Our Christmas 2011 + Recipes

Hello again everyone!
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas with friends and/or family and lots of food :) As for me, it was quiet but relaxed and nice. Well, I didnt have to cook so it was definitely relaxed, hihi...

Because I HATE travelling around this time of year (really, someone is always on strike, flights are packed or delayed, luggage gets lost, and my present never fits into my suitcase), the bf and I just stayed home and had some nice food, some presents under the tree, and a LOT of television for the last few days. I had honestly forgotten what it was like to just sit around and don't do much at all! Slowly but surely the work-stress is leaving me and I seem to find myself baking a lot. Joy for my creativity, not so much for my waist line ;)

At the moment it is 1am and I can't sleep. Luckily I dont have to work tomorrow (am off for nearly another week, whoohoo!) but it might have something to do with a coffee I had at 1pm today... and of course I only just realised that I could have just for decaf actually oops! I've been planning to write this post for days now but just didnt get to it. Yes lazy... Originally I had planned to write all separate posts with each recipe etc, but in the end it was easier to just share my Christmas with you and link to the recipes as we go along. Hope you dont mind!!! Let's start (in true Hobbit style) with the food:

So Christmas Eve had started (as per my rather German upbringing, we give presents on Christmas Eve, giving you at least 2 days to enjoy them), and as we started giving presents, the bf had prepared this lovely plate of caviar (the cheap version) on blini and a lovely Kir Royale for little me. So far so good! :)

The main course was quail with grapes, green beans, and fries. This was made from a recipe from the Larouse cookbook so please dont ask me...

As always, I made dessert :) The bf put in a request for apple pie and voila, I made a proper American apple pie (this caused my sister to burst out laughing btw, but I can assure you that nothing weird happened to this pie, it was baked and then eaten!). The recipe for this yummy pie can be found here. It was so easy, that even for my first proper pie it came out really well :) Plus I got to use my purple pie dish of course.

For breakfast the next day I made bacon and eggs in a basket, courtesy of our dear Martha Stewart. I didnt have slices of bacon so I used bacon bits which you cant see as they're underneath the egg. The bf was very pleasantly surprised :) Recipe can be found here.

And to go with the coffee I made this gorgeous cinnamon bread. Despite owning a bread machine I made this using my purple mixer, meaning I had to wait and wait and wait each time for the dough to rise. It sure was worth it though! The bf found it a bit too cinnamony (I love cinnamon! But I did stick to the recipe so this time it wasn't me), so I ended up eating nearly the whole thing myself. Oops, there goes my waistline! The original recipe can be found here, really you must try this.

Now with all this food, you must be wondering if we still did presents... We sure did :) But we didnt take a lot of pics so I'll share the ones with you that I took the day after when it was daylight (still not a reason to do presents in the morning LOL).

Behold my sewing basket :) It's it pretty! I dragged the bf out to the shop and actually carried it to the register (bf: 'eeeew it has colours, am not carrying that!' Hihi, hilarious) and I love it :) My old one was just a plain box and the contents was spilling over so I opted for the largest one in the shop.

The inside. It's actually a lot larger than expected and even with only the tray filled up and the box about 1/3 full, am a little worried if the handle can hold the weight but it is mainly meant to sit snuggly near my desk looking pretty than be carried around a lot. I love it :)

And finally after years of trying to persuade me, I now own my very first official Doc Martins. Well, Solovair which are the English-English docs. They're even bought at the first even Doc store! Am I showing off? Maybe a little... I just looove them! And yes, they're purple *huge smile*. Some persuasion took place in the colour department but in the end I won. I haven't actually worn them yet, but I surely will soon. I need to mentally prepare my feet for weeks of torture first ;)

That was it, our lovely little Christmas. I think we were both quite exhausted from work etc so it was just perfect.

So better late than never: Merry Christmas!!