While champagne is traditional on New year’s Eve, you can be assured that I will be toasting the end of 2011 with a glass of bourbon from this bottle of Woodford Reserve, a wonderful Christmas gift from Dale.

Cheer to all of us! May the new year bring peace, inspiration, beauty and love into all our lives. Happy New Year, my friends.

When Christmas arrives and there’s no snow on the ground you have to improvise. We made a snowman out of pumpkins to grace our door for Christmas Eve! It was my idea but it was perfectly executed by Dale. He made a charming little greeter for our guests.

Christmas Eve was awesome and everything it should be. We filled our house with family and friends, food and drink, singing and laughter. It was one of the best Christmas Eve gatherings I can remember. Christmas morning was relaxing and fun – we opened gifts, drank mimosas and ate shrimp, monkey bread and leftovers. As darkness fell we gathered at Randy and Mary’s for an amazingly delicious dinner. It was all perfect and now it’s time to relax.

I will not be blogging every day this week but I’ll definitely be back before the year is over!

Let it be Christmas everywhere 
Let heavenly music fill the air 
Let every heart sing let every bell ring 
The story of hope and joy and peace 
And let it be Christmas everywhere 
Let heavenly music fill the air 
Let anger and fear and hate disappear 
Let there be love that lasts through the year 
And let it be Christmas 
Christmas everywhere  ~Alan Jackson

Merry Christmas, my friends!

When it comes to cookies for Christmas I have some that I just have to make every year. Peanut butter balls and Polish tea cakes are a must and I usually make ginger cookies, too. It’s fun to try new recipes, though, and this year I hit on a winner: Cherry Chocolate Kisses.

The recipe is from The Curvy Carrot and you can find it here. They look just like Peanut Butter Blossoms but the flavors are completely different from anything else I make and that’s the main reason I wanted to try them.

They are pretty and delicious and I am very glad that I made them.

You remember the homemade vanilla that I made a few weeks ago, right? The time has come to start distributing this deliciousness and I want to show you the labels that I made for it.

I got round printable labels at Michael’s and then went on the company website to download a template for them. I played around a bit with the font and color and finally settled on a design I liked. I had to actually tape the strip of labels to a sheet of 8 1/2 X 11 paper in order to get it to feed correctly through my printer but once I figured that out it went very quickly.

I am very happy with how they look and I had fun taking a few glamour shots of the bottles. Now I can’t wait to try the vanilla!

If you are anything like me, whether you are preparing to celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Solstice or just the arrival of the weekend, my guess if you have a lengthy list of things to do. And you probably don’t have a lot of time to devote to writing a Ten On Tuesday list. That’s why this week’s topic is 10 Things You Have to Do Before Christmas or Hannukah or the Weekend. In my case it’s Christmas and here’s my list.

1. Finish wrapping gifts. I only have 4 things left to wrap but I don’t have boxes for them and that’s the hold up right now.
2. Go to iParty and get plates, napkins, forks, and knives for our Christmas Eve party. This should actually be accomplished by the time many of you are reading this.
3. Buy the Swedish stuff – meatball mix, Swedish rye bread, cardamom braid, and Farmer’s cheese are all on the list.
4. Finalize the menu for Christmas Eve. I pretty much know what I’m doing but I need to make a couple of decisions and then create a shopping list.
5. Bake and decorate sugar cookies. This may not actually happen, it depends on how much time I actually have.
6. Grocery shop. I need to get food (and drinks!) for Christmas Eve.
7. Buy 2 more gifts. They are both gift cards and are both in the same strip mall so this should be relatively painless.
8. Make an ice ring. I always forget to do this so I’m hoping posting it here will help me to remember.
9. Work stuff – payrolls and schedules and monthly reports all need to be done by Thursday because I am on vacation next week. Hoo. And ray, too.
10. Cook! This could be another 10 things alone – I have to make the macaroni & cheese and the baked party dip, the finger sandwiches and the Swedish meatballs and all the other goodies that are traditionally served at our house on Christmas Eve.

My daughter Hannah is very fortunate to have a wonderful college roommate. She and Karly met last year and they are like peas and carrots, they just go together. Karly makes Hannah a better student and a neater roommate, and, well, I’m not sure exactly what Hannah does for Karly other than make her happy. That’s pretty good, though, and I’m relatively certain that these two have forged a life long friendship. So what’s a mom to do to show a young lady how happy she is that she’s in her daughter’s life?

Make her socks, of course.

The socks should be knit from the mom’s own special pattern.

And they should include the roommate’s favorite color, purple.

They should be soft and warm delivered just in time for Christmas.

Mission Accomplished.

Candle light, angel light
Fire light and star glow

My favorite things about the Christmas season.

Sing along with me to this tune from Vince Vance & the Valiants, won’t you?

Take back the holly and mistletoe
Silver bells on string
If I wrote a letter to Santa Claus
I would ask for just one thing (any guesses? anyone? Bueller?)

I don’t need sleigh rides in the snow
Don’t want a Christmas that’s blue
Take back the tinsel, stockings, and bows
‘Cuz all I want for Christmas is you

I don’t need expensive things (well, this is a teeny bit expensive)
They don’t matter to me
All that I want, can’t be found
Underneath the Christmas tree (because it’s on my kitchen windowsill already)

You are the angel atop my tree
You are my dream come true
Santa can’t bring me what I need
‘Cuz all I want for Christmas is you

Poinsettia