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Initial Wreath Christmas Card

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She strikes again!

My coworker is amazing at decorating cookies, you can see her other work here. This morning she gave this strawberry themed birthday gift to another coworker. I thought the idea was just too cute not to share.

A pot to grow strawberries in with adorable strawberry cookies baked by her.

Bringing in the New Year in Style

CHEERS TO 2011!

It was the day before New Years Eve and I got a voicemail from my good friend Ashley with two suggestions on what we should do for New Years, option 1 was to come over to our house and make dinner and option 2 was to research going out somewhere, and at the end of the VM she said, but I like option 1 better... and how could I turn her down since she offered to do most of the cooking.

Since I wasn't going to be cooking I used my time to pull out my china and crystal. I haven't used it in a while and I was getting the itch to pull it out, and why not it was New Years Eve after all!!

It was a small intimate group, just the 4 of us and Virginia. It's hard to see but Virginia helped her dad pick out the yellow flowers from Whole Foods when he went to go buy the craft brew, I love having a daughter!

While picking up the beer Chris picked up a dozen oysters and shucked them himself, I made him crush the ice in the blender to make it look pretty, he wasn't too happy about that extra step.

As the main course Ashley wanted to make Lobster potpies from a recipe she found in her Cosmo magazine. The only thing Ashley asked me to make was a salad but I wanted to make it a 4 course meal so I also added a soup.

For the first course Chris picked up clam chowder pre made from the deli section, it was very tasty and so easy, just heat and serve!

For the second course I made a pear and brie salad with candied pecans with a white balsamic dressing.

The yummy finished product! In Ashley style she monogramed them, only the "H's" turned out, the W's were unrecognizable.

For the finale of the night Ashley saw these desserts on Oprah and really wanted to make them, champagne cupcakes with champagne frosting and strawberries soaked in champagne. YUM!

Happy New Year

....and now it's time to take down all the Christmas decorations. Decorating my new home this year was a lot of fun.

Although my sister thought I was crazy, I knew when we purchased the house in April that I would be hanging wreaths in every window. I found these red glitter bows at Michael's and I loved how they sparkled in the sunlight.

We had these stocking from a few years ago but this year I added our initials by cutting out the letters from felt. I couldn't find a matching stocking for Virginia so we got the "my first christmas" stocking instead. We also enjoyed a fire for most of the holiday season.

Our tree came from the famous Sextons in McLean, fraser firs are my favorite...and now I'm sad the holiday season is over and we have to take it all down. From our family to yours, we hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and cheers to 2011.