Tag Archives: holiday

Holiday centerpiece

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OK, so I’m not really into “tablescaping” or fancy place settings when guests are coming over for dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I think they look great, but I just don’t have the servingware, the candlesticks (well, I do have four… but they need polishing badly so I’m embarrassed of them currently!), the foufy fouf pumpkin-shaped soup tureens or feather Christmas trees or turtledove salt-and-pepper shakers. (Yes, foufy fouf is the technical term.) I’d like to do more nice table setting for dinners but I usually am more focused on getting the meal ready down to the last second than planning how my table is going to look. And since last time I checked my guests would rather eat food than place mats, I’ll stick with cooking good food.

However! We had some friends over for New Year’s Eve (old people with kids style! which means, eat dinner at 5:30 p.m., everyone goes home at 8 p.m., we’re cleaned up and in bed at 10 p.m.) and I did manage to throw together a last-minute center piece.

It’s a little fruity, with some rustic Montana flair, but I liked it. In my own fruity foufy fouf way.

Center piece 1

I put together the center piece with some things I already had around the house. I used a mule deer antler shed, some pine cones, a red and white snowflake bowl, a ribbon, and some glittery ornament balls.

Center piece 2

 

No nice tablecloth or anything. Just my dinged, scratched, stained, and glass ring-riddled tabletop. Someday I’ll refinish the table or we’ll get a new one. But in the meantime, despite it’s “well loved” appearance, it’s a good table and it was free. And you know what? No one said a word about the table or the center piece (OK, it was a bit weird… but I could totally see something like that popping up in the Pottery Barn catalogue, amirite?), but they liked the food!

Merry and bright

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I’ve been in a funk lately… I think part of it is the prego hormones. But I think it’s mostly that it’s the Christmas season and well, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas. Christmas is my favorite holiday. I’ve always loved making cookies with my mom and sister; playing the “I’m thinking of a ornament that looks like…” game at night in the darkened living room with the glittering Christmas tree while sipping on Ovaltine; eating a delicious Christmas dinner; sampling “The Recipe” (a festive holiday punch… it’s got enough alcohol in it that there is a fair bit of family lore about various relatives awakening in bathtubs and under tables on Christmas mornings past). But this year it’s just Shawn and me, alone for Christmas. To be fair, it’ll be our only Christmas just the two of us, but it just doesn’t feel the same. It feels a little lonely. We don’t have a Christmas tree because we’re trying to save money and because our kitties have never been around a Christmas tree, so they’d probably take to scaling it in the wee hours of the night. I can just hear the shattering of ornaments now. We live in an apartment, so there’s no lights to string, no halls to deck, as it were. A downright bummer, if I let it be.

So you know what? It’s time to get Festive. With a capital F. We’re gonna make this Christmas happen. I even made a list. We’re going to go look at Christmas lights this week around town. We’re going to make a delicious Christmas dinner: Lamb with mint jelly, twice-baked potatoes, homemade apple sauce. We’ve got some Christmas movies to watch. I’ve got a date with a nice glass of eggnog. I’m going to make stollen for the first time ever. I’m digging out the construction paper to make a paper chain to hang. We’ve been enjoying the Season of Advent church services we’ve attended and we’re looking forward to the Christmas Eve service Saturday. And today we made Christmas cookies.

Kelley Christensen photo

Note Shawn's shirt. And yes, it glows in the dark.

Today’s festive creations are not low calorie. In fact, we used four sticks of butter. That’s right. FOUR. We made a batch of spritz, a family holiday tradition (though, alas, I lack a cookie press so they don’t look like spritz), and a batch of gingerbread trees and men.

I did this while listening to a Pandora Christmas radio station blaring out “Carol of the Bells,” “Santa Baby,” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” (and the occasional “Ima CHAINSAW that b*tch!” from the husband, who was indulging his “Gears of War” video game addiction in between helping making cookies and dinner). We’ve got enough cookies at this point I will probably have to start pressing them on total strangers in the street (or just our neighbors… no better way to meet neighbors than to give them cookies!).

And since we’re lacking a Christmas tree… we have a Christmas chair! For your viewing pleasure, I draped the back of the chair with the lovely tree skirt my “Montana mom” Lynnette made for us for a wedding present, and piled the chair with presents from family.

To top today off, Shawn (and the bread machine) made a loaf of homemade bread. It’s one of our favorite recipes, with raisins and orange zest in it. Yum yum yum. We’re going to eat some tonight with homemade chicken pot pie.

Things are definitely looking far more merry and bright.

Chili League (and new holidays)

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On Wednesday this past week, us folks in northwest Montana created a new holiday (well, the credit really goes to Hilary at Outside Media): “406 Day.” Wednesday was April 6, so, 4-06. And Montana’s area code is 406, so it’s the new Montana holiday. And to celebrate, we had the Chili League finals.

What’s Chili League you might ask? It’s a bunch of us (upwards of 40 or 50 people) getting together on a Friday to enjoy each others’ company and to put our best chili recipes to the test. In the past few months, we’ve tried probably a dozen different chilis, all fabulous. Some were red chilis, some were green. I think there was even a white chili, too. Some had meat, some were vegetarian (and had squash!). One didn’t have any beans (“true chilis don’t have beans”). Some were fairly simple recipes (like mine – the secret weapon is Indian chili powder) and others took days of experimentation. All chilis were creatively named (ours was dubbed “Afterburn”).

So the winners from each “heat” competed Wednesday.

Buck Fever, Chili Supresa and (well, I’m forgetting the name of the third chili… someone remind me!) went head to head. The competition was fierce. Brows shone with a sheen of sweat (from the competition? from the heat?).

And Buck Fever claimed the victory. A melange of venison, antelope and elk, the bean-less chili took the crown. Its maker, Erik Lorona, is pictured below with his lovely wife Aubrie. He’s holding the Chili League trophy, from which he’s required to eat his chili during next year’s competition.

During the summer, after all, Chili League becomes Barbecue League. Ladies and gents, fire up your grills!

I also made orange rolls for the event. Here’s a before-I-baked-them photo. I like how you can see the little flecks of grated orange peel in the dough. Alas, there’s no “after” photo because folks inhaled them! But I guess that’s a good thing!

Decking the halls

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Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I’m always bummed when the big day is over. I love Christmas because it means time with my family. We make big, delicious meals, laugh and joke around the table, listen to favorite holiday tunes and spend time in front of the Christmas tree admiring the lights and ornaments.

This year the Hubs and I are headed to Denver, so we’re not decorating much and we didn’t get a tree. But the apartment still feels festive.

It’s not much, but I like the shabby-chic look of it. I simply strung ribbon through the sparkling ornament balls and hung them from the ceiling against our spiffy brick wall. The candle by the lamp is Christmas-y too.

And since we lack a fireplace, I hung the beautiful stockings Hubs’ mom made us for a wedding present from the banister of the stairs that lead up to our loft.

Hope your Christmas is merry and full of cheer!