Christmas is A-Coming!

Christmas is getting here fast! It seems like it gets faster each year. I got the tree from Beth at the farmers market on Saturday: she and Gene had picked out a beautiful white fir (concolor) for us. I've never seen one of these trees before, but the large needles are striking!

Carter Actually Wanted to Help This Year

Ta Da!

Ann thought I was hamming it up for this picture, but what I was really doing was getting my evidence documented. She has this thing for gigantic trees and even though she hasn't said anything about this tree, I can tell that she's feeling a little underwhelmed by it. She asked Beth for a 9-foot tree and that is what we got, maybe even a bit more. Exhibit A: with my arm extended, I can touch 8 feet easily.

You Call THAT a Hammer?

I thought my idea of smashing the bag of candy canes against the granite was a splendid, no-fuss way of getting the job done. Too chef-like apparently, for we had to get out the world's most ridiculously small hammer to gently tap the candy canes. Love you, baby!

Carter and the Ricotta Cookies

Always Good, and Sunday, Needed

What's the Christmas season without a little Champagne to get things going? While we were decorating the tree and making cookies, we opened this bottle of Veuve Clicquot. The old widow, she's always predictably good and I do love the yeasty Clicquot house style. Later in the afternoon, we opened a bottle of Perrier-Jouët and it is nowhere near the wine that the Clicquot is. I am still spoiled by our Roland Champion grower Champagne, but Ann is not so much the fan.

The Champagne was well deserved and as it turns out, well needed, witness the next photo:

Caption Contest: How Would You Label This??

Yeah, OK, so teenagers are wont to turn teenage at any moment, no matter how nice and cooperative little adults they seem to be at any given instant. I'm going to let you pick a caption for the photo above. My suggestion: "I brought your ass into this world and I'll take it right out!" Thank God for Champagne!

The Inevitable Mess: Champagne Helps with This Too

Ricotta and Lemon Cookies

And Without the Lemon

Peppermint Bark

P.S. I forgot to say that Ann did all the work for these cookies. Didn't mean to take credit for her work.