I See Why Hansel and Gretel Got Into Trouble

Every year at Christmas time we make gingerbread houses. Well, technically they are graham cracker houses but they're still fun. Basically what happens is I go to the store and buy $4897 worth of candy. Then my girls spend approximately 4 hours creating and decorating their houses and in the final thirty minutes all the sugar consumed while creating and decorating kicks in and everyone feels overwhelmed by the disaster that is the kitchen and then whew! they're done. Great activity for a snow day.

We've learned thru the years which candy works best for a particular project...

We like to use fruit stripe gum to make cute shutters but couldn't find any this year so we tried sugar wafer cookies instead. And we used mini pretzels for the fencing. By the way, pretzels are an essential ingredient in gingerbread house construction...they help ease the sugar high that results after you've eaten one or two or maybe a hundred pieces of candy.

And here's another essential ingredient...

the mobile phone...gotta have that handy because 327 text messages an important call could come in every 30 seconds at any time

Candy makes this one really really happy. And Frank Lloyd Wright's got nothin' on her...she made a 60's style house this year

I love the trees which are ice cream cones painted with icing and rolled in green sugar

Daughter2 almost threw in the towel during the construction phase as she tried to cut graham crackers to precisely fill the eaves in the roof

but she persevered

and I love the roof on the finished product

My girls are nearly all grown up. They are college students with busy lives away from home. But there are some things you just never outgrow...and for that I am thankful.

In the Still of the Night

It is very early morning and still dark outside. I think this is my favorite time of day...all the world feels still and quiet. We are covered in a blanket of snow and it is absolutely beautiful. My daughter managed to arrive home safely mid- blizzard...there were delays and an extremely treacherous ride home from the train station but many people were stranded last night so we are feeling very thankful.

If there's one thing that has struck me since I began blogging it is this...there are people in this world who carry such tremendously heavy burdens...failing marriages, lost jobs, sick children. And they are waiting...waiting for God to act...to restore, to rescue, to heal. I read a post this morning that is one of the best things I've read in a long time...you'll find it here. Click over...you'll be glad you did.

'Twas the Saturday before Christmas

So I live on the East Coast and they are calling for something blizzardy here today. I like snow... I love to watch it fall and I love the way Christmas lights sparkle against it and I love how it makes the trees seem frosted. But not today thank you anyway. Daughter1 is due home this evening, coming by train, and then of course we have to get out of our little town and down the mountain and into the train station to pick her up and that takes almost an hour on a good day. And of course she can stay put for a day but WHAAA...we want her home. Okay, done whining for the moment.

I was going to write a little something about my two days in England but I'm so caught up in all things Christmas that I think I will just say this...you can go home again. A fabulous two days spent catching up with friends...a luncheon at the magnificent Stoke Park Club, a walk down the village High Street, a browse thru Marks and Spencers, those wonderful accents, Christmas bunco fun, and then on Monday... a morning spent with the ladies from my former Bible Study group which made my heart hurt just a little for the missing...then lunch in a local pub and then I was headed home. Which is here. NJ. But its still a little bit there too. And I'm okay with that.

Now...how about some Christmas cheer? I'm very late to the party but I'm going to link up to the Holiday Home tour over at The Nesters anyway...

We are celebrating our first Christmas in this house and it has been fun to decorate and especially to see some of our Christmas ornaments and decorations that went off to storage 6+ years ago. Like my snow village....

Nearly impossible to get in a photo because we set it up on top of our kitchen cabinets this year and if you read down a bit here I mention my ineptitude at picture taking...you'll have to trust me when I tell you how cute it all is...I love it. You can't fully appreciate all the detail (like the teeny tiny skis propped up on the ski lodge) in the way you would if I had it on a table at eye level but I have a lot of pieces now and they require lots of space. In fact you can't even see the whole village in this picture...it continues around a bit further. I especially love the way it looks all lit up when you come into a dark kitchen early in the morning. I need to adjust some of the 'snow' so it doesn't look quite so boxy but I'm enjoying having it all out again.

We have two trees up at the moment and when Daughter1 arrives home later today she will decorate a small tree in her room. It is all things ballet and so adorable. We have a 6 foot tree in our sunroom

and the main tree in our family room.

I absolutely love all the windows in this house but it does make for slightly tricky photography. And if I had waited a bit to take this photo you'd most likely see two feet of snow behind the tree. Sigh. The family room tree holds all of the homemade ornaments and all of our travel ornaments. We tried to buy a little something for our tree on every trip and there were many many trips so I will not post them all...here are a few favorites...

