Our Fabulous New Year's Eve Dinner Party!

We had a great time at our New Year's Eve party last night. We followed a concept one of our friends had found in Minnesota Monthly magazine. There were five couples and each provided a course for the meal and an accompanying beverage. We had fairly small portions for each course, so at the end of the evening, we weren't over full on either food or drink. We did get a ride home, incidentally, something I highly recommend. Here's what we had:
Appetizer #1- bacon wrapped dates with reduced apple cider sauce and Cava (a Spanish sparkling wine)
Appetizer #2- Baked brie infused with brandy and wrapped in phyllo dough served on either sourdough bread or apple slices. Served with a selection of beers, Asti, or Reisling.
Entree#1-Lemon chive fettuccine with Greek shrimp served with Pomelo Sauvignon blanc.
Entree #2-Tenderloin Roast stuffed with mushrooms and onions with béarnaise sauce and asparagus served with a Shiraz.
Dessert- Flourless chocolate torte served with vanilla ice cream and caramel topping with coffee with Kahlua and Bailey's Irish Cream.

Everything was as delicious as it sounds and although it may sound like we were drinking a lot, we had small glasses. Each course lasted quite awhile and the rest of us would sit around and visit while whoever was in charge of the next course prepared it. Anyway, it was a wonderful evening spent with good friends and a great way to ring in the New Year.

Misc. ramblings and resolutions

By popular request, here's a photo of the pasta drying rack DH made for me. As usual, it's larger and fancier than really necessary, but it comes apart completely for storage. With the state of the real estate market, maybe he should go into business selling sturdy pasta racks. This is the last project he completed before we started the complete overhaul of his workshop. Even before the broken pipe incident, I had bought him epoxy floor paint for Christmas. Romantic gift, eh? To use it entails moving everything out of one half, sweeping and scrubbing the floor, then painting, allowing to dry.....that's as far as we've gotten. Crawling around on a cement floor is very exhausting and every muscle I have is achy. It looks great though and it has been a good way to do a thorough cleaning and get rid of a lot of junk.

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I spent most of the day yesterday working at a funeral lunch at my church. A 63 yr. old man had died while shoveling snow with his wife on Christmas day, really tragic. Spending a day in this manner is a good way to put things in perspective. For one thing, you never know when the day will come for you. Not a happy thought I know, but thinking about it can change the way you live your life if you let it.

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As promised, here's the New Year's resolutions for 2009 in no particular order-
1. Lose another 25 lbs. ( I've gained back part of the 25 I lost last year)
2. Don't gain back weight you tried so hard to lose!
3. Exercise at least once a week to start with.
4. Be a better listener, not always thinking of how I will respond.
5. Give more compliments, especially to my kids.
6. Remember when things get tough that other people have it waay worse than I do.
7. Along with #6, be thankful and grateful for everything I have instead of thinking about everything I want.
8. Read more books.
9. Sort my pictures and print off/back up all digital pictures.
10. Be kinder than is necessary.
11. Don't watch so much tv.
12. Go to bed earlier.

Okay, that's it. I realize I'm leaning a little close to the "change your entire life" resolution area, but I think naming several gives me a little more room for success. I'm looking forward to a great New Year's Eve spent with friends and I hope you will have a wonderful 2009!

Pasta Machine Success!

Here's the meal we had last night.....Lemon Pepper fettuccine with Greek shrimp, homemade French bread, and salad. It was very delicious and it was fun to experiment with my new pasta machine. First I made the bread dough in the bread machine, made it into a french loaf, glazed it with salt water and baked it. We made the sheets of pasta and laid them all out on the counter to get them ready to cut. Then we ran the sheets through the pasta machine again to cut it into the fettucinne. We laid the noodles all out on a plate....don't do this! When it was time to boil the noodles, they were all stuck together and we had to run it all through the machine and cut them again. DH is down in his workshop right now making me a noodle drying rack...you've got to have someplace to hang the noodles. While the noodles were cooking, the shrimp part was finishing up in another pan on the stovetop. It consisted of olive oil, lemon juice, onion, garlic, shrimp, parsley, and salt and pepper. When both parts were done, they were mixed together served with a few crumbles of feta cheese on top. Yum! I think we're going to make this again for New Year's Eve. We are getting together with four other couples and each are bringing part of the meal. The others are better cooks than we are, one of the couples even did a cooking class trip to Italy, so I hope this dish will pass muster! I wish I could get my pictures to lay out the way I wanted them!

