terri, February 25th, 2010
What a lovely day, our grandchildren brought carefully crafted valentines and Taite and Matthias woke up early and made some for us too. It was Sunday, it was Valentine’s Day and it was the one year anniversary of being in our new home. We needed to have a special meal.
We bought salmon and normally we just fire up the grill, rub the salmon with wonderful spices and grill it but we wanted a feast to celebrate this day and wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary so we made Coulibiac from a book I reviewed and like (and you can be assured that I reduced the recipe to its most streamlined form for you) from the Essential Rice Cook Book:
Coulibiac
2 oz. butter 1 onion, finely chopped
6 1/2 oz. mushrooms, sliced 2 T. lemon juice
7 oz salmon filet, skin and bones removed, cut into 5/8″ chunks
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped 2 T. fresh dill & parsley, chopped
1 C cooked long grain rice 1/4 C thick cream
12 oz block puff pastry 1 egg, lightly beaten or 2 T butter
1. Melt half the butter in a frying pan, add onion and cook until soft. Then add the mushrooms and cook an additional 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl
2. Melt remaining butter in same pan, add salmon and cook 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and add choppped egg, dill & parsley. Gently combine.
3. In a small bowl mix rice and cream, season with salt and pepper.
4. (This is where I took a little turn as you will see from my photos and used phyllo dough instead of the puff pastry.) Puff pastry is the authentic way to make this dish. but either way, you need a base dough of 7″ X 12″ rectangle placed on a baking tray. Spread half the rice mixture leaving a 1″ border all around. Top with salmon mixture, then mushrooms and finally remaining rice.
5. Place another 7″ X 12″ layers of phyllo or puff pastry on top, crimp or fold to seal. If phyllo, brush with butter; for puff pastry, brush with egg.
6. Bake 15 minutes at 415º, then reduce heat to 350º and bake another 15 minutes.
erin, February 24th, 2010
This past Saturday a few friends hosted me the most beautiful shower ever! It was a dressed up event starting at 5 in the evening complete with low-lighting, cocktail attire, and hor d’ oeuvres. One of the girls dreamed up three completely different mock-tail recipes and even made personalized labels for the “champagne” (I sampled all of them:). Along with the twinkle lights and candle lanterns hanging from the ceiling, they had also hung a string of onesies that guests could decorate.
The evening would not have been complete without a round of Celebrity– in this case, Famous Babies-Celebrity
Some of the guests got pretty competitive with their cloth diaper/onesie decorating… and I mean the two women standing beside me
Elephants, Tiny Republican gear and American flags made a generous showing among the gifts
Me with one of the fabulous photographers of the event (Tim’s mom also took some pics).
The smallest hostest and her mom
terri, February 19th, 2010
Taite turned 13! A teenager! Who’da thought she’d grow up this fast!!? So what do you get a thirteen year old for her birthday?
 
Taite wanted to design her own sweatshirt for her birthday present, so working with the owner of the copyrighted flag and dancer and many emails later, a sweatshirt was born. It is now available in the designer’s shop at cafepress.com. We have ordered a number of items from cafepress and have designed some of our own.
I also discovered a sometimes commenter on our blog had a shop at cafepress too. I saw this clever design, “Don’t get mad, get imprecatory,” and thought it was very clever.
If you go to cafepress, it is a lot of fun to create your own design.
meghan, February 9th, 2010
 This is my favorite of the two. Here are some lovely ideas for your Valentine’s cards. I adored her work so much that I got two of these for myself and plan on framing them for my guest bedroom. Visiting her site again, I saw some new works that walls might not be complete without. I’m totally loving the Eiffel Tower and carousel. And how fun is that super hero one?
 This looks like a Paris street scene.
meghan, February 2nd, 2010
 Here are our Valentine's decorations. Valentine’s Day is a simply delightful holiday for a month when one is wanting some cheering up, chocolates, and a dinner out. So here is a project you can do to brighten your very February windows.
All you need is an iron, wax paper, and some crayons. Take two sheets of wax paper and sandwich crayon shavings between them, whatever colors you would like, and iron it. To protect my iron I put paper over and under the wax paper. Now you have a lovely, large piece of “stained glass” from which to cut your hearts. String them together with a needle and thread and hang them in your windows. Happy Valentine’s Day.
 Some of the hearts we hang singly.
caitlin, January 28th, 2010
My wonderful friend Rachel threw a baby shower for me last week that got me all excited and ready for this little boy. I thought you might like to glean from a few of her fabulous ideas that made the party so special:
Dessert
I am still thinking about (no, dreaming of . . . . no, obsessing over) the S’mores Cupcakes she created, and I’ve pretty much decided I need to have a box in the delivery room as motivation. These little beauties are the brain children of a local baker (Trophy Cupcake, who I’ve featured in Seattle Bride’s newest issue– on stands now) and the recipe was featured on Martha Stewart as her favorite cupcake flavor!
All the hype is for good reason, basically, they are to die for. And along with the Coconut Butter Cream Cupcakes and fruit that Becky and Aileen made, I could have hung out at the food table most of the night.
Fun
Rachel set up a table with white newborn baby onesies and paint and pens for guests to decorate. It was fun to see everyone’s clever designs and personality expressed on the little wearable keepsakes. Here are a couple designs.
Gifts
All my lovely friends proved my preconceived notions– about boys clothes not being very fun– completly wrong! But then, I’m just lucky to have friends with such incredible taste. I couldn’t believe the adorable assortment, and I’m going to be envious of my son’s shoe collection!
meghan, January 5th, 2010
 Milk glass candles. I also sprinkled some white feathers around them. The Christmas decorations are down and I could almost cry because the house seems so empty. I love seasonal decorations, especially in the winter.
