Our Holiday House

Our little house dresses itself up quite nicely for the holidays!

San Gregorio

We stopped by one of our favorite beaches on our short trip down to California for the holidays and got to take some beautiful pictures with our new Canon S95 camera, consider this a test run for New Zealand.

Blondie's Knits: One Thick Cotton Scarf

So as you may have noticed by our post about our first Seattle snow, it's certainly chilly up here in Seattle. Most of my scarves are also fairly thin on the width side of things, so I decided it was time to make a really thick one.
I can't stand wool, with the exception of cashmere, so I used on of my favorite yarns, Araucaina Nature Cotton. I did a simple 1x1 rib stitch for about 6 feet with 4 inches of fringe on each end. It turned out beautiful, heavy, and very warm!

The First Seattle Thanksgiving

Our first Thanksgiving in Seattle was wonderful!  The first turkey we've ever cooked was a success and we had Mary, Zeke's mom, in town visiting. We made pretty much all of the traditional dishes with just a few tweaks to them to fit with our tastes and my food issues, you can find all the recipes we made at my Gluten Free Travelette Blog.

The day before, we brined our turkey in a maple sage brine that we concocted.

We cooked up a pecan pie in a gluten free whole foods pie crust.

We also cooked up some eggnog which stayed cool in the fridge overnight for us to enjoy later in the evening on Thanksgiving.

The day of we got a nice fire going and had the house all cleaned out.

We got all of our recipes lined up and ready to go for the day.

The turkey ended up being done about 2 hours early, so we ended up pushing our whole dinner to more of a "linner". We set the turkey aside under tinfoil for awhile, so it stayed warm until it was time for Zeke to start carving. Which he did with excellent skill!

Our Thanksgiving spread, minus the turkey, of gluten free stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with all the fixings, lingonberry, and gravy.

We had our table set up in the little breakfast nook we've got, with some hot mulled cider.

The gentlemen (and lady) getting ready.

The morning of the wedding was, at least for me, surprisingly un hectic and a lot of fun. Even though we were going to see each other before the ceremony I thought it would be fun to get ready separately from Adina and (i forget whos idea it was) have a "first encounter". So shortly after waking up that morning Adina left to get her hair done and get ready in the upstairs bathroom. Everything was going great until I decided I wanted to get some breakfast - the kitchen was directly across from where Adina was getting ready. As I rounded the top of the stairs I was met by girlish screams and immediately ordered to cover my eyes. Our truly awesome photographer was, of course, there to capture the moment.

Finally with breakfast in hand I retreated back down stairs, collected my groomsmen, groomslady and the officiant to get ready. Despite more than a few difficulties with finding a good, and affordable suit for everyone to get Nate got all the guys on board with irish linen Ludlow suits from J-Crew and even pulled off some extra swank by going all out and having the vests delivered last minute, giving me a run for my money, and rocking the thee piece suits.

Monica had a dress made for her by Amanda Archer , the same person who made Adinas and the brides maids dresses. It was a "tuxedo" cut, brown to match my suit with green trim to match her hair, and our wedding colors. Very awesome.

The first time I went up to Al's Attire it was supposed to be to just check out a cool little shop that Amanda Archer suggested to us because we couldn't find a brown suit ANYWHERE. Al, on the other hand, thought I was there to get fitted for a suit. Turns out Al was right.

The ties were all made by Adinas mom, Kim. And because we couldn't decide on the green or the blue ones generously made us one of each for everyone.

For groomsmen/lady gifts I had to come up with something appropriate for the occasion and that showed the meaningful nature of them supporting Adina and I that day. I settled on cufflinks made by Sherry Truitt. In each set one cufflink had a map of Point Lobos and the other custom from each person. Nate and Geoff were where they were married, and George was where we met and bonded, Los Altos Hills. For Monica Sherri made me a pendant necklace, in the same style, with a map of Point Lobos.

So thanks everyone, it was an amazing day and you all looked the part.

Our First Seattle Snow

As I'm writing this the temperature is supposedly dropping to 13 degrees.  Mighty mighty chill for us California kids!

2010 Holiday Napkins & Tablecloth

Since this was our first Thanksgiving in Seattle and our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, I wanted to make something special for it.

So I used the this pattern from the Purl Bee as inspiration and bought 4 yards of a cotton plaid fabric and 4 more yards of a cream muslin fabric. This is my first try ever making napkins or a table cloth and I think they turned out pretty okay for a first attempt.