Instead of dreaming about getting a sweet Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas
I have been fantasizing about my home construction:
Although she’s coming along nicely, I find myself getting more and more inpatient. Especially when we have a sunset like this:
After showing off ”the baby” to each and every houseguest (4 trips in all), we got down to business. Or rather, the boys got down to business. The contest? Who can create the most interesting facial hair. The 3 guys: N, b.i.l., and S grew out there beards starting from the first snowfall back in November and convened the day after Christmas for a man-scaping show down.
While the guys hunkered down with various shaving implements as well as plastic bags and a roll of paper towel (I’m ok not asking on this one), the parents played games.
One by one, they reappeared.
Yes, that’s my husband looking like he should be announcing the elephant act while wearing a top hat.
I think my b.i.l. was just happy to not be sporting his bushy face mess anymore. S on the other hand?
Maybe facial hair does make a man?
All three contestants:
We never ended up voting like we said we would because all 3 were so good. Ever the over-achiever, N ended up ‘scaping a second look in addition to his ring master look.
I voted for this look.
Once the hair sculpting was done, we could move on to the serious stuff: dinner. This year, N and I decided our theme would be a cooking class. We came up with recipes to approximate the dishes we love at Poppycocks here in TC. We divided everyone into different teams and assigned various dishes.
N and Dad S made the smoked goods: brisket, turkey and this utterly delicious salmon:
B.i.l. and Mom S made tomato basil soup and foccacia bread.
S and Dad Dub made sweet potato and russet potato oven fries with 3 kinds of guac (mild, medium and holy hot).
S.i.l. and Mom Dub made a quinoa greek salad. Sadly, I didn’t take a picture of this beauty. Just know this: it was delicious.
What the hell did I do during this madness? I was the ”floater.” I directed traffic, cooked the oven fries, made some roasted red bell pepper pesto for the smoked brisket and prior to the crazed cooking class, I made lemon bars. Once the lemon bars cooled, I glazed them with lemon curd from TJ’s, sprinkled them with powdered sugar then made a mixed berry balsmic compote with basil. Sounds complicated but the compote really cooks itself.
After a few hours, dinner was ready and we were starving. This is how mean I am. After everyone made up their plates, I had us sit for a picture (actually two pictures but you get the drift).
I don’t need to tell you that I stuffed my face (but I did).
We needed a quick reprieve before dessert–plus we hadn’t opened up presents yet (food before gifts!).
The santa hats were a present from Mom Dub. She also brought along glitter pens for us to personalize our caps.
All 9 of us decorated hats around the table so we could take our group holiday photo.
After a week of fun and games, it was sad to see everyone go. Who is going to take down this tree for me?
I figure I’ve got one more weekend before I really need to think about taking decorations down. So, for now, I’m just going to enjoy.
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!













































































