Christmas Night

Just a short one here..... it's been a long day, and a long night because I've just finished running the dishwasher twice, washing the baking pans, wrapping leftovers, putting everything away and then vacuuming the carpeting. All done, and I'm happy about that.

The day was just fabulous....... we all had such a great time. The dining room table looked beautiful.... red velvet poinsettias running along the center of the table, with tea-light glass votives tucked here and there along its length. For the placecard gifts, I had vintage Christmas postcards (each over 100 years old)...... I put each postcard into a pretty frame, wrote each name in gold on a small square card under the glass......... each framed postcard sat in front of the person's seat but set into the poinsettias so it all looked like one big 'tablescape,' as Colin Cowie would call it. Pretty as a picture, if I do say so myself.

We had the meal in courses.... different silverware and dinnerware for each course. Tossed salad, then A's lasagna, then the turkey breast and trimmings. Then my husband's plum pudding and A's cheesecake. My husband taped a gold dollar coin onto the bottom of everyone's plate. Traditionally, with plum pudding, gold coins get baked into the cake, but his idea was more dramatic--- everyone kept looking for the coin with each bite and they were disappointed because they didn't find any. Then my husband told everyone to take their fork and tap three times on their plate, then he said to look underneath the plate-- and all of us had a gold coin hiding under there. It was a nice surprise, and we all have a nice keepsake of the dinner. We also had traditional Victorian "crackers" after the plum pudding.... the ends of the rolled-up paper 'crackers' break apart and make a firecracker sound, and inside each is a paper crown, a riddle, and a small gift.

After our dinner, and before dessert, we opened up gifts. Lots of surprises for everyone.... a Snoopy Nutcracker for A, plus a Manilow mug for her identical to the one I got for myself and our friend J. Our little friend C made me a soft and beautiful afghan in a pretty blue color with angels and hearts on it. C is indeed our little angel, and it was wonderful to have her and her parents join us for Christmas.

C's mom L made a great first-course salad and a cranberry-apple dish for the turkey. It was great (better than the cranberry sauce I usually make). L will give me the recipe and I'll type it up here later on this week.

Our friend F couldn't be with us for dinner (doctor's orders, after her hospital stay). My husband and I will drive to her house tomorrow. I've already wrapped up four plates of food for her, plus I'll bring her framed placecard/vintage postcard, and her other Christmas gifts. (The framed postcards were part of everyone's Christmas gift... they all got to take theirs home, and I get to think of another good idea for next year's Christmas dinner placecards.)

That's about all I can write for the night........ it's been a long day, and I know I'll sleep very well tonight. Oh--- the snow that fell last night is all melted now. The sun came out around noon-time and it warmed up enough so that our cats could stay on the screen-porch while we had company here. My flowers didn't seem to mind the snow... they all look just fine. And as I thought, today's front page of The Chronicle featured stories about the snowfall. One photo on the front page showed a woman with a snowman put together from yesterday's snow. Are you ready for this--- the snowman was all of eight inches tall.

On that happy little note...... I hope everyone out there had a beautiful Christmas!