Venezia

Scotland

Paris

and of course England...the British taxi is my favorite of all our travel ornaments

This ornament was sent to me by my sweet blogger friend Valerie and it is absolutely beautiful

Of course there is nothing like seeing the smiling face of your four year old on a Christmas tree

or in your kitchen making fudge

and yes it is approximately 7 degrees outside and Miss Sweetness is wearing a short sleeved tee...she only arrived from South Carolina on Wednesday and hasn't quite gotten with the weather program yet.

It almost makes me teary eyed to see the sweet expression on the face of my kindergartner...

which for sure should not be stuck in a snowstorm in D.C. today

This soldier sits in my foyer year round but we've made him more festive for the holiday season with the big red bow. He may just be my favorite souvenir from our years in England and he makes me smile every single time I walk by him.

And finally, a tour wouldn't be complete without a picture of my nativity set. I bought it the first year we were married and I still love it. My husband likes to say Joseph has a bit of a pituitary issue as he is just a little too tall for the stable. He's the only piece that is not original but he's okay I think.

Thanks for visiting today...May you experience real peace and joy as you celebrate this season of God's greatest gift to us...the babe born in a manger so long ago. Merry Christmas!

It's A Good Thing

So I saw Martha yesterday. She says hello. Well, maybe not but she was really friendly and I know if I'd actually spoken to her she would have totally wanted me to say hello. I went into NYC with a group of 11 other women to a taping of The Martha Stewart show and, love her or hate her, this was so much fun.

Where to begin??? Well, how about with the fact that while we were still queuing outside to get into the studio we were told that Martha was taste testing a new brownie mix and a new chocolate chip cookie mix and we would need to sample one and give our opinion. Hey, somebody's gotta do it. When you book tickets to the show you have no idea what will be happening the day you are there but how lucky were we that she just happened to be taste testing brownies and cookies today? FYI-they were good!

Once inside the building we went thru a security check, then a coat check, then we signed the waivers saying they can use our image on television or pretty much anywhere, then we sat and sampled the brownies and looked around at the marketing genius that is Martha Stewart Inc. Wow...is there anything she doesn't do?

Before long we were instructed to turn off our mobile phones and not to shout out during interviews and then they tell us about today's show. The very funny Joey Kola came out for this bit.

He was fun and had us all laughing and then he said all the shows are great and there is always a nice little goody bag for audience members to take home. And then he winked winked and said we happened to have been chosen for a particularly good show because our little goody bag was better than your average day at Martha Stewart.

Our show will be the first one aired in the New Year, on January 4th. There were beautiful Christmas trees and assorted Christmas decorations around the perimeter of the room but they weren't in any of the shots because hello, Happy New Year!

And then Joey tells us the theme of today's show....overall body health. Huh? Didn't you just ask me to taste a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie? But you know what? The show was good. It was fun. Martha is relaxed and she smiles alot and chats with her guests and they didn't retape anything and oh wow did we get us an extra nice goody bag. More on that in a minute.

Before the taping began we were given some instructions regarding clapping...you know the whens and the how longs and the how louds....we practiced a few times so they could be sure we were trustworthy when it came to clapping and then out came Martha. There were seven segments to the program and it moved quickly. There really aren't any bad seats and there are screens mounted overhead in case a camera temporarily blocks your view and believe me when I say there were a whole lot of cameras. There was also a whole lot of staff...we could not get over how many people were working on this show.

The first guest was Dr. Junger who has written a book called Clean and we're not talking housekeeping here. Remember today's theme? Yeah...he talked about a 21 day de-tox which he recommends although four or more days is okay too. He ran thru the sample menu to follow while you're doing the 'cleanse' and it involves two liquid meals each day (breakfast and dinner) and then a sensible lunch (he suggested poached salmon with fennel). Now the sensible lunch bit sounds fine but let me just tell you the color of the breakfast drink was a little bit off putting and even Martha made a face when she tasted it. She much preferred the dinner drink which was made with fruit and veg too but wasn't a funny color. And I'm fairly certain you are not permitted to substitute a nice glass of Merlot for the 'juice' even though it is technically a dinner drink made with fruit. I think the de-tox is kinda like no caffeine, no fat, no alcohol, no sugar, no fun however I'll confirm this after I finish reading his book because that was gift number one in the goody bag.