An Extra Day

We expected to spend about 6 hours on the road today on the way to and from Iowa to celebrate Christmas with DH's family. The icy weather in Iowa prevented the trip, so here we are at home with a free day and no plans for anyone. Nice, Huh? DH and I have been working a little on the remainder of the cleanup from our broken pipe incident of earlier in the week. The kids have been doing various things and are talking about getting together with friends later. Later tonight, I expect we might dive into the giant cheese ball that I made to take along today and probably have a glass of wine and maybe get into the hot tub to soak my back which is still bothering me. All in all I think it will be a pretty nice day. We had temps in the 40's most of the day yesterday, so it was nice to have the streets melted off and the sidewalk and driveway cleared of ice again. We have snow predicted tonight, but that's okay with me.

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I read an interesting post from a blogger named Lisa about New Year's resolutions. Will you be making any this year? I usually do, sometimes I make the "I'm going to change all of my bad habits at once" type of resolutions. Last year DH and I resolved to lose weight. We both did lose quite a bit and I'm still down 25 lbs. from where I was last Jan. 2. We'd both like to lose a little more, so I'm sure that will be on the list. I'd also like to come up with something else in the realm of self-improvement that is specific and attainable. I'll let you know Jan. 1.

Snow Caps

Have I mentioned we have a lot of snow? We've had more than 20 inches so far this month. Today however is a balmy 38 degrees F., so we've actually got some melting going on. Unfortunately, we are supposed to have "a wintry mix" tomorrow, so that may prevent us from going to Iowa to get together with DH's family. I've really gotten into being a homebody the last few days. Today I'm putting away the remains of Christmas wrapping and bows, getting rid of boxes and bags, cleaning, and doing a mountain of laundry. I may venture out later to the grocery store and maybe the bank. Then again, I may start the third Twilight book and stay home with a cup of coffee and a blanket.

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We had a nice relaxing Christmas yesterday with just DH and I and the kids. We didn't go to overboard with gifts this year, but everyone was happy with what they got. I got a pasta maker that looks like it will be fun to use. I think DH was just as excited about it. He and SD made ravioli with it last night and they turned out great. We had the ravioli with a tomato sauce, lettuce salad, and garlic bread and some red wine. Probably the least Scandinavian Christmas dinner ever! DH did make himself his favorite Christmas pudding like his mom makes. It's actually tapioca which I really don't like, but I ate a little even though the texture really grosses me out. We also watched a couple of movies, played ping-pong, and just relaxed.

Merry Christmas to All!

Wishing everyone who happens by a very Merry Christmas! Here's the top of my kitchen buffet with a quilt I made last year, sitting below it is my electric skating rink and a couple of little trees. The skating rink is a little corny, but I've had it for about 16 years and the kids insist that I put it up every year. It plays Christmas music while the skaters go around. It's really kinda fun. Do you have any of those type of decorations you'd rather get rid of?

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We had a nice Christmas Eve last night. We went to DH's brother's for dinner, then went to Christmas Eve service at church, then back to their home for the rest of the evening. Our church service was really nice. SD played her violin with a string quartet for 15 minutes or so while everyone was getting seated. I was really proud of her and it sounded beautiful. The other three were all professional musicians in one form or the other. She and I also played a couple of songs with our handbell group and DH and I sang in the choir while the quartet accompanied.

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This morning the boys got up and did the paper route; it has to be delivered by 7:30 a.m. on holidays. It was hard to get them up and they went back to bed as soon as they got done. Now I've got a couple of butter braids in the oven and as soon as everyone else gets up we will eat and open our presents and have a quiet day around the house. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful day with family and friends!

Please Pass the Peace

Here's another word of peace in today's picture of my Christmas decorations. These new stocking hangers that spell "peace" and the red "peace" and berries in yesterday's picture are the only new decorations I got this year. I guess I've been thinking a lot about needing peace in my life and here it is in my Christmas decorations.

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I definitely needed some peace today or more likely I needed to shout "Serenity Now" like they do in that old Seinfeld episode. DH left the garage door open for an extended period of time last night and froze and burst a pipe in the garage. I think it ran water steadily for several hours. When SD went into the garage this morning there was about 4-5 inches of water on the floor of the garage. The floor drain was clogged with leaves and gunk, so the water couldn't go down. Sooooo......the water overflowed into a hatch we have leading to the basement and under the garage wall into DH's workshop in the basement, so there was an inch or so of water in places down there. The water also somehow got into the ceiling in the finished part of the basement and the sheetrock is looking a little ripply and drippy. We were working on cleaning up the mess until everyone left for various other obligations. I'll go down later and get back at the clean-up, but for now I'm venting and blogging. I'm glad we had done quite a bit of cleaning when the furnace guy came a few weeks ago, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It also could have been really bad if we weren't at home to discover it.