Ok. Here we go...
This is our little living room with our stockings and tree. I found some fun New York City Christmas ornaments at Duane Reade (and proceeded to break two of the four but that's ok). Forgive our wonky broken shades. We also used my husband's mechanical engineering drawings as wrapping paper. As he says, got to save those paper trees.
Here's a bigger version with our pups' stockings as well. And yes, we are recycling a tin can by putting a candle in it.
A Christmas tradition is to drink eggnog. I love eggnog and this is my favorite cup, made by the wonderful Brainella. Go check out her blog and Etsy shop for more fun stuff.
Of course we let the puppies open their stuff first. Here's Charlie with his new toy.I take more photos of Charlie because, well he's mine, and he's so photogenic. Look at those big brown eyes. Poor Anna. I think Robb is just taunting her with the toy.Finally she gets it:Charlie loves to sit or lay on my feet. I got a good picture of him giving me the crazy eyes look:
Then of course, like siblings do, they proceeded to fight over one of the toys while we finished opening up presents:Then it was on to the cooking. My goal was to make home-made cranberry sauce. I used the recipe I found over at She is Too Fond of Books. Absolutely delicious. I urge you to make this ASAP.
You take fresh cranberries: I had to take a close up:
Mix it with apples, pears, cinnamon stick, sugar, juice, etc: Boil it down and you get this yummy concoction. It was gone in about a day or two. Seriously yummy stuff.We also made green bean casserole. A must have for every holiday. In our fun little ethnic hood we couldn't find the traditional French's fried onions so Robb made home-made ones. For Christmas I treated myself to a set of mixing bowls I found at Urban Outfitters. Last time I cooked I had to use extra pots and pans as mixing bowls. So sad. But aren't the colors fun?Robb also made home-made stuffing. I know. We wanted to do it all home-made.Meanwhile I worked on the mashed potatoes (can you believe I'd never made them before?):And of course I made my favorite pie - apple. I make a mean apple pie: Go ahead, you can drool...We made ham AND turkey. I only managed to snap a picture of the ham. We thought, hey, while we are just cooking for us let's do it all so that if we mess up, it's won't be when we are entertaining friends and family. But they both turned out great! I love the turkey bag. That is a must.So this whole thing we managed in our tiny little kitchen. Seriously, when you open the fridge, it only misses the counter by a fraction of an inch. Here it is:Finally, dinner:
I hope you enjoyed our Christmas day pictures!