I don’t know if you have ever seen milk glass in the antique stores. Vases, cups, plates and all of it for a dime a dozen. If you should come across some vases, buy them and fill your fireplace mantle with them. You won’t regret it. Put little votives in them and you will have the most lovely wintry mantle ever.
terri, December 30th, 2009
This is just a small bit of the hilarious Jarrett. I was reminded that I could record video with my camera and finally started.
So, here we are after a delicious meal of prime rib with some incredible wines for our Christmas dinner; we were visiting around the table when this small man suddenly appeared to entertain us!
After Dinner
And then Zac impressed us and really impressed Canon with his talent.
Zac, The Good Egg
And a bit more
terri, December 28th, 2009
Not a small feat! All seventeen of us with our eyes open!
caitlin, December 24th, 2009
 Zac's masterpiece. Here I stand, proven wrong once again by some some previously unknown skill of Zac’s. I never thought this gingerbread mansion would stand. After we under-baked the supporting right wall, nearly destroyed our friend’s counter-tops with pouring the melted sugar windows, almost caved in the roof, and then just wanted to give up– the structure came together in all it’s lit up glory. Total construction time from blueprints to finished product was over a month. If you are one of the few people that think this project is not an act of insanity, here are the instructions for your benefit.
We realized it was stronger than we thought when Freyja saw it the next morning, uttered ”ohhhhhhh!” and started delightedly drumming on the roof and licking the icicles.
Zac says next years blueprints include multiple dormers and out buildings. . . .
 THe contruction took place at our friend's gingerbread house party, but we still had all the decorating to do.  I iced one of the windows and totally botched it.  Some snow drifts on top add the finishing touches.
terri, December 23rd, 2009
 Place holders for the Christmas dinner I had Taite and Matthias gather up the church bulletins and cut the song page, rolled it and we will place one on each of the seventeen plates along with a name tag.
terri, December 18th, 2009
The time Meghan and I got together for a big Christmas baking spree, we began with all kinds of great ingredients and family recipes… and then Meghan decided to go all healthy on me and leave out half the sugar.. out of a cookie!? I mean, isn’t that why you eat cookies because of the sugar!?
So those didn’t turn out too well.
But we persevered.
At the end of our very long day of disasters I thought maybe just one more recipe. I had a craving for macaroons. Bucers in Moscow, Idaho has the best macaroons in the world but the proprietor will not give me her recipe so I found one on my own. It used sweetened condensed milk and lots of coconut, so much coconut that I needed to get another bag out of the freezer.
They came out of the oven and I was so craving the macaroons that I ate one right away and.. well, it tasted funny. Maybe because they were too hot. I let them cool, no, they still tasted bad. I thought I’d add more sugar and at that point Meghan was telling me to abandon ship what with adding more sugar, “Throw them out, mom, why waste more ingredients.”
Then I thought, maybe dipping them in chocolate would help, “No, mom, throw them out.”
I relented and in the end out of about twelve recipes we had one good batch of cookies.
After Meghan had left for home, I opened the freezer and it was then that I realized I had used parmesan cheese instead of coconut in the macaroons.
So this year I thought I’d go easy on myself, a recipe with about four ingredients to start with AND I would not attempt to double the recipe or anything.
  
- roll a ball, pat stamp in sugar, gently press on cookie
 And KABOOM the cookie explodes on the cookie sheet! OK, I have made this recipe before and this never happened, ever. So, I went back read the recipe very carefully to see if I was missing something or over did it with the flour or left out some liquid or didn’t add enough liquid or… Nope.
So, I scooped up the little mess and smashed it back into a ball and forewent the cute little pineapple print on the top. Just balls, maybe that would work. Not to be.
 Baking did not help these poor things Everyone will be home for Christmas and I think that cookie baking will be first thing on the ‘to do’ list.
caitlin, December 16th, 2009
. . . make it be Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Thumbprint cookie with Vanillia Bean Ganache.
This little cookie will blow you away. The combination of dense chocolate cookie with coarse salt and the smooth vanilla and honey in the ganache will make you wonder where this recipe has been all your life . My friend Rachel brought these to a cookie exchange last year and I guarded them like a ravenous wolf until I had happily eaten the half dozen I kept hidden behind the coffee maker. Actually, I did find it in my heart to sacrifice one for Zac– and he was also impressed, which is impressive, since he’s not a sweet eater.
Anyway, thankfully these are fool-proof easy to make, they just take a few steps and bowls, but nothing hard at all. It uses half a precious vanilla bean, but I tell you, it is worth it! (find them at Costco for an incredible price this time of year,a package of two vials of large vanilla beans is only $10) When baking, make sure to keep the cookie almost underdone so it is soft in the center.
Try them out and let me know what you think.
meghan, December 15th, 2009
 Here are some of the creations. I bring to you the humble snowflake. I forgot how fun these can be to make. The kids and I had a blast doing them. I discovered the key to making a good snowflake is in the fold. YouTube had some good and easy how-to videos.
These are some of the flakes I made and it you look carefully they are actually animals. But lest you think I was clever enough to come up with this idea, here is the site.
 This is the giraffe and you can see a bit of the ram.
meghan, December 8th, 2009
 So here are some of the kids' stockings.  I got this one done so Fox would have a stocking for Christmas. Because I don’t knit but wish I did, I have to cheat. I had this lovely throw for the living room that finally got a hole in it. Not wanting to just throw it away, I chopped it up to make a stocking for Fox.
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