So, I'm sitting there kind of thinking about the bread and cheese I ate in France and the Christmas cookies I intend to eat in New Jersey and I'm coming around to the idea of the de-tox. We're clapping and laughing and I'm all caught up in the moment and I think I might just try it. Guest number two was Dr. Someone (sorry), head of Prevention Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. For years there have been various diets out there called the Mayo Clinic diet but none of those have ever been connected in any way to the Mayo Clinic until now. He told us this is not so much a diet (don't they always say that???) but more a plan for eliminating bad habits and forming some good habits. What he said made a lot of sense and he also has a book and yes indeed we did get a copy of that too.

Then he and Martha whipped up something that Martha absolutely loved in this fantastic Breville juicer which I will definitely be trying because Merry Christmas...they gave every member of the audience one of the fantastic Breville juicers!

I couldn't believe it...it's a really nice gift and we didn't even have to lug it around NYC because we just go online, plug in our code and wait for it to be delivered to our front door. Hopefully not anytime before Christmas though because I don't think I want to see it in my kitchen when I'm sneaking a buttercream out of the frig.

There was still more fun and next up was an editor from Body and Soul Magazine (yeah, we got that in our goody bag too)

who prepared a couple of healthy dishes and gave some tips on adding flavor without calories. Two women from the audience went up and shared their food challenges and then Martha's personal trainer be-bopped out to talk about exercising during detox. And the whole time she was talking she and Martha were jumping on these little rebounder trampolines for which Martha earns my utmost respect. I most definitely would no way ever be jumping on a trampoline on national television.

Once the actual taping was over we could take some pictures and Martha said she'd answer a few questions from the audience...really she was just so relaxed and casual and actually very funny. And she didn't scold me once for taking a short holiday in the middle of December or spending my first day home having fun in the city instead of checking off at least one of the approximately eleven hundred and ninety two items on my to do list. And y'all...It's a good thing.

Marche de Noel

La France est merveilleuse. I'm not sure I need to say anything more but of course I will. Spending the weekend in Strasbourg was like being placed ever so gently inside a picture postcard....what an absolutely lovely little storybook town. The entire historic city center is a World Heritage Site.

I've been to the Christmas markets in several German cities over the past few years and I absolutely love them, but the market in France was different. It was very... French. I know it sounds like stereotyping but it's true...the French have a way of making things beautiful that seems completely effortless. As in, of course we'll hang Baccarat crystal chandeliers down the cute little side street...

why wouldn't we?

And the tree in the town center? A huge mass of blue and white lights...not too many and not too few...just right don't you think?

And the little wooden village that sits at the base of the tree? So sweet!

Walking thru the market stalls in Strasbourg you see thousands of delicate ornaments arranged ever so carefully by color and shade...

the scent of chocolate and coconut (oh yes indeed there were macaroons) floats thru the air...

the sound of cathedral bells rings out overhead

and this all comes together so gracefully...

you feel inspired...you dream...you are happy

You wander and look and taste and smell and buy. There is champagne that tickles your nose and wonderful cheese and undeniably the world's best bread...there are sweet little Christmas decorations, beautiful table linens,

miniature houses that hide a candle inside, fabulous scarves and jewelry and chocolates and gingerbread. Oh and did I mention the Alsatian pottery?

I know.

We arrived in Strasbourg on Friday afternoon by train from London with an all too brief stop in Paris. We all agreed that it might actually be a crime to travel thru Paris without enough time to stop for a peek or at least to sit for a while at an outdoor cafe. This is the train station Gare du Nord and yes of course that is an amazing little chocolate shop sitting right there in the station.

It sits very nearby to the amazing little sandwich shop. (See paragraph 1 regarding the French).

I cannot talk about France without at least eight hundred references to food and someone please please tell me how these French women stay so thin because the bread y'all...I actually have no words. (And of course in my case that is just an expression).

We ate in the cutest little bistro on Friday evening and their specialty? Why bread and cheese naturellement...I had brie drizzled with warm honey then melted over thick bread and topped with walnuts. Isn't that what you make for dinner most nights?

Saturday we spent the entire day in the markets and also walking thru the magnificent cathedral. The stork is the symbol of Strasbourg and it is everywhere, including carved into the sandstone atop the massive Gothic Cathedral Notre-Dame.

We stopped for lunch at a creperie that sat just outside the cathedral. We shared a savory and a sweet...the banana nutella crepe was tres bon!

Saturday evening we dined on fondue in a restaurant which is known for having the biggest cheese board in the world.

And after all that cheese a walk was definitely in order but that was wonderful too because every shop window and street in this little town was beautifully decorated...

I haven't even begun to talk about my whirlwind two days in England but this post is getting (has gotten?) l-o-n-g so I'll save that for another day. Sorry and you're welcome.

I will wrap it up for now with this-

France is amazing.

