrapped candies and a bill rolled up with some ribbon.

 

 

 

Next, I made sure all the items were at the bottom (really the top) of the can and I glued the cut out base back in place with a couple of layers of hot glue. As I was doing this and commenting that there was such a big gap between the cut out lid and the can, Neil mentioned I should have used the new can opener which wouldn't have done that. Note to self...use new-fangled can opener next time!

To spiffy the cans up, I covered them with scrapbooking paper, cut out circles to cover the base and then glued on a ribbon over the bottom edge. 

 

 

I added ribbon and a jingle bell, along with a gift tag around the top rim.

I love the way these turned out and think they would be fun for birthdays too. You could add candy, small toys, jewellery, a gift card, etc. Very fun!

it's beginning to feel like christmas

We woke up to a very cold and frosty morning today. It didn't help that our new furnace stopped working while we were away! While that was being fixed and Neil was running errands, the boys and I enjoyed a quiet day at home. The Christmas cards finally got mailed off..

I enjoyed listening to Michael Buble's Christmas album on iTunes while I worked by the Christmas tree...

and I finished our annual photo ornament.

Presents are being wrapped this evening while Adam is off at a get together with his school friends and the to do lists for baking and meal prep are dancing through my head - along with visions of sugarplums ;)

winter holiday getaway 2011

On Monday morning we drove down to Grand Mound, Washington to spend a night at Great Wolf Lodge. We were there almost 5 years ago when it had first opened and the boys were much younger. A night at GWL was one of Colin's birthday gifts. The Loat family joined us on our little getaway. There was much climbing up stairs and then flying down waterslides but we also enjoyed the decked out for the holidays lodge with "snow" falling and a huge gingerbread house. Lucky Neil got to celebrate part of his birthday day there ;)

 

We left Great Wolf Lodge Tuesday afternoon after doing a bit of questing and then drove up to Bellevue. The kids hung out in the game room and pool at the hotel and Sarah and I had a little walking adventure around Bellevue (which ended up with Neil rescuing us many km away from our hotel). After a light dinner, we all hopped on a shuttle into Bellevue to be a part of the Snowflake Lane celebration...it wasn't quite what we expected and the crowds were crazy!

 

After finding out there would be a two-hour wait for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, we walked down to Cupcake Royale for some birthday cupcakes to celebrate Neil's 48th. Happy birthday Neil...it was a unique one!

 

On Wednesday morning we got up and headed over to Sky High Sports. Neil and I jumped this time which was fun and the boys loved the foam pit and playing dodgeball.

 

We made it back into Bellevue for a late lunch at The Cheesecake Factory...so yum! 

It was a great little getaway...exhausting but fun!