The city of Strasbourg is beautiful.

And having these friends to share it all ...

absolutely priceless.

I see London I see France

Remember that rhyme from the playground? I keep saying it because, as they say in the UK, I'm taking a short break for a girls weekend in London and France. I'm technically only in London for two days but they will be jam packed. I hope I can stay awake for all the fun. I arrive in the morning and will go to a Christmas luncheon filled with old friends and then on to Christmas bunco Thursday night. I'm going to try and say hi to my old neighbors and my old house too. I hope my heart can take it.

Friday morning I'll take the train to France with my friend L. We are going to Strasbourg but we have to change trains in Paris. We will have to walk between stations so at least I'll get a glimpse of Paris this trip. Sigh. I've never been to Strasbourg but I've heard it is beautiful. I'm looking forward to shopping at the Christmas market, dining on French food, and most especially catching up with two more friends who are meeting us there. So much talking to do...it will be like a Jr. High sleepover except without the drama and without anyone telling us to go to bed. That's okay... I can sleep in January.

Have a great weekend...Joyeux Noël

Hey Hey Macaroona

Sorry. I've been baking macaroons this afternoon and consequently I have the macarena tune stuck in my head. I'm easily entertained.

First sentence and I'm already off track. An-y-way...as I was saying-macaroons. Oh my. This is the first time I've tried this particular recipe and it is most definitely a keeper. And because it's the Christmas season and I'm all about sharing I'm going to post it here so you can love it too. The recipe calls for almond paste which I found on the baking aisle of my regular supermarket. It is a little bit pricey. I think I paid $5.69 but may I just say that these macaroons are worth every single solitary cent.

The reason for all the baking today is because I'm going to a cookie exchange tomorrow. Actually tomorrow I am the co-host of a cookie exchange. I'm not entirely sure how that happened but one minute I was explaining to a friend how I used to organize my cookie exchanges so as not to make people crazy with the baking and the next thing I knew I was being introduced at a meeting as the organizer. I don't mind though...it's not going to be at my house because did I tell you I AM GOING TO FRANCE this week (Sorry for the shouting but I'm a teensy bit exited) and I didn't feel like I could have 25 people in my house for lunch the day before.

For this exchange you only have to bring three dozen cookies creatively and/or beautifully packaged in three containers of one dozen cookies each. And of course because I'm organizing it there will be a prize to the person who brings the most creatively/beautifully wrapped package. I'm all about the prizes people. I bought these cute containers at The Christmas Tree Shoppe to hold the cookies I'm bringing but I did seal them in a plastic bag before placing them in the houses.

I had an exchange like this one every year before I moved overseas. The container portion became more competitive than the cookie portion because the first year I hosted it a friend who is an artist painted beautiful bird houses to put her cookies in and there may have been a little scuffle when it was time to choose. We drew numbers and it was nice and orderly after that. Oh and btw, that very cute little baker is not part of the deal.

He's actually a smoker that belongs to daughter2...she and I went to the German Christmas markets together for several years and she loves to bake and she loves cotton candy so he was a perfect gift. You put a small piece of incense inside and smoke comes out of his mouth. She'll have a home of her own to decorate one day but for now he is happy in my kitchen.

Back to tomorrow....besides the cookie exchange we're going to have a pot luck lunch and there will be an ornament exchange too. And yes, this will be my third in a little over a week but hey, my trees are happy. And my husband's co-workers will be happy tomorrow too because the extras gotta go somewhere because did I mention I'M GOING TO FRANCE THIS WEEK?

Now for the recipe which was after all, the point of this post....if you love coconut you must try these...your taste buds will thank you. Your hips will not. As it happens I do believe the French are kind of known for their macaroon baking prowess and French women are notoriously thin so perhaps there is nothing to worry about. I'm thinking a little comparison taste testing will be in order once I get to Strasbourg...I'll let you know how they measure up.

Coconut Almond Macaroons

3 TBSP. almond paste

1 tsp. vanilla

4 large egg whites, divided

1 1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

3 1/2 cup flaked sweet coconut

1/2 cup granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Combine almond paste, vanilla and 2 egg whites in a large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until blended. Combine powdered sugar, baking powder and salt and add this to the almond mixture. Beat until well blended. Stir in coconut. Put remaining two egg whites in a bowl and whip until soft peaks form. Gradually add granulated sugar 1 TBSP at a time until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg white mixture into coconut.

Drop dough by level TBSP , 2 inches apart, onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for 17 minutes or until firm. Cool in pan on wire rack 2-3 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely. Makes 32 macaroons.